The esmeralderos were gangs who made a no-man’s-land out of the mountains. They were well armed, well enough to fight running battles with even the government police or make a direct raid on an emerald convoy.
Word was that the gangs were becoming rich. Many mine guards deserted to the other side to get their share. The gangs grew stronger, the mine forces weakened. When they weren’t fighting government police, the esmeralderos went at one another. In 1970 the violence reached its peak. An estimated nine hundred persons in one way or another connected with emeralds were killed that year. A true figure would have been closer to two thousand.
The mines had been producing about a million carats of gem-quality stones each year. Worth about $250 million on the wholesale market.
By 1971, after two years of strife, the legal yield of the mines had dropped to ten thousand carats, grossing only $3 million.
And it was costing the government $12 million a year to operate and protect the mines.
The Colombian Senate was outraged.
Senator Robayo of Boyacá was most vehement. The Minister of Mines was responsible, he said.
The Minister of Defense, Rufino Vega, obliged and sent the entire Third Infantry Division to the mine areas. In command was Colonel Fabio Vicente, one of the army’s best, a forceful, straightforward man, honest to the marrow.
After only two weeks it appeared that Colonel Vicente would clear up the emerald situation. He had the esmeralderos on the run, it was said. They were scattering, hiding, being captured. On the front page of the newspaper El Espectador a photograph showed eight blindfolded esmeralderos a moment prior to death before an army firing squad. Colonel Vicente deserved a promotion, at least a special commendation, it was said.
At the end of the third week, on a Friday morning, a cardboard carton was found on the steps of the Ministry of Defense.
It contained Colonel Vicente’s head and feet.
Minister of Defense Vega was furious. He wanted to send additional troops and another highly respected colonel into the mountains.
The situation in the mining areas quickly grew worse than ever, with more incidents than before and fewer legal emeralds coming out. Official figures for the past six months were incredible. Gross profit: $6,225.
Not even a handful of emeralds.
Street dealers on Calle 14 were handling more than that every week.
Senator Robayo came up with an answer. Lease the mines to a private concern, he proposed. Let someone else, a foreigner perhaps, have the worries.
How long a lease?
Ten years.
What would the government make out of it?
Ten million dollars a year, plus twenty percent royalty on all gems sold.
A far cry from the $250 million return it had been making from emeralds only two years ago.
Better than a deficit, Senator Robayo said. At the minimum, $10 million a year. The concessionaire, whoever that might be, would have to guarantee it.
The Minister of Mines, Javier Arias, opposed the Senator’s plan. He considered it a personal criticism of his official abilities. He issued a statement to that effect. The newspapers made much of it, and the public was temporarily entertained by the political combat. In that manner the emerald question was removed from the wider arena of the Senate. Yes or no narrowed down to who came out on top, Senator Robayo or Minister Arias.
Did the Senator propose to lease all the mines?
Yes.
To the same concessionaire?
In one deal, yes.
Why not lease the mines individually?
If someone was willing to take the huge financial risk, better to make an overall deal while possible.
Ten million was needed to modernize the Campín football stadium, the Senator reminded. Everyone loved football. Even more people went to watch football than bullfights.
Minister Arias capitulated. He would supervise the leasing of the mines, bidding and negotiations.
Shortly thereafter it was announced that the lease had been awarded to a group of private investors, foreigners incorporated under the name La Concesión de Gemas.
Twelve million dollars a year for twenty years and twenty-two percent royalty were the final terms.
Minister Arias was praised for making a better deal than expected.
The Concession took over.
In 1968 the foremost diamond dealer in Italy was Meno Argenti.
He was one of those few men privileged to travel to London ten times a year for the purpose of purchasing a packet of diamonds at 11 Harrowhouse.
Argenti did business according to the codes set up by the Consolidated Selling System, the organization that held such tight and hardfisted control over the world of diamonds. According to The System’s ledger of deportment, Argenti was consistently cooperative. He kept his appointments at Harrowhouse on time; he always accepted his packet, large or small, without comment; he was polite, well-mannered, of proper appearance; and in all his financial transactions with The System, he never came up even a lira short.
For those reasons The System gradually increased Argenti’s packet to the half-million-dollar level. Still nowhere near the top worldwide. The System’s important favorites, Barry Whitman of New York, for example, were allowed to purchase packets valued at six, seven million. Nevertheless, half a million a packet brought Argenti five million a year—profit.
Hardly a bad living. Especially since he had the usual upper-class Italian indifference toward income taxes.
About that time, Argenti was presented with a proposition that would net him four times what he’d been making in a year. Twenty million, maybe more. All he had to do was side-deal thirty thousand carats of first-quality rough. The diamonds were half of a shipment stolen from Her Majesty’s mails two years earlier. The parcel of diamonds, registered, wax-sealed, securely bound and insured, had been posted by The System’s branch in Johannesburg. Routine procedure. Normally the mails were safer, more reliable than personal courier. The parcel arrived and was signed for at The System’s London headquarters at 11 Harrowhouse. Outwardly it appeared that it hadn’t been tampered with; all the wax seals were intact.
Its contents, however, were ordinary gravel.
Somewhere along the way someone had switched parcels, substituting an exact duplicate. A clever someone, resourceful, a stickler for detail. The System’s private seal had been convincingly counterfeited, and the postal cancellation seemed authentic—date, ink color and all.
The System had a squabble with the insurance company, with the postal service in the middle. Exactly how many diamonds had been sent? Had they ever actually been sent? Perhaps they had been delivered … and The System was, to put it politely, “mistaken.” The postal service claimed it had performed its job, had made delivery. According to signed receipt, The System had accepted the parcel and contents.
The insurance claim was settled for ten million. The System ceased complaining about its thirty-million loss and proceeded to try to learn the whereabouts of those sixty thousand carats. No need to involve the police. Publicity of any sort was to be avoided. The System put its own security section to work. Its network of informants and enforcers was alerted. Such was the control of The System, so sensitive was its feel of the entire world diamond market, that any attempt to sell those sixty thousand carats would surely be noticed.
Two years passed.
It was assumed by then that the diamonds had changed hands and The System had given up, chalked it up as a piece of dirty business best forgotten.
Otherwise Argenti, knowing the extreme penalty The System imposed for such duplicity, would never have considered getting involved. He figured he could safely side-deal the diamonds a little at a time along with his regular sales, by a discreet amount added to each of his legal packets. No one would be the wiser. He had a number of clients, never sold all his packet at once.
He made the buy. The hand-over took place in a pharmacy on Rue d’Antibes in Cannes. He asked th
e pharmacist to recommend something for his allergy. He placed his ordinary paper shopping bag down, purchased some green-and-yellow antihistamine capsules, then picked up his shopping bag. It was, of course, an identical but different bag. He never actually saw the other person, had sensed a presence but followed the instructions not to look.
It had gone smoothly.
At home in Milan, he examined the diamonds. They were indeed fine-quality goods, averaging three to five carats, just the size the market was demanding. No exceptionally large stones which might be noticed or which he’d have to have cleaved.
He placed the diamonds in a safe-deposit box in the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura on the Piazza Fontana.
The next six packets he got from The System he increased with the stolen goods by as much as he thought he could get away with.
Being not so honest was marvelously profitable. He celebrated by buying a chalet in Cortina d’Ampezzo, a large place he had noticed and wanted.
He went to 11 Harrowhouse for his next packet, the seventh since his side-dealing had begun.
He returned to Milan and went to the bank for some additional diamonds. He had come out of the bank and was on his way to his car when a man dressed in black began walking alongside him, on his right. Then another, an ominous twin, appeared on his left. He thought at first they were local thugs, that it was a holdup. That was how complacent he had become. Not until he was at home, seated at eye level with the little black hole of death that was the muzzle of a revolver, did Argenti allow himself to realize he had been caught. By The System.
He never knew how they’d found out. Didn’t matter.
The penalty would be his disappearance. Or he’d be found in his car or someplace, having evidently been killed by a robber. Errant diamond dealers were usually dealt with in that manner. No one ever suspected any other motive.
One of the men was talking long-distance with London.
Could Argenti speak to The System? Plead his case?
The question was relayed.
The answer was no.
Would The System grant just one request?
What was the request?
Please get in touch with Count Alessio de Paula and explain.
A very long shot. De Paula was Argenti’s second cousin, married to the niece of a member of the board of directors of The System. Argenti hadn’t seen or talked to De Paula in five years; the last time was at a chance meeting in Paris at Longchamps racetrack. In all their lives, altogether they hadn’t spent more than thirty minutes with each other. But blood was blood, Argenti hoped.
Two hours of looking into the little black hole of death.
The System called back.
Fortunately, De Paula had not been out bird shooting or off somewhere with a girl or two from Madame Claude’s.
The System passed sentence:
Instead of death Argenti was banned from dealing in diamonds. For the rest of his days he was not to lay hands on a diamond, not even to wear one on his pinkie.
He was to leave Milan on the next plane bound for anywhere except Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, the United States or Canada. He was never to set foot in any of those places. That left him South America, Central America, Mexico and the polar regions.
He was not to take anything with him except whatever clothes and money he had on him at that moment.
If he violated these terms at any future time, the original penalty would be imposed.
They were so sure of themselves they didn’t bother to see Argenti to the airport.
He took an Alitalia flight to Rio de Janeiro.
It was like a vacation, he told himself. A nice change. He strolled along the Avenida Copacabana, kept a high-up month-by-month apartment overlooking the famous curve of beach.
Money wasn’t a problem.
The Banco do Londres arranged a transfer of his funds from his bank in Geneva. Over the years he had taken plenty over the Alps. Five million a year for the past ten years. Even after what those thirty thousand stolen carats had cost him, he was left with around twenty-five million. He could do nothing, tastefully, for the rest of his life.
But he was soon restless. Sick of seeing that giant Christ every time he turned around, it seemed. Even bored with all the careless, cooperative girls to be had already practically naked along the beach at Ipanema. And horse racing at the Jockey Club was impossible to handicap when there were as many as six fixed horses in the same race.
He had the impulse to take a short trip to New York but, remembering how thorough and pervasive The System was, thought better of it. Loathed being restricted. Compromised and took a trip throughout his allowed territory. Just from here to there. Buenos Aires to Lima to Caracas to Santiago to Mexico City to Bogotá.
He thought Bogotá, with its equally dull weather and people, was the worst. Till one Tuesday at midafternoon, only a few hours before he was scheduled to leave, when he happened to be walking along Calle 14.
Prosperous as he appeared, he was set upon with intent to sell by numerous street dealers who flashed uncut emeralds at him as though they were precious secrets.
Then it struck Argenti. The System was inflexible. It would expect no more than the penalty it had imposed and would stick to its side of the bargain no matter what.
Diamonds were one thing …
Emeralds another.…
He remained in Bogotá. For six months he kept a low profile, lived modestly, avoided the international set and its social scramblers. He took numerous trips into the back country, up around the mine regions of Muzo and Chivor. Rugged, two-mile-high tropics. He reached remote settlements that were almost inaccessible, where life was cheapest and machismo rampant. At first the people thought he was a missionary or a revolutionary. He was robbed twice and came close to being killed. So he hired several personal protectors, including one Luis Hurtado, who was half Indian, half something else, a man huge and mean enough even for Argenti to hide behind.
Argenti became familiar with that part of the country, paid his way into it. He got to key men, made them dependent on his generosity. He noticed that on the perimeter of each of the government-operated mines there was constant grubbing, men hoping to find a scrap of wealth in the tailings. Canaloñeros they were called. They created a desperate energy, like a belt of explosives waiting to be set off.
He learned as much as he could about la materia verde—the green stuff.
Six-sided crystals concocted in the earth’s melting pot. Beryllium aluminum silicate with a trace of iron and a trace of chromium, which made it green. Minus the chromium it is common, comparatively worthless, merely an aquamarine.
Nearly all emeralds have internal imperfections that the trade calls jardin, “garden.” It is possible to tell whether a stone is from Muzo or Chivor. Muzo stones contain dark flicks of organic matter. Those from Chivor have specks of pyrite crystals in them. Very rarely does one find a flawless stone. Then, however, it is five times more valuable than a diamond of equal size. Even a normal fine emerald, flaws and all, is worth as much or more than a diamond of the same classification. Truth be known, emeralds are scarcer.
They are mined by hand, which, given how unpredictably nature distributed them, is still the best way. Mined on horizontal terraces like giant steps up the faces of slopes, they are found in pockets and veiny clusters, in deposits of shale and sandstone and in matrices of that pale, relatively soft substance called pegmatite.
Most important, for Argenti’s purpose, found within a hundred-mile radius—ninety-five percent of all the emeralds in the world.
Unlike diamonds.
The System had to cope with much less predictable circumstances to keep its market under control. Because diamonds kept turning up in substantial quantities not only throughout western and southern Africa but also in India, Brazil, Russia and even in places on the ocean floor.
Argenti, continuing his strategy, spent the next few months helping himself to the upper atmosphere of Bogotá society. H
e bought a large villa in the fashionable Chico district. Joined the country club, called The Country Club, and took up polo. It was through polo that he became acquainted with General Jorge Botero. Argenti got on the General’s good side by allowing the General to sell him three polo ponies for a top price, although the animals were overused, well past their prime. General Botero was Chief of Staff, the top military man in all Colombia.
He was also an entrée to Rufino Vega, the Minister of Defense.
For a start Argenti treated Minister Vega to a week in the Caribbean resorts of Cartagena and Santa Marta. The Minister especially preferred girls with red hair. Any shade of red as long as it was natural. Argenti made a confidential arrangement with a local hair salon. The girls received double fee for the extra trouble. One girl, a very attractive Venezuelan, refused to shave her underarms, claiming that would displease her French lover. So, not just two but all four batches of her hair had to be dyed.
Then, there was Senator Robayo of Boyacá. His habit was gambling. Argenti met him, and not by accident, at the Hipódromo del Techo. Casually, in the course of their conversation, they disagreed on which horse would win the next race. When the race was run, the horse Argenti picked came in first; and being a good sport, he had also bought Senator Robayo a twenty-five-hundred peso (hundred dollar) pari-mutuel ticket. Typical gambler, the Senator was most pleased to have the winner under any circumstances. What he would never know was Argenti had placed equal bets on every horse in that race.
Thereafter, Senator Robayo often accompanied Argenti to the Hipódromo and to bicycle races in the Velódromo. Thanks to Argenti’s infallible betting system, the Senator never went home a loser.
Minister of Mines Javier Arias was not so easy to get close to. Arias didn’t gamble or lech; he was a stern family man. Extremely conscientious in keeping his public image above reproach. For example, he went to mass at the Dívino Salvador every morning.
Argenti believed Arias was overdoing it, trying so hard to appear impeccable only to cover up something dirty.
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