‘I have doubts about the privacy of this line,’ Daniel interrupted, adding, to explain his apparent rudeness, ‘before we get started.’
‘No, the line is secure. But I surmise by your doubts that you already know your traveling identity has been compromised.’
‘So I’ve gathered.’
‘Listen while I explain what happened. Listen carefully. It’s a revelatory explanation.’
Daniel listened as instructed. As Volta described Dredneau’s torture, Daniel closed his eyes and slumped back against the phone-booth wall. He could feel what was coming in Volta’s voice from the slight tremor at the end of each precise statement, feel it in the precision itself, and when Volta revealed that the man who’d tortured Dredneau had also shot his mother for no reason, Daniel softly cried, ‘Ohhh no. No.’
Volta paused a moment, then continued, ‘Subsequently, through some inspired work by Smiling Jack, we learned the code name of the person who betrayed the Livermore theft to the CIA.’ Volta stopped and waited.
Daniel, too stunned to think, took a deep breath. ‘The killer and the snitch – you didn’t mention their names.’
‘Daniel,’ Volta said evenly, ‘I will give you the names when you bring me the Diamond. I promised you in the hospital, the first time we met, that I would do everything I could to help you find your mother’s killer, and now he is known. I’ve honored my promise. Daniel, you vowed that in exchange for my help you would share with me the privilege of beholding the Diamond and the responsibility of returning it to hiding, safe from us all. You haven’t honored your promise, and even granting extraordinary circumstances, that shows an utter lack of respect for me, and yourself. If you want to revenge your mother, you must honor your promise with the Diamond. That’s fair.’
Daniel howled, ‘What the fuck am I supposed to do? Terrorize him until he kills himself?’ Daniel hurled the phone at the glass wall but the cord was too short and snapped back against his wrist. He grabbed it and slammed it down on the hook.
He stormed back to his truck, started it, then turned it off and slumped back in the seat. ‘It’s fair, it’s fair, goddammit, it’s fair. But I didn’t want to know, don’t need decisions.’ He walked resolutely back to the phone booth and redialed Volta’s number.
Volta again answered on the first ring. He didn’t seem surprised to hear Daniel say, ‘You’re right, it is fair. But I’m going to keep the Diamond until I see inside it, or through it, or whatever it allows me to do. I want to see inside this Diamond a thousand times more than I want to revenge my mother’s death – and even though Wild Bill cleaned out most of that cold frenzy, I would still revenge it. Do you understand what I’m saying? That as much as I would like justice for my mother, it’s nothing compared to my desire to open the Diamond. I need you to let me go. I need your blessing.’
‘I’ve already let the Diamond go, Daniel, and I think the only way it will ever open for you is to let it go. You’re free to do as you can, free to go, free to return. I have no claims on your soul. I wish you luck, and I wish you success. But I will not give my blessings because I believe the Diamond will destroy you. It may destroy you beautifully, magnificently, but it will destroy you, Daniel, and I will not bless pointless waste.’
‘It wants me to see. I can feel it.’
‘It’s a mirror, Daniel. Just another mirror.’
‘I think it’s a window. A door.’
‘Know thyself,’ Volta said, ‘and to thine own self be true. I have too much admiration for you to deny your right to explore as you must. But I wouldn’t be true to myself – or you – if I didn’t tell you I think you’ll be destroyed, and that if you are, Daniel, it will break my heart.’
‘But you don’t understand––’
‘Perhaps not,’ Volta cut in. ‘I grant that possibility. But then, maybe you don’t understand. Maybe you’re obsessed, powerless against the Diamond, or simply too young to know better.’
‘It’s possible,’ Daniel said. ‘But that’s what I’m committed to finding out.’
‘May you find what you seek.’
Daniel smiled in the dark phone booth. ‘That sounded like a blessing to me.’
‘Then may you find what you deserve.’
‘I’ll take that as a blessing, too. I’ve earned this right, Volta, and though you truly helped me earn it – for which you have my endless gratitude – it’s mine. And this is what I’m feeling in my marrow: It is mine not because I earned it or physically possess it; the Diamond is mine by destiny.’
Volta said, ‘Be thrice blessed then. I’ll add an ancient Estonian blessing: “May your journey have an end.” The Diamond is your responsibility now.’
Daniel said quickly, ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way. But as part of my sense of responsibility, I vow to bring the Diamond to you when my work is finished, or if for some reason I can’t and am forced to return it to hiding, I’d like to return it to wherever you had intended.’
‘No, Daniel. I let it go. I can’t tell you how clean it felt when I finally released it from my grasp. And for that lesson, I thank you. I’m going to fold up this operation now, and go home to Laurel Creek Hollow. You have the routing numbers; the direct line is seven multiplied by the day of the month. Call if you want, or come visit. I’ll guarantee your welcome but not my assistance; that will depend on the wisdom of what you need and my capacity and inclination to provide it. Let us take our leave as friends.’
‘That’s all I wanted,’ Daniel said, his eyes burning with tears. ‘Thank you.’
‘Good-bye, Daniel,’ Volta said.
‘Thank you,’ Daniel repeated. ‘Yes, good night. I’ll be in touch.’
They hung up at the same time.
Volta spent the rest of the night on the phone and radio dismantling the operation and reassigning people and resources to other projects. Ellison Deeds, Jean Bluer, and Smiling Jack were all in the field somewhere, so he left messages to call him upon their respective returns. He packed equipment till well after sunrise, then slept fitfully for a few hours. He lay in bed and tried to imagine what Daniel saw when he looked into the Diamond. Daniel had said he could only see into the Diamond when he vanished with it. Volta was skittish about even imagining himself vanished. He remembered the temptation to cross the threshold and keep going, consumed in some undreamable whirlpool of felicity, an ecstatic suicide. Instead, he tried a technique he’d learned from Ravana Dremier, slowly condensing himself to an essence and then separating it from his psyche, lifting himself out of himself as an objective witness, yet retaining his will to know.
He still couldn’t imagine Daniel vanished and looking into the Diamond, but paradoxically – having abandoned rationality for empathetic imagination – he suddenly understood what he might have deduced through laborious reasoning. Daniel saw a spiral flame in the Diamond, just as he’d seen it in the vision he’d reported to Volta. That explained why he’d called it ‘mine,’ and why he thought it was meant for him alone. His vision, of course, had disposed him toward seeing it. Volta was the only other person in the world capable of confirming whether the spiral flame was indeed only visible to the vanished. And both of them knew Volta wouldn’t vanish again. Daniel had perhaps chosen to spare them both the sorrow of refusal – whether out of kindness or pity, Volta wasn’t sure.
And he wasn’t certain Daniel could survive the situation in which he was so terribly alone. There was nothing Volta could do about it and remain true to himself, and probably nothing he could do even if he betrayed himself. Volta had let the Diamond go – not as joyously or as easily as he’d tried to make it seem to Daniel – but he couldn’t release Daniel from his heart. Volta understood that he, no less than Daniel, had confused the ideal and the real, but he understood, in a way Daniel did not, that such a confusion seldom goes unpunished. Because Volta had no children, Daniel, orphan of fire, was an ideal son. And now it was going to hurt.