“Levine’s a fascist,” Selome said bitterly. “I know that sounds strange for one Jew to call another that, but he is. He believes in the purity of the Jewish people and wants all others out of Israel. He wants to build concentration camps and corral the Palestinians in fenced stockades.
“He’s been planning this for years. I don’t know if you remember the airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in the eighties, but he was a major supporter of the operation. He said it was for humanitarian reasons, but even then he wanted to do away with the Palestinians who perform many of the menial jobs in Israel and replace them with African refugees.”
So, Mercer thought, he and Harry had gotten in the middle of an internal Israeli problem and not some international terrorist plot. Selome was trying to stop Levine from using the Medusa photographs to give himself unfair advantage in the elections. All of his suspicions about her ebbed away. For the first time he felt that he could trust her. A dam was breaking inside of him. He’d been on his own for too long and now he had an ally. He felt like hugging her. “So your job was to keep an eye on this group and report their activities?”
“And to stop them if I could. But we came to Eritrea before I got close.”
Suddenly something didn’t make sense. “I understand Levine is a maniac, but I also read that his election was all but guaranteed even before we left Washington. Why is he willing to ruin his chances by going after a worthless fifty-year-old diamond mine?”
“He’s not.” Selome laughed for the first time in a long time. “You already know we have no interest in the Italian facility. I think the Sudanese and their backers are looking for that one. That’s how they stumbled on us. Our two missions come from different directions but end at the same location.”
Mercer matched her smile, the horrors of the morning sloughing off at least for a few seconds. “Before you’d arrived in the valley, when I was exploring for the older workings, I’d already guessed that you were aware of another mine in the area.”
Mercer’s expression suddenly changed as a new thought struck him. The white rock he’d found in the kimberlite tailings was a stone-aged tool, a hammer used thousands of years ago to crush the ore to get at the precious gems. Suddenly everything tied together: Jews, ancient mines, religious fanatics. He finally realized why the stakes were so high, and it had nothing to do with diamonds. Oh, my God! He tried to repress the wild thought but couldn’t. “Is that mine what I think it is?” He could barely speak.
“We’re on our way to talk to some priests who will confirm it, but yes, it is.” Selome smiled at his breathless wonderment. “It’ll be the greatest find of your life. The stuff of legend.”
When he said it, it came out as a whisper. “King Solomon’s Mine.”
The Eritrea-Sudan Border
Gianelli felt like a conquering Caesar as his trucks rumbled into Eritrea. He sat in the passenger seat of the lead vehicle, the windows rolled down so he could smell the dry desert and hear the bellowing of the big twelve-cylinder turbo-diesels. Chuckling, he realized that the heavy-duty transporters loaded with mining gear and provisions weighed twice as much as the CV.35 light battle tanks Mussolini had used to invade Abyssinia. Kitted out in de rigueur khaki, with a bush hat clamped on his head and sunglasses protecting his eyes from the worst of the driving sun, Gianelli was at the very pinnacle of his life. Everything up to this moment, every deal and every decision, had led to this instant. Leading the trucks back to the mine that his uncle had opened decades before was the culmination of his existence. Let others wonder at his wealth and power — they were nothing, merely an extension of what had been handed to him through his family, a quirk of genetics. This was what he saw as his destiny.
Soon after the Eritrean refugees had left their camps in Sudan under the leadership of a nomad prince, Mahdi had approached Gianelli with his idea of searching ahead of the column so they could reach the mine more quickly. The refugees were covering only a couple of miles a day, and the lethargic pace rankled the Italian. Gianelli agreed and sent out a scout truck. Three days later the radio call had come saying they had found the mine in a bowl of land at the end of a narrow valley after hearing an explosion. Gianelli ordered the main convoy to bypass the refugees and speed to where the advance scouts waited. A short time after, another call from them reported a Toyota Land Cruiser driven by a white man was attempting to flee the valley. Gianelli’s first thought was the fools had given away their presence to Mercer, but realized that Mahdi’s people wouldn’t have made such a blunder.
He instructed the Sudanese rebels to stop the Toyota and made it clear that Mercer was not to be harmed. He learned a few hours later that Mercer had escaped through a mine field at the cost of one of Mahdi’s men. Gianelli cursed the whole team over the radio until his fist nearly crushed the microphone. Mahdi listened to the exchange as he sat on the back bench seat of the ten-wheeled Fiat truck. When his turn came, he took Gianelli’s wrath without comment. His employer was fully in his right. Mercer never should have escaped. His men’s failure was inexcusable, and their punishment, when the cargo trucks reached the valley, would be more severe than Gianelli’s verbal tirade.
The radio crackled again, and he snatched up the handset. “Yes?”
“We are back at the valley now and have it secured. The American left only three people here, Eritreans. They have some excavating equipment but are not working at the mine.”
“What are they doing?” Gianelli asked the leader of the advance detachment he had sent out to leapfrog the meandering refugee column.
“They were just digging into the side of one of the mountains. They haven’t said yet what they were looking for.”
“They knew about my uncle’s mine, right?”
“Yes, sir,” the soldier replied, then lowered his tone, knowing his next statement would not please his superior. “The man left in charge here said that there were no minerals in the mine. He told us the American explored the shaft and said there was nothing in it of any value.”
“That can’t be right,” Gianelli stammered, the buoyant mood that had carried him across the frontier evaporating quickly.
Despite their increased speed, it took eight hours before the convoy eased between the ramparts that guarded the bowl of land called the Valley of Dead Children. Listening to the chatter of the men in the backseat with Mahdi, Gianelli learned that they knew of this place and held it in superstitious dread. He asked Mahdi about it, and the soldier couldn’t give him a definitive answer. He told his employer that the region’s taboo went back many generations, but no one knew its origins. The myths surrounding it had spread as far as Sudan and Ethiopia.
“Rubbish,” Giancarlo said dismissively.
His expression was fevered with anticipation, a sense of history weighing on his shoulders. The valley looked nothing like what he’d thought as a child, but now that he was here, he could imagine it no other way.
Across the open pan, he saw the skeleton of the head gear rising out of a watery heat mirage, recognized the support buildings next to it, and after a few minutes, saw the open Fiat his advance scouts had driven. His heart pounded with eagerness.
The trucks lumbered to the abandoned mine, wheezing as their overworked engines spooled to silence, air brakes hissing. Gianelli launched himself from the cab, running across the desert to the rim of the open shaft.
Joppi Hofmyer was the first to join him.
“This is it,” Giancarlo gasped. “Two lifetimes of work, mine and my uncle’s, and here it is.” He gave no consideration to the earlier news that the mine was empty. It was a possibility he would not allow.