This piece appeared in Daytime TV's Greatest Stories No. 2, Everything You Want to Know About...General Hospital in 1981.

EVERYBODY WANTS A PIECE OF THE ROCK
Oh, What a Wicked Web We Weave When It's the Ice Princess We Need to Retrieve

It resembles nothing so much as a hunk of coal on popsicle stick, yet this unremarkable objet d'art has had more intrigue and tragedy associated with it than the infamous Hope diamond. Everybody wants it, some will pay any price for it, others are willing to kill to get their hands on it. What makes it so precious? Well, under that coat of black paint is the Ice Princess, the world's largest diamond, with the formula for making more just like it hidden in its base. Whomever possessed it would also possess untold wealth and power.

Alexandria Quartermaine had it in the palm of her hand--once. And, oh, what a clever girl she thought she was when she painted it black and turned it into a nondescript statue. It looked like a piece of junk, but unfortunately common dockside thieves don't know junk from priceless art and they thought they got a little of both when they hijacked Alex's shipment of arty exotica from the Port Charles wharf.

Alex knew she had a hot little item in the Ice Princess. In fact she'd sunk the entire Quartermaine fortune into the red to get the rock. Now, if she could only find it again. She wasn't the only one who wanted it either; every alert treasure-hunting scavenger 'round the world knew about the Princess and they beat a quick path to Alex's door. Suddenly Port Charles was overrun with slightly sneaky characters speaking in suspicious foreign tongues.

Enter Luke Spencer, fresh from his successful campaign to stop organized crime in Port Charles. Alex and her uncle Edward decided he was just the man to help them recover their lost treasure. "He always lands on his feet," they concurred. They wanted Luke's help (and they got Laura Baldwin's aid too, by default) but they didn't want to tell him all the details of the case. Instead, Luke had to find out the hard way when he was clunked on the head by Robert Scorpio, an adventurer-from-down-under.

Scorpio tried to get Luke on his side by filling him in on Alex's notorious reputation. She's a dangerous woman, Scorpio said, and a thief, too. The Ice Princess, Luke learned, was the stolen property of an even more dangerous character, Anthony Cassadine. Aside from being one of the wealthiest men in the world--kind of a floating international mystery man--Mr. Cassadine had a little list, Scorpio said, and it seemed that if your name appeared on the list you're due for an untimely end. Cassadine's hit list already had two scratch marks on it: two of James Duvall's assistants were dead. Duvall, the inventor of the diamond formula, was next, and since he was right there in Port Charles--cuddling with Alex on the QT--danger was closing in.

Now, everyone seemed to know who everybody else was and keeping a close watch on their competition in crime. There was only one problem: nobody knew who had the Ice Princess. They had a pretty good idea it had fallen into the hands of someone who didn't know its value. They were certainly right on that count. The rock was in the possession of the social climbing Emma Lutz, the wife of Charlie Lutz, a cabby who moonlighted as a heist man on the docks. Luke, with Scorpio and Cassadine hot on his tail, charmed his way into Emma's life by promising to introduce her to the "right people." But Emma couldn't wait for Luke to introduce her to proper society. She decided to make her own introductions by donating the Ice Princess (or, as she called it, "Her modern sculpture") to Lila Quartermaine's charity art auction. When a picture of the statue appeared in the newspaper the next day, it was like the Keystone Cops were let loose in town. Everybody could see it, they just couldn't lay hands on it, because it was stored under lock and key at Pont Charles police headquarters.

So near, yet so far away. Everyday Luke believes he's getting closer to the dream he's had for so long--to get rich quick and find a way to make Laura Baldwin his wife. But the chances that there will be a solution to these ice-capades in the near future are slim, indeed. And Luke and Laura may find themselves chasing their elusive dream for months and months to come.

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