From the first moment he saw it, in the darkness of that stinking, dirty room, the light of the candle glimmering deep in its heart, Josef coveted the stone as he had never coveted anything in his life before, nor ever was to again. Here, cradled within the grasp of his open hand, was the means to change his life and Tanya’s at a stroke, the glittering key to a future of which he had all but despaired. He had no doubt at all as to its value, needed no minute examination to convince him of the diamond’s flawless quality; he knew it, would have staked his life upon it, felt it in his blood the moment he held it. Yet – it was not simply the fantastic value of the thing that drew him, the knowledge of the fortune that must surely await the man who could release the living fire that smouldered within it. From the start it was as if the gem bewitched him, called to him, revealed to him, and to him alone, planes and angles and the rainbowed refraction of light that an unpractised eye could never have recognized. From the moment he held the stone, his fingers ached for the feel of the tools that would discover the beauty that lay dormant within it. So rapt was he in those first moments that he hardly heard the rambling, drunken tale that accompanied it – a story of treachery and murder and betrayed friendship that later he was to sicken of hearing; for, once the Dutchman’s tongue had loosened, it was as if a vicious compulsion urged the telling and retelling of the tale, often with added, lividly embroidered details – but always with the same core that Josef came to recognize as the barbaric truth.
Eighteen months before, on shore leave in Cape Town, van Heuten had embarked upon a drunken orgy that had ended in the cutting of the throat of a ship’s officer. Judiciously, he had decided the time had come to leave the sea for a while, and he had jumped ship in the hope of trying what he saw as the easy pickings of the newly-opened diamond fields upcountry. Lacking in experience, equipment and luck he had at first been disappointed. But not for long. In such a place and at such a time there would always be alternatives for a man like Pieter van Heuten. Leaving the hard work to others he gambled, swindled and cheated his way from the Orange to the Vaal and back again, finally going into dubious partnership with a German called Weitner – a man from all accounts as villainous as himself – with whom he had entered into the lucrative business of stealing sheep and cattle from the vast farms that surrounded the diggings, slaughtering them and selling the meat at hugely inflated prices to the hungry men of the mining camps that had sprung – mushrooms of timber and corrugated iron – along the banks of the diamond-rich rivers of Southern Africa. But they had badly underestimated the tough farmers of the veldt; the day came when van Heuten and his partner had stolen one sheep too many – on their next foray an unfriendly reception committee awaited them. Weitner was taken and hanged on the spot with no ceremony. Van Heuten was luckier – though slightly wounded he managed to escape and make his way towards the newly christened town of Kimberley, centre of the new diamond rush and a good place for a wanted man to lose himself. A few miles from the town, however, he collapsed, weakened by his wound, and was found by the roadside by a young American, Johnny Burton, who, unlike most in his position, neither left the stranger to die nor robbed and finished him off himself. Believing, to the Dutchman’s private amusement, van Heuten’s fabrication about being attacked and robbed, the young man befriended him, took him in and nursed him back to health. More fool him, said van Heuten with a grin; and predictably had repaid the young man’s misplaced generosity with a conscienceless betrayal that had cost the American his fortune and his life. It had been almost a month after van Heuten had moved into Johnny’s corrugated iron shack – an oven in the heat of the African sun, but a haven nevertheless for a hunted man – that the American had at last found the stone that all along he had been convinced was waiting for him. Flawless, weighing nearly seventy carats, it was every diamond man’s dream of swift fortune. Sitting that night with the Dutchman around their small cooking-fire he had, with naive elation, shown the man he considered his friend his find, had sat till the early hours dreaming aloud of his future – a cattle ranch somewhere in the Western States, marriage to the girl he had left behind, a family – twenty-four hours later Johnny Burton was dead, battered almost beyond recognition with his own shovel and Pieter van Heuten was on his way to Cape Town, the diamond in his pouch. He had, however, made one bad miscalculation; Johnny Burton was not, as were so many of the men that haunted the diamond diggings, a friendless down-and-out to be left for the vultures and no one to care. Even among the hard-bitten men of the mining camps his good nature and friendly open-handedness had won him many good friends, among them a dour, tough Canadian known simply as Bull, who had detested and mistrusted van Heuten on sight. As luck would have it, Bull it was who found Johnny’s battered body within an hour of the Dutchman’s departure and, drawing the only possible and absolutely correct conclusion, immediately set out to hunt the man who had killed his friend. So it was that van Heuten, to his astonishment, had found himself the subject of a grimly single-minded manhunt that had, as well as disturbing his peace of mind, effectively prevented him from disposing of the diamond. Finally reaching Cape Town with the stone still in his possession and with Bull right on his heels, he had signed on to the Marie Anne, a freighter bound for Amsterdam, and had fled to safety.
“Why haven’t you sold it here?” Josef asked that first time, weighing the diamond in his hand, turning it gently upon his palm with the tip of his finger.
“Pah!” The sound was a compound of disgust and anger. “Do you think I didn’t try? Cheats! Cheats and thieves!” He snatched back the stone, brooded over it. “Can I go to the ponces that live on the Herrengracht with something like this? Clearly not. Questions would be asked, eh? Questions I should not be happy to answer. So I went—” he paused, shrugged “—elsewhere. To the smaller dealers – to the ones who don’t ask so many questions. Pigs. They thought they could cheat me. Told me the stone was worthless. You know what they offered me?” He spat, too close for comfort to Josef’s boot. “A stinking six thousand guilders. Six thousand! Do they think I floated in to Amsterdam on the last tide?”
“I suppose they guessed that you wouldn’t dare try to sell it on the open market.”
“I suppose they did.” The light eyes gleamed in the guttering light, glinting malevolence, fixed upon Josef. “But perhaps – now – they’re wrong, eh? Now I have a friend – a friend who knows diamonds – a friend who can tell these cheating jackals that Piet van Heuten knows the value of this stone and won’t be made a fool of by misbegotten sons of bitches who think they can pull the wool over a man’s eyes.”
Exactly when the overwhelming desire to own the stone became a resolve – an astonishing resolve – to steal it, Josef was never sure. The thought must have been there, he realized later, from the very first moment he held the thing, must have lain quietly in the recesses of his mind waiting for the moment when desperation and necessity finally exerted themselves to transform the unthinkable into the acceptable and the decision could be taken. Certainly within a very short time he found himself to be completely obsessed with the stone. In his dreams, waking and sleeping, he handled it, worked it, watched its transformation from clouded crystal to living, lustrous gem. The thought of it lying neglected in that pigsty of a room above his head was more than he could bear; the knowledge that all of his own hopes, and Tanya’s, could well lie in that festering filth was far worse, and not even an innately honest nature could long remain proof against such enormous temptation.
But if he could not recall the precise instant of decision regarding the theft itself, he never forgot the moment he saw, in Tanya, the means to that end.
It occurred on an evening when van Heuten, as so often, turned up at their door with a bottle of schnapps and a present for Tanya. Carelessly at home as always, he flung his coat on to the hook on the back of the door, handed the bottle to Josef, his eyes already searching for the child.
“Hey, my little Russian princess. Come see. Come see what Uncle Piet has for you.” He drew from his jacket pocket a prettily-dressed, slightly tattered rag doll with round blue eyes and smudged red cheeks. Grinning, he dangled the doll in the air, just beyond Tanya’s reach. She looked at it, pleadingly.
“Say ‘Please’, now.” He taunted her as he might a puppy, keeping the doll just beyond her reach.
She lifted her arms. “Please,” she whispered.
“Please, dear Uncle Piet.”
She turned her great eyes for a fleeting moment to Josef. Her colour was high. Then, “Please, dear Uncle Piet,” she repeated obediently.
“Give it to the child if you’re going to,” Josef said shortly. “Why make her beg?”
Van Heuten ignored him. He dropped to one knee and handed the doll to Tanya, catching her round the waist before she could grasp the doll and flee, as had been her obvious intention. “Doesn’t your Uncle Piet deserve a kiss then?”
The child’s hesitation was barely noticeable. Then she allowed herself to be pulled on to his knee and petted.
“That’s my good little girl. A kiss for Uncle Piet – just a little kiss.”
It was then that it struck Josef that these times – when he fondled and played with Tanya – were the only times when he ever saw the man so relaxed, so unguarded. Vulnerable. He tried to push the thought away. To contemplate stealing – even from such a rogue as van Heuten – was bad enough. To consider involving the child, surely, was unthinkable. Yet the thought, once lodged, would not be dismissed. Through the long nights when he lay unsleeping, discarding first one impractical plan, then another, he came constantly upon the same stumbling block – van Heuten’s constant vigilance. The man trusted nobody, and though he treated Josef’s room as his own the compliment – if compliment it were – was in no way returned. Never did Josef find himself in the other man’s room alone, never on those occasions when the man was out of the house was his door ever left unlocked. The only way to get at the diamond was to get hold of the key. That, Josef thought, might be easy enough. But then he had to arrange for something – someone? – to distract the man’s attention, keep him safely downstairs, out of the way.
He tried time and again over the next few days not to think of using Tanya as a decoy, yet no matter how he tried the thought would not be dismissed; on the contrary, as the days passed, he found himself reasoning with himself, justifying the unjustifiable. The child could not possibly come to harm. If he – Josef – stole the key from van Heuten’s pocket, made some excuse to slip out, went straight upstairs, took the diamond – why the whole operation would not take more than five or six minutes. What hurt could befall the child in such a short time? And she, after all, would partake no less than he of the new life that could follow. If the choice were between a life that had a meaning and a life that had none – what true choice was there? His plan to dispose of the diamond using the Amsterdam Anatovs meant using the child, and he had no scruples about that – where, in heaven’s name, was the difference?
So he reasoned, knowing the devil’s voice, helpless to withstand it, a man driven against his nature to dishonour. His resolve faltered only once, when the woman Bea, with seemingly uncanny timing, chose to warn him against letting Tanya associate with van Heuten. Josef had noticed that there was intense bad blood between these two; the reason for it became clear on the day that the woman stopped him on the stairs with a crook of her finger and a conspiratorial jerk of her head. “A word with you.”
Josef by now understood enough Dutch to follow most of what she said. He stood politely, waiting.
“Him up there—” She jerked a fat thumb graphically towards the top landing. “Don’t let him near your girl. He’s filth.”
Josef was more than a little taken aback at the directness of the words. “He’s been very kind to Tanya,” he began.
The woman snorted. “Kind? Hah! I dare say he has. As he was to my little Hendrikje, eh? Giving her presents. Telling her his filthy stories. And me not knowing what was going on under my very nose! Till the day I caught him with his hand up her skirt—”
Josef felt hot colour rise to his face. Ridiculously he felt as guilty and humiliated as if it were he himself the woman discussed with such contempt. “I don’t—”
She ignored his attempt to speak. “I tell you the truth. His hand up her skirt. His fingers—” She stopped, eyeing the expression on Josef’s face, “Well, no need to say, eh? I tell you – he was lucky I didn’t chop them off, and his other parts with them. Filth!” she said again, with quarrelsome force. Then she softened. “Your little one, she’s an angel, a little angel, but,” sorrowfully she pointed a finger, screwed it illustratively into her own forehead, “she’s not quite right in the head, huh? And her so gentle. How would she know how to behave with such a man? What would he do to her, filth like that?”
Josef fled. But though the woman’s words haunted him, still the compulsion, the necessity to acquire the stone, the key to their escape from savage poverty and indignity, drove him; and he could see no other way. He’d be a fool and worse than a fool not to take this chance. A heartless fate had kicked them in the teeth more than once this past year – now was the time to take fate by the throat and redress the balance. The man to whom the stone truly belonged was dead, foully murdered by van Heuten. It now belonged to anyone who could possess it. And who had a better right than the man who knew instinctively the secrets of the stone, and who could release its captive beauty to the world? The child would not be harmed.
So he told himself, and so he more than half-believed.
Josef Rosenberg turned thief one gale-swept March night while the loose, ill-fitting shutters of the building crashed against the rotting brickwork in the wind, and small, chill drafts, sprites of cold mischief, scurried along passages, up stairs and beneath doors. He had laid his plans as far as he was able, and then simply and fatalistically waited; who knew, perhaps the opportunity would never arise. But when, on this windy evening, van Heuten put his head round the door and Josef from the other side of the room smelt the raw spirits on his breath, he knew with a disturbing mixture of dread and anticipation that the gods had indeed decided to tempt him.
The Dutchman, grinning foolishly, stumbled into the room, divested himself of his coat, tried unsuccessfully to hang it as usual on the hook on the back of the door and watched in drunken surprise as the garment slipped to the floor in an untidy heap.
“It’s all right. I’ll do it. Here – sit down before you fall down,” Josef to his astonishment heard his own voice, even and self-contained as ever, betraying nothing of the sudden thumping of his heart, the dryness of his throat. He pushed the rickety chair forward, catching the Dutchman behind the knees. Giggling and wheezing, van Heuten collapsed into it. Casually, Josef stooped to pick up the coat. “What in God’s name have you been doing to yourself?”
Van Heuten tossed back his head and roared with laughter. “Drinking, my friend! What else? Drinking a scoundrel under the table! Did I ever tell you of Hennie van der Post? The bugger who damn near got me cut into collops in Athens three years ago?” He launched into a garbled story, the slurred words almost unintelligible. Josef watched him, not listening. The man was drunk as a pig – surely he must soon slip into insensibility? Slowly he walked round behind the chair, and hung the coat he was still holding on the back of it. The room was far from warm, but a sheen of sweat stood on his face.
“And then – you’d never credit it—” the Dutchman stopped, peered around. “Dammit, Josef, where the hell are you?”
“I’m here. Here,” Josef said, soothingly.
“Ah. Well, then I said—”
“Uncle Josef! Uncle Josef – Hendrikje’s found a kitten. A poor little lost kitten. May we—” Tanya’s precipitate entrance into the room took her almost into the arms of Pieter van Heuten before she could stop herself. As he reached for her, she froze. Van Heuten stopped talking, his bleary and reddened eyes upon the child’s suddenly still face. He licked his lips.
Tanya, abashed, stepped back, pulling away from him.
“Come now, little one. Little flower. Come to Uncle Piet.” The tone was maudlin, the hot eyes obscene.
The child looked to Josef in desperation. His heart took up the slow hammer beat of tension. “Where have you been?” he asked severely.
“Upstairs. Playing with Hendrikje. She’s—”
He interrupted her. “You’re late.”
The child looked surprised. “But—”
“You’re late” he repeated sternly. “I’ve been waiting for you. I told you – I have to go out. To see a man about a job.”
She looked puzzled. “You didn’t—”
“Tanya – will you stop arguing?” Guilt made his voice sharper than he intended. “I tell you I have to go out. So come along now – get undressed and into bed.”
The child glanced at the watching van Heuten, then, pleadingly, back at Josef. A poppy flush of embarrassment had risen in her cheeks. “Must I? Couldn’t I wait till – till you get back?”
Josef hardened his heart. Five minutes. Nothing could possibly happen in five minutes. He saw the way van Heuten was watching the child, knew beyond doubt that the man would offer to stay with her. “Come,” he said again, severely, “into bed.”
Reluctantly Tanya walked to the corner where her small mattress lay, turned her back on the room as she wriggled out of her threadbare blouse and skirt, van Heuten watched. Outside, the wind moaned, whistling through the cracks, bringing the child’s pale, pearl-smooth skin to goosebumps. In her petticoat and without turning round she slid swiftly into the cold bed, pulling the dirty blankets close up around her chin.
“Don’t be so hard on her, Josef my friend,” van Heuten slurred. “She’s not ready for sleep yet. Are you my pet?” He lifted a drink-flushed, brutal face. “I’ll tell you what – you go about your business. I’ll stay with the child. I’ll tell her a story. Eh? You’d like that, wouldn’t you, little one?” He staggered to the mattress. She watched him come with wide, stricken eyes.
Almost, then, Josef abandoned his plan. His conscience and his heart impelled him so – his brain told him that no such chance was likely to come again. The key in his hand might have been made of red hot metal. “Please yourself,” he heard himself say. “I shan’t be long. Five – ten minutes at the most. Make yourself comfortable. But Piet—”
‘The Dutchman looked up, surprise in his eyes at the sharpness of Josef’s tone.
“—if you’re going to tell stories, make sure they’re suitable for young ears.”
“Hah!” The man made a gesture of injured irritation. “You been listening to that cow upstairs? I know decent stories. Go – off you go.” He waved an unsteady hand at Josef. “Don’t worry. I’ll look after her. Uncle Piet will look after her.” He turned back to Tanya, who lay, mute, her face in shadow.
Josef cleared his throat. “Yes. I’ll go. I won’t be long. Five minutes at the most—” He hesitated at the door.
Van Heuten grunted and did not turn. Josef let himself out into the dark, draughty passage. The key he had taken from the Dutchman’s pocket had left a painful imprint upon his palm, so fast had he clutched it. He stumbled up the unlit stairs. A feral glint of eyes was followed by a skittering flight – cat or rat, it could have been either. The top landing where stood the Dutchman’s locked door was faintly lit by the lamps of the city that shone, diffused, through a narrow, dirty window. With trembling fingers he jammed the key into the lock. It rattled loosely and would not turn. Cursing, he forced his shaking hands to steadiness, guided the key more carefully into the keyhole. This time it caught, clicked, and the door yielded. Up here at the top of the house the wind noise was demented. The gale buffeted the windows, clattered the shutters, whistled down the chimney, found every crack. Like the landing, the room was lit dimly from the outside. Josef went straight to the cupboard where he knew van Heuten kept the stone.
The wind screamed across the roofs, hit the window as if intent upon breaking into the room.
The diamond was not there.
Frantically he hunted, blinded and deafened by the imperative need to find it. He could not – could not – come this far, take this risk, only to fail once again. The stone was here, somewhere, it had to be.
The minutes ticked by. To the floor at his feet, abandoning caution, he threw dirty clothes, an untidily coiled length of tarred rope, an unwashed tin mug, a tangled ball of string—
It had to be here.
He glared around the room to where another cupboard stood against the wall. Careless of noise, he ran to it, colliding in his haste with a chair and knocking it flying. The cupboard was empty of all but a mouldy loaf and a few hard unappetizing-looking sausages. His eyes picked out in the gloom a chest of drawers. He dragged the drawers open, flung their contents aside.
Nothing.
The wind shrieked, derisively.
And then he saw it in the shifting light – a familiar small box standing in full view on the cluttered mantelshelf. He reached for it with a shaking hand. A moment later the object of his search was in his hand, heavy, cold, wonderfully familiar. He closed his fingers over it, stood for a long moment, eyes closed, perfectly still, the stone clenched in his fist.
It was then he heard, high above the banshee howl of the wind, Tanya’s piercing scream.
The staircase was a pit of darkness. The diamond still in his fisted hand he half fell, half leapt down the first steep flight. The child screamed again; no door opened, no voice was raised in question – in this area of the city, indoors or out, a cry for help was best ignored. Josef slammed hard and painfully against a wall, knocking the breath from his body. He regained his balance, gasping for air, continued his breakneck descent. As he slipped and stumbled down the stairs he rammed the diamond into his pocket.
The foot of the stairs was marked by the lighter square of the open street door. Wind buffeted along the passage, deadly cold.
He reached the door of the room that he shared with Tanya, hurled himself through it. One glance took in the child’s white body, her terrified eyes, the smears of blood on thighs and belly. Van Heuten’s brutish face as he lifted it to the shrieking Josef was a picture of drunken astonishment. His trousers were around his ankles, hampering his movements. With no thought, Josef let his momentum carry him on across the room. He heard his own voice roaring outrage. Blinded by fury and a terrible guilt, he launched himself upon the much heavier man like an attacking animal, bearing him over by the sheer unexpectedness and ferocity of his assault. Van Heuten’s head cracked hard against the floor. The man squirmed, massively strong, beneath Josef’s lighter weight. Tanya screamed again, shrill and piercingly as the fighting men rolled on to her legs.
“Swine! Vile animal!” Josef screamed the words in Russian. He beat at the perspiring face beneath him, heard the agonizing crack of bone. With a roar van Heuten gathered himself to throw his assailant off. Tanya scrambled silently into a corner, weeping silently now, collecting the shreds of her torn petticoat around her. Josef fell against the table leg, giving his shoulder a blow that normally might have half paralysed him. Bellowing, and still hampered by his tangled trousers, the seaman came after him, murder in his eyes. Josef rolled away, came up awkwardly on to his feet. The other man tried to stand, tripped and tumbled. For a moment he lay, prone and dazed, at Josef’s feet. In a move that was pure instinct Josef reached for the chair that stood by the table, swung it high in the air and brought it down with savage force upon van Heuten’s head. The man collapsed without a sound, sprawled obscenely, half-naked and bloody.
Josef retched.
The child sobbed, desolate.
The door opened.
“God in heaven.” Bea stood, hands on hips. “What’s this? What in Christ’s sweet name is this?”
Josef straightened, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He did not look at the woman; his eyes were upon the shuddering, whimpering child.
Van Heuten did not move.
For a long moment the room hung, suspended, in shocked silence. Then Josef moved stiffly to the child. He gathered her to him, rocking her back and forth, muttering her name over and over.
Bea advanced into the room and with a dispassion that amounted to callousness grasped van Heuten’s hair and turned his face to the light of the lamp. “You’ve made a mess of this one.” Her tone was quite unruffled. “If I was you I’d be away before he wakes up. If he ever does.”
The words brought Josef back to his senses. He stood up, fighting the weakness of reaction that invaded his muscles and turned them to water. He bent to wrap Tanya in the dirty blanket that lay crumpled upon the mattress. The child stood as if mindstruck, no longer crying, the violent trembling her only movement.
“Poor little mite.” The woman moved towards her. Tanya drew back, shrinking against Josef. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you, though. Filth!” This last, viciously spoken word she spat at van Heuten’s prone body.
An almost paralysing calm had settled over Josef. Ignoring the woman he settled the blanket around the child, lifted her frail weight in his arms.
“You got somewhere you can go?”
He looked at her then, dark eyes burning in a face bone-white in the lamplight. He did not reply.
The woman nodded, stood aside. “You’re right. Best I shouldn’t know. Just make sure it’s a good long way away.”
Holding the still child as he might a baby, Josef walked past her and past the sprawled body at her feet without a glance, out into the windy darkness.
The house on the Herrengracht was ablaze with light. Despite the still gusting wind, the front door stood open and there was every evidence that a well-attended social gathering was in progress. Josef allowed himself a faint, grim lift of relief. All the better. Walking through the night-dark, gale-swept streets he had tried not to think of the consequences if this, the second half of his plan, went as badly as had the first. The sight of the lit windows and queueing carriages cheered him a little; an audience could surely only make his chances of success stronger.
He entered the house by the simple expedient of marching up the steps and through the open doors with a crowd of elegantly attired arriving guests. He was almost half-way up the staircase before the astonished servants had grasped what was happening.
“Hey!”
He neither stopped nor looked round. His body ached, his face smarted where van Heuten’s clawing nails had caught him, the child’s light weight after the walk from the waterfront was leaden. Doggedly he climbed the wide, shallow stairs, the focus for a dozen pairs of astonished eyes.
“What’s this?” On the landing above, flanked by several openly intrigued guests, stood Sergei Anatov, his harsh voice tense with the same rage that whitened his handsome face to the tone of ivory in the light of the glittering chandeliers.
Josef neither spoke nor stopped until he reached the landing and stood eye to eye with the man he had come to confront. A liveried servant stepped forward. Sergei Anatov, his eyes flicking from the perilously challenging face of the man before him to the blanket-wrapped child that he carried, held up a restraining hand. For a moment they stood so, the two men, the one resplendent in perfectly cut evening clothes, diamonds sparking in the studs of his shirt and at his snowy cuffs, the other thin, shabby, his face scratched, his eyes exhausted.
“My dear Sergei—” A slim, blonde young woman in shimmering pink, frill-bedecked, draped and exaggeratedly bustled, her bare shoulders gleaming in the light, leaned to Anatov and tapped his arm playfully with her fan. “How very entertaining! A charade. It is a charade, isn’t it?” Her voice was piercing, her pink mouth smiled, her eyes were sharp and avidly curious as she quite unashamedly craned her neck, trying to see the cowering child’s face. “What are we supposed to do? Is this,” she laughed spitefully, “some kind of Russian game?”
“It’s no game, Madame.” Josef’s eyes remained fixed steadily upon Anatov. “I’m going to talk to you,” he said, simply and quietly to the other man, “either here in public or elsewhere in private. The choice is yours.”
For a moment it looked as if Anatov might unleash the anger that simmered beneath his surface calm. Then, with an obvious effort, he spoke softly in Russian. “In the study.”
“Sergei – Sergei, for Heaven’s sake, what’s—” Madame Anatov’s gay voice died and she stopped, staring dumbfounded at the tableau. Music drifted through the open doors of the drawing room. Very slowly, deep colour rose, mottling her shoulders and throat and staining her cheeks.
“Look to our guests, my dear.” Anatov’s voice, to his credit, was now totally under control, “I’ll see to this.” More people had gathered around them, the women gowned and gleaming with jewels, the men elegant in evening clothes, their faces without exception lit with the same voracious interest that the girl in pink had shown. Here was something that promised to lighten the boredom in the salons of Amsterdam – something to make a change from the latest love affair, the latest scurrilous gossip. Eyes moved from one face to the other, trying to probe beneath the filthy blanket that hid the child from view.
“The study,” Anatov said again, tightly, and moved from the crowd, past Josef, to the study door. Looking at no one, Josef followed. As if a spell had been broken, everyone moved then, the guests being ushered into the drawing room by Madame Anatov – though there were some still to send speculatively curious glances towards the study door as it closed sharply behind the two men.
The study was in darkness, lit only by the glow of firelight. Anatov, his movements brisk with the anger he would not show, lit a lamp that stood upon the wide desk, adjusted it so that its light sent shadows dancing on the walls and drawn curtains. Josef gently laid his silent burden upon a leather couch, tucked a cushion beneath Tanya’s head and folded the tattered blanket tenderly about her. The child’s eyes were open, unblinking. She made no sound. The sight of the small white face hardened his resolution. He must not fail.
Anatov watched in silence, frowning. “What’s happened to the child?”
“She’s been – hurt.” Josef’s voice held a faint tremor. “Please – she needs some decent clothes – perhaps also a bowl of milk?”
“Certainly,” Anatov said coldly, paused, and then added very quietly, “but I doubt that that is all you have come here to demand.”
The door opened, and the sound of music and laughter swelled as Madame Anatov entered the room, closing the door quietly behind her and leaning upon it, her eyes on the two men.
Josef straightened. “I have come for two things,” he said. “A loan. And – a favour.”
“I see. And if I refuse to grant either and have you thrown out on to the street as you deserve?”
In answer Josef leaned to the child and drew back the blanket from the bright head. What might have been Anatov’s own eyes looked at him, emptily and apparently without understanding. “Your guests seemed very interested in the child,” Josef said quietly. “I very much doubt if you could have us thrown out of the house in such a manner as to arouse no curiosity. And – if you did – it would be an easy matter for me, I think, to discover their names – contact them later—” He let the words fall gently into the silence of the room. Anatov watched him contemplatively. His wife stood tense as a strung wire at the door.
“To what purpose?” The man’s voice was even.
“To – shall we say – satisfy their curiosity. To beg a little help for the child – to explain the sad circumstances of her birth – the shame of her parenthood—”
“Ah,” Anatov said.
The woman by the door drew a sharp breath, her eyes on her husband, doubt and question open upon her face. The man ignored her, watched Josef with an unfathomable gleam in his eyes. “I thought we might come to something like this,” he said softly. “Come, explain to us the – shame – of the child’s birth.”
“It’s a sad story. My poor sister, seduced, ruined, abandoned, died giving birth to the love child of the man who betrayed her. All these years it has taken me to track the scoundrel down, and now – despite the evidence of anyone’s eyes – he repudiates the child, abandons her as he abandoned her poor mother to poverty and death.”
“All lies.”
Josef lifted suddenly peaceful eyes. The woman by the door visibly held her breath, watching him. “Of course,” he said, and the woman’s eyelids fluttered, veiling her relief. “But since the truth served for nothing but to get me thrown from your door – what else is there for me but to resort to deceit? It isn’t of my choosing.”
“Is it not?” Sergei Anatov walked to where another lamp stood upon a small table in a corner by the window. His movements studied, as if unaware of the eyes focused upon him, he lit it, carefully adjusted the wick to his satisfaction. The silence stretched on, punctuated by the muffled sounds of music and laughter, the crackle of a burning log. The man turned. “Money you said. And a favour. What favour?”
Josef hesitated. Here was the final throw, the gamble upon which all might be won. Or lost. He held out his hand, palm up, to Anatov. The man stood for a moment, absolutely still, his eyes upon the stone that lay in Josef’s open hand. Then very slowly he reached for it, held it between two tapering fingers towards the light. “Where in God’s name did you get this?” Josef shook his head. “You don’t need to know that.”
Anatov was regarding the stone in rapt admiration. “What do you want of me?” he asked at last, softly, after what seemed to Josef a very long time.
“Your word that, after I’ve cut and polished it, you’ll help me sell the stone, above board and no questions asked. I’ll want you to substantiate the story that I obtained the stone legally and brought it from Russia with me. I plan to go to London. There I’ll work on the stone. But I need someone of good standing to dispose of it for me.”
Sergei Anatov nodded thoughtfully, turned the stone this way and that, his attention and his connoisseur’s eye totally taken by it. He looked up at last. “Now tell me this. What is to stop me from simply appropriating this and turning you over to the authorities?”
Josef’s voice did not falter; here was the true test of nerve. “The child. The scandal. And your own self-esteem. You may be hard, Sergei Anatov, but I don’t believe you to be cruel. Nor dishonest.” Fair eyebrows quirked at that. “I would of course be perfectly willing to negotiate a commission upon the sale of the diamond.”
“How much?”
“Ten per cent.”
The man barked laughter. “Thirty.”
Josef shook his head, trying not to let the relief that washed over him distract him.
“Twenty-five.”
“No.”
“Well cut and polished it will be worth a fortune.”
“I know.”
“Twenty per cent.”
Josef hesitated. “Twelve-and-a-half.”
“Sergei—” said the woman from the door.
“Fifteen,” her husband said, his eyes intent upon Josef. “Or you find yourself another seller. Fifteen.”
Josef let out his pent breath. “Done.”
“And the money to take you to London—”
“—would be a loan. Oh yes—” Josef added, as he saw the open disbelief on the handsome face. “A loan. I too, believe it or not, am an honest man.” He pushed from his mind the thought of those sickening moments when he searched for the diamond, and of the events that had followed. “I’ll not be beholden to you. And neither will Tanya. Don’t worry – after this transaction is finished you’ll hear from neither of us again.”
Anatov watched him for a long, unnerving moment. “You’re assuming that I’ve agreed to the transaction, that you’ve blackmailed me into helping you.”
“Yes.”
“You really believe that people would take your word against mine in the matter of the child?”
“Yes. In fact,” Josef hazarded a shot in the dark, “I suspect that some would be glad to—”
The woman, who still had not moved from the door said now again, sharply, “Sergei! For heaven’s sake!”
He made a quick, irritated movement. “Supposing I did agree.” He held up the diamond. “How do I know you can handle this? How do I know you won’t ruin it? I’d rather have it prepared in our own workshops—”
“No!” Josef’s voice was sharp. He held out his hand, thumb turned to show the leathery burn mark that was the brand of his craft. “You’ll have to trust me in that. No one is to work the stone but me. I can handle it, I promise you.”
“The cutting?”
“That too. My father taught me well.”
There was a short, nerve-racking silence. “Very well,” Anatov said softly. “Then I agree.” He lifted a hand as Josef began to speak, and continued, his voice brisk. “We’ll feed and clothe you and the child. Tomorrow we will agree a sum to take you to London. It will not, I warn you, be princely. Enough to get you there and to live on for – shall we say three months?” Josef nodded.
“That should give you long enough to prepare the stone for sale. It will also give us time to manufacture some story as to its source – I imagine you have no desire to tell me or anyone else the truth of it.”
Josef remained silent.
“As I thought. It’s South African?”
“Yes.”
“Then it shouldn’t be too hard.” Anatov handed the diamond back to Josef. “If stones like this aren’t exactly two a penny, at least there are enough of them turning up not to create too much fuss. It seems to me that the best thing would be to say that you brought the stone with you from Kiev. The less we lie the better. And if you produce the stone that you promise, it would be impossible, I think, to keep from its buyer the name of the man that worked it.” He turned to the mirror that hung above the splendid fireplace, straightened his white tie meticulously, turned as he caught Josef’s eye in the mirror. “Understand this,” he said, softly, “I want you, the child and the stone out of this house by tomorrow evening, and I want your solemn word that you’ll not bother us again after this business is finished.” He stood for a moment over Tanya, looking down, his face sombre. The child lay, as she had since Josef had put her there, a silent doll. He lifted his head, searched Josef’s eyes. “What in God’s name happened?” he asked quietly.
Josef maintained a bitter silence. Something that would not have happened had you helped us in the first place – he did not say it. What purpose in recriminations now? Relief was giving way to exhaustion. He needed to be alone. To think. To rest – yes, above all to rest.
Anatov stared down at the child for a moment longer, then shrugged and turned away. “Well, Mr Rosenberg – I trust you have no further objection to our rejoining our guests?”
“Rose,” Josef said, his voice tired.
The man turned. “What?”
“Rose. The name will be Rose. In England. An English flower. An English name. I’m not just going to England, you see. I’m going to be English. I’m going to forget everything that has happened, everything that I’ve known. A fresh start. A new name. Rose. Josef Rose.”
“The man’s rambling.” Madame Anatov laid her gloved hand upon her husband’s extended arm. They left the room in silence.
“Josef Rose,” Josef said again softly into the flickering shadows, then walked unsteadily to the sofa, sat beside the silent child, buried his face in his hands and wept as he had not since Charnov Street.