Death is Forever

though the searing October sunlight had wings.
    Quickly Street checked the bodies of the two people he’d just killed. No sign of the tin box or the velvet bag. He went over the bodies again, hoping to discover who had sent them and why.
    Neither Chu nor the Chinese woman carried anything that might identify them: no papers, no clothing labels, no weapons.
    Frowning, Street sat on his haunches and studied the two dead bodies. Chu had been at the station for years now, but Street had never noticed the calluses on the cook’s hands and feet. They belonged to a highly trained fighter, not to a simple scut worker. The woman’s hands were similarly hardened. The two Chinese had worked as a team, a team that had been prepared to kill or die.
    Now they were dead and Street was no closer to knowing who they’d worked for than he was to Crazy Abe’s diamond mine.
    Street spat on the red earth, then turned his back on the bodies. There was little chance that anything of value remained, but after a decade of watching the mousehole, he wouldn’t let frustration make him overlook any chance at all. It was just possible that the box containing the old man’s doggerel and his will were still hidden on the station.
    The stench in the house hadn’t changed.
    Street went through the place with the practiced motions of a man who had searched those same rooms many, many times before. As always, nothing new turned up. Nor did the tin box. Wiping dirt and sweat from his eyes, he went to stand over the corpse of the old man who had evaded him in death as he had in life.
    “Ten years of ‘Chunder from Down Under,’” Street snarled, his voice low in his throat. “Ten years of your stink and your sly laughter. To hell with you, Abe Windsor. And to hell with whoever inherits the Sleeping Dog Mines.”

1
Northern Territory, Australia
October
    “Two people died getting this to me.”
    Cole Blackburn looked at the small worn velvet bag in Chen Wing’s hand and asked, “Was it worth it?”
    “You tell me.”
    With a swift motion Wing emptied the contents of the bag onto the ebony surface of his desk. Light rippled and shifted as nine translucent stones tumbled over one another with tiny crystalline sounds. The first impression was of large, very roughly made marbles that had been chipped and pitted by use. Nine of the thirteen stones were colorless. Three were pink. One was the intense green of a deep river pool.
    Cole’s hand closed over the green marble. It was as big as the tip of his thumb and surprisingly heavy for its size. He rubbed it between his fingers. The surface had an almost slippery feel, as though it had been burnished with precious oils. He turned the stone until he found a flat, cleanly chipped face. He bathed it with his breath.
    No moisture collected on the smooth green surface.
    Excitement stabbed through Cole. Without a word he walked to a liquor cart that stood against a nearby wall. He picked up a heavy leaded crystal glass and glanced at Wing, who nodded. Cole brought the green stone down the side of the glass in a single swift stroke.
    The stone scratched the glass easily and deeply. The stone itself wasn’t marked.
    At random Cole picked up other stones from the desk and drew them down the crystal surface. New scratches formed. The stones themselves remained untouched. He pulled a well-worn jeweler’s loupe from his pocket, angled the desk light to his satisfaction, picked up the deep green stone, and examined it.
    The sensation was like falling into a pool of intense emerald light. Yet this was not an emerald. Even uncut and unpolished, the stone held and dispersed light in ways that only a diamond could. It shimmered between his fingers with each tiny movement of his hand. Light flowed and glanced among the irregularities in the stone’s surface and gathered in its luminous depths. There were no fractures and only two very minute flaws, both irrelevant to the diamond’s value. They lay just below the surface, where they would be cut and polished out of existence.
    Cole looked at several more stones before he put his loupe back in his pocket and said, “White paper.”
    Wing opened a desk drawer, extracted a pure white sheet of Pacific Traders Ltd. letterhead, and slid it across the desk. Cole pulled a small chamois bag from his pocket and removed a rough diamond that he knew was of perfect color. Uncut and unpolished, the stone had a natural octahedral shape. It looked almost manmade next to