The Lucifer Cut by Matthew Hart

Author:Matthew Hart [Hart, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

29

I followed her into the packed dining room. Every head was turned to a screen that showed the race. She pushed through a door at the end of the room and led the way down a flight of metal stairs that came out at the river.

Wooden houseboats were moored along the bank. Beyond them, an eight went stroking by, the coxswain bellowing the tempo through a bullhorn. We walked upriver. In a minute we came to a wooden pier. A dented aluminum skiff was tied up at the end with a length of rope. We climbed in and I cast off. Frankie gave the old ten-horse outboard a little choke. It started on the first pull. We puttered out into the current and threaded our way through the traffic at the finish line. Five minutes later we were alone on the river.

“Any surveillance we have to think about?” I said.

She shook her head. “Downstream, sure. London Bridge, Westminster. Not up here. This is an extraction route I’ve used before. We’ll get out of London no problem.” She adjusted the throttle. “So fill me in. Who was the old lady working for?”

“Hassan.”

“Your rabbi. That’s heavy.”

“She said there was a red notice on me.”

“Red notice my ass. A red notice doesn’t end with an old lady dicking around with a Mossberg. It ends with fully tooled-up guys coming in the front and back at the same time.”

The engine coughed. She turned on her seat and fiddled with the choke. When she faced forward again, her face was solemn. “So if Hassan is in it for money, whose money are we talking about?”

“Mei’s hedge fund. The fakes Lou had were from a Shanghai lab. We assume they own it.”

“OK. So the Chinese are running a long play to sell fakes. Why? I get that they make money, but how much?”

“That’s my problem too. The diamond business is worth $100 billion a year. Let’s say they’re careful. They start with a trickle, then build it gradually until they get to—$2 billion? Still a lot of diamonds, and the problem is—where did they come from? Mei could be planning to disguise the fakes as production from the mine that she and Lily own. But that would take a long time to set up. The market knows what’s in the pipeline.”

“Maybe just use the stones as untraceable bribes.”

“But then the person you’re bribing has to unload it, and that’s not easy. It’s one thing for Lou Fine to sell a fake, and even then, the street sniffed it out.”

“And that’s not your biggest problem, anyway. Your biggest problem is Tabitha. Why is she on this so fast? She’s on it because something is scaring the crap out of everybody. It can’t be the money angle. If she’s worried, that’s not why.”

She took a last drag and flicked the cigarette away in a high arc. It landed in the water with a hiss.

“Who are you, masked stranger?”

She winked. “Couldn’t crack my file, could you?”

“You didn’t learn to think like that at filing school.

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