“Supper’s ready in a few minutes,” the hotel manager announced primly, poking her head tentatively through the open doorway, surprised to find Charlie there.
“We’ll show it to Andre, maybe he can figure it out,” Charlie decided, as he left for the dining room.
The meals were improving. Nadia and Elaina had been advising the cooks on dishes that were more acceptable to foreign tastes. The group had also learned that it was better to refrain from asking “what’s in this?” The dining area was also better lighted than before. Some of the burnt out bulbs had been replaced. The staff also seemed friendlier, but the dombra player had not reappeared.
Of course, it also helped that Andre seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of Chilean wine. “This is one of my favorites,” he told them enthusiastically. It’s a Cono Sur Sauvignon Blanc, and it is as good as any of the French, and not nearly as expensive. You know,” he continued “some people refer to Chile as the Bordeaux of South America. Recently, it has been attracting some of the Old World grape superstars like Chateau Lafitte Rothschild, Paul Pontallier of Chateau Margaux, and Robert Mondavi to name a few.”
As Andre expounded at length on his favorite subject, he seemed completely oblivious to the mine dust on his shoulders, and peppering his silver hair.
As Andre’s voice droned on, Charlie’s mind wandered back to the note in his pocket. He continued to try and understand its importance, and why it was given to him.
Once the hotel staff began serving the meals, the attention of the group turned to their food. Only small talk went on among the diners who studiously avoided any further discussion of what had happened during the morning meeting.
Henry apparently had regained his composure by temporarily shelving his emotional breakdown in the same manner he might have previously dealt with an aberrant account.
The approach seemed successful since he approached his meal with obvious enthusiasm, eating more than usual.
Finished, the group filed out of the dining room, Charlie tugged at Andre’s sleeve. “I have something I want you to look at,” he said handing over the diagram.
“Where did you get this?” Andre asked.
Charlie related his theory about the wild-eyed miner.
“I didn’t see him do that, but I left before you did. What do you think it is?” Andre asked turning it over slowly in his hand. He was obviously unsure which was the top and which was the bottom.
“We hoped you could tell us,” Nadia told him after joining the two men outside the dining room.
“Nadia translated the Russian terms into English,” Charlie added, handing Andre the list. “See if that helps.”
“The Tekeli Lead and Zinc Combinat,” Andre explained “includes a number of structural units. The Tekeli underground mine; the Tuyuk underground mining site, the concentrator plant, a railway shop, maintenance shops, the motor transport shop, an energy plant, a special repair shop—that’s by the construction and underground erection area—they also do chemical analysis there. Then there is the fire protection building, a cafeteria, and a mini brewery. Can’t have a mine without a brewery” he grinned, “especially a Russian mine.”
Your diagram shows the concentrator plant, so I guess this is the Tekeli shaft and not the Tuyuk. It is the bigger of the two. I was down there this afternoon. I can recognize some things, but not others.
Your miner obviously thought that it was important you have this, so there must be some significance to it. Not just some childish drawing,” he added not fully convinced, looking more closely at the crude markings.
“That was what Nadia and I decided when she finished her translation. We hoped you could figure that out.”
‘Sorry amigo,” Andre grinned. “There is only one way to find out. Tomorrow, the three of us go down there. Have you ever been in a mine before?” he asked.
Charlie and Nadia looked at each other. This was obviously not the answer either one wanted to hear.
“You think that is the only way huh?” Charlie asked. “What about…..? His voice trailed off.
“Yeah, what about it. Look at it as a learning experience” Andre suggested with a broad smile on his face. “I need to go back down anyway. I want to take some samples and see if Dave is able to analyze them with some of the gear he brought along. Some of the sides of the shafts look like they might contain something other than lead or zinc. The stuff looks odd. It is probably just some anomaly, but I don’t recognize it. Anyway, we won’t be getting in anyone’s way, the mine hasn’t been worked for weeks,” Andre added attempting to be reassuring.
Back in his room, Charlie sent an email to Beth, to tell her about the meeting earlier in the day, but omitting the part about the note or what they planned to do tomorrow. Afterwards, he stretched out on the bed, not listening to the orchestra he had tuned-in on the shortwave. His mind was on the following day—on the damned mine. He wasn’t afraid to go underground, he told himself.
He wasn’t claustrophobic. Not really. He had MRIs before, where they put you into a narrow tube and bang your eardrums with high velocity sound. It hadn’t bothered him---much. It did some people though. Some people had to take a sedative. Not him. But, the idea of going a mile below the surface of the earth, that was an entirely different thing.
The problem was he had very little confidence in third world maintenance programs and their equipment. There was that time when Beth and he had gone to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar in a cable car. The damn thing swayed in the wind. Back and forth. Back and forth.
The beat of the orchestra’s music on the radio seemed to him it be in sync with his mental image of the swaying gondola.
On the way down the cable became stuck. The operator tried to make it swing to get the cable back on track. Back and forth. It didn’t catch. Then he opened-up a trap door in the top of the cab, climbed out, stood up, and jumped up and down. He jumped up and down on the roof, while they swung back and forth thousands of feet above ground. The cable finally caught, and they continued their descent. When they reached the bottom, the manager turned away the waiting crowd, telling them they were shutting down for routine maintenance. Routine my ass.
He also recalled some of the dumpy third world airlines it had been necessary for him to fly as part of his job. Air Brunei—Aero Peru—Ecuadorian, Air Surinam and Garuda immediately crossed his mind. He hadn’t wanted to use them, but it was the only way he could get to where he was going. The equipment was all right, but he was sure the bozos who ran the airlines weren’t spending any more money than they absolutely had to on maintenance, and they didn’t have too much money to start with.
But, he had survived. No big deal. And, he got the job done. That was the main thing. That was what they paid him to do. That was what kept the kids in college and food on the table.
Maybe this would be all right too. Probably would be. Nadia didn’t seem to have any qualms about going down there--how could he?
Then again, he thought, this whole damn thing could be a diversion to get them spending their time mucking around in a dead mine, rather than finishing the project they were sent to do.
On the other hand, he suddenly realized, it could even be a trap. Get some of those smart-ass yahoos down there and knock them off. That would finish the project all right.
Now, the miners know these foreign guys are a soft touch. They even break down and cry during an opening speech.
Oh to hell with it, he decided. Whoever said, earlier in the day, that ‘we have no other option’ was right. I have to go down in the mine with Andre and Nadia.
Charlie clicked off the radio, punched his pillow, and tried to shut off his mind and get to sleep.
14
The morning was crisp and clear. A deep sleep had effectively banished Connelly’s profound concerns of the night before. After completing his daily number of pushups, he felt refreshed and renewed, prepared to face whatever the day required.
After breakfast, Henry and Elaina went to the Adm
inistration Building to set up their procedures, and pore over the information that Sammie had acquired during his previous visits to Tekeli.
Dave went back to his room to finish calibrating his equipment.
Charlie, Andre, and Nadia returned to their rooms to get their coats before setting off on foot for the mine.
“It’s not too far,” Andre assured them as they began their trek to the mine.
They passed the dilapidated heavy vehicles parked in the lot close to the hotel. The streets were almost deserted, with only an old woman inspecting her garden, or a slight flutter of a lace curtain in a home as they passed. An occasional gray column of smoke rose from several of the houses, suggesting they were not as abandoned as they might initially appear.
Walking along the street, the three of them did present a rather peculiar procession Charlie had to admit. A silver topped Frenchman with a ruddy complexion, flanked by a red haired Russian woman wearing a heavy leather jacket and a matching fur trimmed hat, escorted by a gangly American in a Burberry trench coat. No wonder some of the villagers could not resist monitoring their progression.
They paused for a moment to study a large lead sculpture of a miner prepared for work, dressed in miners cap, coat, and boots. The Russians had a talent for erecting sculptures of fierce fighting men or heroic male or female workers glorifying one occupation or another.
It was still too early for the brewery to open, but there was a small group of men already waiting to be welcomed by the manager. They stared curiously at the passersby before hastily turning their attention back to the brewery’s locked door. The barber sat idly in the shop’s only chair, focusing her attention on the newcomers, and perhaps potential customers. Her regular ones were few and far between as their income had gradually dwindled.
Andre chose a path through a stand of silver birch that defined the outskirts of the village. The wind sighed through the trees as they walked. “It’s shorter this way,” he assured them, brushing a slender branch from his face.
They soon left the small forest behind them, and the mouth of the mine came into view. It was a gaping hole in the side of a hill. A thick growth of underbrush was beginning to fill in the gaps between the rusting tracks that led to the mine’s entrance. A single metal tub remained on the rails that once bore the ore to the nearby compressor.
There was no gate or obstruction limiting entrance to the area, nor a fence surrounding it. Only a few of the shoddy buildings appeared locked. Several had broken windows, their panes rattled in the breeze creating an eerie form of wind chime. One of the larger shed's roof was collapsed, and birds flew in and out of the vacant building at will.
“In here,” Andre told them, entering the building nearest the entrance. “I found this yesterday. I couldn’t get the damned generator going so there are no lights underground. We will each need a lamp,” he advised, as he walked to the back of the ramshackle building. Along the wall, there was a series of large shelves holding rows of brightly colored metal helmets. Crowning the top of each yellow helmet was a large battery powered lamp.
Charlie eventually found one that seemed to fit. When he turned to look at the others Nadia giggled. “You look like a gigantic Cyclops from another planet,” she told him, ignoring the effect that the yellow hat had on her own appearance.
“And you of course look very debonair,” he replied with a broad grin.
They looked at each other to make sure their lamps worked before entering the mine. Once inside, the outer light began to fade the further in they got.
“This is a deep one,” Andre warned. “If closets make you uneasy you may want to reconsider going down. Once you get below, it might be hard to get back up quickly enough.”
Well, this won’t bother me, at least that was what Charlie told himself, halfway hoping Nadia would decide to bow out. He glanced at her. She nonchalantly shrugged her lack of concern.
The three entered the open cage. Andre took the controls. “Last chance,” he laughed, pushing a large red lever forward. His gallows humor was lost in the clang of the warning bell. The cable screamed, then caught and the cage began to drop into the hell of a deep mine.
The wire enclosure started to descend slowly down through the concrete lined upper mouth of the abandoned shaft, passing into a beehive of steel and timber lining the walls of the narrow passage. The mesh enclosure had a strong odor of diesel fuel mixed with body odor left over from generations of sweating men.
It quickly picked-up speed, now dropping so fast Charlie could feel his breath rushing from his lungs. Miner’s pay doesn’t begin until they check in on the floor of the mine, and they don ‘t want to waste any time along the way.
Charlie was certain that the lift was going to drop like a rock--but it did not. Not quite.
It was black as pitch above them, and equally as opaque beneath. The lights from their helmets cast faint illumination on the walls of the mine as they passed.
Once, Charlie thought he could make out an older abandoned landing but they speed past so fast he was not sure. He could feel the jerking and grinding of the cable in the pit of his stomach, and he fought back nausea. A single bead of sweat trickled slowly down his side, causing him to repress a slight shiver in the cold air.
“How deep is this damn pit?” Charlie asked, more out of nervousness than curiosity.
“Oh maybe a mile mas or menos,” Andre replied off handedly.
“Would that be more than or less than a mile?” Charlie pursued the question.
Andre ignored him, concentrating on the controls.
After an eternity, Andre slowed the rate of decent. The lift shuddered, and then came to a grinding stop. The door opened and Andre leapt out, followed more cautiously by his less eager companions.
They stood in front of a small open office marked by a dust covered metal desk. Huge pneumatic drills lay strewn about the floor of the mine; as if someone had shouted get out and the miners abandoned their equipment in the same position that it was now.
“This is where the miners check in,” Andre explained. He held out his hand to Nadia, pointing toward the crumpled diagram she had forgotten she still clutched tightly in her fist. She had been afraid of losing it during the drop to the bottom.
Andre spread out the map on the desk, placing small pebbles on the corners so they could focus their lamps on the faintly drawn lines. Looking closely they could identify multiple tunnels leading from the Under-supervisors office. They squinted in an attempt to determine which one they were to follow.
“This way,” Andre finally pointed to the tunnel leading to their right. “If you hear noises hug the wall.”
“Why?” Charlie and Nadia asked in unison.
“One of the dangers miners face is falling rocks. Occasionally it can signal a cave-in. If it does, you are pretty much screwed. Mostly it’s just that--falling rocks.”
“Of course,” he continued, almost to himself. “Just falling rocks can also be a problem if one is big enough and lands on your head, or on your foot--it could cripple you. That’s why the miners wear steel toed boots.”
Charlie looked down at his tassel loafers--their soft leather and thin soles. He had not planned on becoming a spelunker on this trip he thought with some bitterness.
“Deep mining isn’t easy,” Andre continued, “the deeper the mine goes—and this is a deep bugger—the more risk there is from underground earthquakes, rock bursts, gas discharges, and flooding. And for the miners, the deeper they work, the conditions get progressively more uncomfortable from the heat and the cramped spaces.
Visions of the recently trapped Chilean miners flooded Charlie’s mind—and his fears--as they tried to find their way along the tunnel.
He also noticed that the three of them had unconsciously slipped into the miner’s stride: a half-crouch with the head up, unconsciously measuring the length between the ties of the track that the tubs traveled. The irises of his eyes had dilated so that dark had become shadow, and shadow took o
n form.
Andre stopped so they could better focus their lamps on the map.
”Looks like we are going all right, but it’s hard to tell how far this tunnel runs without some type of scale,” Charlie observed.
Andre shrugged in agreement. “I wasn’t down this way yesterday,” he told them, picking up the pace. “This is a totally new seam.”
Their lamps cast weird silhouettes on the walls as they went. They reminded Charlie of the shadow-puppet show he and Beth had seen in Jakarta. He was curious then who was pulling the puppets strings, and he wondered now who was manipulating theirs to get the three of them in this hellish hole.
“Where is the zinc?” Charlie yelled to Andre attempting to slow their progression.
“It’s all around you,” came the muffled reply. “At least it should be. I took some samples yesterday and left them with Dave Dieter. He promised to see if he could analyze them when he gets his equipment set-up. I can’t tell, but it looks to this old miner like the seam is still strong. If I am right, I am puzzled why the men refuse to mine it. After all, it is their life. Their bread and butter so to speak,” he shouted back, amused by his own witticism.
Death on the Silk Road Page 12
