The Final Cut by Catherine Coulter
He heard a throat clearing and looked over at his uncle Bo, walking in front of Ben. Nicholas was grateful for his presence. It would make the next few days easier, having him here.
When it was done, when Nicholas had said a silent prayer over her grave, the sky opened and rain began to fall in heavy sheets, crying for him, crying for them all.
Friends from the Yard were going around to The Drunken Goose, Farrow-on-Grey’s fifteenth-century pub, with its small windows of square-cut glass, ancient oak beams, and hot, sweet air, Penderley with them! But Nicholas didn’t want to go, he wanted to go home and strip off the damn funeral suit, take a shower, and have a drink. He crossed the church graveyard to Bo, who laid a hand momentarily on his shoulder; then the two of them turned to wait for Mike and Ben. Once they were together, Bo said, “Let’s get out of here.”
The drive to Old Farrow Hall took only a few minutes. They were all silent.
Cook Crumbe had prepared a spread for them, of course, so when they arrived, all shaking umbrellas and ducking out of the way of Mike’s enormous hat, Horne shepherded them into the dining room and saw to it everyone had a drink and some food.
Nicholas nodded to the old man who’d taken such care of him and his family for so many years. He cleared his tight throat. “Thank you, Horne.”
Horne only nodded and said in his most formal voice, “Of course, Master Nicholas, of course.”
“Inspector York told me she appreciated your kindness to her.”
Horne bowed his head, then said, his voice austere, “She was a young woman deserving of kindness. I will miss her.”
Mike watched Nicholas speaking to the Drummond butler—butler!—she still couldn’t get over having a butler in the modern world. She’d noticed his accent was deeper, his voice more clipped, when he was at home. It had been a hard day on him—a hard week, really, what with telling his parents he was joining the FBI. She would have loved to be a fly on the wall when he’d made that announcement. He’d told her his parents and his grandfather, even Horne and Cook Crumbe, had taken it well, but she thought he was just trying to make himself feel better about his decision.
And then he’d arranged for Elaine’s funeral, seen to Elaine’s ill mother. Mike was very pleased that Elaine had had time to send her mother the $200,000 before she’d been killed.
She knew this huge rambling house with its hundreds of years of life and all its endless dramas was a deep part of him, and would always be his touchstone. As for her parents, she’d told her dad how his heroine, beautiful Mitzie Drummond, was a gracious, loving woman who solved mysteries in her spare time.
Mike looked at Mitzie across the room. She’d left it all behind, fame and fortune, to marry Nicholas’s dad, a man very unlike his son. Tall, aloof, but when he smiled, it warmed his face and made you smile in return.
Nicholas’s wily old grandfather had asked her if she intended to take care of his grandson. And not five minutes later, Nicholas’s mother had asked her the same thing. And not five minutes after that, Cook Crumbe had stirred from the kitchen and asked if she would take care of Master Nicholas. She told them all the same thing: yes, she would take care of Nicholas Drummond, they could take that to the bank.
She ate one of Cook Crumbe’s delicious shrimp prepared with some sort of curry and watched and listened.
Horne waited until Nicholas had eaten and had a few sips of single malt before handing him a thick package.
“A woman came with this while you were out.”
Nicholas only glanced at it. “Can’t it wait?”
“She said no, sir. She wanted you to open it the moment you came home.”
Something in Horne’s tone made Nicholas look up sharply. “Who was she?”
“I couldn’t say. She was small, though, with dark hair. Bonny blue eyes, so light—”
Nicholas thrust his drink into Horne’s hand and grabbed the package from him, ripped it open. Everyone stopped to watch him. He pulled the thick stack of paper from the envelope; saw the familiar blue backing indicating a legal document.
Mike asked, “Nicholas, what is it?”
He thumbed through the pages, then started to laugh. “It’s a deposition. Almighty God in heaven, it’s a bloody deposition.”
“From who? About what?”
“There are hundreds of pages. I will be damned. This contains information on Mulvaney’s thefts, all the murders, everything she promised.”
He looked up and said simply, “Kitsune. She’s alive, and she kept the bargain.”
London
March
The rooftops were slick with frost, the sun just beginning to break through the gloomy sky. Snow again, she could feel it. She adjusted her position slightly, made herself more comfortable. She stashed the ATN night-vision goggles, pleased she’d chosen the PVS7s. Wouldn’t do to have anything less than military-grade. They’d served her well on her overnight sojourns this week.
She brought her monocle to her eye and checked it once. All was quiet. In their quarters, their tiny apartments, men were waking, beginning their morning routines. Women were showering, preparing breakfast, readying themselves to go out into the world. The men stayed behind; this was their work and their home.
She saw him then. Her pulse quickened, her breath became shallow, and something moved deep inside her.
She set the monocle down and poured the last of the tea from the thermos into her cup. She drank, letting it warm her, then checked the monocle again. The watch was changing, the guards in camouflage bristling with weapons.
The gates would open to the public at 9:00 a.m. The most dynamic and wondrously grim landmark in London would see throngs of people streaming through the gates, despite the weather. Though late March now, the air was still a bone-deep cold and seeped through puffy down jackets.
Today, Kitsune would be among them, bundled in her jacket, as she had every day for the past week.
Today, she would approach him. Ask to speak. Ask for forgiveness.
She was prepared, overprepared, but it was the only way she had the courage to try. Today everything would change. He’d either turn her away or take her back. There would be no in between. He wasn’t the type to stay friends.
Ignoring the lingering pain in her forearm, she packed her things and crawled down the slick roof. The wound was healing, but she’d have the long, thin scar forever.
The window on the tenth floor was still cracked, and she slipped inside, taking a moment to make sure nothing had been disturbed. It wasn’t just a stroke of luck construction had started on the building closest to the Tower of London. She’d bought the building and commissioned the renovation. Through a shell company, of course. She wasn’t about to let anything else get in her way. And she saw a profit down the road as well. She’d been able to observe unmolested for days.
She said a small prayer as she changed clothes, stashed her black camo that blended so perfectly with the nighttime rooftops, and became the young researcher from the University of Edinburgh again, jeans, trainers, jumper, and mac, hair in a ponytail, the false brown irises restored to their natural, startling blue, the odd genetic anomaly that should have led her to a career in modeling instead of the life she’d led. She wouldn’t change her old life for the world, but she’d bid it farewell back in Gagny.
She pulled the satellite phone from her bag, scrambled the signal, and placed a call to a mobile number she knew by heart.
His voice was deep, clogged with sleep. She’d woken him. She couldn’t blame him for sleeping late. He deserved rest after all they’d been through. And his life was undergoing a sea change as well.
“Drummond here.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, then ended the call before he had a chance to react.
Time to go.
With a smile, she gathered her bag, walked to the elevator, and disappeared.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Koh-i-Noor—say it aloud, pause for a moment. Do you feel the fleeting warmth of light bathing your face? Or perhaps the pull of something you don’t understand, but you know it’s in the deepest part of you, the part that recognizes magic?
Imagine, this incredible stone was once 793 carats—the size of a man’s fist, the prized possession of the god Krishna. Now imagine betrayal and a curse passed down through the ages that promises death, chaos, and destruction to any man who tries to keep the Koh-i-Noor close.
The stuff of legends, you say, but in truth the Koh-i-Noor did indeed pass from bloody hand to bloody hand, and always devastation followed in its wake. A long ago Sultan had the Koh-i-Noor cut from 793 carats to a mere 186. It came to Queen Victoria in 1850 and it was she who wanted to shine it up. The once massive Koh-i-Noor of 793 carats ended up 105, and that is its size today.
The Final Cut is based on fact. What I have created is the personal Lanighan family legend passed down from father to son for generations:
When Krishna’s stone is unbroken again,
the hand which holds it becomes whole.
Wash the Mountain of Light in woman’s blood,
so we will know rebirth and rejoice.
I hope you enjoyed The Final Cut, written with love and great excitement and a touch of magic.
Say “Koh-i-Noor,” and just imagine.
—Catherine Coulter
and J. T. Ellison
HISTORY OF THE
KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND
Legends claim the Koh-i-Noor diamond belonged to the great god Krishna until a treacherous servant stole it from him while he slept, and thus the curse was born.
He who owns this diamond will own the world, but will also know all its misfortunes. Only God or a woman can wear it with impunity.
Other stories have the Koh-i-Noor discovered in a riverbed in 3000 B.C. alongside its pink sister, the Darya-i-Noor, residing today in Iran.
The first time the Koh-i-Noor enters into written history is in 1305 as a stone weighing an extraordinary 793 carats. It passed from hand to hand as regimes rose and fell, always coveted, but never bought or sold, only gained through conquest.
THE FIRST CUT
In the seventeenth century, Emperor Aurangzeb, the last of the great Moghul leaders, wanted to impress a French gemstone expert who was searching the East for rare and special stones. Aurangzeb gave the Italian lapidary Borgio the task of polishing the diamond for the visit. Borgio bungled the job, taking the 793-carat diamond down to a measly 186 carats.
It mattered not, the value of the stone was still overwhelming. It changed hands many more times, through blood and trickery, even going to Pakistan and Persia before returning to India. Thus, all three countries lay claim to it, and regularly petition the British government for its repatriation.
HOW THE KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND CAME TO QUEEN VICTORIA
In 1850, Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last Maharaja of Lahore and the youngest son of the famous Lion of Punjab, was dethroned by the British, his country (Punjab) annexed. He was forced to hand over the Koh-i-Noor to the British as part of the Treaty of Lahore. However, Duleep Singh wasn’t imprisoned or mistreated. He was feted by British society and became a favorite of Queen Victoria.
THE FINAL CUT
In 1851, Queen Victoria displayed the Koh-i-Noor to the British public. However, the 186-carat diamond hadn’t been changed since the Borgio bungling two hundred years before, and it looked ugly and dull, not the brilliant cut the people expected.
After great debate, Prince Albert hired a lapidary named Coster from Amsterdam to cut the stone again. When Coster was finished, the Koh-i-Noor was radiant with dazzling light. However, the diamond was now a mere 105 carats.
The British have been very careful not to test the curse, and only the women of the Royal Family wear the diamond. The Koh-i-Noor was originally made into a brooch for Queen Victoria, then found its way into crowns for Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary before it came to rest in its current home, the centerpiece of the queen mother’s crown. It can be seen in the Tower of London.
In my story, Parliament has enacted a temporary law allowing the queen mother’s crown to travel to the United States to be the centerpiece of the Jewel of the Lion exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Given what happened, it is highly doubtful the British will ever again allow the prized Koh-i-Noor to leave their shores.
Catherine Coulter, The Final Cut
(Series: A Brit in the FBI # 1)