Charlie and Dave looked at each other. “OK,” Charlie told him. “What do you want to do?”
“Tie his hands, and take off his pants. I don’t care which you do first.”
“Take off his pants?”
“That’s right take off his damn pants. Russians are like anyone else. You put them in their skivvies in front of other men, and more particularly women, they feel humiliated.
“You remember Abu Grebe. The British press was full of it, and I imagine the American papers were as well. Those soldiers really didn’t physically harm their prisoners. Just stripped them, and put women’s panties on their head for the pictures. Ok—Ok--It was not nice, I grant you that. But you should see what the Russians do. Now take off his pants.”
Boris was now awake and struggling with the rope binding his hands that Dave had found in the kitchen. They removed his belt and stripped off his trousers. He wiggled and squirmed, but could do nothing except shout curses at them.
And Boris did just that—loud and long.
Red Jockey shorts! The men snickered, and Boris’ face became flushed.
“Dave you were smoking a cigar the other night. Do you have any left?” Henry asked.
Dave nodded, and started down the hall to his room. He soon returned with a wide grin on his face.
“My last one,” he told them. I hope it will be used in a good cause.”
Henry looked at the band. “Habana Primo?”
“That’s right,” Dave told him proudly. “It’s the best old uncle Fidel has to offer.” He lighted the huge cigar with obvious satisfaction, and exhaled a puff of smoke directly in Boris’ face.
“Do you still have the diagram of the mine that he gave you?” Henry asked turning to Charlie.
It was now Charlie’s turn to trot down the hallway. As he was going out the door he saw Henry approaching Boris with the cigar and slowly circle the lighted tip around his right eye, and then the left eye; while all the time laughing with maniacal glee.
Our little bookkeeper has become a changed man, he thought rummaging in his desk for the diagram.
In the lounge, Boris face was contorted with fear. The bright flush of embarrassment had now turned ashen.
“You’ve got to make them think you mean business,” Henry said, as if he had heard it repeated many times before.
Charlie showed Boris the diagram. Henry blew on the end of the lighted cigar until it glowed a bright red in the dimly lit lounge.
Boris shook his head, and cursed in Russian.
Like hell I am,” Henry replied, and placed the burning tip of the cigar on the back of Boris’ hand.
He screamed, shaking his head in pain.
“He is not going to tell you anything,” Dave said.
Henry drew closer to Boris and slowly advanced the cigar toward his bloodshot eye.
Dave reached out to grab Henry’s arm, but withdrew his hand when he saw the expression on his face. He didn’t like this, but he knew how important it was to get the miner to talk.
Before Boris could shake his head again, Henry quickly changed the direction of the cigar from targeting the Russian’s eyes to pointing it menacingly at the man’s crotch. Henry slowly approached closer, a wild look in his eyes and a broad grin on his face.
Boris screamed while trying to squirm away. Then he began spewing long sentences in Russian. It was obvious he wanted no more of this crazy Englishman.
“Now is the time to get Nadia,” Henry told them, backing off slightly, and blowing again on the glowing end of the Habana Primo.
Charlie knocked on Elaina’s door, “It’s Charlie Connelly Nadia. We think Boris has decided to tell us what he knows about the diagram, but we need you to interpret.”
Nadia, cracked open the door, and peeked out. She had heard Boris’ shouts, and wondered what was happening, but until she heard Charlie’s knock she didn’t think she should get involved.
Now, Nadia looked in the lounge and was shocked at what she saw. Her mind searched for the proper English adjective. Bizarre was the first one that immediately came to mind. Boris was sprawled across the sofa, with his hands tied behind him, and his pants in a heap on the floor. Oh my God she thought, Red shorts, how utterly Russian. To make it even more curious, Henry was standing close-by, blowing huge clouds of smoke in the miners face.
“Maybe you should not be so rough on him. He looks frightened to death,” she told them.
Charlie ignored her question. He didn’t like doing this, but he looked away.
He had looked away before-–several times in fact, during his association with the Agency. Not only in relation to what others had done but, God help him, what he had done himself. Each time it became a little easier than before. Although he was beginning to feel sorry for Boris, this was not the time to reduce the pressure. He had to know if Boris had killed the miners, or if it was someone else. More importantly, he needed to know if the same people who killed the miners had also killed Andre, and might now kill them as well.
No, this was not the time to let up on this miserable Russian.
“Ask him, Nadia,” Charlie demanded, “to tell us everything he knows about the dead miners and why he gave us the diagram. Tell him if he doesn’t we will start again, and this time it will not be just a threat. He will never be able to be with a woman again.” Henry moved closer to make the point. “Also, if he doesn’t, you might add, we will tell the other miners where we got the diagram, and let them deal with what is left of him.”
Nadia looked curiously at the three consultants. They looked deadly serious, and repeated in Russian what Charlie had told her in English.
Henry moved even closer toward Boris, blowing on the tip of his cigar to emphasize whatever Nadia was saying.
Boris began to talk, with an occasional prompting from Nadia. Finally, she turned to repeat what he had told her. “He had gone to work that day drunk. He says that it was not that unusual. All of the miners would do that. You had to be drunk to be a miner--according to him. That day he had drunk even more than usual. He got sleepy, and wandered off to find a place to lie down. He came across an old pathway and curled up. For just a few minutes, he tells me.” Her expression registered disbelief.
“Anyway, a noise woke him, and he saw a figure he did not recognize rounding a corner. He looked like a miner, but not one he knew. Well, Boris stayed quiet until the other man was out of sight before trying to find what he was doing there.”
“Can he tell us what the man looked like?” Charlie interrupted.
Nadia repeated his question in Russian, and then shook her head negatively. “He says it was too dark to tell. He never got a good look at his face, and he still may have been a little drunk.”
Nadia apparently was having difficulty believing all that she was hearing, and evidenced her skepticism in the tone of her voice.
“OK, sorry I interrupted,” Charlie apologized.
Boris now needed less prompting from Nadia. It was as if he had become anxious to tell his story.
“He says,” Nadia continued her translation, “that after he was sure the other person was gone he got up to see where he had come from. He was afraid of what he might find. In recent weeks miners had turned up missing, and no one knew where they had gone. Sometimes they were missing at work, and others were missing from town.
“It had gotten so bad that most of the men refused to go to the mine any longer. They thought it was haunted. Just a few would still go to work each day.”
The miner began to talk again, barely waiting for Nadia to finish her translation.
“He tells me that after going around the corner and squeezing through a crevice he found five bodies. The ones you found he says. They had been dead for some time. He didn’t know what to do. All he knew was that he wanted to get out of there, as fast and as far away as possible.”
When he finished, Boris lapsed into a moody silence, seemingly unwilling to continue. After an unexpectedly harsh verbal nudge from Nadia, he began
talking again.
“At home that night he thought about it. He couldn’t sleep,” she translated. “The vodka was no help. He did not know who he could tell. What if he told the mine manager and he was involved in the killing in order to get the mine to close.”
Everyone was now sitting down, fascinated with what they were hearing. All of them focused on Nadia, and her translation of Boris’ story.
“The next day was the meeting with you people,” Nadia continued. “He decided to draw up a map and try and find a way to give it to you so that you would find the bodies. He knew that you could not be involved in the killing since you had just come to Tekeli, and had no reason to kill the men.”
Nadia turned to Charlie. “That’s all he knows, he says. Now untie him and give him his pants back—he says.”
“In a minute,” Charlie told her. “Ask him to tell us who he thinks killed Andre?”
Nadia repeated the question to Boris. He shrugged his shoulders as best he could with his arms tied.
“He says he has no idea,” Nadia told them. He doesn’t think that it was one of the miners. They all appeared to him to be very saddened by the deaths of the men you found.
“Thank you Nadia. Do you think we should ask him why he was pounding on Elaina’s door?”
“That is pretty obvious, but anyway he has said that he thought she wanted him to come and see her. He thought she would be easy.”
Nadia returned to Elaina’s room to tell her what had happened, while the men untied Boris and tossed him his trousers. He put them on, and slunk down the stairs, muttering Russian obscenities the entire way.
Back in his room, Charlie studied the list of possible suspects he had prepared earlier, then crumpled it in disgust and tossed it into the wastebasket. He turned and gazed out his window. A bright moon cast shadows over the sleeping village. He could see that it had been snowing again. The paths to the brewery, that the miners cleared earlier, were drifting in again.
After a moment of reflection, he returned to his desk and removed the chair. Making certain it could still support his weight; he retrieved the gun he had hidden on top of the armoire. He twirled the cylinder a couple of times to make sure that it was working properly, and then slid it under his pillow feeling stupid he had not thought of it before. Finally he dropped off to sleep.
22
Breakfast was a curious meal. The prevailing mood was one of melancholy, seasoned with a considerable dash of angst. Everyone was overly quiet and polite. ‘Please pass this,’ or ‘would you like some of that.’ The men looked older than they had the day before, and the women appeared much more vulnerable. Dave silently spooned his coffee with his liver spotted hands. Finally, he stopped and yawned. He had slept poorly, but he was not alone in this.
Each one was attempting to digest what had taken place the night before, and wondering who might be next. They were well aware of the potential danger they were in, made even worse by the inability of any outside help to intervene.
Henry, on the other hand, had a better appetite than usual. He was satisfied with his performance the previous night. He felt he had won back his position with the group.
“Are there any more sausages?” he inquired of the server.
“Do you like our Kazakh sausages,” Nadia asked as his plate returned with another helping.
“Yes as I matter of fact I do. In England we call them bangers.”
“Really?”
“Yes, they are made with pork. They are really quite tasty,” he added approvingly.
Now, all eyes focused on Nadia and Henry, instead of on their plates.
“In Kazakhstan,” she smiled sweetly, “we call these sausages chuchuk…….they are made of horsemeat. I am surprised you find them so tasty.”
Everyone stared at Nadia, who was smiling innocently .
Henry choked--his face turning a bright crimson. Stuffing the napkin to his mouth, he rushed from the dining room.
That was the end of breakfast. The mood was broken. Everyone rose and adjourned to the lounge.
Charlie had received a cryptic note from Emmett on his computer. It contained merely the reference Nd60 and a question mark. Retrieving it from his pocket, he handed it to Dave.
“Any Idea what in the hell this means?”
“Where did you get that?” Dave asked. Nearby the women began assembling their work for the day, ignoring the conversation between the men. “You remember that mineral sample Andre collected from the mine? He thought it might be important. You looked at it and were unable to classify it with your equipment. I gave it to young Pembroke when he was here, and asked him to send it out to have it analyzed when he returned to Almaty. (Charlie didn’t bother to tell Dave exactly where it had been sent for analysis.) “I think this is their answer, but I certainly don’t understand it.”
Dave looked at the email more closely. “I am not sure, but let me get my mineral handbook from my room. I’ll be back in a minute.”
While Dave was gone, Charlie watched Nadia and Elaina going about their work. They were hard working young women, and it was unfortunate that they were now in a situation where they were at risk.
Soon Henry came into the lounge, still somewhat pallid from his quick exit from the dining room. “Bloody horsemeat! These people hide it in everything they cook.” He sat down next to Elaina, and the two of them began organizing their database for the final report.
Charlie was beginning to feel like the British colonel Nicholson in the Bridge on the River Kwai, who aggressively continued to work for his Japanese captors because he felt it was his duty to do so. He hoped that was not the case with him. He was well aware of their situation, but saw no option other than to keep doing what they were sent to do.
His train of thought was broken by Dave’s footsteps echoing down the hallway at a parade ground clip. He burst into the room with a broad smile on his face, and thrust his dog-eared minerals handbook at Charlie. “I found your Nd60 here. It is just as I thought. It’s one of those rare- earth elements we were talking about yesterday.
“My God was that only yesterday?” he paused before continuing. “Nd is the symbol, and 60 is the atomic number for the rare-earth element neodymium. My book tells all about it. You can read it for yourself. I have to work on finishing my part of the project.”
“Ok, alright, I will take a look at your book,” Charlie assured him, “but just tell me one thing before you take off. If that stuff is in that black hole out there would it make the mine more valuable to other owners?”
Dave was already halfway out the door. “Hell yes—is that clear enough for you non technical person?”
Charlie sat down on the sofa and began thumbing through the thick book. Neodymium is a soft silvery metal which tarnishes in ordinary air. He began skipping through the technical description, attempting to find some passages that he understood. Most of the world’s neodymium is mined in China and Mongolia. That made sense. China was just over the border.
He continued to search through the pages for things that were at least somewhat clear to him. Neodymium glass solid-state lasers are used in extremely high power (terawatt scale), high energy multiple beam systems for inertial confinement fusion. The current laser at the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment is a 1-terawatt neodymium-glass laser. …………They are also used in computer hard disks and in power versus weight electric motors in hybrid cars, and generators for aircraft and wind turbine electric generators.
Charlie set aside Dave’s reference book and thought about what he had learned. It appears, he decided, that if the mine at Tekeli contained rare-earth elements, in addition to its already valuable lead and zinc deposits, it could provide a valuable acquisition for a variety of countries. Enough to die for, as the phrase goes.
~~~
Charlie was not the only one thinking about the discovery of rare-earth elements at Tekeli. Half a world away, Emmett looked over the results of the analysis from the researchers before condensing it into the sho
rt message he had transmitted to Charlie.
Now, he was wondering how the recent discovery of beryllium would affect his project Silk Road. He had thought about it for some time, evaluating the alternatives and consequences, but the only thing he was getting was frustrated He decided to give up, and go back to his apartment.
He stuffed the manila folder into his old leather briefcase. It had been around almost as long as he had. The brass clasp was beginning to pull away from its base, but still provided sufficient security if closed properly—and Emmett always made sure that he had closed it properly.
He impatiently buzzed the garage to signal the driver to bring his car around to the entrance. Afterwards he set the locks on his files and turned off his stereo and the lights. In the empty hallway he peered into a small peephole in the center of his closed door. The electrodes scanned his retina, and a faint click indicated the lock was set for the night.
Death on the Silk Road Page 19