The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14)(101)
The contractor had then proposed that New World would pay Andrew Krueger’s company a million dollars for one of its specialties: “downwardly modulating production output.”
In other words: sabotage, threats and bribery, and occasionally worse, to make sure that finds of precious metals, uranium and other valuable ores and gems never saw the light of day. The diamond industry had a long—and violent—history of suppressing production and competition.
The specific plan that the contractor came up with was brilliant: Krueger was to kill Jatin Patel, after getting the names of anyone who knew about the kimberlite find. And kill those individuals too. He’d bribe a Northeast Geo employee to give him access to the site, where he would collect and dispose of as much kimberlite as he could. Then he’d drop explosive charges down some of the shafts and seal them with grout, and plant gas line bombs in buildings nearby. Each C4 charge was timed to detonate just before a gas line blew. This would mimic an earthquake and the resulting conflagration.
The city would close down the site, citing the risk of more quakes. That would be the end of drilling up more kimberlite.
He’d gotten the devices planted fine and then had turned to eliminating anyone who knew about the kimberlite.
Under Krueger’s knife, Jatin Patel gave up Saul Weintraub’s name. But Patel swore no one else knew about the kimberlite. After the man was dead, though, into the shop comes the young man—Vimal Lahori, it turned out—obviously an employee, since he knew the door code. Krueger shot him but he got away. And it was clear he knew about the kimberlite, too, because the bullet had struck a bag of the stuff.
Knowing that the young man would call 911 at any moment, Krueger had tried to figure out what to do. He didn’t have time to go through all of Patel’s papers and learn his identity—a fast search revealed nothing. Then, looking at the white squares of envelopes of diamonds he’d scattered on the floor, to make the police believe the crime was a simple robbery, he had an idea.
He would trick the police themselves into helping him find the boy and anyone else who might know about the kimberlite find.
In his job as a hired gun for the diamond and precious metal industry, Krueger often used identity theft as a tool (just as Rostov had done). He would do the same now.
In Patel’s shop, he’d found an empty diamond envelope and had written on it the names and specifications of four multi-million-dollar diamonds, along with the name of Grace-Cabot, a real South African mining operation. The phone number he wrote down, however, was a burner phone of Terry DeVoer, his business partner in South Africa.
Krueger left the envelope at a work station and, taking the hard drive and its telltale security video with him, fled.
He then called DeVoer in Cape Town to have him change the voicemail announcement on the number to Grace-Cabot and be ready for a call from the police about the stolen rough. He was to play the role of Llewellyn Croft—a real executive with the company. “Croft” would sound shocked about the loss and then send the police to the company’s insurance investigator, a man with experience in tracking down diamonds, a man who could assist them.
Krueger assumed that identity himself: Edward Ackroyd, with the real insurance company of Milbank Assurance, whose identity he’d “borrowed” in the past. Ackroyd, who was about Krueger’s age, was British, former Scotland Yard. And there was no picture of him on the Milbank website. Krueger had had Milbank cards printed up with Ackroyd’s name and that of the insurance company but with one of his own burner phone numbers on it.
Absurd, indeed. The plan could fall apart at any moment. There was a knife-edge chance it might work. Krueger had to take the risk.
His luck had held…for a time. The police believed his fake identity, the C4 charges went off as planned, the fires roasted a few people, the city halted the drilling, he found and killed Saul Weintraub and he was making some headway in finding Patel’s protégé.
But then he’d run smack into a brick wall: Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, who managed to link the two parts of the plan that absolutely should not have been linked: That the man who’d killed Patel had also been present at the geothermal site. And, even worse, that he was behind faking the earthquakes. He could still recall with dismay how Rhyme had called him into the parlor to describe in perfect detail, thanks to the CCTV videos, what their suspect was really up to, faking the earthquakes and fires.
It’s Forty-Seven’s plan. It’s why he’s here: planting gas line bombs and C4 charges to mimic earthquakes…
It had taken all Krueger’s willpower to stay calm. He was sure Rhyme would turn to him and say, “I know you’re the one! Arrest him, Amelia!”
But, no. The Ackroyd fiction held. And, thank God, Rhyme and Sachs hadn’t made the leap that the reason for the scheme was sabotaging the diamond lode at the geothermal site. They identified the kimberlite, too, but fortunately it had no particular significance to them.
Of course, then, on top of it all, the unstable, meddling Russian, Vladimir Rostov, blusters his way onto the action.
“All right. So you decide to become my doppleganger and—”
“The fuck is that?”
“A double, you know. You imitated me. You hear me on the phone, talking about the witnesses I have to find, and you decide to help me out.”
“Yeah, yeah. I find this Iranian asshole—Nashim—and he gets me to Vimal’s friend, Kirtan. And he gives up Vimal’s name and girlfriend, Adeela. I am fucking good detective, huh? Columbo!” A shrug. “I got close. But didn’t work. Fuck me.”