Soul Intent

by dennis batchelder

  Shamelessly facilitated by Soul Identity. “Did they ever suspect you?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “The media wakes up every few years with another theory,” he said. “And every now and then another old soldier issues a confession about how he inadvertently slipped Hermann Goering the cyanide. I certainly am not going to reveal to them our role in the matter.”

  Marie pointed out the window at the river below us. Small fields encased it, and young evergreen forests rimmed the edges. “Is that the Danube down there?” she asked.

  George glanced out. “Yes, and that city you see up ahead is Bratislava. We’re over halfway to Kosice.”

  I had pulled out a map. “Why not Presov?” I asked. “It looks like it’s the closest city.”

  “The airport is now army-only,” he said. “Kosice is twenty miles away.”

  “Flora, I thought you mentioned the opal mines were in Hungary,” Val said, looking over my shoulder. “Dubnik’s in Slovakia.”

  “Now it is,” Madame Flora said. “When my grandfather was there, that land was part of Hungary.”

  “As part of our prep work, I researched the history,” George said. “After World War One, this area joined up with the brand-new Czecho-Slovakia. Then during World War Two, it became part of the Slovak Republic. The Soviets re-united Czechoslovakia until 1993, when the two split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.”

  “Was it the turmoil that kept you away?” I asked Madame Flora.

  She nodded. “Baba died in 1948, but the communists got here before I could organize a trip.”

  “They’ve been gone twenty years, Grandma. Since we were born,” Rose said. “Are you sure your gold is still there?”

  “How can I be sure?” she asked. “Nobody’s mined there since 1918, though recently I heard a visitor’s center will open, and a diving group is organizing tours.”

  “Who wants to dive in a mine?” Marie asked.

  “Lots of people,” George said. “Thrill seekers. The lower half of the Viliam gallery has been flooded for sixty-something years, and supposedly it’s fabulous. I found some diving sites that rave about the crystal-clear waters and opals shining in the walls.”

  Rose looked at her grandmother. “Is this why you had me and Marie spend two summers taking diving lessons?”

  The old lady smiled.

  I sat down with Madame Flora, Archie, and George when we were an hour away. “You buried the gold in an abandoned opal mine,” I said to Madame Flora.

  She nodded.

  “And since the mine is now flooded, we’ll have to dive to recover it.”

  George held up his hand. “I ordered four suits and rebreathers for you young people to use.”

  I looked at him. “Do you have a map of the mine?”

  “Of course.” He reached into an overhead compartment and pulled out a tube. He withdrew a map, unrolled it, and spread it on the table. “After some detective work, we got our hands on these plans,” he said. “They were made in 1918, right before operations shut down.”

  I looked at the map. “This place is huge,” I said.

  “More than thirteen miles of tunnels.” George tapped one particularly complex section. “This gallery is the part that’s underwater. It’s a quarter-mile in. Multiple levels are connected to each other by shafts and rail ramps. Most of them connect back to this other gallery here, but not all of them. Some dead-end into the cave walls, and others look like blind alleys.”

  I couldn’t think of a worse place to dive. Val would be in jeopardy of wearing out her singing voice as she kept me calm.

  I turned to Madame Flora. “Where’s it hidden?”

  “I’m not telling you. Not yet.”

  “Are you sure you remember?”

  She turned on that wide-eyed stare of hers. “I’m sure.”

  The pilot dropped under some clouds, and Val and I got a great view of the High Tatras to the north, the part of the Carpathians marking the border between Slovakia and Poland.

  “Good thing the gold’s not up there,” Val said. “Those mountains are covered with snow.”

  “And look at those cliffs.” I reached out and took her hand. “I’m really not looking forward to the diving. Are you still feeling committed?”

  “Absolutely.” She squeezed my hand. “You’ll be okay.”

  “Just stay close to me and be ready to sing if I panic.”

  “You don’t have to dive, you know.”

  “And let you girls have all the fun?”

  We sat quietly for a minute. Then I said, “There’s another reason I want to dive. Old Ned has drawn me in—now I need to be there.”

  It seemed to me that the stories I’d heard from the World War Two era were filled with larger-than-life heroes and villains, and packed with high-definition drama, romance, and tragedy. Was this part of history a golden age, or did it just stand out as the New World’s bridge between the Great Depression and its rise to prosperity?

  Ned Callaghan was an old man by the time he made his trip with Flora. Though his personal life was in shambles, he fought in both world wars, and it seemed he died helping the granddaughter of a man who twice saved his life. In just a week, he’d become a hero to me, one I was bound to by our shared soul identity. I wanted to ensure his relevancy, and the best way I could do that would be to learn all I could about him, and then put his story into our soul line collection. I couldn’t wait to hear the rest of his final adventure.

  I wanted to help him finish his mission. And that’s why I had to dive.

  We landed at Kosice airport and got into a large green van. George climbed into the driver’s seat. “We’ll head directly to the mines,” he said. “It should take less than an hour.”

  I turned to Madame Flora. “What happened when you brought the gold to Dubnik?”

  forty

  October 1946

  Dubnik Mine, Czechoslovakia

  Flora gripped their guide Vlado’s outstretched hand and hopped down from the back of the horse-drawn wagon. “I felt every bump of that trip,” she told him, even though she figured he didn’t understand.

  She stretched and looked around the clearing. Two rusting ore cars sat on railroad tracks, which ran into what must have been the mine’s entrance in the side of a hill. A wooden shack stood beside the tracks.

  They had arrived five hours earlier at Presov Station, and while the Major arranged transportation to the mine, Flora searched for a guide who spoke German and English. They both were partially successful: they were now the proud owners of two wagons, and they were accompanied by an old man named Vlado who claimed he once worked the mines, and who demonstrated a vocabulary of a few Romany, German, and English words.

  But he couldn’t easily string those words together in any decipherable order, Flora soon realized. In the long ride to the Dubnik mine entrance, Vlado’s communication was mainly about his name, his fee, and his joy that the war was over.

  The second wagon rolled to a stop next to them, and the Major and the captain’s man, Dieter, clambered off the barrels and jumped to the ground.

  “Crikey, I thought we’d never reach here.” Callaghan whacked the iron-rimmed wagon wheel with his cane. “Bloody wagons. Who would have guessed there would be no trucks in Presov?”

  The Major directed Dieter to unload the barrels, boxes, and equipment, but when he started, Vlado began shouting in Slovakian and waving his arms.

  “What’s he saying?” Callaghan asked Flora.

  “I don’t know,” Flora said. She tried to talk to him in Romany, but he continued to shout. She switched to German, then English, with the same results.

  “Dieter, stop unloading for a minute,” Callaghan said.

  When Dieter stopped, Vlado went silent.

  “We can’t afford to attract any attention,” Callaghan said. “What the devil is making him holler?”

  Dieter cleared his throat. “Vlado say verboten to stay here, sir. Mine is haunted.”

  “You understan
d him?” Callaghan asked.

  He nodded. “A little. I served with Slovak SS unit on Russian front. Good little fighters.”

  “Tell him we need to unload these bloody barrels and find a hidey hole in the bloody mine.”

  Dieter shook his head. “Sorry sir, I don’t understand. Hidey hole?” He looked at Flora.

  Flora translated for Dieter, who talked to the guide while they waited. After a few minutes Vlado spat on the ground and stalked off.

  “Where’s he going?” Flora asked Dieter.

  “Home. He won’t help us. He says to keep the fee.”

  “You can’t let him go!” she said. “He’ll just tell the others.”

  Dieter ran after Vlado and dragged him back. The old man shouted, and Dieter clamped his hand over his mouth.

  “Everybody around here thinks the mines are haunted?” Callaghan asked Dieter.

  Dieter asked Vlado, who nodded.

  The Major turned to Flora and spoke softly. “Then it won’t matter if he knows—nobody’s going to go down there.”

  The Major was right. But maybe she could help spice up the story. She spoke to Dieter again. “Tell him we knew the place was haunted, and that’s why we came.”

  He looked at her. “We did?”

  She nodded. “The Major and I did. Tell him.”

  Dieter shrugged. He told Vlado, and the old man stopped struggling and opened his eyes wide. He said something to Dieter, who held up his hand and spoke to Flora. “He wants to know what you have in the barrels.”

  “Cognac, but you already knew that.”

  Dieter stared back. “Why are you putting cognac into a mine?”

  She smiled. “Because of what’s in the boxes.”

  Dieter translated for Vlado. Then he turned to Flora. “What’s in the boxes?”

  “Strigoi morti,” she said.

  At that, with no translation necessary, Vlado started shouting again, and he clawed at Dieter.

  “I can’t hold him much longer,” Dieter said. He blocked the guide from biting his forearm.

  “Tell him that I am their Gypsy servant,” Flora said. “We’ve brought enough cognac to keep them calm for many years. But tell him that nobody should come here again, or the strigoi will become angry at the trespassers, and they will descend on them and their children.”

  Dieter relayed this to Vlado, who nodded his head vigorously. Dieter let him go, and the old man fell on his knees in front of Flora and spoke to her.

  “What’s he saying?” she asked Dieter.

  “He promises on the graves of his wife and oldest son to tell everybody to stay away. But you must tell the strigoi that he is a good man.”

  Flora nodded and pulled out her purse from under her shirt. She gave Vlado triple his negotiated fee, and he took the money and shoved it in his pants.

  “Tell him this—I will give the strigoi his name. Any mistakes…” she let her voice trail off and clasped her fist over her heart.

  Dieter repeated this to Vlado, who shook his head, stood up, and shuffled out of the clearing without looking back.

  Major Callaghan cleared his throat. “That was a sight to behold. What did you tell him?”

  “That we’re hiding cognac.”

  He shook his head. “I heard you say that. But what put the bee in his bonnet?”

  She grinned “I told him about the strigoi morti in the boxes.” At his blank look, she said, “Undead vampires.”

  The Major chuckled. “That’ll keep anybody away—including me,” he said. He pointed at the horizon. “The sun goes down early in the mountains. We ought to set up camp.”

  The men raised two tents, close to the mine’s entrance, and Flora built a fire next to the abandoned ore carts. They heated their “K” ration meals in the coals and ate quickly.

  “So this is where your grandfather worked before coming to Australia,” the Major said.

  Flora nodded. “Baba gave me his old map of the tunnels. I need your help choosing the best place to hide everything.”

  “I’ve seen his map,” he said. “Raddy had it hanging on the wall in his front room before we went to war.” He was silent for a moment. “Your grandfather told me a story of those ghosts Vlado was hollering about.”

  “Do you really believe in ghosts?” she asked.

  “We miners are a superstitious lot, Flora. And every mine has its share of ghosts.” The Major rummaged in his bag and pulled out a pocket knife.

  “What did he tell you?” she asked.

  He reached over to the firewood pile and selected a long and straight stick. He used the knife to strip the branches, tossing the shavings into the fire. “I reckon I shouldn’t be scaring you with the story.”

  She shivered. “I can handle it.”

  Callaghan sharpened the end of the stick to a point and ran his finger over it. He cocked his head at the other man. “You listening, Dieter?”

  “Yes, sir.” He sat across the fire from Flora and Callaghan, as far away as possible from the boxes.

  The Major smiled. “Good. Then I only have to tell this once,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I’m reciting the story your grandfather told me, Flora. I cannot vouch for its accuracy.”

  She nodded.

  The Major used the pointed end of his stick to stir up the fire’s embers. “Raddy told me these mines have been active for a thousand years, and he reckoned even longer. Many generations of families spent their lives chasing the opals. And for most of that time, Dubnik was the only opal mine in the world.”

  He cleared his throat. “Flora, your grandfather told me that when he first came to Dubnik, he and three other miners were dropping a new shaft under the Viliam and Fedo galleries. They had sunk it down forty or fifty feet chasing an opal vein when bam!” He smacked the fire’s embers with his stick, sending sparks flying in the air.

  Both Flora and Dieter jumped.

  The Major looked at them and chuckled. “Nervous Nellies, hey? Raddy and his mates fell right through the collapsed floor. The four of them tumbled down a steep and slippery chute that opened into a large cavern. They dropped twenty feet or so and landed in a small lake of water.”

  Callaghan drove the stick point-first into the ground and reached up with his hand to the top of it. “About this deep—halfway up their chests. Their torches and lamps and tools landed in the water, and it was pitch black in the cavern. The water was cold, and they didn’t dare move for the fear of stepping in a hole and drowning.”

  He looked at Flora. “Your grandfather said they hollered for help, all the time getting colder. They heard nothing but the drip, drip, drip of water from above. They started poking around, and one of them found a ledge they could clamber on.

  “Once on the ledge, they dove into the dark water and retrieved their lamps. They somehow got one lit, and looked around to see where they had fallen.”

  The Major used his stick to prod some red and orange embers out of the fire. “Look how these glow,” he said. “That’s what old Raddy and his mates saw in the cavern walls.”

  “Die opale.” Dieter said.

  He nodded. “Aye. Opals, glistening in the walls, lit by the lamp. Opals the size of your fist, reflecting and amplifying the lamplight in grand swaths of green and red. And on the roof, around the stalactites, opals glinting back at them in deep purples and blues. A huge nest of the noble opals, guaranteed to make the four of them rich.

  “There was a problem—the opals by rights belonged to their employer, Solomon Goldschmidt, the Viennese jeweler who had leased the mine,” he said. “Another problem—and I reckon it was bigger than the first—was how Raddy and his mates were to get out of the cavern and return to the surface.

  “But they didn’t let either of these bother them. Instead, they dove for their picks and shovels, and they pulled the fattest, juiciest opals they had ever seen out of the wall behind the ledge. They filled their pockets, then they made a pile of the larger ones at their feet on the ledge.”

 
The Major poked at the now-dim embers. “The lamp was low on fuel, and the glimmer from the opals was weak, just like this. They lit another lamp, and then their last one.” He looked at Dieter. “And only then their opal lust died down enough for them to think about how they were going to get out.

  “Your grandfather, Flora, was the scrawniest, smallest man among the four. After hours and maybe even days of arguing in the dark, they decided to send him up to get some ropes and buckets. The chute’s opening was high over their heads, and the cavern’s wall was slippery from the water and slime that oozed out of it.

  “They were in a fine fettle, I reckon. To encourage him to return all the quicker, they made Raddy leave his pocketful of opals behind, and warned him not to tell anybody about the treasure. Then the biggest miner planted himself in the water up against the wall, and the next stood on his shoulders, and the next on his. Raddy climbed this human ladder, and he was able to touch the base of the chute.

  “Raddy asked his mate to lift him up by his ankles, and after many tries and many tumbles back into the water, he was finally able to pull himself up and into the slippery tube.”

  Callaghan shook his head. “He told his mates he’d be back soon, and then Raddy shimmied up the chute in the dark. He was bone tired by the time he reached the shaft, but he made it to the ladder and pulled himself up.

  “The gallery was deserted. Your grandfather had to drag himself in the dark out of the mine. When he finally reached the entrance, he collapsed on the ground.” The Major looked around, then pointed at Dieter. “Probably right about where you’re sitting, young man.”

  Dieter shuddered, and Callaghan smiled.

  “Right before he passed out, Raddy told the foreman about the shaft and the chute and his three trapped mates, but he kept mum on the opals.” The Major dropped his voice to a whisper. “He didn’t wake up for a day and a half.”

  “Did they rescue the other miners?” Flora asked.

  He sucked some air through his teeth. “The foreman told Raddy that he sent a boy down the chute with a rope tied around his waist, but after a few minutes they heard a piercing scream. They hauled on the rope, and found it had been cut, its end soaked red with blood. The screams continued for another hour, but the foreman refused to send anybody else down.