by Tom Norton
This was agreed to by MM and they wanted to know when to deliver the material. The three communicated with the storage facility as to the conditions of the deposit in their facility and they requested a thousand pounds per year storage fee.
A delivery time was decided on, the money paid the storage facility and if everything went as planned this would be a big relief, because now the three had evidence of their discovery if they ever found an opportunity to use it.
After delivery was confirmed and arrangements made with the secure storage facility for John to examine the contents of the boxes, the three sat at the now very familiar small table in the rental and Rick said, “Now what?”
John replied, “We can’t do a damned thing until they start mining gold and have taken some off the site. Before that, if they get caught sending steam from site 22 to site 23 they’ll lose their contract, maybe pay a fine and get kicked off site 23. That doesn’t do us any good. We want some of the gold or money from the gold they are mining.”
Hendrick replied, “That could be a couple years.”
“Nothing we can do about that. Until then I think we’re in the clear with these people in London and Iceland.”
Rick said, “What in the hell are we going to do until then?”
John replied, “The same thing you would be doing if you weren’t getting a shit pot full of money down the road. We were screwed before we heard of Masters and Miller and the Icelanders. Hopefully there is thirty seven thousand pounds in that storage facility in those boxes.”
Hendrick said, “I don’t need any of it.”
“Thank you for that.”
“Actually, I could lend you two enough to get by on.”
John said to Rick, “See I told you everything would work out.”
Rick replied, “Oh yeah, now all we have to do is blackmail the Icelanders and Masters and Miller out of that shit pot of money you are always talking about. And Masters and Miller are going to be pissed.”
“That’s all down the road.”
A year passed and during that time John had made a trip to the security storage, inventoried the contents and recovered thirty seven thousand pounds in cash. Everything was there, but the gold disk. He copied all of the excavation video and audio to flash drives on a laptop.
John, Hendrick and Rick kept their eyes and ears open and looked at the Reykjavik newspaper on the internet in respect to geothermal sites. They managed to determine that site 23 now had the status of power plant under construction and would be completed in nine months.
The three had returned home to a mountain of mail and much of it being from the University of Berlin. They had been officially divorced from the University of Berlin and if the University could manage, from the scientific community as a whole. It was the consensus that the three had tried to undertake a hoax at the expense of the University and eleven students who had been duped into unknowingly contributing to the hoax. Everyone involved had determined that it was in their interest to never bring this failed hoax to light.
Hendrick was living an obscure normal life with Lin Lou in Berlin because he could afford to. John and Rick decided they would worry about their finances after they were broke.
Rick suggested to John that because they had the audio and video from the excavation site as well as some video and the audio recordings from sites 22 and 23 they had taken in Iceland, they should make a documentary. Rick said they had little else to do while waiting for the piss pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
With a little thought, John decided that it might come in real handy when negotiating with the Icelanders and again with Masters and Miller.
They set up what was a small studio in the house and with multiple computers and monitors, started on what was an arduous task of making somewhat of a documentary.
Rick said, “You know, when we are dead and gone, which I figure is about a year from now, the University is going to howl when we stick this up its ass.”
“Well, let’s try to stay alive, I want to do the sticking.”
“You know all this Icelandic audio will have to be close captioned on the video.”
Rick replied, “I’ll write the priest and see if he is headed this way in the next year.”
“Good.”
“When do you think they’ll start mining the gold?”
John replied, “I don’t know. I don’t even know how they are going to do it, but they have to go straight down and that won’t be easy.”
“Why don’t we go nose around a little and take some video. The worst they can do is kill us and they are going to do that anyway.”
“Why don’t we? I’m about to go crazy and its dead summer there. How about a tourist cruise? I can get fake passports no problem and they aren’t looking real hard for terrorists heading for Iceland from London.”
Two months later John and Rick were on a cruise ship with Hendrick who used the excuse he was tired of Chinese food. With three fake IDs, they registered at a hotel that catered to cruise ship tourists and settled in.
Rick called the priest and invited him to have dinner with the three at a local restaurant late in the evening.
At the restaurant, John explained to the priest the status of the project and informed him that they were going after the Icelanders involved in the site 23 scheme as well as Masters and Miller. They were in effect going to blackmail the bunch for whatever they could get out of them and John said to the priest, “I assume you don’t want to be involved in something like this, but I hope you won’t mind too much if we are.”
The priest replied, “I can see where you should be compensated for the personal hardships this thing has caused you and I have nothing against anything you do to these crooks. But I do have concerns about Iceland being robbed of their resources.”
John said, “We could not have told you our plan.”
“I realize that.”
John said, “Well here it is Father. If you didn’t know about the gold below site 23 you wouldn’t care. If Iceland didn’t know, they wouldn’t care either and Masters and Miller would take it all. My understanding is that this is hydrothermal gold and will be for the most part in one solid piece and it must be one hell of a chunk of gold.”
“What we get from Masters and Miller will be insignificant to what’s there and any money lost by Iceland.”
The priest replied, “You plan on getting yours and then blowing the lid off this thing?”
“How are we going to do that without going to prison as accomplices?”
“I don’t know.”
John said, “I don’t either, but we will work on it.”
The priest thought for a moment and then said, “Maybe I shouldn’t be involved in this at all. I will trust in the Lord that it will work out to the benefit of you and Iceland.”
“My thoughts exactly. You and the church have never been involved, but hold that thought until we finish dinner and that bottle of wine.”
The next day the three took a sightseeing flight that came reasonably close to site 23 and video recorded the site and Rick said to John, “What’s that building on the site, none of the other sites have it?”
“Now, how in the hell would I know?”
“Do you think the pilot would fly over it?”
John replied, “Ask him, there are only three other tourists, he might.”
By the time Rick was back in his seat the airplane was banking to the left and the public address system stated that they would be flying over one of the many hydrothermal electricity generating facilities.”
Rick video recorded every second, approaching, over, and leaving the site and nodded to John and Hendrick. The remainder of the flight was over numerous volcanoes and mountain glaciers.
chapter 6
everyone is screwed
At the hotel the three watched the video numerous times and it looked much different than it did when they were drilling. Now it looked like site 22 that had been in production, but for some reas
on, site 23 had a large building on it that no other power generating facilities had.
Hendrick said, “You can bet your ass that building has something to do with the mining, but how do they get away with that?”
John replied, “Well, I guess that’s the first thing we do, is to find out. It looks to be at least four stories tall and maybe one end has a door on rollers like an airport hangar.”
Rick said, “Other than that it’s a duplicate of site 22, a lot of vehicles and people walking around. Everything has MM on it, I guess Masters and Miller. I think the drilling outfit is completely gone.”
Hendrick looking at the monitor said, “There’s that truck we saw leaving the site, but its load is covered.”
John said, “My guess is that its rock. They are digging and they have to get rid of the rock somewhere. They sure as hell can’t have people asking where the rock is coming from. We’ll check on that too and see what they are doing with it. We’ll take some video of the whole thing. Maybe we can determine how deep they are. We can’t stay here very long, it’s definitely not cheap in this place, can you believe ten krona for a fish sandwich?”
Hendrick replied, “No, but I can believe it’s a fish sandwich. Don’t these people eat anything besides fish?”
Rick said, “I saw one orange in the store and it looked like a big orange raisin. Hell, nobody could afford to buy it.”
It required a trip to the public library to find out that the large building at site 23 was a building that had been proposed by Masters and Miller to build another drilling derrick for other proposed sites and also to repair the existing drilling rigs. There had been quite a row over this and a member of the government insisted on it to the point others conceded to him.
John said, “Oh great, now we have a political crook in on the deal. They are drilling again from inside that building.”
Hendrick said, “That doesn’t sound like a very cost effective way to mine that gold.”
“It isn’t. They have something up their sleeve.”
Rick said, “Maybe they are going to melt it somehow and suck it out.”
“That is physically impossible. I think we had better do a little investigating. We could use some more on the spot video anyway; we don’t have to get close. First thing, let’s check out the trucks leaving the site.”
John said, “Here comes the truck down the highway and I can see Hendrick way behind him.” When the truck passed their secluded parking spot, John said, “Ok, Hendrick will pull off. Wait until the truck rounds the corner up there and then get on his tail, but stay way back.”
Twenty kilometers later and nearing the coastline that was for the most part steep cliffs and ravines into the ocean, the trucker pulled off the road, unlocked a gate, pulled through and relocked the gate and then headed towards the ocean nearby.
John said to Rick, “Stop by the gate and take off with the video camera, if I ran that far I’d keel over.”
“How far?”
“Hell I don’t know, until you see what he is hauling and what he does with it.”
“Ok, I’m outa here.”
With Rick running down the truck road, John pulled around a nearby corner and walked back to where he could see the truck road and he drank a beer.”
Within fifteen minutes the truck was back at the gate and leaving and after thirty minutes Rick could be seen slowly walking up the steep grade of the truck road.
Another ten minutes and John picked him up and John immediately asked, “Well?”
“He dumped it in the ocean off a cliff. There’s a ramp there for the truck to back up on.”
“What did he dump?”
Rick replied, “I don’t know. After he left I looked around on the ramp for something, but what little was on the ramp looked just like the rock off the ramp. I recorded the whole thing on zoom because he was already dumping when I got to the first place I could see him. It just looked black or brown to me.”
“Did you get good video of the truck and license number?”
“Yeah, a plain white truck, no markings.”
John said, “Well, that about does it here. I have the place marked on the map; we’ll see who owns the property or the truck.”
At the hotel the three met in the room and Hendrick said, “You saw the guard they have at the highway gate to site 23?”
John replied, “Saw him. Let’s see what Rick’s got on video.”
The video was run once through and it was as Rick had said, white truck no markings and dumping something out the back of the truck and off the cliff that was about ten meters high. Whatever was dumped was very dark in color and fell directly into the ocean. The video of the license plate and the driver was crystal clear.
John said to Rick, “Play it back slow so we can get a better look of what he was dumping.”
“I can’t, I didn’t take it in slow motion, but I can show it one frame at a time.”
“Well, do that then.”
As the still pictures came up one at a time, Hendrick said, “I don’t know what it is, but it has to be mine tailings.”
John replied, “We’ll know more tomorrow because I’m going to be down there watching.”
Hendrick said, “You could be there all day.”
“You would be surprised how long I can set in one place if I have enough beer.”
John sat at a concealed spot with the video camera already positioned and waited for the truck to show up. Eight hours and eight beers later the truck arrived, the camera was turned on and John concentrated on the material as it left the truck for its fall into the ocean.
The truck left and John slowly made his way back to Hendrick and Rick waiting with the car at the gate.
John said, “Let’s look at it on your laptop and tell me what you think.”
Hendrick said, “Those are big pieces of rock and some of them must be nearly a meter in size. They can’t be from their core drill.”
John replied, “That all depends on how big their core drill is.”
“I’ve never heard of a core drill bigger than twenty five centimeters.”
“Well I have.”
Rick said, “It would have to be at least a one meter core drill.”
John replied, “Probably is. All they have to do is get men and equipment down there and then they can do whatever they want.”
“And we can’t do shit until they start hauling gold out of there.”
“That’s about it. Other than borrowing steam from site 22 they are perfectly legal. Let’s get to town, I’m starved and I want to look at the video again.”
After dinner the three sat and watched the video of the material sliding from the dump truck and stopped the video several times.
Hendrick said, “Those pieces have some curved edges, so they are definitely from a core drill.”
Rick said, “Tomorrow I’ll search the web and find out about large core drills. We need to know when they are going to hit gold, like you say we can’t stay here forever.”
John replied, “So far it looks like one truck of tailings a day and that can give us some idea too. I’m guessing a couple meters a day. That truck was nowhere near full. Tomorrow let’s see who owns the truck, learn more about the core drill and wind it up here in Iceland. We don’t have to know the minute they remove any gold from the site as long as they have removed some when we confront Masters and Miller.
Back in Berlin, John and Rick continued with their documentary by adding new footage. They had calculated that with a lot of unknowns and guesses that the drilling would continue for about a month. The only way to know for sure is if the truck stopped dumping tailings that had no curved edges indicative of a core drill, but typical of mining underground.
Of interest was that the owner of a small trucking company hauling the rock just happened to be the politician that insisted on the large building at site 23.
The only way to get the information on the truck loads was for one of them to monitor the dump site
and one of the three would go to Iceland in a month.
Rick said to John, “How much are you going to ask for from Masters and Miller?”
John replied, “I’ve been thinking about that. The more I see, the more I think there is a hell of a lot more gold down there than I imagined. I’m thinking two million pounds and we’ll see what their reaction is. I have a knack for that.”
“My next question is, are they going to kill us?”
“Not if we play it right. We have to prove to them that if they kill us, their entire operation is finished and probably some prison time for some. I’m working on that.”
Some days later, Rick said to his two friends, “I’ll go to Iceland and watch the truck. If we need to determine what they are dumping is from drilling or mining, I can walk up and down that slope easier than you guys.”
Hendrick replied, “That sound good to me. It’s starting to get cold there too.”
John said, “Alright, but keep your car around the bend and that’s another couple hundred meters.”
“No problem.”
A quick flight to London and then to Iceland and Rick arrived with his fake ID. He had been around Reykjavik enough that he was recognized by a few of the waitresses and bar tenders so it was not like he was a complete stranger in a foreign land.
He rented a cheap motel room and in the morning rented an older model pickup truck like could be seen on the highways in Iceland. With a sack lunch, he headed down the highway towards the drill sites.
As Rick saw the site 23 road in the distance, the dump truck pulled out onto the highway and Rick thought to himself, “Damn, here was a trip for nothing.”
Hanging way back, he followed the truck to the dump road but, the truck didn’t turn in and kept right on going.