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for fifty or a hundred thousand dollars a carat. There are also industrial diamonds, which are used in cutting tools. They fetch a lot less, although they are still valuable.
    “There are not many organizations in the world that market diamonds straight from the mine, so it’s usually easy to establish the provenance of a diamond. If an expensive diamond is sold, it comes with a certificate stating where and when it was mined, authenticated by the organization that mined it, and also where it’s been cut and polished.
    “A few years ago, a very valuable diamond came on to the market that did not have any such certificate. It’s an absolutely flawless deep blue diamond, twenty-two carats. Magnificent colour. That’s very rare, it’s top quality. One like that doesn’t come on the market very often. It was said that it comes from a new diamond mine in Uzbekistan. Do you know where Uzbekistan is?”
    “It’s in central Asia. North of Afghanistan.”
    “Right. But nobody has found this new diamond mine. The diamond was offered for sale in London five years ago. As you can imagine, it caused quite a stir. The man offering it for sale was a German. He said that he didn’t own it, he was selling it on behalf of somebody else. He was very secretive about it, he wouldn’t sell it at auction, he sold it privately.
    “As I say, he said it came from Uzbekistan. I went to Tashkent on investment business and I took the occasion to follow this up. There are Western businessmen there with a nose for anything like a diamond mine, and plenty of greedy Uzbeks who would lead them to it if there were one. No, it’s not from Uzbekistan, I’m pretty sure of that.
    “With a certificate from a mining company, a diamond of that size and quality might be worth fifteen million pounds or even more. In view of the mystery around its origins, it’s been sold for less, I don’t know how much. I also don’t know who it was sold to originally.” I noticed that when he talked about a specific diamond, instead of diamonds in general, he talked about pounds and not dollars.
    “For a while there was a lot of speculation in the trade about this diamond, but people lost interest. There are very few mines in the world that have ever produced diamonds of that quality. It couldn’t have been mined at one of those without a lot of people knowing about it.”
    “Blood diamond? Africa?” I suggested. I had thrown out the phrase at random. I didn’t have much idea of what it meant.
    “Perhaps. I want to know where this diamond comes from. Wherever it is, there are likely to be more. There may be a great big diamond mine somewhere that someone is sitting on and keeping secret. That’s a possibility. If there is, I’d like to know about it.”
    He paused in his recitation and shot me one of his looks. It was evidently up to me now to say something to show that I was following him.
    “Is it out of the question that it could be a clever fake?” I asked.
    “Absolutely out of the question. It’s been examined under a microscope. Nobody pays a few million pounds for a diamond without knowing it’s genuine. You can’t fake diamonds. That’s why they’re special.”
    I asked, “Is there any special reason, Mr Michelmore, why you’re interested in this? I hope you don’t mind my asking you.”
    “To be blunt, I’m not sure it’s any of your business,” he said. I felt sure I could always count on him to be blunt. “However, I’ll answer your question. Partly because you may want reassurance that you’re not going to get involved in anything criminal. I’ve recently concluded several profitable business arrangements. There’s nothing more in the offing right now. I have capital to spare. The idea of finding a previously unknown diamond mine that could be exploited, perhaps where someone with plenty of funds could exploit it more – that appeals to me. Maybe an opportunity for investment. There could be a lot more diamonds where that