One night last spring, Amiran Chaduneli, a flea-market trader in the ex–Soviet Republic of Georgia, met with two strangers on a bridge at the edge of Kobuleti, a small town on the country’s Black Sea coast.
Over the phone, the men had introduced themselves as foreigners–one Turkish, the other Russian–and they were looking for an item so rare on the black market that it tends to be worth more, ounce for ounce, than gold. Chaduneli knew where to get it. He didn’t know that his clients were undercover cops.
From the bridge, he took them to inspect the merchandise at a nearby …read more
Source: Time
