7. Zero Hour by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers
ISBN: 9780140294958
Publisher: Gardners Books
Published: 2003-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five.

VARIOUS LOCALES

AVRAM HOFFMAN DASHED BY JEFFREYS ON HIS way to the elevators in the DDC's ground-floor entrance hall. It was already twenty minutes past nine, late for his morning prayer session, and he couldn't afford to run even a minute later. Mr. Katari had left the Club in a huff well before Avram returned from yesterday's hastily arranged meeting with Lathrop, and his indignance over having been put off was understandable. In the competitive hustle of the jewelry trade, one's time was not to be squandered. A missed appointment could lead to another, and that might result in lost opportunities. The domino effect could be rapid and serious. All the hard, quantifiable appraisals of a gemstone's value, its cut and carat, clarity and color, scientific identification and grading-all of it-meant less than its tenuous hold on a potential buyer's fancy. No man or woman had ever died for lack of a precious bauble. It could sparkle with the brilliance of a thousand suns, but what did that matter if it couldn't arouse a comparable gleam in the eye of the beholder... or if its lure to the eye faded before a sale was closed? The true measure of its worth would be found in dreams, desires, and passions-and these were fleeting intangibles, enchantments of fickle power. That diamond you promised me hasn't arrived? The broker was held up at an appointment? Well, I'm flying out of town tonight and will have to shop around.

Avram had needed to shower Katari with apologies, guarantee him exclusives and special discounts, practically offer verbal supplication over the phone to convince him to come back here today. But Katari was a major client, and Avram wouldn't hang himself with a noose of pride.

He stepped into the elevator now, out of breath, bleary- eyed with exhaustion, his cheeks flushed above the line of his beard. It was the rushing. The constant scurrying to get things done. He'd been awake most of the previous night in his home laboratory examining the Kashmir with his various instruments... a binocular microscope, a polariscope, an immersion cell analyzer, all state-of-the-art equipment for which he had paid many thousands of dollars. At about eight o'clock, his youngest daughter, Rachael, had knocked on the door with a stack of books in her hand ... would he read to her? Avram had sent her off to bed in a brusque, preoccupied tone for which he still felt guilty. Told her he was too busy, knowing he had broken a promise made earlier. But he'd considered it an urgent must to look for any signs of artifice before dropping the sapphire off at the GIA laboratory ... a stop he had made first thing this morning, eager to get the certification process underway, hours of his own extensive tests having shown him absolutely nothing that might indicate the stone wasn't of natural origin. Though the lab was just down the block from the DDC building on Fifth Avenue, Avram's need to wait for his regular man and put in a request for prioritization had put him behind schedule.

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