Death is Forever Read Online Free PDF

on distant vistas. And sometimes he simply had to endure.
    He closed his eyes and endured, trying to think beyond the blinding instants of pain that measured his heartbeats in the blood vessels behind his eyes. Jason Street had come to ConMin with the highest recommendations ten years ago, when he had been barely thirty. Nothing had happened since then to make van Luik doubt Street’s abilities or his ultimate loyalties.
    Until now. Now something was wrong. Street was temporizing, lying, or withholding some crucial bit of information. Van Luik couldn’t tell whether the Australian was lying to avoid ConMin’s wrath or for some other, less obvious reason.
    “Were you able to get any information on the helicopter?” van Luik asked softly.
    “I checked every charter operator in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. No luck. No trace of a flight plan in the air traffic control system, either. Must have been privately owned.”
    “Find that helicopter.” Van Luik almost gagged with the sudden blinding agony his outburst triggered. He breathed shallowly through his mouth for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was controlled and calm. “We must find out who has the poetry and the stones.”
    “I’m working on it, mate.”
    Van Luik shifted the phone to his left hand and massaged his right temple with long, well-manicured fingers. Light flashed from the little finger of his right hand, where he wore a five-carat, emerald-cut, D flawless diamond. The stone was pavé set in matte-finish platinum. It was the only jewelry van Luik wore or needed to wear. In Antwerp the stone was a calling card, instantly identifying him as a fellow of the international diamond brotherhood.
    “You have, of course, a copy of ‘Chunder from Down Under’?” van Luik asked.
    “Sarah checked it a week before Abe died. It hadn’t been changed since the last time I sent a copy to you.”
    “I don’t suppose she was able to copy the will, though?” Van Luik’s tone was quiet, almost accusing. When Street didn’t answer, the Dutchman added, “Did she even manage to look at it?”
    Street drew a deep breath and prepared to tell van Luik what he already knew. “Abe left ‘Chunder’ on his bedside table, but his will was his own bloody little secret, and he kept it even closer than the stones around his neck.”
    Van Luik grunted. He opened the file on the desk in front of him and glanced through a sheaf of photographs. They were grainy prints, blown up from the tiny negatives of a Minox camera, page after page of spidery, old-fashioned handwriting on rough, lined tablet paper. Meaningless ramblings or a dead man’s cleverly disguised clues to a missing diamond mine. The truth of the poetry was still elusive.
    “You have a copy with you,” van Luik said.
    It was a statement, not a question. Street bit back a savage retort and said only, “Yes.”
    “Begin.”
    “Rack off, van Luik. We’ve been around this course so many times that—”
    “Begin,” van Luik interrupted coldly.
    There was a silence, followed by the subtle rustling of paper as Street shuffled through pages of Crazy Abe’s oddly lucid handwriting.
    “Any particular verse strike your fancy?” Street asked in a goading tone. He knew that “Chunder” offended van Luik in more ways than his inability to pierce its central secret.
    “The fourth verse this time, I think.”
    “Right.” Street began reading aloud, his voice uninflected. “‘Find it if you can,/If you dare to go/Where the dark swan floats/Over a dead sea’s bones,/Where men are Percys and Lady Janes are stone.’” When he finished reading, Street waited.
    So did van Luik.
    With a muttered curse, Street began explaining lines he’d read and explained so many times he no longer really saw them. “The first line—”
    “Is self-explanatory,” van Luik cut in. “So is the second. Begin with the third.”
    “Right. Black swans are all over the outback, like koalas used to be all