Death is Forever

a Dog mine.
    “Cole?” she asked, sensing his intensity.
    Instead of answering, he grabbed another map, this one showing major modern watercourses. There were no year-round rivers, but in the wet more rain came down than even the parched, porous land could absorb. The result was a series of on-again, off-again “rivers” that were little more than flood channels several miles wide.
    She watched while his intent, nearly silver eyes measured distances and catalogued possibilities. The speed and decisiveness of his work suggested an intelligence that was as impressive as his physical strength.
    Watching him, she had to admit just how drawn she was to him—and never more so than now, when the intelligence and discipline in him were real enough to touch.
    Don’t even think about being his lover.
    She wasn’t the kind of person who did anything by halves. If she gave herself to him physically, it would be impossible not to give the rest of herself as well. There was no guarantee he wanted anything more than her body. It was a recipe for disaster.
    Yet the lure of him sank into her more deeply each moment she was with him.
    Without warning, Cole looked up and caught Erin’s luminous green eyes admiring him. When she realized it, she looked away hastily.
    “Well?” she asked, gesturing to the map.
    He shrugged. “About two-thirds of Australia can lay claim to being the burial ground of a dead sea’s bones.”
    “Oh,” she said, disappointed.
    “On the other hand, when it comes to checking existing claims, I’ll concentrate on the areas with limestone outcroppings first.”
    A smile transformed her face. “Then I helped?”
    He grinned. “I hope so. We’ve got a hell of a lot of land to cover any way you look at it.”
    “Is there a river?”
    “Not the way you mean it. There were paleo-rivers, though. They drained into the shallow sea where reefs formed. There were beaches, too, maybe like Namibia’s beaches, where every time you dig down to the oyster line you come up with diamonds running out of both hands.”
    “Where are the old rivers on Abe’s claims?”
    “I never saw any sign of them,” Cole said, “but they’re there. They have to be.”
    “Because of the diamonds?”
    “No. Because the Kimberley Plateau has always been there, and a sea was usually there, and water always runs down to the sea.”
    Unconsciously, she worried her lower lip with her teeth, something she often did when nervous or thinking hard. “What about your maps? Do they show old rivers?”
    “No. The only maps I can get my hands on are of the tectonic sort. They’re useless if you’re looking for something that’s smaller than a hundred square miles.”
    “How big are diamond pipes?”
    “Most of them are only a few hundred square acres on the surface. A lot of them are smaller. A few are huge.”
    “Talk about a needle in a haystack…”
    “I’d settle for that,” he said sardonically. “If it was a needle, I’d whistle up an industrial-strength magnet and suck that baby out in nothing flat.”
    His eyes went back to the maps. Instantly he was absorbed, pursuing some line of thought Erin could only guess at. She watched him openly, wishing her cameras were lying on the table instead of on the chair next to her bed. Though she rarely did portraits, preferring the timeless beauty of wilderness to the transient faces of humanity, she wanted to photograph Cole. Like the land, there was more to him than his harsh exterior.

16
London
    Hugo van Luik passed down the long hallway like a ghost. The lush green wool carpeting, the tapestries, and the heavy curtains soaked up every sound his steps made. A closed-circuit television camera mounted on the woodpaneled wall tracked his progress. Depending on the time of month, this office was the repository of anywhere between two and three billion dollars in rough diamonds.
    When he reached the heavy, hand-carved wooden door at the far end of the hall, he stopped and tapped a four-digit code into the security key pad. The lock retracted, allowing him to push the door open and pass into the next long hallway to the next electronic locks, until finally he was inside the conference room.
    Although meetings of the “steering committee” of the Diamond Sales Division of Consolidated Minerals were “unofficial,” “advisory,” and never publicized, such gatherings were crucial to the economic expectations and requirements of the nations that attended. Individual