Anya shook her head.“No! He is not husband. Only person I have been on date with a fewtimes. I thought he was a good man, but I was foolish. He is liar andhas terrible temper.”
Volkov sighed. “Well,as I said, he won’t bother you again. I’m afraid I did not getyour names.
“I’m Gwynn, and myfriend is Anya.”
He offered a slight dipof his chin. “It is a pleasure.”
He pulled the ring fromhis pocket, along with a jeweler’s loupe. He pressed the loupe tohis right eye and moved the ring into focus in front of themagnifying loupe. “You were correct. Ring is fugazi. Youknow this word, fugazi?”
Anya shook her head.“It means two things. First, it means fake piece of jewelry in thebusiness, but it means also situation that turned bad very quickly. Ithink both are appropriate for tonight.”
Gwynn squeezed Anya’strembling hand, and Volkov noticed.
He placed a fingerbeneath Anya’s chin and raised her face to look into his. “Youhave nastoyashchiy drug, a true friend, to hold your hand, andnow you have me to protect you from that horrible little man.”
Anya gazed toward thering and Volkov’s loupe resting on the table. “How do you know itis fugazi?”
Volkov motioned foranother waitress. When she arrived, he spoke in Russian. “Bring ameat tenderizer from the kitchen.”
She returned secondslater with a stainless-steel hammer with triangular protrusions onone surface and a smooth, rounded finish on the other. Volkovproduced a piece of folded white paper from his interior jacketpocket. As he unfolded the paper, a glistening, loose diamondappeared in the creases. He pulled back the tablecloth and placed thediamond on the heavy wooden table. “A diamond is the hardest of allstones. Nothing can cut diamond except other diamond. Is magnificentthing. Watch closely. This is two-carat diamond and is IF clarity andE maybe F, but is colorless. Do you know what this means?”
Anya shook her head.
Volkov said, “Twocarat means the stone weighs point four grams. Is bigger than averagestone. Clarity means what you see when you look deep inside diamond.Anything you see inside is bad. Cloudy areas or dark spots, these arecalled inclusions, and they lower value of diamond. FL meansflawless. This means perfect diamond. These are rare and are mostexpensive diamonds in all of world. This one is IF, internallyflawless. This means there is nothing inside stone but may havealmost invisible mark on outside of stone. I say this one isflawless, but I am not final authority. Finally, the color. Thismeans how clear is diamond. D, E, and F are colorless. This scalegoes to Z, which means yellow or brown. This diamond is E in color.”
Anya’s feigned angerand fear melted into feigned admiration.
Volkov handed her theloupe and produced a pair of locking jeweler’s tweezers. Hepositioned the stone in the prongs of the tweezers and placed them inAnya’s left hand. “Place loupe against your cheek and lookinside.” She did as he instructed, and he laid his hand acrosshers, then slowly moved the tweezers closer and closer to the loupe.“Stop when stone is in focus, but do not move loupe.” He pulledhis hand from hers as she slowly moved the stone into focus.
She gazed into thenearly invisible diamond. “It is beautiful.”
“Yes, it is,”Volkov breathed. “Allow Gwynn to see.”
Anya offered the loupe,and Gwynn pressed it to her cheek. Just as Volkov had done, Anyaplaced the tweezers in Gwynn’s hand and positioned them closer.
Gwynn moved the stonetoo close and then backed it away until it came into focus. Shegasped. “It is astonishing.”
Volkov smiled. “Youhave eye for beautiful things. This could be why you are true friendfor Anya. The two of you are the only things inside restaurant morebeautiful than this diamond.”
Anya blushed at thecompliment, but Gwynn couldn’t look away from the stone. Shefinally surrendered it back to Volkov, and he lifted the meattenderizer in his left hand while holding the diamond against thetable in the prongs of the tweezers. With a powerful blow, he sentthe hammer into the stone. Dishes and glasses clattered and leaptacross the table. When he lifted the hammer, the stone had escapedthe grasp of the tweezers and had been driven into the surface of thetable. He dug it out with the pointed tips and repositioned itbetween the prongs. He handed the tweezers to Anya. “Look again,and try to find mark from hammer.”
Anya inspected thestone through the loupe for a long moment and then handed the stoneand loupe to Gwynn. After several minutes of searching, they gave up.
“It didn’t doanything to the diamond,” Gwynn said. “That’s amazing.”
He lifted the tweezersfrom her fingers and handed her the ring Anya had thrown across theroom. “Now, look at this one.”
Anya and Gwynn tookturns staring through the loupe at the fugazi until Gwynnsaid, “It looks almost better than yours. How do you know it isn’treal?”
Volkov leaned back inhis seat. “You have heard phrase that if something seems too goodto be true, it probably is, yes?”
Both women nodded.
“This is why I knowthat it is not real diamond. It is too good to be real. This stonewould be worth thirty thousand dollars U.S. if it were real. No onewould mount a stone so valuable in setting so cheap. It is probablyreal gold, but only maybe ten-karat gold. This means only ten partsgold for every twenty-four parts of alloy. It is gold, but cheapgold.”
He took the ring fromAnya’s fingers and laid it on the table. “Watch what happens whenI hit with hammer, but this time, not so hard. Only soft hit.”
He tapped the mountedstone without disturbing anything on the table, and the fugazicrumbled into a dozen shards of glass. Volkov tossed the ring withoutits stone onto a plate of scraps and replaced the tablecloth. Hefolded the real diamond back into its paper carrier and tucked itback into his pocket.
Anya leaned forward.“How do you know so much about diamonds?”
Volkov smiled. “I’min the business. I get paid to know more about diamonds—especiallyfake diamonds—than everyone around me.”
The three ate andtalked for an hour. Anya told the story of coming to America tobecome
