Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

Prologue
    Those are pearls that were his eyes.
    SHAKESPEARE
BROOME, AUSTRALIA,
    November
    T he sky was violent over the southern sea. There was no horizon, no center, no boundary to the onrushing storm. Heat lay over the land like an invisible, burning shadow of the sun.
    Humidity stuck to the man’s naked chest as he unlocked the door to the pearl sorting shed, entered, punched a code into the security panel, and relocked the steel door behind him. Even though he had just tossed out the sorters on the pretext of a random security check, it would quickly become murderously hot inside. In a metal-roofed building, air-conditioning didn’t last long after the switch was thrown to Off, but that was the first thing he did after entering his security code.
    He didn’t enjoy sweating. It was simply that when the air-conditioning was running, he couldn’t hear the sound of the door opening or footsteps sneaking up behind his back. So he flipped a different switch and settled for the small comfort of ceiling fans. Overhead, metal sliced like slow mixing blades through the sullen air. He could have opened steel-shuttered windows to let light and air flow through the shed, but he didn’t. The last thing he wanted was to be spied on by any of the eager employees.
    Everybody was dying to know where he hid his hoard of magnificent pearls.
    Automatically he wiped sweat off his face and arms and hands with a cotton towel. Only then did he approach the sorting tables. Beneath full-spectrum lights, gleaming sea gems lay in tidy rows and inviting mounds. The pearls begged to be touched, stroked, savored, caressed.
    Worshiped.
    But not by sweaty hands. Pearls were the most delicate of all gems. The oils and acids of human sweat ate away the thin, smooth layers the captive oyster had so patiently, mindlessly, created to mask an internal wound. Careless handling dulled the fabled orient of pearls, dimmed the subtle ribbons of dawn dancing just beneath the satin surface, just out of reach. Like a dream. Like a miracle.
    Just out of reach. Always.
    But man reached. Always.
    Four thousand years before Christ, man collected, treasured, revered, and wondered about the gleaming miracles from the sea. Born of thunder, conceived in mist, impregnated by moonlight, tears of the gods . . . all explanations for the pearl’s origin shimmered with the transcendent mystery of the pearl itself.
    Barbarous or civilized, savage or aesthetic, few cultures had been proof against the pearl’s allure. It was the most perfect of all gems, for it needed no cutting, no polishing, nothing but man’s recognition. And greed. Believed to embody both the carnal and the sublime, pearls adorned the altars of Venus and the reliquaries of saints. Dissolved in wine, pearls cured diseases of the flesh. Buried with the dead, pearls celebrated the wealth of the living. Worn by kings, priests, emperors, sultans, and sorcerers, pearls were a signal of absolute power.
    Whoever owned pearls owned magic.
    Magic lay all around him, trays and mounds of miracles gleaming, pregnant with all possibilities. The gap between modern rationality and Stone Age awe was as thin as a layer of nacre spread over the glowing ocean gems.
    Surely in the midst of all these miracles, another one was possible . . . .
    Slowly he went past the virginal white, shimmering gold, and peacock black of the South Sea pearls that keen-eyed sorters had been matching for size, color, and degrees of perfection. None of the pearls on the tables interested him. He had been the one to do the first sort, at harvest, when he creamed two years of work, taking only the best. When a man made offerings to gods or devils, only the best would do.
    As he moved toward the twin steel doors that went from floor to ceiling at the end of the shed, the whisper of hard rubber gliding over the tile floor followed him wherever he went. He no more noticed it than a walking man would notice the soft sound of his shoes on a floor.
    Though this second set of doors led nowhere, another combination lock guarded them; behind their steel lay a treasure like no other on earth. He released the lock and pushed the doors wide. The lockers inside the vault were deep, protecting tray after tray of pearls, the riches of other seasons, other harvests. Each locker had a hefty steel handle and a tumbler lock of the type popular on low-tech personal safes. The tropical climate was hell on fancy electronics. Behind the locker doors lay tray