Kone repeated the procedure with several more diamonds. The Arabs again nodded in approval; they were getting exactly what they expected.

The diamonds were, indeed, wonderful; it was hard to find something of such quality at the price offered by the Russians, and in such quantity.

Finally, the gemologist, having examined yet another stone, looked at the sheikh, but he just made a barely noticeable hand gesture for Kone to continue working. The gemologist nodded, carefully packed the diamond into the bag and placed it back in the box together with the certificate. He then took another diamond from the table and continued to examine it closer through the special loupe.

Robert carefully watched the gemologist.

Thirty minutes passed, but Kone had yet to examine half the stones. He was very thoroughly checking their conformity with the certificates and even more thoroughly packing them into the bags and back in the metal box.

Despite the official nature of the meeting, there was no tension in the room. The Czechs were talking quietly with the sheikh about something through an Arab interpreter.

Robert approached the gemologist and asked quietly in French, “Mr. Kone, do you live in Conakry?”

“No, Mr. Blanche,” Kone answered without pausing his work. “When my great friend Mr. Lansana Conte passed, I had to leave. I moved to South Africa in early 2009. That’s where I live now. That’s where my family lives.”

Kone spoke calmly, peering intently at another piece of treated carbon.

The next moment, a bank officer entered the room and addressed Robert.

“Mr. Blanche. There is a phone call for you.”

Robert picked up the phone and heard the agitated voice of Jovan, his friend and head of the firm’s security.

“Robbie, we’ve got a problem. I just received news from the hospital. Zimme did not suffer a heart attack. They discovered some powerful toxin in his blood.” Jovan fell silent, then whispered, “Poison.”

Robert said nothing. He was stunned.

Jovan quietly continued: “I don’t know where to start digging, but we need to figure out what the deal here is and who benefits. I believe somebody wanted to sideline the gemologist.”

“Did you tell the boss?”

“Roland? Of course, I did. He's already dropped everything and is coming to the office. But I wanted to tell you personally.”

Robert realized he had to do something and do it now. Before the main contract was signed and the transactions begun. He smelled fraud. The reputation of the firm was at stake.

When Robert returned to the conference room, all appeared normal.

Who would benefit if the deal falls through, he thought, looking around at each man in turn. The Arabs? No. They transferred the money to the bank, the account has been checked, so everything is good there. They rejected the idea of cash right away. Everything is clean there. The Russians? The diamonds are here. Everything was thoroughly checked in advance, and double-checked for compliance of the stones with the certificates. Mr. Zimme praised the quality of the diamonds yesterday at the restaurant. He said that every stone was worth at least fifty percent more than what the Russians were asking. This gemologist, Kone, is also a reliable expert. It was the Arabs who found and vetted him. Seems like everything is clean here too.

Robert, however, knew that if Mr. Zimme had been poisoned, then his illness and replacement with another gemologist were links in a single chain. It all looked very suspicious. The 5 % penalty clause for breaking the deadline was a demand of the Russians, the seller.

Robert looked around the room again. Everybody was talking quietly and waiting for the gemologist to finish. He looked intently at the gemologist and was suddenly struck by a strange idea. He had to test it, but not raise suspicion.

He approached Kone and asked in Bambara[18]: “E be moun fo, a kani?[19]” Robert decided to ask a question in the language Trevor from his dreams was fluent in. He had never used this language, but if Kone was who he said he was, then he must understand him. Almost everybody in Conakry speaks Bambara, as well as French.

However, Kone did not reply. He held a big round diamond in his hands and acted as if he hadn’t heard Robert.

“A be dioli soro sissan?[20]” Robert asked and drew closer to Kone.

The gemologist remained silent, looking intently at the diamond through his loupe, as if nothing had happened.

The Arabs noticed the gemologist’s unresponsiveness and fell silent. The Czechs, it seemed, grew nervous and one of them picked up his phone and quickly exited the room.

A bank officer entered and asked Robert what had happened.

Robert stared at Kone, still waiting for answers to his questions, but Kone remained silent. He was still examining the same diamond. Rather, he was not so much examining is as simply staring at it. And he seemed to have stopped breathing.

One of the Czech men broke the silence. With a common Czech accent he said hesitantly: “Everything is fine. Some just can’t take it they see those diamonds. Big money, big anxiety."

Mehmet approached Robert and asked what happened.

Robert looked at the sheikh, then at Mehmet, and answered in Arabic: “No, not alright, gentlemen. This man is not who he says he is. He is not Guinean. And most likely his name is not Kone. I was just informed that our gemologist, Mr. Zimme, was poisoned."

The sheikh nodded and one of his bodyguards approached the Czech and the other – the gemologist. The bank officer called the bank’s security.

Dumbfounded and sweating profusely, Kone looked around and with trembling hands lowered the stone into the metal box, as though defeated.

The scam was simple, but daring and craftily elegant.

Mr. Zimme, whom the Arabs trusted fully, had performed the first examination of the diamonds. Then he was sidelined. Poison was the simplest way to go and, seeing as Zimme was polite and friendly, did not require additional preparation. While he was distracted by conversation, someone slipped a small dose of poison into the gemologist’s food.

If the Arabs were to go back on the deal in the absence of the gemologist, they would have been forced to pay the fifty-million-dollar penalty. Nobody wants to lose this kind of money on an almost closed deal. Naturally, the buyer would approach top gemologists in Antwerp or Israel in search of an experienced professional. On their side, upon getting the information about the gemologist chosen by the buyer, the scammers took steps to ensure that he was unavailable by offering him a better job which he could not refuse.

Then using an employee of the Israel exchange, who suspected nothing, the scammers offered Mr. Kone, who was known and respected there. To replace Kone with their own person, a gemologist, was just a technicality. Nobody really cared where the real Mr. Kone was at the moment, as a beneficial contract worth over a billion dollars or a huge penalty for disruption of the deal was at stake.

When the switch was made, the new “Kone” was presented to the parties as a person of the buyer, i.e. the Arabs. The only thing he needed to do was to confirm that all the stones complied with the gemological certificates and that Mr. Zimme did all the work regarding their examination.

After “Mr. Kone” confirmed to the buyer that everything was good, the box with fake stones would be passed to the buyer and the buyer would transfer all the money to the seller’s offshore account. To make it more convincing, several of the stones were authentic and “Kone” showed them to the sheikh, as the latter could easily tell a fake just by looking at it. The rest of the stones were excellent fakes from wonderfully cut cubic zirconia.