Queen of Diamonds Prologue

Saigon, South Vietnam, June, 1963

Ngoc Soàn’s chest swelled with a new phenomenon: adult pride. Only ten, she sat on her father’s shoulders outside President Diem’s palace, waiting for a glimpse of Madame Nhu. Spotlights bathed the entrance; waves of jabbering people—middle-class, no peasants—pressed from the rear. Ngoc’s father held his ground in the fourth row behind a barricade. He had sweated through his shirt. Ngoc, perched atop her parental throne, was impervious to the heat, but not the excitement.

“Is she coming yet?” Ngoc asked in Vietnamese.

“I don’t think so,” her father said.

“Is she coming now?”

“Not yet.”

“Now is she coming?”

“Ngoc, no. She’s picking out her jewelry.”

“Oh.” Ngoc pulled on his chin, an effort at patience that was rewarded a minute later by a commotion at the gate.

“The door is opening,” Ngoc squealed. “Is she wearing your necklace?”

“Our necklace. You picked the color, remember? And I used your idea for tiny figurines.” He pointed. “Can you see?”

Ngoc pushed on her father’s head, straining to see the most flamboyant woman in South Vietnam. As her father held Ngoc’s feet, one in each hand, she stood as if in stirrups, squeezing his head between her knees.

“Oh, Papa. There she is!”

“And is she wearing our necklace?”

“Yes! Yes!”

Flashbulbs froze the magical image: an imperial wave, a glittering throat.

“How does the Star of Saigon look?” her father asked.

“Oh, so beautiful. Better than in the shop—dancing with sparkles from the lights.”

“And her dress?”

“White as the moon, but so low, not covering all her…”

“That is Madame Nhu’s style,” he chuckled. “She makes her own rules. What about the setting, the color?”

Ngoc squinted.

Madame Nhu was ten meters away, but the hue of the diamond’s setting was unmistakable. Ngoc clapped. “Lavender. My lavender.” A pixie’s smile transformed her face.

“Too bad you cannot see the tiny figures of the Trung sisters.”

“Oh, I can see them,” Ngoc said, using memory instead of her eyes. “I can.”

“What is happening?” her father asked.

Ngoc gulped a breath. “Madame Nhu is standing at the curb beside a long white car, as white as her dress. She is waving. Oh, I think she waved at me! Now she is getting in the car—I have never seen a car so long. Where is she going?”

“To a state dinner, perhaps at a foreign embassy.”

“Oh, Papa, there goes the car.” She stared at a trail of exhaust, wishing herself to be inside the limousine.

The crowd dispersed like a backdrop being rolled away until the next staged appearance. Within minutes only two guards remained, rifles slung on their shoulders. Ngoc slid down her father’s back and stared at the palace, holding his hand. Her gaze focused on a checkerboard pattern of scaffolding—the building had been bombed by insurgents.

“So how does it feel to be apprentice to the jeweler of Madame Nhu?”

She gazed up at his face. “Are you really the jeweler of Madame Nhu?”

“One of a few—trusted enough to set the Star of Saigon, and important enough to be told when she would wear it. Her husband said she likes the necklace. So you know what that means?” He tickled her ribs. “It means you have to sleep so you will be able to help design settings even more beautiful than the diamond.”

Ngoc Soàn beamed. Nothing made her happier than helping her father. She skipped beside him, believing in his wisdom but knowing that nothing could ever be more beautiful than the Star of Saigon. Sleep was inconceivable. “When we get home, may we play cards before bed?”

Her father pretended to deliberate, releasing her hand to scratch his chin. “Perhaps one game.”

“Three!”

“Two, and no whining.” The negotiation was a ritual.

She knew they would play at least four. A few skips later, she asked, “Papa, will Madame Nhu want another diamond necklace?”

Her father patted his daughter’s straight black hair. “Perhaps, but we should think about bracelets, broaches, and rings.”

“And a crown,” Ngoc said. She drew a halo in her hair. “A thin one.”

“A tiara.” He laughed. “Madame Nhu is not a queen, although she thinks herself one.”

“I will wear a tiara someday,” Ngoc said. “A diamond tiara.”

He scooped her into his arms. “You will always be my princess.”

“Someday, Papa, I will be a queen.”


Innamincka, South Australia, June, 1963

Night blackened the outback. Maury Thorp, long and lean, darted from his uncle’s cabin. It was his tenth birthday, and he wouldn’t sleep until he used his new hunting knife, a present from his crazy, one-eyed uncle.

Maury was more at home in darkness than sunlight, which burned his pale skin. When he reached the Strzelecki Desert bush, he listened and stalked. Maury was empowered by the blade’s weight in his hand as he sensed his prey. The wind was his ally, blowing sounds of a death-struggle toward him as it blew his scent away from a pack of snarling dingoes. While they feasted on a carcass, Maury inched closer.

Slowly. He had all night.

When Maury struck like a harpoon, the dingoes bolted, but the one with its snout imbedded in entrails wasn’t quick enough. Maury latched his hand, the size of a man’s, around the dog’s leg. The dingo bit his wrist, but its struggle was short, yelping silenced by the birthday present slitting the animal’s throat.

Until that moment, Maury had been without purpose, trapped on a barren sheep ranch with a demented uncle. Now, Maury thought: this is pleasure—the power to take life. Others might give, but his destiny was to take. If he had been patient, he could have tortured the creature; then the night would have been perfect. He would learn patience.


Freiberg, West Germany, June, 1963

At the same hour that Ngoc Soàn walked home with her father, at the same moment that Maury Thorp killed the wild dog, Peter Bergmeier stood alone under the largest tree on the campus of the oldest mining university in the world. A stooped professor spied the round, comical young man and tottered across the grass, steps so tiny that his ankles could have been tethered with a bowtie.

“Did you find a position with De Beers yet, Peter?” the old man asked in stilted German.

Peter, head down, kicked a root. “No. So I will go to Canada. They will welcome the future of diamond mining.”

“There is little diamond mining in Canada.”

“There will be soon. I will map the glacial sources of surface diamonds found to the south.”

The professor suppressed a chuckle. “You are a mere boy in your twenties. Why should De Beers listen to you?”

“I had the best grades.” Peter raised his head to make eye contact. “And I should have won the Freiberg Medal of Distinction.”

The professor was distracted, as always, by the roundness of Peter’s metal eyeglasses, which enhanced the roundness of eggshell-blue eyes. “As you have been told by the standards committee, the medal requires an outstanding thesis. Yours had very little data and, frankly, is implausible.”

“But not impossible. Is it my fault that instruments have not yet been invented to verify what my equations prove?”

“Hocus-pocus with numbers does not win geology medals. Heed my words, Peter. You have a brilliant mind. Don’t waste it.”

“You have always been against me, Professor.”

The old man patted Peter’s shoulder. “If you only knew who your friends really are.”

Peter shook off the hand and kicked another root.

“Peter, sometimes the search for knowledge requires one to play the academic game, pay one’s dues, lay a foundation.”

“Leave me alone, please.”

“As you wish.” The professor sighed before shuffling back toward the stone walk.

“Imbecile,” Peter muttered.

The man turned. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. But I will prove to the world that I know how to find diamonds.”