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better returns than the average diamond mine.”
    Wing rubbed his palms together thoughtfully, then shook his head. “Have you looked at oil prices lately? At gold? At copper? Iron? Uranium? They are, as you Americans say, in the toilet.” He smiled slightly. It had been a long time since he had used American slang.
    “Diamonds have had their own problems,” Cole said. “What cost sixty-two thousand dollars American per carat in 1980 costs about twenty thousand at the moment.”
    “Yes, but take a slightly longer view and you’ll find that in 1974 the same diamond cost only forty-three hundred dollars per carat. Trust me, my friend. I have done my research carefully. Diamonds are the only commodity to have increased in real value over the last fifty years.”
    “Thanks to the cartel.”
    Wing sighed. “They’re bloody geniuses, aren’t they? At meetings of the UN, countries argue and do nothing. At meetings of Consolidated Minerals, Inc., countries agree and make money. ConMin is the only monopoly in history that has channeled rather than set free the inherent greediness of man. Prices rise, but slowly. Long-term stability, not short-term profits. ConMin has an almost Chinese appreciation of time.”
    “And power.”
    “That too,” Wing agreed softly. “That most of all.”
    “So the Chen family wants a diamond prospector who owes nothing to the diamond cartel.”
    Wing was momentarily startled. He’d seen Cole only infrequently in the five years since his sister Lai had broken her engagement to the American. In that time, Wing had forgotten that Cole’s mind was as quick as his well-conditioned body.
    “Yes, that is precisely what we want,” Wing admitted.
    Cole leaned back in the sleek leather chair and listened to his own instincts. He was used to operating on them at times and in places where more than money was at stake. His instincts had urged him to come to Darwin on the strength of Wing’s cryptic phone call.
    Instincts…or sheer restlessness.
    Whichever was speaking, Cole was ready to listen. He still didn’t know precisely what Wing wanted. More accurately, Cole didn’t know what the Chen family wanted. But he did know that touching the luminous green diamond had made him feel more alive than he’d felt in years.
    Listening carefully to his inner silence, waiting to hear the whisper of instincts telling him to avoid an unseen trap, Cole waited for another minute. He heard nothing but the quickened beating of his own heart. He’d found diamonds and diamond mines all over the world. He had made and lost small fortunes, and large ones as well, but he’d never found the equal of Wing’s green diamond.
    Now he was being offered the chance to find a whole mine full of them, God’s own jewel box.
    Cole pulled a pen from his pocket and signed his name on the contract and its copies with quick, slashing strokes. Saying nothing, he folded one contract and put it in his breast pocket. Then he pulled a dollar bill from his wallet, clipped the bill to the remaining contracts, and flipped the papers back across the ebony desk.
    “All right, partner,” Cole said. “Tell me about this diamond mine you want me to find.”
    Wing’s smile was amused. “The Chen family didn’t hire you merely because you’re a brilliant prospector, although you are. We brought you into this because you have a verbal promise from Abelard Windsor of a fifty-percent interest in Sleeping Dog Mines Ltd. as a full repayment of gambling debts incurred by him during a night of playing Two Up.”
    For an instant Cole was too surprised to say anything.
    Wing allowed his small smile of triumph to spread into a grin. It was the first time he had ever seen Cole off-balance.
    “That was twelve years ago,” Cole said. “Christ, I didn’t even know you then.”
    Wing made a dismissing motion with his hand. “Did Mr. Windsor ever pay off that debt?”
    Cole made a sound too harsh to be called laughter. “There were times Crazy