JACK OD DIAMONDS

CHAPTER 12 Part TWO (WHILE IN THE DOMINION OF...)

Anatoly watched his father walk away, thinking if he could retrieve the Cromwell Skull, he might be able to pay off some of the bills he’d picked up over the last months. One thing he’d discovered at great cost to himself, was the amount of money needed to run a counter-revolution. He doubted very much if his father would help him out of the hole he’d found himself wallowing in. Knowing him as he did, Anatoly assumed his father would simply tell him it was his problem to sort out.

I will, he told himself. Given time.

And now, on the eve of the biggest opium deal the Plymouth docks have ever seen, they find the body. The body turning up like that couldn’t have come at a better time. And to make things worse, the local Socialists have taken it into their heads that the family bank holds most of the treasures of Russia—when it couldn’t be farther from the truth—but that doesn’t change the collective mind of the local Socialists, does it? What do you think would happen if they got hold of the guns?

He made his way up the stairs, a slow methodical walk, watching as his father made his way into the Grand Salon. Anatoly smiled to himself, thinking how his father was in for a big surprise when he entered the kitchen and met the members of the Jazz quartet.

For one thing, there’s five of them, he smiled. Everyone always forgets the singer.

He stopped at the small bar at the top of the stairs, pouring himself a drink. He told himself he needed it; while part of him believed it, the other part told himself it wasn’t true. Well, he hoped it wasn’t true. His father was right though, he did like to drink; most of the time, he drank too much. He’d have to make certain he didn’t let himself get carried away tonight. Tomorrow’s meeting was too important. Once he had the guns in transit and the gold for the opium, everything would work itself out. Harry Solomon and his brother would unknowingly pay to transport guns stolen from the Irish. The Finns would pay for the guns on arrival. He’d pay the Sicilians the following day with money from the Finns, and walk away with the left over gold the Solomon Brothers used for buying the opium. It was ridiculously easy how he had played them.

Asking Sabini to send some of his boys as added security was a stroke of genius, he thought. Neither of them trusted each other.

How do I let myself get into these spots? he wondered, leaning back against the small table that served as the bar. It wasn’t something someone like him should even be aware of—that side of life—but things happen, don’t they, and then they spiral out of control no matter what you do. Before you know it, there’s nowhere to turn; no one you can count on, and you have to look to the mercy of strangers. The problem with strangers is that you can never really let yourself trust them, can you? You have to remind yourself that they’re in it for their own needs first.

It’s the company you keep, he told himself, knowing he’d been a fool for approaching Harry Solomon in the first place. But he knew, or he’d overheard, that the Solomon brothers were looking to expand into the drug trade now that Sabini had forced them out of the bookie market. He just happened to know that Sabini had a connection, and it was nothing to ask him to broker a deal—to act as the middle man and hopefully make a little profit, he’d told him. Money would be changing hands, and like any other gangster he’d come across, Anatoly knew that greed was always a factor when it came to these things. And given the chance to stab the Solomons in the back one last time, he asked Sabini how he could say no?

He turned around, walking to the bannister and looking out at the giant chandelier across the way. The crystals caught the sunlight coming in through the large windows downstairs, spraying colours across the ceiling and along three of the walls. He looked down at the floor twenty feet below, where tiny shards of colour danced across the floor. When he was a boy, he used to think the chandelier was close enough to touch. He’d always thought that if he could get the nerve up, he’d climb up onto the railing and make the jump. Now, he didn’t think it would hold his weight. He was about to turn away when something dark caught his eye. He paused, looking closer, straining up on his toes to see.

He turned, knowing there was a chair against the wall. He put his drink down on the table and picked up the chair, placing it next to the bannister. He stepped up. He had no intention of making the jump, but there was something that caught his eye and he knew exactly what it was. It was probably a child’s toy, he told himself even as he looked at it. He stepped up on the chair and looked at the chandelier. He wasn’t high enough, so he stepped up onto the rail with one foot. It was wider than his foot, so he stepped up with the other foot and looked directly across at the chandelier.

Don’t look down, he told himself, but I can definitely see the skull.

He didn’t see who it was. He didn’t hear anyone, or even suspect there was someone close by. He felt a hand hitting his leg though, just behind the knee. Whoever it was pushed hard enough for his knee to buckle and send him tumbling off balance. He could feel himself falling, and tried jumping out to the chandelier, but missed. His hand hit with a metallic clang, and a large cloud of dust rained over him as he fell to the floor.

The scream he’d uttered as he fell, was brief; the sound of the impact he’d made hitting the floor, was sickening; the scream of pain, excruciating. The ankle of his left foot went directly through the joint, splitting the tibia and fibula which shattered on impact. His knee buckled, and his femur was driven into his pelvis, the ball and socket broken, as the pelvis fractured into five pieces and the femur pushed six inches into his abdomen.

He saw a face he didn’t recognize looking down at him over the bannister.

And then he passed out.