Free The Jerusalem Diamond by Noah Gordon Page A

confronted by Gen. Naguib’s army in the Ras el Tin Palace and agreed to abdicate, his man Bardissi was in Belgium, picking up a small but choice group of gems from the Farouk collection which had been on display in Antwerp at the Forty-Sixth International Gemological Exposition. Bardissi signed a receipt for seven large diamonds; three matched transparent red rubies, each weighing between nine and ten carats; a fourth ruby described as “the size of a pigeon’s egg, presented by Gustavus III of Sweden in 1777 to Catherine II of Russia” ; and a tray containing “historical stones
” —
gems with purportedly interesting backgrounds but little intrinsic value
.
    Bardissi never returned to Egypt, where there is still a warrant for his arrest. His lands were confiscated by the State in 1954
.
    The Catherine II ruby reportedly has been in the collection of the Iranian Treasury in Teheran since 1954, but the government of Iran will neither confirm nor deny this. The Iranian Treasury Collection is never open for inspection
.
    The three matched rubies were sold in 1968 to a Tokyo businessman named Kayo Mikawa. They are almost certainly from the Farouk collection. When questioned, Mikawa told Interpol he had bought the stones in London from a man named Yosef Mehdi
.
    Interpol contacted Egypt, from which it has a standing request for information regarding Bardissi. Since Egypt and Britain do not have an extradition treaty, the Egyptians could take no action
.
    Mehdi readily admitted to the English that he was Bardissi. He showed authorities a letter from Farouk, postmarked from Cannes on November 18, 1953, which declared that the gems were Farouk’s personal property and not that of the Egyptian government, and that Farouk was transferring ownership of the jewels and other articles to Bardissi in return for good and loyal services rendered. Bardissi convinced British authorities that he was wanted as a political figure and not as a criminal and that he would be put to death if they returned him to Egypt
.
    He was released
.
    After that, he dropped from sight. Obviously, he believes his life still is in danger. But early this year in Amman, a man who gave his name as Yosef Mehdi approached several individuals known tohave western sympathies and connections and raised the question of the possible sale of gems
.
    The case of Hamid Bardissi is considered by Cairo to be “current but inactive
.”
    The Harry Hopeman System made an intercontinental flight no more difficult than leaping a tall building at a single bound. As soon as the plane was airborne, off came his shoes. In soft slippers and a comfortable sweater he watched a movie, not quite terrible enough to be enjoyable. Over Newfoundland he ate the reheated chicken and a Jaffa orange, ignoring the sweet champagne and ordering a bottle of dry wine.
    He spent a long time studying Mehdi’s dossier and then his father’s notebooks, returning repeatedly to the pages devoted to the Inquisition Diamond. Finally he put on the earphones and listened to Handel, for him a guarantor of drowsiness. All the while, sipping on the wine. By the time the bottle was two thirds empty, he was almost two thirds across the Atlantic. He placed the sleep mask over his eyes and tried the different sound tracks, settling for the sibilant noises of surf. His toes were numb, the sea sounds were in his ears; the mellow grape aftertastes pulled him under until he slipped into sleep, like drowning pleasantly at twenty-two thousand feet.
    He paid the real price of the wine next day at high noon when the golden hammer struck him between the eyes as he left the plane at Ben Gurion Airport.
    It was hot. He inched through customs and eventually achieved a taxi. The driver manhandled the wheel with the obligatory roughness, and Harry was fighting nausea by the time they passed through the ravine outside of Jerusalem where the roadside was marked with twisted metal