FORTY-THREE
Friday, August 15th, 1975
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The rent on the one bedroomed flat in Rio de Janeiro was one hundred dollars a month plus another hundred deposit. The ship had been met by traders and conmen of all description, trying to squeeze some money out of the ragged band of refugees who came down the gangway. One of them had a small apartment for rent on Rue Nascimento, behind the Copocabana beach, and Sergio quickly snapped it up. After stocking up on provisions and household requirements for the family he had almost eight hundred dollars left. He also had the diamonds. The pouch had remained hidden and intact during their whole trip, carefully folded each day into Raymundo’s nappy.
The voyage across the Atlantic had been relatively uneventful. The captain turned out to be a man of his word and left the family in his cabin in peace. Sergio realised that he’d paid through the nose when he heard how much the other passengers had been charged. But he reasoned that it was worth the money for his family to be safe and fairly comfortable in the cabin. There had been many arguments and fights amongst the refugees on deck and one man had been lost overboard in the night. Only the captain’s quick and decisive action had prevented things from descending into all out war.
Although he had enough cash left for two or three months, Sergio needed to sell one of the diamonds. Elvira’s condition hadn’t improved. She was constantly wheezing and the effort of gasping a little air into her lungs was taking all her energy. Pale and skinny, she had no appetite and not enough strength to look after the children. He had to look after his whole family so he couldn’t even go out to try to find work. He had called a local doctor, at a cost of ten dollars, who gave Elvira a quick examination and told her that she should go into hospital for proper rest and treatment. But they had no insurance, and hospitals cost money. He needed to get some cash for their comfort and security and for the hospital. It couldn’t wait.
He walked along Calle Almanteja, a street where there were several gem dealers, until he came to a store with a name that he thought looked Portuguese. He knew nothing about Brazilians and he didn’t trust what he didn’t know. The store owner was Sr. Ferreiro, a short fat man with a bald head, about fifty, who smoked cigarillos and confirmed that he was from Coimbra. He and his wife had emigrated from Portugal fifteen years before and he had been in business for five years, buying and selling diamonds and other gems.
Sergio had taken one diamond, which he showed to the man after he’d talked with him for ten minutes and felt that he was an honest dealer.
Ferreiro whistled through his teeth when he looked at the one carat stone through his lens. “Angolan, eh. Have you got more of these?” He asked.
“Depends. How much is it worth?” Sergio countered.
“I could go to three thousand dollars.”
“I could go to some other dealer.”
“OK. Three thousand three hundred a carat. I have to make a living too. What’d you say?”
Sergio knew that Ferreiro was right. His brother, Henriques, had quoted four or five thousand, but that was a top price in a quality market, not a shitty little corner of Rio. Also, he was used to selling rough diamonds at four hundred dollars. This was almost ten times that price, he wouldn’t get more. He agreed.
“I don’t have that much cash here,” the dealer said. I’ll have to go to the bank this afternoon. Keep the stone and I’ll come by your place tonight and we’ll do the swap then. OK?”
Sergio was relieved. He could pay for Elvira’s hospital treatment and look after his family for a year with that much money. Ten years of security from all ten stones, enough to set up a business and make a living in this new country. He blessed his brother’s foresight in leaving him the diamonds. He gave Ferreiro the address and went home to share the good news with his wife.
The doorbell rang at seven thirty. Alicia and Raymundo were already in bed and Elvira was sitting with them. Sergio didn’t want her disturbed by the transaction. The single diamond was in his pocket, the others hidden in a trunk in a closet in the bedroom.
He opened the door and was surprised not to see Ferreiro. The man who stood there was huge, almost two metres tall. A massive body topped by a surprisingly small head, covered with long, lank, blonde hair.
“Sr. d’Almeida?” he asked. His voice was high, almost a falsetto, totally out of character with his physique. His Portuguese was guttural and accented.
Sergio felt uneasy. He didn’t like the look of this man. “What is it?”
“You have some merchandise for a friend of mine.”
“You mean Sr, Ferreiro?”
“That’s right. I’m his collection agent.”
“Do you have the money?”
“Where’s the stones?”
When he heard, stones, plural, Sergio’s eyes flickered towards the bedroom where the diamonds were hidden. That was enough for the stranger. He pushed Sergio aside and opened the bedroom door. Elvira was sitting by the bed. The two children were fast asleep. She swung around, alarmed at the intrusion.
“Get out of my wife’s bedroom, she’s not well and you’re frightening her. Where’s the cash?”
He tried to pull the man away. The blonde giant turned and hit him across the face with an enormous backhand and he fell to the floor, his nose broken, blood running down his chin. He scrabbled around trying to find his spectacles. Elvira screamed and ran to help him. The children awoke and started crying, alarmed by the noise.
“There’ll be no cash. Just give me the diamonds and I’ll leave you alive. Otherwise it could turn out very nasty. For you and your family” The stranger pulled out a folding knife from his belt. He slowly opened it up. It had a long, thin stiletto blade.
Fifteen minutes later the blonde man left the apartment, all ten diamonds in his possession. Sergio was lying on the floor of the living room, three ribs cracked and his nose and two fingers broken. Even when the man had kicked her husband in the side and stamped on his fingers for the third time, Elvira had managed to stay quiet about the diamonds, for the sake of her children’s future. But when he took Sergio’s hand, raised the knife and threatened to cut off his fingers one by one, she hadn’t been able to stand any more. She begged him to stop and brought out the diamonds, even finding the last one in Sergio’s pocket. Their fortune was lost. It was the price she had to pay to save her husband’s life.
Sergio scrabbled around on the floor and found his spectacles. He straightened out the plastic frame. Only one of the lenses was cracked. Ignoring the pain that racked his body, he helped Elvira up to lay alongside his frightened children on the bed. She was wheezing badly from a panic attack.
He sat on the side of the bed, dabbing the blood from his face. The diamonds were gone, he was hurt, Elvira was sick and he had less than eight hundred dollars to support his family. His head drooped as he reflected on his predicament. Where the hell is Henriques? What would he do now? He asked himself.
FORTY-FOUR
November - December 1975
Luanda, Angola; Lisbon, Portugal
After Mozambique’s independence in June, the Marxist-led FRELIMO took over the government, plunging the country into seventeen years of civil war. Immediately after the declaration a bloody government clampdown left thousands of Portuguese and Mozambique civilians dead in the streets of Lourenco Marques. The first action of Samora Machel, the new President, was to execute all five of his political opponents, including Joana Simeão. During the civil war, over a million Mozambicans perished and almost two million left their country, never to return. Carlos Souza Machado was not the only loyal citizen to be fooled by the Marxists, nor to sacrifice his life for his country.
On November 11th Angola gained its independence. Over half a million Portuguese and Angolan citizens had aready fled from the civil war that was engulfing the country. Thousands of Cubans were shipped in during the week before independence and many Soviet officers arrived on November 12th. Luanda, Malanje and Cabinda were sw
iftly taken by the MPLA and in January, 1976, backed by Cuban forces, they defeated the FNLA and captured Ambrizete, extending their control from Luanda to the north west border with Zaîre. As foretold by Henriques, the rebels grabbed control of all mining operations in the country to finance their armies. Angolan diamond production ceased overnight.
South Africa and the other western nations withdrew their troops within a year and the FNLA crumbled, leaving only the MPLA and UNITA, the remaining moderate rebel movement, to fight each other and continue the destruction of the country. The twenty-seven year civil war became the longest, bloodiest war in recent African history and one of the great Cold War conflicts, a bloody reminder of the political divide between Russia and the USA.
In December, a moderate government under Colonel António dos Santos Ramalho Eanes took back control of Portugal. A state of emergency was declared, COPCON was disbanded and two hundred extreme left-wing military were arrested. Major Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, the hero of the Portuguese Revolution, was stripped of his position and a new Democratic Voting System was inaugurated. The communists were ousted from power.
What had been foreseen by Charlie and his friends many months before finally became clear for the rest of the world to see. Why Álvaro Cunhal had been rescued after eleven years in a Portuguse prison and taken to Russia. Why he was so valuable to the Marxist regime that they had looked after him for another fourteen years in Moscow and Prague before bringing him back again to his homeland.
Cunhal had succeeded in doing what no one had done in recent history. What the power and might of the Russian State had tried and failed to do for so many years. He had, almost single handed, converted a right-wing, capitalist controlled European country into a Marxist state. In less than a year, he had subverted the military leaders into appointing a communist government whose first actions were to destroy the capitalist system in Portugal. And although this situation lasted for only a year, it was a long enough time to achieve the objective.
And that objective, the strategy behind this apparently senseless and short term change of power now became apparent. A strategy born of many years of planning and preparation between Cunhal and his masters in Russia, from his escape in 1960, until his return in 1974. The Russians knew that even if they lost control of Portugal, there was a bigger prize to be won. Africa! They had fomented dissatisfaction in the army by financing increased guerilla activity in the colonies long before the death of Salazar in 1968, in the hopes of instigating a sea change. Then, when the change came, they hijacked the Revolution of the Carnations as a means of destabilising and radicalising the country and pushing it towards Marxism. This rape of Portugal had been executed to win a fabulous prize. To take possession of Angola and Mozambique.
This was the strategy that Cunhal and the Russians had planned for so long. This was why they had financed the murder of thousands of innocent young soldiers in Africa. Why they had nurtured the revolution in the minds of the many unhappy elements in the army. This was what Cunhal had somehow managed to orchestrate over the long, almost thirty year period, while he was in prison in Portugal and then exiled from the country. Álvaro Cunhal was not just a Portuguese communist. He was Portuguese Communism.
At New Year, Nick came down to Mijas and they made a toast, both to the past and their old, lost friends, and to the future and their newly found friends. 1976 was the beginning of a new life. For those of them who had survived 1975.
FORTY-FIVE
April 25th, 1976
Geneva, Switzerland
Before the four partners returned home, they had agreed to hold a meeting of the Angolan Clan each year. Somewhat nostalgically, they chose to meet on the anniversary of the Revolution of the Carnations, the 25th of April, at ten in the morning in Geneva.
Their first meeting was in Miriam’s conference room at Klein, Fellay. Charlie hadn’t released any financial information, so there was an air of expectation in the room.
The Englishman, looking fit, tanned and relaxed, opened up the proceedings.
“Welcome to the first annual meeting of the Angolan Clan. It’s great to see everyone here. First of all, Nick will give us a report on the diamond production.”
“I’ll keep this short and it’s not a monologue, so if you have any questions, just fire away.” The South African took up a hard-backed ledger and consulted the pages as he spoke. “The exact count of rough diamonds that we started with was seven thousand one hundred and ten stones, with a total weight of just over twenty-two thousand carats. So we actually had more than the number of stones and weight that we expected.
“Since last November we have gone through a baptism of fire. I won’t bore you with the many problems and disappointments along the way. But thanks to Laurent and Charlie and a lot of lateral thinking, we have created a viable business model. We’ve moved our rough diamonds up the food chain, by processing them and marketing them successfully. We’ve actually proved that we can do what we set out to do.
“The first good news is that by going slowly and low profile we’ve cut and polished exactly one hundred and twenty stones, with a rough weight of three hundred and seventy carats. We processed them in New York and Montreal and we’ve forged a great relationship with the companies involved. So we have the cutting and polishing operations sorted.
“The next good surprise is that the average loss on converting the rough stones to finished gems is less than we expected, at slightly below fifty percent. Henriques chose well shaped stones which are easier to work with than I had feared. These African diamonds are very hard, so you can get some surprises, but so far our net weight is more than half of the rough weight.
“We split these hundred and twenty stones into one hundred and sixty-five finished gems, with a net weight of one hundred and ninety carats. The stones are in a good commercial range of sizes for pricing; half a carat to two carats, average weight just over one carat. Not small enough to be rubbish and not large enough to raise any eyebrows.
“Let’s have a look at what we’re talking about here.” Nick pulled out a small pouch from his case, it was actually one of Henriques’s original pouches. He tipped the contents onto the table. Five magnificent diamonds spilled out, sparkling in the light from the overhead lamps. Each stone was about two carats in size. He moved them with his fingertips and they shimmered and reflected the light, like clear drops of spring water. The stones were brilliant cut, the multiple facets catching and reflecting the light from every angle.
He handed the stones to Alberto. “These are the pick of the crop. I would qualify the clarity as pure. If you look at them through the lens, you’ll see no inclusions - that’s imperfections. In these stones there aren’t any. The colour is finest white, the best there is. The cut is also ideal. The rough stones were of just the right shape to obtain perfect proportions in the finished article. From the first hundred rough stones we produced fifteen of this size and quality. Laurent sold ten of them and I kept the remaining five back to show you. The other hundred and fifty stones are excellent gems, but of slightly lesser quality, in colour and cut.”
He took another pouch out of his case and sprinkled a number of smaller stones onto the table. “These are some of the gems of lesser purity, but you need a lens to see that. They’re beautiful stones for high quality jewellery.”
Alberto passed the large diamonds to Laurent who sprinkled them from hand to hand, like a miniature waterfall. Alberto did the same with the smaller stones. “They all look the same to me, absolutely perfect.”
Nick nodded in agreement. “That’s right. All our diamonds are highly saleable. Some at excellent prices and the rest at reasonable prices. I can’t promise that they’ll all be the same but I’d be surprised if they’re not.”
He turned to Charlie. “Your turn to knock them out.”
Charlie got up, notebook in hand. “While I’ve sat around doing nothing and Nick’s been producing these fabulous stones, Laurent’s been travelling the world and spreading t
he gospel, to great effect. First, he placed a few stones into Sotheby’s and Christies’ sales in London, Geneva and New York. We got decent prices, with no disruption in the market and with no publicity. Now he’s got several private dealers taking stones as well. So far, we’ve sold one hundred and forty gems with a total weight of one hundred fifty carats.
“We set up a Geneva trading company to do this business. To run the paperwork, buy in the diamonds and sell them legitimately to the ultimate customers. It’s called International Diamond Dealers SA. - IDD. A bit corny, but at least it’s clear what we do. We have a small office just around the corner, near the railway station, with a secretary and an accountant. He’s a French Swiss, called Rolf Besson. A clever, hard-working man and also very discreet.
“The diamonds are brought into view by Angolan Clan Ltd, an offshore outfit we registered in the British Virgin Islands. When we bring stones from the vault to process and market, we sell them from the BVI company to IDD. Then they become documented and legitimate. The accounting requirements in the BVI are fairly non-existent, so there isn’t any scrutiny on where the diamonds came from, where they’re going, or what pricing policy we implement. We opened an account for IDD with the Banque de Commerce, near the office, and we simply use the Angolan Clan account here at Klein, Fellay, for the BVI company.
“We can’t provide any certification of the origin of the gems and we don’t want any visibility, so we’re selling at a big discount to the market. On the other hand, our tax liability is minimal, because between BVI and Switzerland we match the pricing with only a nominal profit for IDD. This keeps us in good shape with the Swiss, because we cover our costs and make a small profit and the BVI doesn’t care what we do. Unless something changes to convince us otherwise, we’ll continue with this formula. It works so we won’t fix it.
[African Diamonds 01.0] The Angolan Clan Page 29
