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little man in the boat is—”
    “Yes, yes, yes,” van Luik cut in impatiently. “Knowing that Abe is talking to his heir doesn’t suggest any new interpretations to you?”
    Street hesitated, then sighed. “Not a hope, mate. Not a bloody hope. But I doubt the chokies will have any better luck making sense out of the poem than we have. They were probably looking for maps or ore samples, anything that would point them in the right direction. It’s a big station, and Abe had mineral claims in other places as well.”
    “But it must mean something to someone,” van Luik said harshly. “Windsor’s heir might be able to decipher it. That’s the possibility we must guard against now.”
    “Do you know who the heir is?”
    “Not yet. We should know soon.”
    “Find out,” Street said. “I’ll take care of him. No worries, mate. With the heir dead and the mines abandoned, the government will let the claims lapse. I’ll file new ones, you’ll underwrite a real search, and the mine will eventually be found and controlled by us. No worries.”
    “Even with the claims in hand, you’ll be no closer to finding the mine than you are right now.”
    “No worries. I’ll find the bloody thing. All I need is time and money for equipment.”
    Van Luik smiled weakly. If only it was that easy. But it wasn’t. Nothing about the Sleeping Dog Mines had been easy. Nothing at all. Since the instant of their discovery, the diamonds had been both a siren call and a threat of death.
    The siren call had proved false. The threat could prove to be all too real.
    “We will consider your solution,” van Luik said.
    “Don’t consider too long. This operation is balls-up enough as it is.”
    The line hummed, telling Street that van Luik had disconnected.

4
Darwin Chen Wing’s office
    Despite the dense legal language, Cole Blackburn only had to read the partnership contract once. He had a nearly perfect memory. It was a quirk of mind that had sometimes helped him and more often had brought him pain. Too many things had happened to him that he would rather forget.
    The agreement itself was quite clear. The contract allowed Cole to purchase half interest in BlackWing Resources for the sum of one dollar U.S. In return, he would agree to sign over to BlackWing his interests in any Australian mining claims or patents he held. At the moment, that amounted to zero claims and patents. BlackWing had been worth $10 million U.S. five years ago, when Cole had sold his half to the Chen family. Since then, the value of the company had at least doubled.
    Beneath all the legal bells and whistles, Cole was being offered $10 million in equity for the investment of a dollar, plus mining claims and patents he didn’t hold. The contract itself was fully executed except for his own signature. Everything was clear except the reason for the offer.
    That was why Cole had spent the past nineteen minutes reading between the contract’s lines. Granted, circumstances surrounding the dissolution of his partnership with Wing had been unusual. The family of Chen had paid Cole $5 million partly to soothe him for the loss of a lover who was their daughter, Wing’s sister. But now the shrewd clan that controlled a sizeable portion of Hong Kong and Macao seemed to be offering him twice that much for no reason he could see.
    It made him nervous.
    He was no lawyer, but he was sophisticated enough to see that there were no loopholes, no tricks built into the partnership agreement, no obvious or subtle way for the Chen family to recoup from Cole Blackburn the missing $9,999,999.
    Without signing, he dropped the document back on the desk. “It’s too early for Christmas.”
    Wing shrugged. “It’s not a gift. The present geologists at BlackWing are either too inexperienced or too corrupt to find what we want.”
    “And what’s that?”
    “Diamond mines,” Wing said succinctly.
    “Why do you want them? You’ve got a half-dozen Pacific Basin holdings that pay