The Courier

She fed the card into the slot. The red light flipped to amber, and the screen prompted for her next move:

Please Scan Fingerprint

Beth fidgeted behind her. ‘What now?’

‘If we had more time, we could lift Garvin’s prints from around the house.’ Harry wrinkled her nose. ‘Maybe make some kind of mould. Problem is, with ten fingers to choose from, it’s a bit hit and miss. We only get three shots before the vault locks us out for good.’

Beth groaned. ‘We’ve only twenty minutes left.’

Harry peered at the recessed opening. ‘When did your husband last open the vault?’

‘This morning. Why?’

‘Has anyone touched the finger sensor since?’

‘Not that I know of.’

Harry fetched her torch and shone it into the recess. The beam picked out a faint smudge of grease on the metal pad. She snapped off the light and ran through her options. She could hack the sensor in a few different ways, but the priority here was speed.

‘What are you going to do?’ Beth said.

Harry shrugged. ‘Use the only fingerprint we have. The one on the sensor.’ She saw Beth’s blank look and explained. ‘I’m going to try and reactivate it.’

Harry bent down low so that her mouth was on a level with the metal pad. It was a capacitive sensor that measured electrical changes across its surface when a human finger touched it. A high measurement meant a ridge in a fingerprint, and a low measurement meant a valley. The sensor put it all together to reconstruct a fingerprint pattern.

The trick now was to make it think that Garvin’s finger was still there.

Harry swallowed, and licked her lips. She needed to breathe on the surface of the sensor, letting the moisture from her breath gather between the lines in the grease stain. With luck, it’d be enough for the sensor to measure the capacitance and mistake it for an actual finger.

Gently, she breathed on to the surface of the pad, exhaling for three or four seconds. The screen beeped, and she glanced up at the message:

Access Denied: Finger Detection Failed.

Damn. Probably too much moisture. She must have exhaled for too long. She could try it again, but in her experience, tricking around with her breathing technique wasn’t going to help.

‘Now what?’ Beth’s voice was shrill.

Harry aimed for a confident tone. ‘Plan B.’

She reached for her case, but before she could open it the desk phone rang. Harry jumped. Beth’s hand flew to her throat and they both stared at the phone.

‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’ Harry said.

Beth shook her head. After four rings, the answering machine kicked in.

‘If you’re there, pick up the bloody phone.’ The man’s voice was gravelly, his accent clipped. New Zealand? He waited a beat before continuing. ‘Forget it. I’m nearly there, I’ll see you in two minutes.’

The call ended with a click. Beth stepped backwards, wide-eyed. Her fear was infectious, and Harry found herself checking over her shoulder.

‘Can you do it?’ Beth’s voice was a whisper.

‘In two minutes?’ Harry swallowed. ‘Maybe. Or you could bail out now?’

Beth’s headshake was almost imperceptible. A voice in Harry’s head shrieked at her to run, but she blocked it out. Fumbling through her case, she found a clear plastic bag and a bottle of water. Trying to hold the bag steady, she half-filled it with water, then tied a knot in the top. She kneaded it, testing its pliability. It wobbled like jelly in her hands. She squeezed a corner of the water-filled plastic into a marble-sized balloon. Then she turned back to the vault.

She felt Beth’s eyes on her like a pair of hot skewers. Holding her breath, she lowered the balloon on to the sensor and counted to three.

Beep. Beth cursed. Harry’s gaze shot to the screen:

Access Denied: Finger Detection Failed.

Hot sweat flashed down her back. She’d only one shot left. She grabbed her torch and shone it on to the sensor. The smudge was still there, faint but visible.

‘One minute left,’ whispered Beth.

Harry ripped out the packet of wine gums from her case, the contents exploding on to the floor. She snatched up an orange jelly. Its surface was soft and dry. She pushed her index finger into it, coaxing the smooth jelly round her fingertip with her thumb and middle finger.

The jelly had the same capacitance as the skin on a human finger. Hackers called it the Gummi bear attack, and there was a small chance it could fool the sensor.

Harry moved her fingers into the recess. Wheels crunched on gravel in the driveway outside, and Beth gasped. Harry froze, a pulse hammering in her throat.

A car door thunked.

Harry swallowed and lowered the wine gum towards the pad, her fingers trembling. Footsteps scraped against stone outside. She touched the jelly against the metal, keeping the pressure even.

One, two, three.

The light flashed green. Bolts clinked inside the vault. A split second later, the door to the house crashed open.

2 (#ulink_08a75fcd-5e1a-5ede-98eb-be15462ce7f8)

Finding a diamond could mark a man out for death. Mani knew this, but still he had no choice.

Black dust swirled in the beam from his helmet, thicker than smoke. There was always dust. It burned his throat and crusted against his skin. Most of the time, he could barely see his own hands.

He adjusted the mask over his mouth. It was a poor fit, inadequate for wide, African noses. Most of the men pulled them down under their chins after the first twenty minutes.

‘They don’t fit,’ Takata explained. ‘Besides, Van Wycks, they say the dust is safe.’

But Mani knew better.

He tightened his grip on the drill, holding it like a machine gun, one hand in front of the other. Pickaxes clinked in a nearby tunnel, and in the distance someone buzzed up a chainsaw. Mani lodged the bit into a crevice on the blue kimberlite rock and leaned into it, the pressure burning through the knife wound in his arm. His heart pounded against the butt of the drill.

‘Mani? Are you all right?’

Mani could hardly see Takata’s face, but he felt the old man’s bony fingers on his arm and heard his wheezing chest. Mani nodded, blanking out the cramped tunnel and the ceiling that seemed ready to crush him.

He pictured the layers of rock pressing down from above. Three or four feet of loose black soil up near the surface. After that, the soft yellow ground, for another fifty feet. Then the blue ground, where the kimberlite was hard and dense, to a depth of six hundred feet. All of it right above Mani’s skull. And all of it packed with diamonds.