Coiffed and manicured, Tia, a sales agent for Helzberg Diamonds, eyed me quizzically. She might have asked what I was doing in her store, stumbling around like a dazed lamb. It was the first time I’d ever ventured into one of those types of jewelry stores, all beige velvet and mahogany-veneered Formica, occupying a breezy corner in an unoriginal mall and settled somewhere in the spectrum of diamond retailing between Tiffany’s and the cut-rate warehouses advertised in cheap television spots.

I don’t remember the Prince Charming myths I entertained as a child. If some magic man was to barge into my life, I guess I figured he’d have all the two-dimensional panache of the cartoon versions that wooed Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. Never boy–crazy, it took me a long time to connect love and marriage, presuming the latter was simply an element of adulthood, much like permanent teeth and cooking dinner. But even if I didn’t understand the point of the prince, I knew early on that any charmer worth his salt came with a diamond ring. That was non-negotiable.

It’s an effective ploy, conflating fairy tale with ritual. A diamond is forever, after all. We’ve been buying that shtick since an unmarried copywriter penned it in 1947, one decade into a nationwide De Beers campaign. Subsequently, diamonds wield a near mythic power—over the American imagination especially—enduring as symbols of love and bondage that nothing short of cosmic oblivion could tarnish.

Now, in a way it’s all true: Cosmic oblivion has a tendency to create diamonds. Meteors colliding deep in space undergo huge impact forces that blast everyday carbon into diamond, lickety-split. On this planet, diamond dust litters meteor craters in the sparkly aftermath of a crash landing. A diamond may be the hardest substance known to man; it may repel water, resist high temperatures, slow the speed of light and suck the very warmth from your fingers. But its natural occurrence isn’t as rare as the historical hubbub suggests.

Let’s take a quick geological tour. Borrowing a page from elementary school science textbooks, imagine a cut-away view of Earth, with its glowing yellow-hot core and thick layers of inner and outer mantle, in deepening shades of rust, accounting for the bulk of this tidy, two-dimensional representation. A relatively thin crust provides a rocky casing for the mysterious, ancient goo comprising the mantle. Volatile activity within the mantle gives us mountains, valleys, islands, continents—diamonds.

Terrestrial diamond deposits correlate to the oldest bedrock stems of all our modern continents, roughly central to each landmass. Some 200 kilometers (or 124 miles) under the surface, the weight of 54,000 times our atmospheric pressure, sparks a diamond crystal. Most diamonds we currently have access to formed 1 to 3 billion years ago, and reached the surface during localized but violent eruptions that leave behind rootlike pipes of igneous rock and mantle-born tidbits. Mining companies spiral down into these pipes, burrowing compulsively, concentrically. There’s no reason to believe the mantle isn’t constantly pressing more diamonds; we just can’t dig that deep.

When I asked Tia what she felt motivated sales, she explained to me a diamond, any old diamond: “It’s not rare, but it’s rare to get.” I was a little surprised by her candor. This summation cuts to the quick of the diamond industry’s success, highlighting the brilliance of De Beers’ generic advertising and its subtle manipulation of human fears: With a diamond you will never be alone, unloved or unsuccessful. People needn’t perceive the gem itself as rare, so long as getting one makes them feel special. But even receiving diamonds is commonplace. In 2002, 84 percent of brides-to-be obtained diamond engagement rings. Amid the display cases and low-price guarantees, I was struck by the absurdity of it all. Here in one of the most unromantic settings imaginable, the local mega-mall—fluorescent lighting, greasy food-court smells, sameness everywhere—hundreds of couples flock to outfit their commitment.

North across the tiled breezeway from Helzberg Diamonds sat a Zales, and east of Zales, beyond the benches and potted palms, was a Ben Bridge Jewelers, and south of the Ben Bridge I noticed Whitehall Jewelers. All within 40 feet of one another, in one mall, in one American city. Our voracious appetite for gem diamonds consistently accounts for 50 percent or more of the global market each year. In 2002, American consumers spent $27.4 billion on diamond jewelry (a 5 percent increase over the 2001 totals despite all that moaning about a floundering economy). Parked on a retail shelf, a diamond has reached its final stop along the nondescript production “pipeline.” After a circuitous and clandestine journey from mine to cutting center, polishing factory to sealed container, a diamond’s value hangs on the upkeep of tradition and fascination with perceptions of wealth and status.

Long a global orchestration by the South African De Beers cartel, news that the diamond industry indulges rather shifty practices really is not news at all. For years reporters have been giving savvy readers the lowdown on De Beers’ delicate control of perception, supply and value. Edward Jay Epstein’s 1982 book, The Diamond Invention, excerpted by the Atlantic Monthly, details the inflated value of diamonds influenced by De Beers’ advertising. A March 2002 issue of National Geographic inspired widespread concern over the impacts of an unregulated diamond trade, and the tragedy of “conflict diamonds”—those which pass through the hands of African rebel groups mainly in Angola, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, funding myriad atrocities against civilians.

The latest in this litany shines an even brighter beam on the deeply entrenched malfeasance of De Beers and the industry it nurtures. Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel, written by Janine Roberts and published in September 2003 by The Disinformation Company, chronicles a lifetime of investigation into the underbelly of the diamond trade and covers the details of its origins. “De Beers was originally set up to protect wealthy merchants who had invested in genuinely rare Indian diamonds—who panicked when diamonds were found literally sparkling in the moonlight in southern Africa,” Roberts tells me in an e-mail. She explains the formation of the Diamond Syndicate, which early on established exclusive rights to African diamonds through funding the purchase of mining leases. “This way they keep the prices high—and De Beers has been true to its original charter ever since.”

For most of its operation, large-scale diamond retailing has banked on obfuscation. Deflecting attention to the brilliance of the gem itself, De Beers has directed public interest and awareness from the periphery. But this is beginning to change. Intensifying media buzz over “conflict diamonds” presents quite a nuisance to the management of the trade, like a horsefly in the flight deck. De Beers, to spare its reputation as a provider of African diamonds, has scrambled to reroute its public perception, stepping into the spotlight as if to prove by boldness its integrity.

Andy Bone of De Beers London commented on an Australian radio program of the American marketplace: “…we went there and just did some informal research, and clearly we didn’t want to—it wasn’t in our interests to—raise the ante as such—making sure the consumer was informed, but at the same time making sure that they weren’t unnecessarily alarmed.” In response to the threat of bloodied booty, new policies were enacted in 2003: the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, a South African-driven, multinational effort to secure the exact course a diamond takes through the pipeline, and the congressional passing of the Clean Diamond Trade Act, which seeks to bar trade in conflict diamonds within the United States. Still in their infancies, both efforts lack third-party regulation. Roberts reports that Angolan diamonds remain on the market, while murders at mines under the jurisdiction of the Congo government and De Beers go unnoticed in the legislation.

I wondered what wisdom Tia might impart were I a real customer interested in knowing my diamond’s origin, to ensure it did not inspire abject violence. This was not a question she was accustomed to fielding, apparently. “Nobody, like one in 1,000,” cares much about where a diamond is mined, cut or polished, she insisted. But when I pushed her for more information about how Helzberg buys the diamonds they sell and who ultimately supplies them, she lowered her voice and let me in on a little secret, “De Beers is, like, going out of business.”

Though the pipeline system has serious flaws as an accounting practice—once a diamond is polished it’s impossible to know its origins or, therefore, the worker treatment or social strain its purchase supports—it successfully charts how much money changes hands. Today De Beers ultimately owns or controls 62 percent of the $56.9 billion diamond market, a historical low but still the lion’s share.

Back in 1982, Edward Jay Epstein concluded his observation of the industry with this assessment: “Unless the resourceful managers of De Beers can find a way to gain control of the various sources of diamonds that will soon crowd the market, these sources may bring about the final collapse of world diamond prices.” He was speaking about then–new mines opening up in Australia and scouting missions in Canada.

For many years, diamonds were only mined in Africa, but the discovery of lodes in Siberia in the 1960s, mainly tiny one-tenth carat stones, threatened to disrupt the De Beers supply chain. Soon, Americans were lulled into buying “eternity” rings, studded with dozens of miniature Russian diamonds, with such success that people almost stopped buying big gems. In the early 1980s, De Beers again struggled to maintain its grip on the world diamond trade, as the volatility of Namibia and Botswana threatened to cost De Beers its heaviest producing mines. Now, De Beers enjoys a 50-50 share of the mines’ profits and operations with the governments of Namibia and Botswana. Even though unseating De Beers has fueled the public imagination for quite some time, they are a stalwart organization and increase the security and consistency of the global trade so convincingly that no other mining organization, government or trading company would want to survive without them.

Deep in Canada’s Northwest Territories, new mines are sprouting up like toadstools, operated by mining agencies competing for De Beers’ throne, though disinterested in disrupting the consumption-friendly climate it spawned. Future-forward U.S. companies Apollo and Gemesis have patented two different laboratory processes that inexpensively produce true diamonds, natural but synthetic, good for rings and semiconductors. The diamond industry is caught in what could be a tremendous shift, with a larger quantity of diamonds reaching the retail shelf than ever before, along new and different channels.

De Beers has ushered in the next phase of diamond marketing already: branding. Canadian companies have jumped on this wagon, too, offering Canada Mark and Arctic Ice, among other more ridiculous names. As certification of origin becomes a more rigid requirement of diamond producers, branding and laser inscription offer the illusion of fail-safe accounting. While proving a diamond’s path to the jeweler’s shelf has positive benefits on the chain of low-cost workers involved, a skeptic might consider it a convenient segue into building a trusted brand.

De Beers certainly bears the brunt of the branding chore, as the name is both besmirched and beloved with no real rhyme or reason. By partnering with luxury goods company LVMH (Louis Vuitton, Moen-Hennesy), De Beers sidesteps anti-trust laws that have barred direct operations in the United States since its very inception. Expect De Beers LV stores in New York and L.A. sometime in 2004, opening to much fabricated fanfare.

Won’t Tia be surprised?