Matthew’s thoughts were already racing. Just who the hell was Sam Ryder planning to buy off with those millions? Because Sam, of course, was enough of a dumbass to go after a mythical diamond. The Weaze was right about that, no doubt. “Shit,” he muttered, then sighed. “Okay, Ziegler, thanks. Anything on the other business?”

“That was considerably easier,” Aaron said, looking more relaxed, if not at ease. “Rachel Stein came from Amsterdam; she was a member of an old diamond-cutting family that was wiped out during the Holocaust. She and her brother Abraham were the only survivors. Pretty grim stuff. I have a lot on her life in the U.S., but you were just interested in the Dutch connection, right? There wasn’t much. They were hidden by a Dutch family through much of the war but were discovered in its last months and deported to the death camps. As I said, there wasn’t a lot of detail. As for Juliana Fall-there was a nice, fat folder on her in the library.”

“I’ll bet,” Stark said.

“As you said, the Dutch connection comes from her mother, whose maiden name was Peperkamp. She grew up in Amsterdam. There was a file on her-a review of her bakeshop. I went ahead and checked under Peperkamp. You’re not going to believe this, but there’s a diamond cutter named Johannes Peperkamp.”

Here a Peperkamp, there a Peperkamp. “Go on.”

“There wasn’t much recent stuff. He started out in Amsterdam and moved to Antwerp after World War II, and he’s cut a number of famous large diamonds, including the Breath of Angels, which is now in the Smithsonian. He’s the last of the Peperkamp cutters, who apparently got into the business in the sixteenth century when they provided safe haven for Jewish diamond merchants fleeing the Inquisition in Antwerp and Lisbon, which until that time were the principal diamond cities.”

“Any relation to Catharina or Juliana Fall?”

“None mentioned, but that’s not surprising. Juliana would have been just a kid when most of the material in the folder was published.”

“Any mention of Hendrik de Geer?”

“No. I couldn’t find anything on him.”

“Any connection between this Johannes Peperkamp or Juliana and Catharina Fall and Rachel Stein?”

“None that I could find.”

“Okay. Thanks, Aaron. I appreciate it.”

Ziegler beamed. “Should I keep stalling Feldie?”

“By all means.”

Matthew went for coffee, pure rotgut but hot, and sat in the cafeteria for an hour talking sports with a couple of reporters. The Caps were playing the Bruins at home and losing in the third period. He wondered if Juliana Fall had ever been to a hockey game. They could go together, and she could get up on the organ and play the national anthem. Hell, that’d kill her reputation faster than getting caught as J.J. Pepper. Did she even know what the inside of a hockey arena looked like? He doubted it. Had she ever eaten a hotdog from a concession stand? Had she ever eaten a hotdog at all? Probably called them frankfurters.

He pulled himself up short, got a refill, and headed back downstairs.

His telephone was ringing. He picked it up. “What?”

“Oh. You are there.”

He recognized the liquid voice instantly and dropped into his chair. “Shall I call you Juliana or J.J.?”

“Usually I’m called Miss Fall-or Ms. Fall.”

“Still mad, huh?”

“That’s irrelevant. Why didn’t you tell me Rachel Stein was dead?”

“Because you would have said, ‘Rachel who?’ I described her to you, if you’ll recall, and you said you didn’t know her. I didn’t think there was any point in telling you she was dead.”

“You were trying to trap me,” Juliana said. “Besides, you didn’t believe me anyway.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I might have told you more if you’d been honest with me.”

He felt himself grinning. “And I might have told you more if you’d been honest with me. Want to talk now?”

“There’s nothing to say.”

“Then why did you call?”

“I only met Rachel Stein once, but I-well, I want to know more about this story you’re half working on.”

“Why?”

He heard her take a breath, controlling herself; he irritated the hell out of her. “Curiosity, I guess,” she said stiffly.

“More interesting than painting your hair purple and dressing up in nutty clothes to play jazz? You’re bored, Juliana Fall, and I’ve got better things to do than to unbore you.” Then again…he thought, but left it at that.

“Do you know why Rachel Stein was with Senator Ryder on Saturday?” she asked, her voice cool now, distant and very calculating.

“No, do you?”

“Of course not. You and Senator Ryder know each other, don’t you? Why were you at the concert?”

“I like music,” Stark said. The woman was holding back on him, which was one thing. But holding back and expecting him to talk was another, and it pissed him off. “Let me ask you something, Ms. Fall. Are you any relation to a diamond cutter by the name of Johannes Peperkamp?”

Not a sound came out of her. Matthew leaned back, listening. Finally she said, even more cool, even more distant and calculating, “Why do you ask?”

“Curiosity, I guess,” he said, mimicking her.

He’d pushed her too far. She called him a bastard and hung up. He’d memorized her phone number when he went to her apartment, and he reached for the phone to call her back. But he stopped himself. What the hell was he doing? Juliana Fall had no business getting mixed up in anything that involved Otis Raymond and Sam Ryder. She was a pianist, for God’s sake. Let her get her kicks out of keeping Shuji from finding out about J.J. Pepper and Len Wetherall from finding out about Juliana Fall.

He put on his coat and went home.

Wilhelmina Peperkamp scrubbed a batch of clay pots in her tiny kitchen, oblivious to the bright morning winter sun screaming through her window. Her apartment was on the first floor of a restored seventeenth-century building in Delftshaven, where she had lived for the last forty years. Literally Delft’s harbor, it was the quietest, most picturesque section of Rotterdam and virtually the only one that had escaped the 1940 German bombings. The rebuilt Rotterdam was pleasant enough-likeable, efficient, and convenient. But it was the cobblestone streets and centuries-old buildings of Delftshaven Wilhelmina had grown to love.

She was elbow-deep in water and had just begun to have some success with the stubborn mildew on one of her pots when her telephone began ringing. She considered not answering, but she received so few calls she changed her mind. Grumbling to herself, she put down her stiff wire brush and wiped her hands on her apron as she picked up the phone. “Yes?”

“Willie…”

She recognized the soft, unhappy voice at once. “Catharina, what’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry, Willie, I don’t mean to sound so upset-”

“Never mind,” Wilhelmina responded abruptly. She had spoken in Dutch, Catharina in English, automatically, as if it never occurred to her to speak in her native language. Ordinarily Wilhelmina would have remarked on her sister’s thorough Americanization. This time she didn’t. Catharina rarely called, least of all when something was bothering her, and Wilhelmina opted to speak in her own excellent English. “What is it, Catharina?”

“It’s Rachel-Rachel Stein. She’s dead, Willie. It was in the papers here.”

Rachel. Even after all these years, Wilhelmina thought, I can still see her lively, tiny face and the expressive eyes that had had no effect whatever on an officer of the Green Police. They were bastards, all of them. Nazis, Dutch Nazis. So filled with hate. That one had kicked Rachel like a dog and dragged her away-and Wilhelmina, too. But that was of no consequence; she’d failed to protect Rachel, and the Nazis had taken her away.

Now she was dead.

Wilhelmina reached for a cotton towel and dried her dripping forearms, cradling the phone between her shoulder and chin. She looked down at her hands, red and rough with work and age. They had never been pretty hands; she had never been a pretty woman. But her plainness hadn’t bothered her; she had other qualities.