Free Mission of Honor by Tom Clancy, Steve Pieczenik, Jeff Rovin Page A

they had come here.
    In Botswana, the mentality was far different than it was in Antwerp. For one thing, the age of things in Africa was measured in eons, not in centuries. The sun witnessed the rise and fall of mountains and plains, not improvements in buildings and streets. The stars looked down on the slow workings of evolution, not the life span of civilizations. The people had a monolithic patience that was unheard of in Europe.
    Here, Genet had found himself thinking bigger thoughts but with European impatience.
    As ancient as this world was, it was also fresh and uncomplicated. There was a clarity of purpose. For the inhabitants it was dance or die. The predators had to kill their prey. The prey had to elude the predators. That simplicity also suited Genet’s partner Beaudin. Unlike Europe, where there were attorneys and financial institutions to protect him, the risks here were intense and exciting.
    It had been two days since Genet first arrived to oversee the expansion of the ministry. What he had discovered was that even sleeping here was a challenge. The noises, the heat, the mosquitoes that lived in the shallow waters on the shore of their little island. Genet loved being challenged like this.
    Especially when the Belgian diamond merchant knew that, if he needed it, escape was just a few dozen yards away. Genet could always use the Aventura II to fly back to his private airstrip and then to civilization. He wanted excitement, but he was not delusional.
    Not like Dhamballa. He was an idealist. And idealists, by their nature, were not realists.
    Genet used the edges of his pillow to wipe sweat from his eyes. He turned gently onto his belly so the perspiration would run out on its own. Then he thought about Dhamballa, and he had to smile. This operation could not have been easier from conception to launch. And for all Dhamballa’s ideas, for all his insights about faith and human nature, he had no idea what any of it was really about.
    Eight months before, Dhamballa had been associated with Genet in a much different capacity. Then, the thirty-three-year old Botswanan was known as Thomas Burton. He was a sifter in a mine Genet visited each month to do some of his buying. Sifters were men who stood beside the mining flumes-long wooden troughs with running water. These troughs were located inside the mines where the lighting could be kept constant. There were screens at different intervals. The water went through without a problem. Small rocks and dirt were trapped by the screen. If the sifters did not see any diamonds, they moved the screen so the detritus could be washed along. Each successive screen had a finer mesh than the one before. And each successive sifter was trained to spot diamonds of decreasing size. Even diamond dust had value to scientists and industrialists. Those people used the dust in micro technology as prisms, cutting surfaces, or nano-thin switches. The diamond dust was removed from the sand by a fan operator, who blew the fine powder away from the significantly heavier grains.
    Thomas had worked at the very end of the trough line. And he had a voice that could be heard over the rushing water and the hum of the fan. Genet knew this because every day, promptly at two o’clock, Thomas would speak about the ages old teachings of Vous Deux or “You Two.” While continuing to sift, the young man would extemporize on the beauty of life and death and their relation to the universe.
    He would talk about the greatness of the snake, which cast off its skin and died without dying. He would explain how men could cast off death if they took the time to find their own “second skin.”
    The mine operators allowed Thomas to speak. The other sifters enjoyed hearing him, and they always worked more energetically after his ten-or fifteen-minute inspirational talks. During one visit, Genet listened to what Thomas had to say. He spoke about the gods and how they favored the industrious. He talked about “the