Shock Wave(155)

Strouser was stunned. His earlier impression was that Dorsett's marketing strategy was for a temporary dip in prices to make a quick profit. Now he saw the enormity of the grand design. "You'll impoverish thousands of retailers and wholesalers, yourself included. What can you possibly gain by putting a rope around your neck and kicking over the stool?"

Dorsett ignored his salad, swilled his beer and gestured for another before continuing. "I'm sitting where the cartel has sat for a hundred years. They control eighty percent of the world's diamond market.

I control eighty percent of the world's colored gemstone market."

Strouser felt as if he were teetering on a trapeze. "I had no idea you owned so many colored gemstone mines."

"Neither does anyone else. You're the first outside my family to know. It was a long and tedious process, involving dozens of interlocking corporations. I bought into every one of the major colored stone producing mines in the world. After I orchestrate the demise of diamond values, I plan to move colored stones into the limelight at discounted prices, thereby spiraling the demand. Then I slowly raise the retail price, take the profits and expand."

"You always were a snatch and trash artist, Arthur. But even you can't destroy what took a century to build."

"Unlike the cartel, I don't plan to suppress competition at the retail level. My stores will compete fairly."

"You are making a fight nobody can win. Before you can collapse the diamond market, the cartel will break you. We'll use every international financial and political maneuver ever devised to stop you in your tracks."

"You're blowin' in the wind, mate," Dorsett came back heatedly. "Gone are the days when buyers have to grovel in your high-and-mighty selling offices in London and Johannesburg. Gone are the days of licking boots to be a registered buyer who has to take what you offer him. No more sneaking through back streets to bypass your well-oiled machinery to purchase uncut stones. No more will international police and your hired security organizations fight sham battles with people you label criminals because they engage in your artificially created myth of smuggling and selling on what your little playmates have concocted as the great and terrible illicit diamond market. No more restrictions to create an enormous demand. You've brainwashed governments into passing laws that confine diamond traffic to your channels and your channels only. Laws that forbid a man or woman from legitimately selling a rough stone they found in their own backyard. Now, at long last, the illusion of diamonds as a valued object is only days away from being pronounced dead."

"You cannot outspend us," said Strouser, fighting to remain calm. "We think nothing of spending hundreds of millions to advertise and promote the romance of diamonds."

"Don't you think I've considered that and planned for it?" Dorsett laughed. "I'll match your advertising campaign budget with my own, pushing the chameleon quality of colored gemstones. You'll promote the sale of a single diamond for an engagement ring, while I'll promote the spectrum, a world of fashion touched by colored jewelry. My campaign is based around the themèColor her with love.' But that's only the half of it, Gabe. I also plan to educate the great unwashed public about the true rarity '', of colored gemstones versus the cheap, overabundant supply of diamonds. The end result is that I will significantly shift the buyer's attitude away from diamonds."

Strouser rose to his feet and threw his napkin on the table. "You're a menace that will destroy thousands of I people and their livelihood," he said uncompromisingly.

"You must be prevented from disrupting the market."

"Don't be a fool," said Dorsett, showing his teeth. "Climb aboard. Switch your allegiance from diamonds to colored stones. Get smart, Gabe. Color is the wave of the future in the jewelry market."

Strouser fought to control the anger that was seething to the surface. "My family have been diamond merchants for ten generations. I live and breathe diamonds. I will not be the one to turn my back on tradition. You have dirty hands, Arthur, even if they are well manicured. I will personally fight you up and down the line until you are no longer a factor in the market."

"Any fight comes too late," Dorsett said coldly.

"Once colored gemstones take over the market, the diamond craze will disappear overnight."

"Not if I can help it."

"What do you intend to do when you leave here?"

"Alert the board of directors of what you have up your sleeve so they can plan an immediate course of action to knock the wind out of your scheme before it can be realized. It's not too late to stop you."