7
Colin’s drive hooked deep into the rough to the accompaniment of George’s stifled laughter.
‘You’ll have to do better than that when you get to Obuasi,’ he said, preparing to drive off from the third tee of a late afternoon round of golf.
‘Obuasi?’ Colin spoke out on George’s downswing, and laughed as the white ball disappeared deep into the rough.
‘Damn!’ George turned on him with a bad-tempered look. ‘You know you’re not supposed to do that!’
‘Sorry,’ Colin grinned unrepentantly. ‘You mentioned something about Obuasi?’
George sent his caddy into the long grass after his ball. ‘I’m teeing-off again. You deliberately distracted me,’ he accused.
‘C’mon, it’s only a game. You can tee-off all day as far as I’m concerned. Now what’s this about Obuasi?’
‘You’ll have to start taking your golf more seriously,’ an admonishing finger waved under his nose. ‘Only a game indeed!’
‘C’mon, George …’ Colin appealed.
‘I’ve arranged a long weekend for us up there. You did say you wanted to see a gold mine, didn’t you?’
‘Oh aye,’ Colin tried to sound off-hand, belying the sudden interest George’s news had generated in him. ‘Is it far then?’
‘It’s in the Kumasi region of the Ashanti Tribal Lands. The mine itself is at Obuasi, about twenty miles south of Kumasi city. I’ve been in touch with John Ogilvie, the general manager up there. He’s an old friend of mine and we’re invited for the weekend. You can tour the mine and we’ll be able to fit in a round or two of golf. That is …’ his face turned stern. ‘As long as you are prepared to treat the game seriously.’
‘When are we leaving?’ Colin hid his rising excitement.
‘We leave on Friday evening. We’ll have the full Saturday and Sunday there and return on the Monday morning train.’
‘We can’t drive there?’
‘We could, but not direct from here. Driving would mean going via Accra to get on the Kumasi road and that would more than double the mileage. On top of that, the road is pretty poor once you get a few miles out of the city. So driving is not really an option.’
‘It’s a fair distance then?’
‘Not really; it’s only about 120 miles from here to Obuasi as the crow flies, but the roads north of Takoradi are nothing more than dirt tracks.’
‘Aye,’ Colin nodded agreement. ‘I’ve noticed that myself. Went for a drive the other day and nearly wrecked the old car’s suspension.’
‘Exactly! That’s why we’re taking the train. It leaves Friday night and I’ve already booked the tickets.’
‘That’s good.’ Colin abandoned his first drive and teed up another shot, driving his ball a good 200 yards. ‘That’s really good.’
*
It was midnight when the old narrow-gauge steam engine gasped to a wheezing standstill at the small, wooden-platformed station of Obuasi, where George and Colin were met by a driver from the goldmine. Less than ten minutes later, they were settling into one of the Ashanti Goldfield Corporation’s guest-houses where, weary after the hot, rackety train journey, the cool-looking beds were a welcome sight for both of them.
*
The following morning John Ogilvie, a dark, saturnine, lanky Aberdonian of about fifty years, collected them from their rooms. Looking like a scoutmaster in freshly laundered khaki shorts and long woollen socks, he led them to the mining company’s clubhouse and social centre for a late breakfast.
‘So you wanted to see a goldmine, eh?’ He turned dark eyes on Colin as they sat at a table overlooking the mine-head workings.
‘Well … seeing as I’m here.’ Colin smiled.
‘Aye. And nae doubt ye’ll be expecting to see lumps of gold lying about, or sticking out of the walls like rocks, eh?’ He grabbed up the pepper pot from the table and held it tight in his fist. ‘Like this?’ He stared hard into Colin’s eyes, a hint of amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth.
Colin shrugged, wondering if this strange man understood more than he was letting on. It was obvious to him that George and John Ogilvie were old friends; they seemed to communicate easily without saying very much. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something was definitely amusing the two older men and their Scottish accents became more and more exaggerated as they talked on.
‘Aye … The loon here will be doon the mine looking for the gold. Aye, like thoosands afore him.’ Ogilvie grinned knowingly. ‘Gold fever!’ he added, his Aberdonian accent almost destroying the words. ‘They all come lusting after the bonny Ashanti Gold.’ He looked into Colin’s eyes. ‘Well, m’loon, you’ll ha’e your chance wi’ the gold, same as a’body else. You’ll ha’e your chance.’
Puzzled by his host’s enigmatic statement, Colin peered down at the dust-covered work-sheds, feeling a familiar quiver as he eyed the activity below. He was keen now to get down into the mine and see the gold for himself, totally unaware of his hands rubbing together in the universal language of greedy anticipation. A younger man dressed in a carefully pressed, one-piece, white boiler suit came across to their table.
‘Ah! Good morning, Gareth.’ Ogilvie waved the newcomer to an empty chair. ‘You’ll be having a bite with us?’
‘Thank you, Mr. Ogilvie,’ the man replied in a quiet, lilting voice. ‘But I’ll just have a coffee, thanks – I’ve already eaten.’
Colin identified the accent as Welsh. ‘You married men,’ Ogilvie raised thick eyebrows and smiled. ‘Mollycoddled day and night you are.’ He turned to Colin. ‘Gareth Davies,’ he said, introducing them to each other. ‘Assistant Mine Manager – Operations.’ He turned back to Gareth, the slightly amused tone entering his voice again. ‘He’s come to see the mine; that’s the reason I asked you to meet me here this morning. Give him the usual tour and see he doesn’t collect too many free samples.’ His voice broke off in a smothered laugh as the three men looked at Colin, grinning knowingly.
*
‘This is the deepest mine in West Africa,’ Gareth informed Colin as the metal cage plummeted underground. ‘We’re mining now at 4500 feet – that’s not far off a mile straight down, boyo.’
‘Amazing.’ Colin looked at the raw rock through the mesh of the cage as the lift descended. He was twin now to Gareth – wearing an identical white boiler suit, a white safety helmet with its miner’s lamp, and a heavy battery-pack slung on his hip. Not normally the nervous type, Colin had to admit to a certain apprehensiveness as the flimsy-looking lift rattled and clanked downwards to level twelve, the temperature dropping along with them as they moved further away from the heat of the midmorning sun above.
There was little sensation of being deep underground when they left the lift. A long, smoothly cut tunnel stretched ahead of them, illuminated by alternate pools of light and dark, the curved concrete props of the tunnel gleaming white, like the ribcage of a whale, in the reflected glow of a string of naked light bulbs. A faint rumbling sound was gradually growing louder as they progressed along the underground passage.
‘Be at the working face in a minute,’ Gareth volunteered, breaking a longish silence. ‘There’s always lots of dust and stones flying about, so be careful,’ he warned as rumbling sounds increased where the tunnel reached a T-junction.
A conveyer belt moved steadily along against the far wall of the new tunnel and Colin could see the dim shapes of men through flying dust as they went about their work. One of the men looked up, raising an arm in greeting as he moved towards them.
‘That’s Kwakko, overseer on this level,’ Gareth told him. ‘Good man. The Africans need one of their own to get the best out of them.’
‘Good morning, sah,’ Kwakko pulled a neckerchief from his face as he approached them and addressed Gareth. ‘All work is ahead.’
Gareth showed his teeth in a smile and nodded. ‘Kwakko, this is Mr Grant.’ He introduced them, pleased to see Colin extend his hand to the black overseer. ‘We’ll
show him the new face. You should be well into it by now.’
‘Yes, sah.’ Kwakko turned to Colin. ‘You come?’ he said, lifting his mask back over his mouth and turning towards the sound of heavy machinery.
Gareth produced two rectangles of cloth from a pocket in the leg of his boiler suit, handing one to Colin and demonstrating its use as a mask before nodding in the direction of the noise and flying dust.
The machine was operated by three African workers. One man sat at main controls, his thin black hands moving skilfully over the shiny knobs and wheels, while two assistants operated levers at either end of the cutting blades.
Colin scrutinised the walls of the tunnel for the gleam of gold and saw nothing. He looked at the area where the cutters were chewing, peering through flying chips as he leant closer.
‘Where’s the gold?’ he shouted at Gareth, who pointed at the wall in front of them and held up his thumb. Puzzled, Colin stared hard and shook his head. He still couldn’t see any of the precious metal.
Kwakko was pointing at the revolving blades of the machine, evidently explaining their function and proudly indicating the operator, who threw himself into the spirit of things by making several adjustments to his knobs and switches in an exaggerated exhibition of efficiency. After a few minutes Gareth touched Colin on the shoulder and jerked his head back along the tunnel.
‘Where’s the gold?’ Colin asked again with a distinct tone of disappointment when he removed his mask. ‘I didn’t see any gold.’
The Welshman smiled and drew him over to the rumbling conveyer belt. ‘There’s your gold, boyo,’ he pointed to the moving detritus on the conveyer belt. ‘Everyone expects to see chunks of the stuff sticking out of the walls,’ he said, shaking his head in amusement. ‘It gives us a laugh watching their expressions, but it’s not like that at all.’ He lifted a handful of dust from the belt.
‘Two and a half ounces to the ton, that’s the average yield down here – and that’s good! But you’ve got to get it out of this stuff,’ he said as he spilled the dust from his hand. ‘Come on, we’ll head back up now and I’ll show you the furnaces.’
*
It was hot inside the smelting shed, its corrugated iron roof absorbing and magnifying the power of the noon-high sun. But even this heat was overpowered by the incandescent blast emanating from three oil-fired furnaces which ‘cooked’ the excavated earth in massive pots held hard in their mountings against the cherry redness of flames.
African workers, wearing only ragged shorts and worn sweatbands round their glistening foreheads, stood at the base of the number three furnace as the overhead crane manoeuvred to hook on to brackets on either side of the huge pot.
Gareth nudged him. ‘Now you’ll see the stuff, boyo! Now you’ll see the gold!’
The crane succeeded in hooking on and the huge pot, accompanied by a thermometer-bursting blast of heat, swung high through the shed to be tipped on to a loading chute for the travelling skips.
‘The furnace heats the ore until the particles filter through the drain holes into the base tray,’ Gareth explained. ‘Once the gold is collected, it’s ready for pouring. There you go; they’re pushing the mould in now.’
Sure enough, two men were manoeuvring a flat trolley into position under the lip of the base-tray. Another figure, a white man, approached the small knot of men.
‘That’s Fred O’Hara,’ Gareth told him. ‘He’s the shift supervisor and he’s got to be present at every pour. I’ll introduce you.’
Wild blue eyes stared into Colin’s face as he shook hands with Fred. At close quarters the man had a crazed look about him.
‘Heard we had a visitor,’ Fred inspected Colin, blinking slowly as though trying to squeeze moisture from dry eyes. ‘Right on time to catch a pour too. Just stand back a bit, it can spit when it hits the cold tray.’ He warned Colin, waving him off a pace.
‘Right?’ Fred looked at a sweating worker who stood by a large metal wheel.
‘Yes, sah!’
‘Okay.’ Fred inserted a key in a lock to release the wheel. ‘Slowly then,’ he instructed.
The man turned the wheel and the tray began to tilt, sending its glowing contents rippling towards the vee-shaped spout.
‘Steady! Steady!’ Fred fluttered his fingers delicately. ‘That’s it, you beauty!’ The liquid metal radiated light as it bled from the spout in a heavy, golden stream.
Colin stared, hypnotised. Gold! Raw gold, fresh from mother earth. It was all he had ever imagined. In a few moments the base-tray was vertical, the last blob of richness sliding heavily into the mould, melding like quicksand into the glowing coalescence of the pool.
‘Good pour!’ Fred opened his eyes wide at the wheelman in appreciation, receiving a broad, pink-gummed smile in return.
Colin had been too engrossed to notice the arrival of the two soldiers who stepped forward to take command of the trolley, one of them pulling it forward a few feet to allow the second soldier to take up position at the rear.
‘Right then?’ Fred addressed the towing soldier, receiving a nod of acknowledgement before the three of them moved off towards a door at the end of the shed where another soldier stood guard.
‘Weighing room and vault,’ Gareth explained as they followed behind the trolley. ‘The gold is made up into 400-ounce ingots in here and locked away in the vault.’
‘Why all the soldiers?’ Colin asked, although he was pretty certain he already knew their purpose.
‘Security,’ Gareth confirmed his suspicions. ‘We had a bad scare about six months ago. A team from some political group tried to finance themselves by dynamiting the safe and liberating the gold – damn near done it too! They had to install a new vault and now they’ve got a permanent army unit practically living in the place.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘Huh?’ Gareth looked puzzled.
‘The men who tried to steal the gold? What happened to them?’
Gareth shook his head. ‘No mercy where their gold’s concerned. Fellow in charge of security, Major Judas Akaba, had the poor bastards shot where they stood.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Judas Akaba’s well named. He’d shoot his own grandmother if she as much as touched a pennyweight of his precious gold.’
Colin looked away and swallowed before speaking again. ‘Didn’t look much in that last pour.’
‘I’d estimate 250, 270 ounces there, boyo,’ Gareth told him. ‘We’re into rich ground just now. Averaging 2.8 ounces to the ton, we are.’
‘How much gold do they get in a shift?’
‘Government’s ordered us to increase production to at least two pours from each furnace every day.’
Colin tried to work out the totals in his head, but the effort was too much and he merely nodded, impressed by the figures.
‘Come on, boyo.’ Gareth led him up to the door that had just let the gold trolley pass through. ‘You’ll have your chance to get rich now.’ He beckoned to a puzzled Colin and led him through the door.
Air conditioning made it almost cold in the well-lit office they entered and for a moment Colin thought they were in a bank, as he took in the broad counter and thick security screens rising to meet the ceiling. There were two soldiers lounging on a bench facing the counter and as he looked a door opened behind them to allow two other squaddies into the office. The four soldiers exchanged desultory words before the first two left, allowing the new men to commandeer the bench where they made a show of inspecting their weapons.
Colin could see Fred O’Hara eyeing a set of scales as two white-coated Africans busied themselves with the fresh delivery. Fred looked round and came over to let them behind the counter. Suddenly his hands went out to squeeze Colin’s biceps, making him jerk in surprise.
‘Don’t think we’ve got too much to worry about here,’ he said, grinning inanely at a mystified Colin. ‘I’ve seen more muscle in a piccaninny’s pecker!’ He gave Colin’s arms another squeeze and
turned back to the scales.
Colin watched the weighing operation, keen to learn as much as he could about this fascinating business. One of the white-coated Africans smiled at him.
‘We are making up a standard 400-ounce ingot,’ he explained, eyeing the quivering indicator on the sensitive scales. ‘That’s … it!’ The needle steadied precisely on the 400 ounce mark.
‘What about that?’ Colin pointed to the excess gold remaining in the mould the man had poured from.
‘Next pour go on top till 400 ounces. Make one ingot.’ The smooth cheeks of the man rounded as he smiled. ‘Now all gold go for vault.’ He inclined his head towards the rear of the office.
A huge steel door stared balefully at Colin. It covered almost half the rear wall, highlights glinting forbiddingly on the massive steel portal.
The door opened silently, allowing the two workers to carry both the new ingot and the remains of the last pour over the metal step and into the strongroom.
‘Come on then,’ Fred beckoned Colin. ‘You wanted to see the gold, didn’t you?’ He made a courtly little bow and held his hand out in invitation.
A surge of excitement gripped Colin as he entered the interior of the Ashanti Goldfield Corporation’s gold store. Barely the size of his cell in Wandsworth Prison, with heavy steel shelving lining three walls, there was little room for the four men who crowded inside. Colin didn’t mind, he could have stood beside the gold forever. He held his breath without realising it, drinking in the sight of the gold bars and swallowing as they reflected opalescent waves of soft-hued, reddish light. It was all he could have hoped for, the intrinsic richness of the gold bringing a lump to his throat as, like thousands before him, he became mesmerised by the gleaming bars of Ashanti gold.
Ashanti Gold Page 5