The Fake Discovery

By Zulfi Qar

Indian diamond expert… African science genius… American data whiz… Fierce Arab lawyer… A multi-layered mystery twists into an unusual, super fast intrigue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Zedign House
• Release date: Apr 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386911661

Book preview

Table of Contents

Part 1

1

2

3

4

5

6

Part 2

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Part 3

1

2

3

4

5

6

The Fake Discovery

Zulfi Qar

*

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.

Copyright © 2017. All rights reserved. Including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author.

Cover designed by The Zedign House. Cover photo by Thorn Yang Stock Snap.

Book designed, composed and produced by The Zedign House.

www.zedign.com

Version 07022018

Part 1

1

The diamond was fake, no question about it.

It sounded unnatural the moment Rajab dropped it into his tin tray. It shone weird the second he pointed his lamp on it. It rubbed strange as soon as he rolled it between his fingers. And it just felt wrong before he even took it between his teeth and gave it the famous Rajabali Ferozbhoy ‘bite test’.

Rajab repeated the tests. Then performed some more. And examined again.

He then removed his glasses, pushed away the spotlight above his workbench, walked over to his small desk in the corner, and leaned back on his chair.

Bad piece…, mumbled Rajab in Gujarati, the native tongue of Surat — the world’s diamond capital in the State of Gujarat, India.

He sat there for a while, rocking thoughtfully, listening to the endless stream of automobile horns, loud engines, screaming vendors and machine sounds from the main shop above. He opened a desk drawer, took out a thick register, flicked through several pages and confirmed certain data.

Rajab then got up and went back to the workbench. He pulled the lamp and picked up the stone.

Saifu, the polishing master sitting at his station a few feet apart, saw his guru-sethji staring at that diamond longer than usual and with an expression he had never seen.

Hanif, the final cutter, noticed his employer wearing a magnifying eyepiece for the first time in years.

Vinod, the detailing filer, stopped and put down his tool to hear the maestro make a call to someone he’d only heard about from other guys in the workshop. He exchanged a look with Hanif and Saifu. Both had paused what they were doing as well. Then everyone watched Rajab speak into the phone.

"Dinesh Patel coming for a piece-look, sethji?", asked Saifu, to which Rajab looked up and gave a short nod and went back to the phone.

Their boss, the man most industry experts referred to as an authority, had invited Dinesh Patel of Patel & Patel Merchants for a second opinion — apparently over a diamond that should not have warranted such a visit at all, fake or otherwise.

And the specialist craftsmen of that monotonous basement of Ferozbhoy & Son Fine Jewellers in the diamond capital of the world knew their day was about to get a lot more exciting.

* * *

Seven thousand kilometres west of Surat, a grey BMW SUV entered a narrow side street of the Diamant Kwartier, the ‘Diamond Square Mile’ district in the town of Antwerp, Belgium (aka The City of Diamonds.) It whispered to a swift stop outside the Lieber voor Diamanthandel precious stones trading establishment.

A strikingly handsome black man in a dark blue designer suit and thick rimmed glasses stepped out of the back seat. He held his hand out for an equally gorgeous, long haired & olive-oil skinned Middle-Eastern woman in an exquisite short summer dress. The couple walked into the place’s elegant entrance through its sliding fence.

The instant they disappeared inside, the front doors of the vehicle swung opened. A pair of athletically-built Latino girl and a blonde Nordic guy in identical white tees & jeans climbed out, sprang over to the back of the van and lifted its rear hatch. They pulled out four small but seemingly heavy cotton sacks, deposited them one-by-one into a vent next to the building’s gate, and returned to the car.

The entire operation, from the opening of the back-hatch to dispatching the last bag, took 3.8 seconds.

2

Ibemaka Tommy Huambo returned home from a gruelling day’s labour to find his mother flat on the ground with her heels rubbing against the rough clay floor. She was twitching in pain, one hand still trying to reach for a spilled can of water.

From the looks of it, she had collapsed while preparing food in the corner that was the kitchen in their tiny hut of a house. The pot was still simmering over a rusted propane stove.

Tommy’s seven year old mind, at first, didn’t fully comprehend the scene. He instinctively rushed and turned her over to find a frothing mouth. He shook her hard, calling Wake up, mama… Wake up, what’s wrong?

When she didn’t respond, Tommy panicked and fled outside screaming. Then he kept running.

He was heading towards a settlement located six kilometres away. His aunt Ipara — the only relative he knew — lived there with his four cousins. Tommy and his mother lived in their isolated hut which was once part of a bustling hamlet. Their village had long since disappeared. It was made to relocate much farther, towards where Tommy now ran. Tommy and his mother were shunned to stay out. She had refused to work for a big diamond prospecting landlord who had forced the entire population of a once thriving farming community to move away from their ancestral land. The devastation which soon followed the miners, eventually drove the entire colony into becoming bonded labourers spending their days shovelling and sieving dirt for pittance.

Tommy sprinted on, avoiding pits filled with stagnant rainwater infested with every imaginable filth and deadly insects.

He hurried along a parched landscape. He raced through shallow remnants of a dry river that once flowed with life and water and fish and all the rich goodness it had carried since time immemorial. The river was rerouted some years ago, via a crudely built dam, for one purpose alone: To expose its mineral rich bed underneath.

He was rushing through a depleted, but once lush landscape dotted with farmland. Those fertile soils had long since eroded because the rivers and their bountiful banks had vanished and withered away.

He ran hungry and thirsty over dead trees and bushes which once formed part of a forest bustling with wildlife and vegetation and fruit. The dense woodlands had now been deforested and razed to dig countless pits and holes for one purpose alone.

Little Tommy, in a sense, was like a teardrop running across a desolate panorama that eerily resembled the surface of a barren alien planet. The tragedy back in his ramshackle hut could very well have been reflected through the ruin which now surrounded him: A once-beautiful, loving motherland ravaged in disease and misery. It was raped and plundered by nothing other than the pursuit of a few men and women’s greed & vanity.

The sun was almost setting when Tommy finally reached the edge of his aunt’s village. His frail body was so exhausted from the long trek, he could hardly breathe. His face was shimmering bright from the tears and sweat of his long trip.

"Aunt Ipara! Hear me! Something is wrong with mama!" Tommy shouted at the top of his lungs, but just a whimper came out. He began coughing wildly and threw up. He tried to steady himself upright but his vision had gone blurry. A dizziness came over him that made him drop to the ground.

Now breathing heavily and disoriented, Tommy tried yelling again. He then began crawling down the slope of a hill that led to the shanty slum.

His mouth had dried up, with his tongue wagging out in thirst.

"Water… mama wrong… aunt, water…"

And as he grovelled, groaned and wriggled on — inch by inch — pleading desperately for water, calling out for his aunt, crying for his mother… the already terrible world of little Ibemaka Tommy Huambo slowly went dark against the setting sun over a land long forsaken.

* * *

The battered old Toyota Hiace mini truck almost broke down twice before it arrived outside the warehouse gate.

It had once puttered and gasped after leaving the dockyard, then had come dangerously close to a meltdown on its way to Birth 3 Storage Wharf. But luckily for the driver and two passengers sitting next to him, their old Japanese faithful had ultimately managed to reach their destination without further jeopardy.

The man behind the wheel gave its wavering flat horn a distinctly weak honk. A few seconds later the rusty old iron gate of the building started to open with a loud protesting sound of its metal grinding against the seldom-greased rails. It must have taken a gruelling effort by whoever was in charge of that duty.

It had been raining since midnight. The early morning misty panoramic view over Queen Elizabeth II Deep Water Quay was still not doing an artist any justice in capturing the largest natural harbour on the African continent.

The city of Freetown in Sierra Leone was waking up to another damp day.

Inside the dimly lit, hot and humid, barn-like place, the youthful driver — donned in light work overalls — climbed out. He clapped his hands once and yelled a hailing cry in his native local Krio language.

His two fellow riders were already out of the vehicle. An exceptionally handsome black man with a dark rimmed pair of glasses was accompanied by an athletically built blue-eyed blonde Nordic male. Both were dressed in well-worn, rugged shirts and jeans.

As a result of the man’s wailing call, a multicultural rainbow of glowing-faced young men and women — black, coloured, and white — had started to emerge out of the shadows. They slowly gathered around the two new arrivals. In contrast to the men who just came, the younger ones were all in clean smart-casual urban attire. This crowd was obviously not from around the dockworks of Freetown Harbour.

There were a few welcoming hugs and enthusiastic handshakes with the newly arrived men. A few steaming mugs of coffee appeared. A girl cracked a joke and there was a loud laughter. The mood was jovial.