Death is Forever

he’d been able to turn Street loose years ago to use his quick, cruel skills. Street would have opened up the old man like a sturgeon, spilling the glistening caviar of truth. Or better yet, if possible, a swift death, a death that would have killed the secret of the mine as well…. But neither ideahad been approved by van Luik’s superiors.
    Now it was too late.
    “No one can prove the mine exists,” van Luik said softly, not even aware that he was speaking aloud. “He was, after all, quite mad.”
    “Dream on, mate,” Street retorted. “The mine exists. They called him Crazy Abe and he might have been, but not like that. Diamonds were his children, his women, his country, and his god. I’ve heard a lot of lies in my day and bloody little truth. Hearing Abe talk about diamonds was like being a priest in the confessional. The truth, no matter how wild. I never got my hands on the stones in the bag, but I’d bet my life they were real.”
    Silence stretched into a sigh. “The sixteenth verse. Read it.”
    This time Street didn’t argue. Before he’d only feared that Abe Windsor would leave the secret of the diamond mine to someone other than his friend Jason Street. Now Street was certain. He’d sworn the poetry had nothing new to teach him.
    He’d been wrong.
    “‘It can be yours, all of it./Say goodbye to mallee root,/Say g’day to my queen,/Go a yard for each year of deceit,/Turn around once—see it?/Stupid merkin./Can’t find shit in a loo, can you?’”
    Van Luik waited.
    “Mallee root is rhyming slang for prostitute,” Street said tiredly, finding nothing new in the line. “There’s no map or local name like it on any of Abe’s properties or claims. As for his ‘queen,’ it’s probably his mine, right?”
    Van Luik grunted.
    “As for the rest, until you know where to stand and how long Abe was deceived, the words are useless. Same for ‘Take a map of Tasmania,/Find the little man in the boat./Go on, row on.’ The map of Tasmania is slang for pussy, and the little man in the boat is—”
    “Yes, yes, yes,” van Luik cut in impatiently. “Knowing that Abe is talking to his heir doesn’t suggest any new interpretations to you?”
    Street hesitated, then sighed. “Not a hope, mate. Not a bloody hope. But I doubt the chokies will have any better luck making sense out of the poem than we have. They were probably looking for maps or ore samples, anything that would point them in the right direction. It’s a big station, and Abe had mineral claims in other places as well.”
    “But it must mean something to someone,” van Luik said harshly. “Windsor’s heir might be able to decipher it. That’s the possibility we must guard against now.”
    “Do you know who the heir is?”
    “Not yet. We should know soon.”
    “Find out,” Street said. “I’ll take care of him. No worries, mate. With the heir dead and the mines abandoned, the government will let the claims lapse. I’ll file new ones, you’ll underwrite a real search, and the mine will eventually be found and controlled by us. No worries.”
    “Even with the claims in hand, you’ll be no closer to finding the mine than you are right now.”
    “No worries. I’ll find the bloody thing. All I need is time and money for equipment.”
    Van Luik smiled weakly. If only it was that easy. But it wasn’t. Nothing about the Sleeping Dog Mines had been easy. Nothing at all. Since the instant of their discovery, the diamonds had been both a siren call and a threat of death.
    The siren call had proved false. The threat could prove to be all too real.
    “We will consider your solution,” van Luik said.
    “Don’t consider too long. This operation is balls-up enough as it is.”
    The line hummed, telling Street that van Luik had disconnected.

4
Darwin Chen Wing’s office
    Despite the dense legal language, Cole Blackburn only had to read the partnership contract once. He had a nearly perfect memory. It was a quirk of mind that had sometimes helped him and more often had brought him pain. Too many things had happened to him that he would rather forget.
    The agreement itself was quite clear. The contract allowed Cole to purchase half interest in BlackWing Resources for the sum of one dollar U.S. In return, he would agree to sign over to BlackWing his interests in any Australian mining claims or patents he held. At the moment, that amounted to zero claims and patents. BlackWing had been worth $10 million U.S. five years ago,