18mm Blues Read online

  “When was that?”

  “A hundred years ago.”

  “Anyone could go down thirty fathoms and stay under … forever,” Grady quipped.

  “How deep is thirty fathoms?” Paulette asked.

  “About a hundred and eighty feet.”

  “Without diving gear?”

  “Just a mask.”

  “Impossible.”

  “The best divers are the Japanese amas.”

  “Think so?” Julia challenged.

  “I know so,” Lesage told her.

  “Then it’s true.” Julia did a sweet smile. “In fact everything you say is true.”

  At that moment beneath the table Paulette’s hand reached and found Julia’s hand. Enclosed upon it and held it captured for a while and then, as though it were an object without a will, brought it to herself and placed it just so, palm down on the bare skin of her inner thigh.

  Julia’s immediate reaction, even to just the hand holding, was to jerk her hand away, and she would have, however she was undergoing the same loss of control she’d experienced in the river when it had been impossible for her to reach out for the pouch containing the rubies. Again her arm and her hand wouldn’t mind her.

  She didn’t panic. Mainly because this paralytic sensation had occurred before and she wanted to understand it. It seemed her hand and arm were separate from the rest of her. As though they were being persuaded to misbehave, not heed. The persuasion spread to her shoulder and neck and within her head, and she no longer considered that her hand and its fingers, kneading gently as they were, stroking and skimming, upward and downward lightly, were performing against her will. Rather, something told her what they were doing would be beneficial.

  Lesage stood suddenly, causing the legs of the table to slip from the wedges and wobble drastically. “We’ll have coffee and whatever else you might want up in my study,” he said, turned and walked into the house before the others had a chance to rise.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Lesage’s second-floor study was a huge high-ceilinged room with a series of tall french doors leading out to a balcony. It was paneled in antique walnut boiserie. One entire wall was inset with bookcases that held so many leather-bound volumes they looked painfully squeezed. On the surface of the lower shelves was an array of precious little objets: lots of shagreen-covered things, boxes, clocks and such, a collection of gold and jewel-embellished ladies’ compacts, a premeditated scatter of ancient Greek coins, a few of a hundred litrae showing Herakles slaying a Numean lion.

  The bureau plat that Lesage now called his desk had originally belonged to someone within personal range of Louis Quinze. Among the things on it was a Sèvres spyglass provenanced to Madame de Pompadour and a silver-framed enlarged snapshot of Lesage and Paulette. Paulette immediately drew attention to it, as though she’d not seen it prior to now.

  “That was taken the afternoon Daniel and I met at Lake Como. We were both staying at the Villa d’Este. The Count and Countess Del Vecchio and I needed a fourth for bridge and Daniel obliged.”

  Julia shrugged and plopped down into one of the plump cushioned sofas. There were three such sofas. Grady sank in next to her.

  Coffee was served from a silver pot created by Paul de Lamerie. Cigars were offered from a Buccellati humidor. The cigars were Flor de F. Farach Extras, true Havanas. Grady and William declined the smokes. Paulette took one from the humidor, held it beneath her nose, whiffed it and replaced it. “I prefer them unlit,” she said. Lesage bit the puffing tip off one and lighted up. He motioned Kumura to sit behind the desk, and Kumura settled in the antelope skin-covered bergère that Lesage’s rump had broken in.

  Grady gulped the coffee. It was French brewed, extremely strong and nearly viscous. Made the hairs on the back of his neck bristle. He’d have a problem sitting still if he drank more, maybe even get to grinding his teeth. What the hell … he held his cup up for a refill.

  “Grady,” Kumura said loud enough to get everyone’s attention. “From what I understand you have a unique ability.”

  “Such as?”

  “I’m told you’re one of the few people able to distinguish a natural pearl from a cultured one without technical means.”

  Grady had reached the assumption the job offer was the reason Kumura had gone to the trouble of looking into him, his background. But it seemed unreasonable that Kumura had dug this deep. He told Kumura, “At times I can tell the difference.”

  “Anyone could half the time,” Lesage contended. “That’s just in keeping with the laws of chance.”

  “I usually do better than that,” Grady said. “How about most of the time?”

  A dubious scoff from Lesage. “What’s most of the time, eighty, ninety percent, what?’

  Grady felt like whacking him one. One shot in the gut, a hard right. He did pop him, with his eyes.

  Kumura brought out a pearl from his right jacket pocket. Another from his left. He placed them well apart on the surface of the desk.

  The pearls were blue. Didn’t have merely a bluish cast, they were a vivid blue. Like blue sapphires but with pearl qualities, luster and iridescence. They appeared to be perfectly round, identical in that respect, and of equal size, slightly larger than a child’s play marble, about three-quarters of an inch in diameter.

  William sat forward to take them in. His eyes stayed fixed on them. No telling what his thoughts were.

  Grady felt Julia stiffen and heard her breath catch. She laced her fingers and confined her hands between her knees.

  Lesage was indifferent, Paulette just as much so. She was pouring herself a cognac.

  “One of these pearls is a natural,” Kumura explained to Grady. “The other is a cultured pearl that’s been dyed. Can you tell me which is which?”

  Grady got up and went to the desk. An afterdinner game, he thought. Kumura was trying to trick him. Both the pearls had to be dyed. There’d never been a natural pearl that size, about eighteen millimeters, Grady estimated, and that blue. If so, it would be worth a fortune. Several million, at least, more probably, depending upon what someone would pay for it. Should he purposely allow himself to be tricked, or show how smart he was? He recalled having told Julia just last week at Reese’s when she’d asked for real blue pearls that there was no such thing. “Am I allowed to handle them?” he asked Kumura.

  “Of course, but please don’t get them mixed up,” Kumura replied. “I don’t happen to have your gift.”

  Grady took up one of the pearls, enclosed it in his fist. Then the other in his other fist. He didn’t close his eyes or roll them back and do anything that might be taken as a trance. Merely concentrated on the spheres in his hands, first one, then the other, and then both simultaneously. Focusing on both at the same time was difficult. His concentration kept veering left or right. The pearl in his right seemed to be talking to him more, claiming it was the natural. It was his imagination probably, but didn’t it seem to be throbbing, insistently trying to convince him. It was in on Kumura’s trick, of course, Grady thought. He was sure neither pearl was a natural, but if they hadn’t been so large and especially so intensely blue, he would have chosen the one in his left because it felt so placid and pure. “Is it all right if I loupe them?” he asked.

  “By all means do,” Kumura replied and provided a loupe from out of Lesage’s desk drawer.

  Grady first examined the blue pearl from his left hand. Held it up and saw with ten-power magnification how flawless was its complexion. Its luster was deepened by its body color. He rolled it slowly between his thumb and second finger, examined it all around. It was consistently fine. He did the same with the other blue pearl, the one he’d had in his right hand, the noisy one, as he thought of it. It appeared equally lustrous and symmetrical and free of any sort of blemish. Only one thing about it that caught Grady’s eye. One tiny thing. A minuscule speck on its surface that differed ever so subtly from its overall color, just a little darker.

  Grady let his imagination ru
n free with that speck. It was where the pearl had been drilled, he thought, with an extremely fine-gauge drill, like a needle. So that it could be dyed. So the dye could get to and permeate all the layers of nacre outside and in. The pearl had been soaked in a beaker containing a blue medicinal dye for as long as it took to attain this color. Then the drill hole was filled in with a compound of pearl dust and cement, then polished. It was a careful, neat job, intended to deceive. Grady had his exceptional gem dealer’s eyes to thank for discerning it and providing him with an opinion. Or was it an opinion as much as it was a hunch? He still leaned toward the more likely possibility that both pearls were cultured and dyed. He should say that to Kumura, let Kumura know how sharp he was.

  Instead, he placed the pearl he’d had in his left hand on the desk in front of Kumura and told him, “That’s the natural.”

  Kumura waited a long beat before calmly saying, “Right you are. Amazing.”

  Julia beamed proudly and mentally applauded Grady’s rather mystical demonstration. Unnoticed was the flare of malevolence in her eyes as her gaze fixed upon the natural blue pearl.

  William, meanwhile, managed a slight smile, contrary to the serious set of his expression and the solemn sorting of possibilities that the verified natural blue had suddenly brought about in him.

  “Bravo!” was Paulette’s momentarily amused reaction.

  No comment from Lesage. Having been relegated to the perimeter of attention, he tried to regain the center by attempting to peel an orange in one continuous coil. It was a performance he’d practiced much and normally succeeded at. However, this time distraction caused him to pare too thin, the peel was severed and the blade of his penknife sliced his thumb nearly deep enough to show blood.

  Grady nonchalanted, gave little to his ability to discern natural from cultured. In this instance he believed he’d been clever and lucky more than anything.

  A pot of fresh coffee arrived and a dish of chocolate truffles. Also some curly cookies that Lesage enjoyed telling everyone were called langues des chats, cats’ tongues.

  Kumura came over and sat on the sofa next to Grady and Julia. Julia flirted with him a little, fed him nibbles of her cookie. Grady told him, “I was meaning to ask, before, when we were talking about pearl divers, have you ever personally met an ama?”

  Kumura said he had, many. “They’re not as plentiful, though, as they once were,” he said. “Last number I seem to recall there were seven thousand still active. They gather each year at the shrine on Ise Peninsula. It’s quite a sight to see them diving all at once, all those heads bobbing in the swells.”

  “I’ve read a lot about them,” Grady said, “the way they dive and all. I find it fascinating.”

  “Have you ever been to Hegurajima?”

  “That’s where William is from,” Julia informed. “He has family there.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” William confirmed. All eyes were on him.

  “Ama tradition is still very much alive up there, isn’t it, William?” Kumura said. “Most of today’s amas have resorted to wearing modern equipment, scuba gear and all that, but there are those who refuse to give in to it and dive the old way. That’s especially so of the amas on Hegurajima. It’s a remote place, one of the lesser spoiled. Worth a visit.”

  That pleased Julia for some reason. She rewarded Kumura with a truffle, had him open his mouth wide for her to pop it in.

  “I enjoy diving,” Grady remarked.

  “Are you experienced?” Kumura asked.

  “It’s not something I do every week. In fact, it’s been too long since I last dove. I spent a whole month once exploring the reefs off the Dominican Republic. Came across signs of an old wreck and caught the treasure bug. I’m sure that wreck had been worked over before, plenty. All I found was a pair of leg irons, you know, shackles. No matter, it was one of the best months of my life.”

  “Rather than swim around some old sunken ship that’s been gleaned by every other diver in the world, I think it would be much more rewarding to go for pearls,” Julia said ingenuously.

  “Fat chance,” Grady told her. “Finding a pearl oyster on its own would be a long, long shot, much less one containing a pearl.”

  “You’ve looked I suppose,” Julia defied.

  Kumura interceded. “He’s right, to a point. The waters near here were pearled out years ago. That’s not to say you wouldn’t find a few strays here and there but the prospect of a crowded bed is highly unlikely. The same might be said of the area north of here. But in Burma waters I believe one would have better luck.”

  “Why?”

  “Only because Burma’s been so self-isolated and the government hostile. Burma may not make the most of its riches but it surely doesn’t want any outsider taking advantage.”

  Grady imagined what it would be like, diving for pearls, finding one, even just one. It was an old dream he’d given up on. “What a kick it would be,” he thought aloud.

  “Yeah.” Julia fueled his notion.

  “Even if for no other reason than to be able honestly to say you’d done it,” Grady said.

  “That’s the right attitude.”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  “You feel that strongly about it you ought to do it.”

  Grady shook it off. “It’ll never happen.”

  “It could if you wanted it to,” Kumura said. “The Andaman Sea is right out there. My new ketch could use a shakedown. How good a sailor are you?”

  “Fair enough.”

  “That Hinckley practically sails itself.”

  Grady turned it over in his mind, told Kumura, “Thanks, anyway.”

  “Some guys only talk adventure,” Lesage remarked.

  Grady ignored that. Christ, he thought, this is getting to be a thing actually to do. Now did he really want to?

  A nudge from Kumura. “What have you got to lose?”

  “The better question is what’s there to find,” Julia said optimistically. “Me, I’m all for going.”

  Grady looked to William, who was seated on the sofa opposite. “Not me,” William said. “I’m not much of a swimmer.”

  “Thought you said you were,” Julia said with a sly admonitory tone. “From what I understood it was your mother who wasn’t the swimmer.”

  “Anyway,” Grady said, “we don’t have any scuba gear.”

  “Lame excuse,” Lesage goaded.

  Fuck you, Grady thought. His more lenient self told him some underwater peace would do him a world of good. Hadn’t he been longing for it? He’d consider it a holiday, time off, time out. It wouldn’t matter whether or not he even saw an oyster. Besides, why should he deny Kumura the pleasure of being generous? His future boss, maybe.

  He looked to Julia. They’d make love on deck at night. They wouldn’t necessarily limit it to night. He could practically taste the salt on her skin.

  Julia seemed to know his thoughts, there was wickedness in her eyes. “Let’s,” she whispered.

  That settled that.

  Kumura was pleased.

  For some reason so was Lesage.

  Paulette and Julia left the study, ostensibly to make feminine repairs.

  William was up and pretending his attention was on the contents of the bookcase, removing volumes at random, opening them to any page, not actually scanning the printed words. He was agitated, feeling the need to be apart from the others in order to put his mind straight.

  The sight of those blue pearls had set him off. Like a switch in his head had been thrown, causing an arc of a long-contained current. Now he was charged with it, his eyes possibly sending out electrical sparks, bolts coming from his fingertips as he snapped shut Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past and replaced it in the vacancy he’d caused. He closed his eyes, shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and shifted his weight so it was the responsibility of both his legs.

  He left the books, moved on to the adjacent wall where a portrait of an eighteenth-century gentleman wa
s hung. Lesage had claimed the man was a forebear on his mother’s side. Well-done portrait, well-off gentleman, vague resemblance to Lesage. It struck William that the location of the portrait was strategic, acting as visual prologue to the good-size niche that was next, an architectural intention, not an afterthought, meant for no other reason than to contain Lesage’s most personal and defining keepsakes. Shrinelike.

  Hung on the walls of the niche were numerous well-framed and neatly matted watercolor sketches by Alexander Sauerweid. Of Napoleonic soldiers slain and alive with sabers, carbines, horses. They set the military ambiance for the photographs situated among them, snapshots turned sepia, others a better quality, professionally taken, all captioned in typeset.

  Of young Lesage as a cadet at Saint Cyr in full dress, plumed casoard and all.

  Of young Lesage and several fellow cadets out on a good time.

  Of young Lesage in his Saint Cyr days behind a machine gun during field maneuvers at Coetquidau.

  Of Lesage as a sous lieutenant wearing the képi blanc of the Foreign Legion.

  Of an older Lesage as a subalterne, a capitaine standing with his company.

  Another of those in paratroop gear.

  A rack of happy-hued medals encased in a glass frame, including the Legion d’Honneur.

  The framed colors of the Thirteenth DBLE (Demi-Brigade de la Légion Étrangère), a cap badge of the same.

  An elaborate saber.

  Numerous letters of commendation, citations.

  Lesage’s honorable discharge from the Legion.

  There were many more, but it was at that point William came across the knife.

  Knife like no other.

  Kept under glass in a boxlike frame.

  Knife with a curved blade, striations visible along its cutting edge from having so many times been honed.

  Burmese knife with a carved whalebone handle…

  … bearing the inscription Buddha is generous.

  CHAPTER TWENTY