“Uncle Bo, call my mobile if you need anything.”
Mike sat at a terminal and started typing, pulling the two sets of data together. When the program began to run, a series of mug shots began streaming across the monitor, faster than the eye could keep up with. Nicholas noted that the facial-recognition technology used bone structure as points of reference. It would be accurate to the letter, should a match occur.
Mike said to Victoria, “While this gets started, tell me more about how Peter Grisley got permission to make the replicas. Could he have something to do with this?”
“I seriously doubt it. He was allowed to utilize the molds from the Queen Victoria cut done in Antwerp in 1852 to digitally map the Koh-i-Noor. He petitioned the palace to be allowed to make the replicas for a research project he was working on. Since they were fakes, no one was worried about them. We were wrong.”
Mike looked up from the keyboard. “What do you mean, the Queen Victoria cut?”
Victoria’s eyes lit up. “Oh, you don’t know the history of the stone? The Koh-i-Noor’s story is quite incredible. When it came into Queen Victoria’s possession in 1850, it was one hundred eighty-three carats, huge, but alas, hardly beautiful. It was dull and badly cut. Diamonds are meant to sparkle, and this one didn’t. At an exposition held to showcase it, it looked even less impressive because it was poorly displayed in a gilded cage on dark velvet. The public complained so much Prince Albert, the Queen’s consort, hired a lapidary named Coster from Antwerp to recut the stone from a rose cut to a brilliant, which would make it shine and glow and impress the British people with its beauty.
“When Coster was finished cutting and polishing the stone, it was down to a mere hundred and five carats; on the other hand, it was much prettier. Albert then had it made into a brooch for Queen Victoria. Over the years, it’s been the focal point of three crowns, Queen Alexandra’s, Queen Mary’s, and Queen Elizabeth’s.”
A mere hundred and five carats. Mike thought of her mother’s precious diamond solitaire, only a carat. Talk about a new perspective.
“Coster came under fire, actually, because the stone was so much smaller, though all the experts rushed to his defense, claimed he did the best with what he had. Nowadays, they might have been able to save more of the original stone, with the laser cuts and all, but back then, it was line things up as best you can, take a crack at it with a hammer, and pray.”
Nicholas pictured a man in a leather apron sitting before the stone with a hammer and chisel in his hands, saying, “Please, God, please, God, please, God.” And whack. He knew it was slightly more complicated than that, but for the most part, luck, or the lack thereof, had played a large role.
Mike leaned back in the office chair, making it squeak. “I thought the name of the diamond was the Koh-i-Noor. Why is the exhibit called the Jewel of the Lion?”
Victoria was now lit up like a Christmas tree. “The Koh-i-Noor translates to Mountain of Light, but I didn’t think that flashy enough to draw the American crowds, but I did want to capture the history of the stone a bit, so I looked to the source—India. When England annexed Punjab in 1849, the youngest son of the Lion of Punjab himself, fourteen-year-old Maharaja Duleep Singh, was forced to hand over his family’s most priceless possession, the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Hence, Jewel of the Lion. Do you like it?”
Mike said, “Very much. It’s very dramatic. And no wonder the Indian people feel it was stolen from them. It was.”