War had been declared. Gordon Tracy was the defending champion, and was determined to make sure he stayed that way.

He risked a fast peek, SEAL Team style, around the corner of the kitchen doorway. The lounge looked empty, the sliding doors open to the balcony, white curtains billowing softly in the breeze. But looks could be deceptive.

Surprise was always the most effective element. He flexed his hands on the custom-molded grips of the huge Super Soaker – the triple-tanked Cyclone Blaster II, the biggest, baddest model they made – and leaped into the other room, ready to annihilate and conquer.

Nothing. But Gordon quickly overcame his disappointment. His father’s office was next in his path. John was known for hiding there sometimes, under the desk, waiting to ambush those of his brothers who foolishly let their respect for Jeff Tracy’s property slow down their offensive.

As he reached the partition on stealthy feet, the sudden, ominious notes of the Darth Vader Imperial March, improbably played on the accordion to the background of a polka beat – one of his finest finds, if he said so himself – made him jump. He slipped into the office and picked up the cell phone lying on the desk. “Jeff Tracy’s phone.”

What he heard made him abruptly turn serious. “What? You’re kidding. No…no, I’ll tell him. Thanks, Mat. See you when you get here.”

He shook his head at the phone and shouldered the Super Soaker. The game was definitely over for today.

Jeff stood at the observation windows of the Cliff House an hour later, flanked by John and Gordon, watching the Fijian ambassador’s twin engine plane sweep in to a graceful landing on the runway below. Scott and Virgil had gone down to meet the plane on the runway. “You’re sure Mat didn’t say why they were coming?”

“I’m sure, Dad,” Gordon said. “He didn’t sound very happy, though.”

“Hmmm.”

They watched as three figures climbed out of the plane and were greeted by Scott and Virgil, then ushered toward the elevator. “OK, boys, let’s go up and meet them,” Jeff said.

First through the door into the lounge was the imposing figure of the American Ambassador to Fiji, Kiribatu, Nauru, Tonga and Tivalu, former star rugby player Mathias Tuamoto. He shook Jeff’s hand warmly and introduced his companions, a tall man with a deeply lined face and white hair in a stiff buzz cut and an attractive woman who looked to be of Hispanic descent. “Jeff, these are Detectives Slauson and Alvarado, Los Angeles Police Department. Homicide Division.”

“Los Angeles?” Jeff’s eyebrow went up. “Los Angeles, California?”

“Homicide?” John said, frowning.

“Mr. Tracy,” the woman, Alvarado, addressed Jeff, “we are here to speak with your son, Alan. We have some important questions to ask him.”

John and Gordon exchanged puzzled glances. Jeff said, “You came all the way from California to talk to Alan?”

“Yes, sir,” Slauson affirmed.

Jeff hesitated for a moment. “Ah…I’d really like to help you, but Alan’s not actually…here at the moment.”

The detectives glanced at each other. “Not here?” Slauson asked.

“He does live here, correct?” Alvarado pressed.

“Mr. Tracy lists this island as his home address on all official paperwork,” Slauson added.

Jeff nodded. “Yes, he lives here. He’s just not…here right now.”

“Well, then, would you be able to tell us where he is?” Slauson asked, a slight edge creeping into his voice.

John matched his tone perfectly. “Would you be able to tell us why you want to know?”

Both detectives turned appraising eyes on him. Tuamoto stepped in. “As I understand it, John, Alan has been declared a person of interest in a high profile homicide investigation.”

“What?” the word came out higher-pitched than Gordon intended it to. “Are you sure you have the right guy?”

“Homicide?” Scott and Virgil had arrived. Scott’s eyebrows were hovering somewhere around his hairline.

“Whose homicide?” Virgil asked, sounding equally astonished.

The detectives looked at each other, hesitating. “These are all my sons,” Jeff said firmly. “Whatever you have to say, you can say it in front of them.”

“Mr. Tracy, this is highly confidential, but yesterday, the body of Hailey Mitchell was found by a fishing boat in Santa Monica Bay. We have been keeping this information under wraps awaiting the return of her mother from South Africa. A press conference is scheduled for tomorrow.”

There was a moment of shocked silence. “I’m so sorry to hear that,” Jeff said finally. “I knew her father well.”

“I’m presuming that since you two are here,” Scott put in, “you suspect foul play?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But what does this have to do with Alan?” Virgil said, frowning. “I mean, it’s very sad news, but he broke up with Hailey what, three years ago, four? I don’t think they’ve really seen each other since, except in passing, maybe.”

“Not only that, but when was the last time Alan was in Los Angeles?” Gordon asked the family in general.

“According to Ms. Mitchell’s cell phone,” Slauson said, “Mr. Tracy called her three times on Saturday, which was the same day we believe she disappeared. Preliminary investigation shows that he checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel on Friday and left the next morning.”

“Alan was in Los Angeles?” Tin-Tin’s voice from the doorway, sounding puzzled.

“We really would prefer to discuss this with Mr. Tracy himself,” Slauson said, firmly. “Now, where is he?”

Gordon had to fight the urge to look at Alan’s portrait on the wall. “Up north,” he said.

John nodded soberly. “Way, way up north.”

As soon as the detectives had been escorted back to the plane by Ambassador Tuamoto amid promises from the Tracys that the second Alan checked in they would have him contact them at their hotel in Suva, Jeff sat down at his desk and hailed Thunderbird Five. Alan’s portrait flipped to the live view of him in his uniform at the main console. “Thunderbird Five, what’s up, Dad?”

“Alan,” Jeff said sternly, “Were you in Los Angeles last week?”

“Alan,” Tin-Tin said, even more sternly, “Did you call Hailey Mitchell on Saturday?”

Whatever response Alan had been going to give, died quickly when he saw their expressions. “What’s happened?” he asked.

“Hailey’s dead, son,” Jeff said. “I’m sorry.”

Alan looked like he’d been struck. “What?”

“Two detectives from Los Angeles Homicide were here just now, wanting to talk to you. They told us they recovered Hailey’s body from Santa Monica Bay two days ago. They’ve been waiting for her mother to come home before they announce it to the press.”

“Christ.” Alan ran a hand through his hair. “Wait...homicide? They think somebody killed her? But why?”

“I think they were hoping you could help them figure that out,” John said.

“So you were there,” Tin-Tin had her arms folded, green eyes glinting dangerously.

Alan glanced at her. “Yes.”

“And you did call her.”

“Yes,” he repeated. “But it wasn’t how you think.”

Jeff intervened before Tin-Tin could continue. “I look forward to hearing how it was, Alan. But you’d better come back down here right now, or those detectives will think we’re hiding you for a reason.” He turned to Gordon. “Gordon, you’re due for a refresher week on Five, right? Go with Scott and relieve Alan.”

“Yes, sir,” Gordon said, “as long as I get to hear everything.”

Jeff shook his head. “As if I could keep it from you.”

“I stopped by LA on Friday on the way home,” Alan told them in the lounge, as soon as he and Scott returned home from Thunderbird Five and he’d had time to change into civilian clothes again. He looked at Tin-Tin. “Honey, I didn’t tell you because I was picking up a surprise for your birthday. You know how you always find out what I’m getting you. This time I wanted it to be different. I was having Harry Winston’s in Beverly Hills make you something special.”

“Oh, Alan!” Tin-Tin instantly teared up.

He smiled at her. Jeff said, “So how did Hailey Mitchell figure into all this?”

“I still can’t believe she’s…” Alan trailed off, shaking his head. “I ran into her at Winston’s. I hadn’t seen her since that fundraiser we went to at the Guggenheim a couple of years back, remember, Dad?”

“Ah, yes,” Jeff nodded. “I do remember that now. She seemed…a little busy.”

“A little blitzed was more like it. She was high as a kite. I couldn’t even get a complete sentence out of her.”

“Oh, dear,” Grandma said. “She was such a nice girl when you first met her.”

Alan sighed. “People change, Grandma. Not always for the better.”

“I’ll never forget that fight you had in the Monkey Bar the night you broke up,” Virgil said. “Man, she threw everything but the furniture.”

“No, I think there was at least one chair,” Alan said ruefully. “Epic doesn’t begin to describe it.”

“What was she like when you saw her at Winston’s?” Scott asked.

“Sober,” Alan said, thoughtfully. “OK, but kind of tired. Thinner than I remembered. We just started talking…really talking, like we hadn’t done since before we broke up.” He reached out and squeezed Tin-Tin’s hand. “I told her about you. She sounded glad for me.”

“What happened then?” John prompted.

“She came back to the hotel with me and we had lunch at the Fountain. She talked to me about what was going on in her life…and about her dad dying a few months back. I told her we were sorry we couldn’t make the funeral.”

“Yeah, we were a little busy that day, if I remember,” Gordon chimed in from his portrait screen. “That was the Cairns forest fire, right?”

Alan nodded. “Anyway, she said lately she’d been thinking about her life, about how maybe it was time to go back home and make peace with her mom and her sister. Then I went to the bathroom, and when I got back to the table she was gone.”

Jeff sat back in his seat. “And you don’t know what happened?”

“Nope. I figured maybe she got a call…who knows?” He paused. “There is one more thing, though. When I got back here on Saturday morning, and I was packing to go up to Five, I found a note in my jacket. I’d left it over the back of the chair at the Fountain, and she must have put it in my pocket before she left.” He reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, holding it out to his father.

Jeff took it and smoothed it out. It was a dry cleaning bill, and there was a message that looked like it had been written in great haste. “Alan, I need to talk to you! Please call me!” he read out loud. “That’s it, just that and her number?”

Alan nodded. “I couldn’t figure it out. Why leave me a note that says she wanted to talk to me, and then disappear? Anyway, I didn’t have time to do anything about it then, so I waited until I got up to Five. Then I tried to reach her a few times. She never answered.”

John pursed his lips. “And I’m guessing you bounced the call so it looked like you were local?”

Virgil caught on. “So it will look to the police as if you were still in Los Angeles.”

“Well, better that, than sitting in the space monitoring station for International Rescue,” Alan retorted.

“Uh, guys, you know what this means, right?” Gordon chimed in. “Alan’s got no alibi.”

Jeff called New York and got the head of his legal team out of bed.

Tall and lanky, disarming of nature and reminding everyone who met him irresistibly of Abraham Lincoln, native New Yorker Dan Hall was the best of the best. He was also the only one of the raft of lawyers on retainer to Tracy Corp who knew about International Rescue. “Jeff,” he said, blinking at the screen in the light of his beside lamp. “What can I charge you a small fortune for breathing in the general direction of?”

It was an old joke between them, but today Jeff wasn’t playing along. “We’ve got a problem, Dan,” he said soberly.

Dan listened while Jeff outlined the situation to him. “My advice is to come clean to the police with everything you know,” he said. “It’s not going to take them long to get eyewitness accounts of Alan with Hailey at the Beverly Hills Hotel, or at Harry Winston’s, and we don’t want it to look like we’re hiding anything. And the note will prove that Alan had a reason to call her the next day. We’ll have to tell them that he was in transit on Saturday, but since he was flying his own jet, there weren’t any witnesses. Did anyone see you board the jet at Van Nuys, Alan?”

“I don’t think so,” Alan said, frowning as he tried to remember. “It was pretty early in the morning, nobody else around. And I didn’t recognize anyone I knew on the Tower frequency, either. I mean, they knew it was supposed to be me, but…”

“Yeah, it would be pretty easy for anyone to cast doubt on whether that was really you,” Dan said. “And even if they do believe it was you, since your next destination was Tracy Island, and there is no independent verification of your landing, it would seem easy for you to have turned around at the first opportunity.”

“Dan,” Tin-Tin said, her eyes worried, “What if they really think Alan did this? Will they be able to arrest him?”

“It’s not that easy, Tin-Tin. Alan is an American citizen but he lives abroad, and even though Tracy Island belongs to Jeff here, it’s still part of the Fiji island group and therefore under the jurisdiction of their government.”

“Fiji has an extradition agreement with the US, though, doesn’t it?” John said.

“Yes, but these things take time. First, the US has to request extradition through the Fijian Minster of Justice. The Minister then has to decide whether the requirements of the Extradition Act are being met. Only then will he issue an authority to proceed, and after that a magistrate will order Alan’s arrest. You been drinking enough kava with the ratus over there lately, Jeff?”

“Boatloads,” Jeff said drily. It was impossible to avoid Fiji’s favorite drink – especially at the higher social and political levels – and in any case, it was an insult to try to do so. It was far easier to give in and get used to the taste and the aftereffects, some of which felt a little like a mild shot of Novocain from the dentist. He had to admit, though, his back hadn’t troubled him in quite some time, so obviously the claim that kava relaxed the muscles was valid.

“Bula!” Virgil grinned. “You go, Dad!”

“Oh, that stuff is awful,” Tin-Tin said, wrinkling her nose. “It tastes like dirty water.”

Dan smiled. “Then I would imagine we’re good for the immediate future. It’s amazing how often paperwork gets lost in the islands. In the meantime, the best defense is a good offense, as you’re always saying yourself.”

Jeff knew exactly what he meant. “I’ll send Penny to Los Angeles right away.”

Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward was always quietly amused at the celebrity watchers in places like the Beverly Hills Hotel. She was used to those little frowns of concentration as they watched her walk by and tried to figure out what movie or television series they had last seen her in. They knew she looked familiar, but most of them couldn’t place her for the life of them.

Smiling to herself, she crossed the lobby, passed the Polo Club and descended the spiral staircase to the 1940s-themed Fountain Coffee Room. After a brief conversation with the hostess, she was seated in one of the wrought iron chairs two thirds down the long, curving bar. The pink-garbed waitress turned toward her.

“Kristin Saldana?” Penelope asked.

Kristin paused. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry…do I know you?”

“I don’t think so, but I need to ask you a few questions,” Penelope said.

Kristin glanced around the bar. “Is this about Hailey Mitchell? Because the police already asked me all about her.”

“Kristin, my name is Penelope. A dear friend of mine is in danger of being falsely accused, and I need your help to see that that doesn’t happen. Can I count on you?”

Kristin hesitated. “You’re taking about Alan Tracy, aren’t you.”

Penelope nodded. The waitress drew closer, relaxing a little. “Alan is always so nice,” she said. “I can’t believe he’d ever do anything bad to anyone.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Penelope said. “Now, you were working when Alan and Hailey were here last week, weren’t you?”

“Yes. They came in for lunch. They were talking a lot, and laughing. They looked like they were having fun.”

“Now, what I need to ask you about especially was when Alan went to the restroom. What happened while he was gone?”

Kristin shook her head. “I don’t really know. I was serving a group at the other end of the bar. I do remember he came back and asked me where Hailey’d gone. I told him I didn’t see her leave.”

“Did anyone else?”

Kristin thought for a moment. “I think Mike was working that day. He’s been out for a week…this is his first day back. Hold on.”

She came back with one of the two short order cooks, a squat Hispanic man. “Penelope, this is Mike Ortiz. He remembers Hailey and Alan being here last Friday.”

“This is very important, Mr. Ortiz,” Penelope said, leaning forward. “Do you remember what happened when Alan left for the restroom?”

“Not all of it,” the cook said. “But I remember I saw somebody come in the door...kind of guy who gets your attention, big guy, tattoos on his face. Wearing some kind of costume. He walked all the way down the bar, didn’t say anything, just looked at everyone. Weird.”

“Oh!” Kristin said, “That’s right! I remember him.”

“Forgive me, Mr. Ortiz…or may I call you Mike… But what does this have to do with Hailey?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Ortiz said. “But as soon as she saw this dude, she went white like a sheet. I looked away for a minute to get an order, and when I looked back again, she was gone.”

Penelope called the island on the vidphone as soon as she got back to her suite. “I’m on to something, Jeff,” she said after relaying what she had learned in the Fountain Coffee Room for the benefit of both the elder Tracy and Parker, who was seated across from her in the suite’s sitting room. “I’m sure of it. I had Mr. Ortiz draw what he could remember of the man he saw, and the tattoo gave it away. I’m positive that man was from Basonda.”

“Basonda? The African kingdom that overthrew their government a couple years back, kicked out their royal family and declared themselves a republic?”

“That’s the one.”

“But what’s the connection, Penny?”

“Hailey herself, Jeff. I remember seeing it in the society pages. The new government of Basonda hosted an international fashion show just a few months ago, to raise money for famine relief. It was their way of introducing themselves to the world in a non-threatening way, I think. My friend Francois Lemaire was one of the designers invited, and he asked Hailey to be one of his celebrity models.”

“Was there any kind of scandal while she was there?” Jeff asked. “Something that would make her not want to see this guy when he showed up in LA?”

“I don’t know,” Penelope said. “But I’ll find out.”

“Monsewer Lemaire went to Basonda?” Parker made a snorting sound as Penelope disconnected the line. “I thought ’e said ‘e’d never get h’on another h’airplane after what ‘appened on the Skythrust.”

Penelope laughed. “The lure of fame and fortune, Parker, is much stronger than the fear of flying.”

She dialed Francois’s number in Paris. After blowing kisses to Penelope, and declaring how tragic Hailey’s death had been and how much he had adored her, Francois let slip something interesting. “She was very nervous to be wearing ze diamond, I think, my dear Penelope. I did not see her relax until ze stone was returned to its guards.”

“The diamond?” Penelope asked. “Oh, of course, the Star of Basonda! Part of the crown jewels, wasn’t it? I saw it in the pictures.”

“Yes. She was chosen for the honor of wearing ze diamond in ze fashion show. But I have never seen her more nervous than when she wore it on ze runway.”

“Well,” Penelope mused, “It is a very large diamond…”

“Pfft,” Francois said, flapping a hand dismissively. “She ‘as worn ze best the world ‘as to offer and she was just fine.”

“Well, you would know,” Penelope agreed. “Thank you, dear Francois. Let me know if you hear anything, will you?”

Francois said he would. Penelope disconnected, then looked up to see Parker’s fiercely shrewd gaze. “What is it, Parker?”

“If I were us, Milady, h’I’d be looking to find h’out if h’anyone has made a copy h’of a rather large diamond recently.”

Penelope gave him her widest smile. “Parker, you are brilliant.”

It took Parker several hours to follow the thread of rumor and gossip through his network of criminal friends, but eventually he was able to locate a counterfeiter said he’d heard from another counterfeiter that there were indeed rumors out there that someone just might indeed have been trying to find someone who could make a copy of a famous diamond. They all agreed, too, that they knew of only one man who could have done the job…

While Parker was making his inquiries, Penelope had gone to beard the lion. She discovered that her hunch was right…the man from Basonda, whose name was Tau Mbadinuju, was staying at this very hotel, and seeing Hailey downstairs at the Fountain had been a lucky coincidence. Perhaps not lucky for Hailey, of course, although Penelope had a feeling about that, too…

Penelope let herself into the suite and took a quick look around, more out of habit than anything, since that wasn’t the real purpose of her breaking in. She helped herself to the mini bar and read a complimentary copy of Vogue while she waited for the click of the door release.

The tall figure of the Basondan came in about an hour later. He froze when he saw Penelope sitting coolly in the living room of the suite. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What are you doing in my room?”

Penelope rose smoothly and offered her hand. “Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward, Mr. Mbadinuju. I need to talk to you about a diamond.”

Two hours later, the puzzle was starting to come together.

“Penny,” Jeff told her over the vidphone, “You were right about Hailey owing money. I talked to her mother. Apparently she had a very large gambling habit. Atlantic City, Vegas, Monte Carlo, Singapore, Macau…they all knew her. And while her father was giving her money, she was able to pay off her losses. But then her father died, and her mother decided it was time for her daughter to straighten up and fly right.”

Penny nodded. “So she cut off the money. But Hailey didn’t go home.”

“No,” Jeff said. “She started looking for someone else to take care of her.”

“I managed to get Mr. Mbadinuju to admit that they had discovered the Star of Basonda was a fake a month after the fashion show took place. Thanks to an insurance appraisal, of all things. They only had one thing to go on…Hailey Mitchell. So they sent Mr. Mbadinuju, the former palace head of security, to the place they knew she had returned to, Los Angeles.”

“So how do these things all fit together, Penny?” Alan asked from behind Jeff. “I can’t believe Hailey would have stolen something like the Star of Basonda!”

“I don’t think she did, Alan. Parker was able to track down the man who made the fake diamond that was swapped for the original after she wore it on the runway. And you know how…persuasive Parker can be, when he wants to be…”

“Oh, yes,” Alan laughed.

“He described the man who hired him. A man with tattoos just like Mr. Mbadinuju. When we told our Basondan friend, he immediately recognized the man as being the chief bodyguard of the former Crown Prince of Basonda. Each man’s tattoos are apparently quite distinctive, sort of like a ceremonial fingerprint.”

“So who killed Hailey?” Jeff asked. “Are we any closer to figuring that out?”

“Much closer, Jeff. Mr. Mbadihuju explained the importance of the Star of Basonda…it seems there is a legend that it must never leave Basonda or the country is doomed. Many of their people are still very superstitious…the new government was frankly afraid of what would happen if the news got out that it had been stolen. It seems obvious to Parker and me that our exiled Crown Prince heard over the grapevine that Hailey was in need of money. The Prince knew she was slated to appear at the fashion show in Basonda, and when he heard she’d been chosen to wear the Star of Basonda, he seized his chance to get his hands on it. Normally the stone is locked up behind some pretty amazing security measures; this was the kind of opportunity he wasn’t going to get twice. He approached Hailey, and I imagine offered to pay off her gambling debts if she would do this one thing for him.

“When she agreed, he purchased the copy of the diamond and smuggled it in to his sympathizers in the former Basondan palace guard, who were the security for the event under Mr. Mbadinuju. All Hailey would have had to do was wear the stone the first time down the runway, and then pass it to one of the guards during the performance, in exchange for the fake. She would then have completed the show wearing the fake, and no one would have been any the wiser. The Basondan guard would then have smuggled the Star of Basonda out of the country to his former prince.”

“I’m sure a h’inquiry of the casino h’owners Miss Mitchell owed money to will turn up some more proof, Mr. Tracy,” Parker added. “Just ask them who paid them h’off.”

“Yes,” Penelope laughed. “I’m sure he wouldn’t have trusted a mere woman to do that herself.”

“We still haven’t proved he killed Hailey, though,” Alan said gloomily.

“Perhaps not, Alan, but I have a hunch we will, soon. I have an idea…”

Scandinavian Airlines flight 8741 from Berlin, Germany via Copenhagen, Denmark and Chicago, Illinois, landed at Los Angeles International Airport a full half hour late, blaming weather conditions over the Midwestern United States. Her tall frame draped in a stylish London Fog raincoat, golden hair concealed beneath a chic Turkish scarf, Penelope waited beside a concrete pillar in the baggage area. As the throng of passengers milled around the baggage carousel and heaved their suitcases and rucksacks on to carts, she spotted her quarry.

Berthold Rosenthal was a man who had practiced being invisible most of his life. Like a chameleon, he took on the coloring of whatever and whoever he stood next to. Average height, average build, hair and eyes of a color so nondescript there was no descriptive word for it. Most people never knew he was there in their midst. That fact was as necessary to him as the oxygen he breathed.

“Bertie!” Penelope said brightly, in a voice that rudely shattered his cloak of anonymity and left him standing there exposed to the world. He shrank back, glowering at her.

“Penelope,” he hissed.

“Come and talk to me,” Penelope smiled. “Parker will get your luggage.”

She slipped her arm through his and began to guide him toward the glass doors. “So nice to see you, Bertie,” she said. “Shall I tell you why you’re here?”

“I am a businessman, Penelope,” he snapped. “I conduct business.”

“No, you’re a collector,” Penelope corrected. “And most of what you collect is, shall we say, a tiny little bit illegal…”

“You cannot prove…”

She stopped and swung herself in front of him, eyes dancing. “Does the Star of Basonda ring any bells for you, Bertie?”

The shock on his face was profound. When he tried to bolt for it, back toward the terminal, she blocked him swiftly, reinforced by Parker’s appearance on his other side. “H’I wouldn’t try that h’if I were you, sir.”

Rosenthal stared from one to the other, suddenly drained. “What do you want from me?” he whispered.

“The man who is trying to sell you that diamond has already murdered once,” Penelope said, her face darkening. “And from the looks of it, your advance payments helped make that happen. So because of that, and because this whole mess has put a dear friend of mine into a very bad place through no fault of his own, you’re going to do one very important thing for me to put things right.”

Rosenthal swallowed. “And if I refuse?”

There was absolutely no humor in her smile. “You won’t refuse, Bertie. I can promise you that.”

“But Penelope,” Tin-Tin said later back on Tracy Island – after it was all over and the former Crown Prince of Basonda had been taken into custody and charged with the premeditated murder of Hailey Mitchell – “However did you know that the Prince was trying to sell the diamond?”

“Mr. Mbadinuju told me, although he didn’t know it at the time. When I asked what had happened to the royal family, he said they were expelled in the middle of the night and allowed to take nothing with them. The family’s accountants had been secretly working with the revolutionaries for some time before the takeover, recovering all the money that had been stolen from the people of Basonda and hidden in overseas accounts.”

Alan’s eyes opened wide as he realized. “They were broke!”

“Exactly,” Penelope nodded. “And even fake diamonds cost a great deal of money. So when Mr. Mbadinuju told me that, I began to wonder, where would the Crown Prince get the money to pay for that copy?”

“A collector,” Jeff said. “Of course.”

“Yes. And Bertie Rosenthal is one of the richest, as well as one of the slimiest. He is obsessed with owning things nobody else can, and unlike most people he has no need to ever let anyone know that he has them. If he’d got his hands on the Star of Basonda, no one would ever have seen it again.”

“But however did you get him to help you, Penelope?” Tin-Tin asked.

“Everyone fears something. With Bertie it’s the spotlight. He’s spent his life in the shadows, like a cockroach. Just the threat of public exposure was enough to get him to agree to let me fit his glasses with a spycam. I have to hand it to him, he trapped the Prince into confessing like a real pro. I almost think he could have had a career in espionage.”

“So Rosenthal gets away?” Jeff said.

“Yes, but we got what we wanted, didn’t we? The Prince is behind bars, Alan is cleared, and life can go back to normal.”

At that precise moment, the eyes on Gordon’s portrait began to blink. Standing up to cross to the desk, Jeff caught Penelope’s eyes and laughed. “That’s right, Penny. Normal for us, at least!”