by Tom Norton
The remainder of the conversations were unintelligible or pertained to working on vehicles.
The priest said to John, “You must have gone crazy filtering this out for me.”
“I didn’t have far to go, Father. Rick, there wasn’t a drilling derrick on site 22; maybe they were talking about site 23.”
“What are they going to do with all that drill pipe?”
“Yeah, make me look stupid. It sounds like they are just setting up a derrick at 22 and we know the one at 23 is already drilling and they have a shit load of pipe over there.”
The priest replied, “Sounds like it.”
John said, “Why would they be doing that, they are already in production and there is not enough room on the site for another steam turbine?”
Rick replied, “Just add that to our list of unknowns.”
John said to the priest, “We’ll be back after seven.”
Rick said, “Let me guess, we’re going to go have a beer.”
At their now favorite bar and a new friend, a barmaid, they ordered and waited. At the long bar sat someone in dirty work clothes and John said to Rick, “He’s a local, I’ll have the barmaid ask him what the hell pitch means in Icelandic.
“Can’t hurt unless it means bitch.”
The barmaid returned with two beers and sandwiches and John told her what he wanted her to do and she seemed more than happy to oblige. She looked over the bar at the local and said something to him and he looked to where the barmaid was looking at John and Rick. The guy got a very strange look on his face, sat a half finished beer on the counter and left looking straight ahead.”
“Oh shit,” said John, “I think we may be in deep trouble.”
“I think you’re right. How serious is it?”
“They were talking multi-millions of English pounds, so I’m thinking damned serious.”
“What should we do?”
John replied, “Get everything out of the hotel room that would make these people think we know anything about their deal and get out of Reykjavik. Call the priest and tell him the situation and to bring the recordings and his notes to us right now and leave them in the car outside; he should be in the clear; I hope.”
“Where we going?”
“I don’t know, down the coast highway until we come to another town. I don’t even know if there is another town, and take the battery out of your cell phone. All that guy knows is two trampy looking guys with long hair wanted to know what pitch meant. We clean up and he would never recognize us.”
The audio recordings and notes were in the back seat and within an hour they were on the highway east down the coast some sixty kilometers until they came to a small city named Selfoss that was quite modern and had several nice hotels. They stopped at a convenience store and bought razors and in the restroom got themselves in some kind of condition to even ask to rent a room.
In the room, they cleaned themselves up and went for dinner and on return John called the priest in Reykjavik on the hotel room phone.
“Father this is a friend. Do you have the rest of the paperwork done? Good. When can you get away for a day? Wednesday, good. You know that place you took us for lunch? Yeah that’s it. Just keep going on that highway until one of us flags you down. Buy gas. Ok, we’ll see you then.”
Rick said, “Day after tomorrow, huh?”
“Yeah, let’s just cool our heels and watch the games tomorrow in the bar downstairs.”
Wednesday about noon the two could see the priest’s car coming on the highway and Rick flagged him down, yelled, “Follow us,” and the priest followed the two to the hotel parking lot. When the priest got out of his car with a briefcase, he had a big grin on his face and getting close to John and Rick, he said, “I think I have it figured out.”
John said, “Let’s get inside out of this wind.”
The priest followed them to the hotel room and they all sat at the table next to the window.
John said to the priest, “Well let’s hear it.”
“Ok, and bear in mind I listened to the rest of the recording. Now this is just my theory you understand.”
John said, “I’m waiting Father.”
“Do you know what pitch means?”
“Tell me.”
“It’s a term used by some drillers for horizontal drilling.”
Rick said, “Like fracking?”
“Yes, they drill straight down and then curve the drill pipe to a horizontal position or whatever degrees they want. Do you understand?”
John replied, “Yes, but why in the hell would they do that?”
“At first I thought it was just to drill outside of the boundaries of the drill site, and that they are not supposed to do.”
“Well that makes sense, that’s what I would do.”
The priest said “It’s much too difficult and expensive to be drilling exploratory holes in all directions. Even if they did find a steam source they would have to justify another power plant on the site. They are limited in power output anyway by contract, something about losing pressure and waste water from the steam.”
“Well why are they horizontal drilling?”
“Hold on to your hat; just a theory mind you. They are drilling and running a casing between site 22 and site 23. Both sites are drilling towards each other at shallow depth and when they are connected site 22 will send steam to site 23 as a steam discovery.”
John replied, “Site 23 must be a dry hole, then and they will build a steam generator there as if it was over a stem vent.”
“Exactly.”
“Is there multi millions to be made by doing this?”
“No. I’m going to have a little fun with you boys; you think on it while I go downstairs and get some sandwiches. And think carefully, I’ll be back.”
The priest left the room and Rick said, “What in the hell is he talking about?”
“I don’t know, but if it’s supposed to be fun, let’s do the thinking about it carefully.”
“That’s not fair, he heard something on the audio we haven’t.”
“It was a long twenty minutes before the priest retuned and he said, “You got it yet?”
John said, “No, we haven’t got it yet.”
The priest said, “I love this. You know what they found when they drilled the hole on site 23?”
John and Rick looked at each other and said, “Gold,” and they both smiled.”
“That’s right, gold without any copper in it.”
John and Rick sat looking at each other, playing the last year or so in their minds.
Rick said, “That’s it. They can’t stay on the site unless the site goes into production.”
The priest said, “That’s right.”
John replied, “But they can’t mine gold; minerals are owned by the government.”
“No one will know they are mining gold and I bet you it isn’t very deep. From the numbers I’ve heard I would say fifty meters. They will set there over that gold and mine it for decades. Who is Sam?”
John replied, “The Neanderthal.”
“I think he’s in London. Let’s run through my notes of the last audio.”
“Let’s do it.”
With notes in hand the priest started, “Of most importance is the Professor and Robbi talking when they are alone and their calls to London. These were when the door was closed and the background noise diminished. During one of the discussions after making a call to London, the two were laughing about Sam, to the effect; did they think they could pull a scam like this off? Comments about London and a box of bones. More comments made about a hoax and the National Inquirer. One said surgery and they laughed. That bunch are screwed, they have nothing. There were numbers discussed in English pounds. This is a sweet deal. The drills will break surface in two weeks. Subsequent calls only dropped mention off all of this.”
John said, “You’ve got it balls on Father and in Iceland and London they think Sam is a hoax attempted by us.”
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“Right.”
Rick said, “It all fits, what a deal, huh?”
John said to the priest, “You like real good wine, Father?”
He replied, “I brought some.”
The three celebrated, not that they had benefitted in any way, but that they had solved a mind bending puzzle.
The priest said to the two, “I have to get back. What are your plans now?”
John said, “From here on out Father its going to get real dicey and not only could it be dangerous for you, it could end your position in the church. I think you had better bow out. Rick and I are already screwed and have nothing to lose, but you do.”
“Do you think it’s that serious?”
“Not this second, but from now on, yes. In dealing with these people we might be involved in something you would not want to be a party to.”
The priest replied, “Well, don’t do anything crazy.”
“We crossed that bridge a long time ago, Father. When you get back, have an excuse for this trip and destroy everything connecting you to us. Be assured we’ll never involve you in this thing.”
The priest said, “Ok, but if there is any way you can let me know how things are going, do it.”
Rick said, “Keep an eye on the Reykjavik classifieds.”
“Goodbye, gentlemen and good luck.”
After the priest had left, Rick said, “Now what?”
“We want Sam back to give to the Poles without the portion of the skull with the operation and we want a shit pot full of money from someone.”
“Blackmail?’
“Whatever. I don’t really give a shit if they mine that gold, somebody will if they don’t. You can’t keep something like this quiet if the Iceland government finds out. What good is it going to do to blow this thing apart? Then they’ll look at Sam and determine he’s a real artifact. If these people lose, we lose.”
“We don’t want to rock the boat here until we get Sam back and that gold disk. If we do, maybe someday down the road we will still be the discoverer of a Neanderthal that had brain surgery.”
Rick replied, “I’m still waiting for a plan.”
“I’ll let you know after a few beers.”
The next day John said to Rick, “First things first.”
“What’s first?”
“Getting Sam back.”
“In London?”
“Yeah, from that Masters and Miller outfit.”
“They are sitting with a box of bones that they think are fake or not valuable, so how hard can it be. We go after Masters and Miller first and get Sam and then whatever we can get out of these Icelanders.”
Rick said, “It was these Icelanders that took the disk, you can bet they kept it.”
“That would be my guess and we need it to down the road for Sam.”
“Well that’s a plan, how good it is I don’t know.”
“Make airline reservations for us out of Reykjavik to London tomorrow. I’m going to call Hendrick and have him meet us there. And I’m going to borrow some money from him and we, I emphasize we, are going to pay him back or die trying.”
Rick replied, “Emphasis on the die.”
The two arrived in London, rented a car and then rented a motel room and John gave Hendrick a call. He would fly into London that evening and take a cab to the motel.
Hedrick showed up at the motel and they drove to a recommended quiet upscale restaurant and took a table in a corner. Over dinner, John and Rick described everything they had been through and what they had learned.
Hendrick said, “That’s absolutely amazing. And now you’re going to try to get Sam and all our data?”
“Yes, we’re going to get Sam and everything they took from the lab, except the gold disk.”
“Is it going to be dangerous? You know I don’t need the money.”
“How about your personal integrity? This blows up in our face and Lin Lou won’t be able to give fried rice away.”
“People would find out we’re married?”
“Are you kidding me?”
Hendrick replied, “Ok, how do we get Sam back?”
John said, “We blackmail Masters and Miller. We know they have stolen property; they stole it from us and we want it back. We tell them we were working a deal with a tabloid rag and they screwed it up for us. Hopefully they won’t think we know a damned thing about Iceland. We will have two different operations, we get Sam and then we go for a cut of the gold, stocks, bonds or whatever; it all spends.”
Hendrick said, “Well I know how they will feel being blackmailed.”
“First we need false I.D., nothing special and I know a guy in London.”
“I bet you do.”
“Then we need a private place to work out of, like a house rental. We need a private vehicle too. I might as well get into the borrowing money from you right here Hendrick, I have spent a fortune.”
Hendrick replied, “I can handle the expenses.”
At the rental, Rick sat at his laptop writing a letter that John dictated to him. As they had discussed, it was a blackmail letter threatening to expose Masters and Miller for breaking and entering a college lab, stealing personal belongings from the lab and as well stealing what was in the cave in Poland. It was hinted that these were part of a business deal that had been shut down due to the loss of all of these personal belongings. If everything was not returned with some penalty for the business loss incurred, the owners would file a formal complaint with the London authorities. Masters and Miller could reply with a classified Personal ad in the London Times.
“That should do it,” said John. “They sure as hell don’t want to jeopardize the gold deal over a bag of bones.”
Hendrick replied, “I wouldn’t think so.”
“We’ll go down town and have a courier deliver the letter. We can’t have just anyone there reading it so Masters or Miller will have to sign for it. It says they are alive on their web page.”
Rick said, “When do you think we’ll hear from them?”
John replied, “A day to digest it, a couple days for them looking for us in Germany and a couple days looking for us here in London.”
“What are they going to tell the Icelanders?”
“I don’t think they will tell them anything. They don’t want to get them upset.”
Hendrick said, “You’re probably right, over what they think was going to be an illegal scam. They’ll probably be happy to not be involved. They don’t need a lot of publicity right now.”
John said, “Well let’s get downtown and send them the letter.”
After a courier was sent from the far side of London, they stopped at a pub close to the rental and had a beer or two.
John said, “It’ll be quite some time now, there’s no need for all of us to be here, but I’m concerned about you two if you go back to Berlin. They certainly know who we are and we don’t know what kind of people we’re dealing with. Yeah, Masters and Miller is a big engineering and geothermal company, but they sure as hell are crooks too, with millions of pounds at stake.”
Hendrick replied, “We’ll just have to stick it out and see what happens. How about you Rick?”
“No raving beauties in Berlin waiting for me.”
John said, “Let’s not get sloppy. Everything we do from now on we cover our ass one hundred percent. We can’t let them locate us or things could get a little intense. They will reply in the newspaper; they have to.”
Five days passed and in the personals was a short piece from MM that said, “We have to know who we are dealing with.”
John said, “They want to make sure we are who they think we are. Rick, write a note to the effect. We are the people you screwed. The deal we had going before you got involved is dead now. We want everything that you took. We don’t want any of it to see the light of day and unless we have it we can’t be sure of that. An additional thirty thousand pounds will be far from compensating us. We also want to know why you took our prope
rty; you have not done anything with it.”
In a few days, from MM was; “We will have to meet. Time and place.”
John said, “Time and place my ass.”
The reply to MM this time by mail was; “No time, no place, is it a deal?”
The reply was, “Where did you get the trinket? Is it of value to you? It was lost.”
Johns returning letter said. “Paid a lot for the trinket on black market. Authentic Viking artifact for our project. Add two thousand pounds for the trinket.”
To this Rick said, “We need the gold disk?”
John replied, “They don’t have it, the Icelanders do, but they wouldn’t give it to us anyway.”
Hendrick said, “You know what I’m thinking? MM thinks one of the Icelanders took some of the gold from the drill discovery and peddled it to someone.”
“That’s what I would think, since there isn’t any other gold like that in the world.”
“I bet somebody is going to get their hand slapped over that.”
John replied, “Probably a lot more than their hand.”
The next reply from MM was, “How do you want to handle it?”
This had been a problem for John, Hendrick and Rick and they had talked about it for weeks in case Masters and Miller went for the deal. How to get all of the stuff with no risk. It was determined that there would always be risk, but they would have to minimize it.
Rick came up with the best idea, which was quite expensive and was not in their original plan to turn the Neanderthal to the Poles, but that all went by the wayside anyway when they found out about the gold discovery. The plan they finally agreed on was to have Masters and Miller deliver, what would be boxes, to a very upscale security storage facility in Berlin where a lot of wealthy Germans stored valuables like antiques, rare paintings, gold and the like. It would be delivered as a prearranged lot number and the facility would then give the material a number known only to John, Hendrick and Rick.