Suddenly, Roger hit the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road. In the distance, he spotted a man on horseback, accompanied by large dog, herding a string of grazing camels across the steppes. That is one hell of a picture he thought. The camel cowboy of Kazakhstan, he chuckled, throwing the Rover into gear and resuming his journey.
Maybe this place isn’t as bad as he first thought. That Elaina was something else. She was hot. He really dug those almond eyes and olive complexion. Not at all like the women at Sarah Lawrence, or Wellesley. They were icebergs compared with little old Elaina. What can be sexier than almond eyes and black boots? Now that’s real culture, he decided grinning broadly. He would have to give her call when he got back to the Embassy.
Eventually, the outskirts of Almaty came into view. The city looked a little different to him from when he left. Perhaps the sun shining helped. The buildings didn’t look nearly as grim as they had when he was leaving the city. Now children seemed happy as they played their games in Panfilov Park. Couples held hands as they posed for their wedding pictures in front of the bronzed soldiers of the Panfilov Division.
Maybe this assignment will be better than he originally thought.
He was smiling as he pulled into the entrance of the embassy compound. A new marine guard was at the gate. He was a little younger than the one there before. After flashing his ID, the guard waved him through.
Parking the Rover in the visitor’s slot, he looked back over his shoulder and saw the young marine already flicking through a copy of Playboy magazine.
Michael Pearlman was in his office, and rose to welcome his new assistant. “Hi kid good to see you. How is life in the mines?”
Roger quickly told him about the people he had met at Tekeli. Most of them at least. He also went into some detail recalling the death of the five miners, and the unusual funeral he witnessed.
“That’s quite a story. I thought it was going to be a classic boondoggle sending you up there, but the old man insisted. Does he know about the dead miners?”
Roger assured him that he did, and handed him the envelope with the samples Charlie had given him before he left for Almaty.
The station chief put the samples in a thick manila envelope, and addressed it to Emmett Valentine. ”Mei Lyn,” he bellowed through the open doorway.
The young woman entered almost instantaneously, as if she had been outside awaiting a command. “Get this in today’s pouch to Langley,” he ordered. The young woman smiled at Roger as she turned to leave.
“She’s been asking about you,” Pearlman told Roger after she was gone.
“Look there has been a slight change of plans concerning what we do with you,” he added more seriously. “I had a chat over the secure line with Emmett after you left. He is becoming increasingly concerned over what is going on in Kazakhstan, and how it fits into the entire international scene right now.”
“And that is?” Roger prompted, surprised by the new course of events.
“Well to put it bluntly everything is going to hell. The Mideast has caught fire with the conflagration spreading from Tunisia to Egypt, then on to Bahrain, Yemen, and now Libya.
“They are referring to it as the Arab Spring. You know the government has to have a name for everything, or they think that no one will know that it actually exists.
At the same time, the shadow of a nuclear Iran looms over the entire region and we still haven’t figured out what to do with that. Aside from hoping it just goes away.
“The intelligence community was caught flatfooted again, and now we are trying to catch-up. They have formed a thirty-five man task force at Langley to try and determine where the hell the fire will break out next, and what we can do to respond. We should be trying to figure out how to prevent it, of course, but it is a little too late for that.”
Roger was taken off guard by the station chief’s candor. He was not used to hearing someone criticize their own family. “What does it mean for us here?” he asked becoming concerned for his own position.
“To put it very bluntly, Emmett needs a success. He thinks it may be possible here in Kazakhstan. The country is becoming increasingly critical to the United States.
“Since becoming independent, President Nursultan Nazarbayev traditionally has been our ally. It has massive oil fields, when oil is becoming an endangered element. We need a secure supply, and the Kazakh fields could be a tremendous benefit. At the same time, the country contains profound mineral resources that are becoming increasingly critical to commercial and military development. That mine up there at Tekeli is a good example of important mineral deposits…if they can figure out how to produce them as they did before.”
“Sure Connelly knows that,” Roger assured him, rising from his chair and beginning to pace around the room. “All the men up there know it, but someone may be trying to keep the mine from developing. Why would that be?”
“Any number of people, for any number of reasons,” Pearlman replied taking his feet off his desk and standing to face Roger. “Perhaps they want to keep the mine from being owned by someone other than themselves. Russia and China are the most likely culprits. They could want the minerals to maintain their commercial production and market expansion. Or they may need it for their own military developments.
“Emmett told me that we are entering a new paradigm where a country’s natural resources are the real portal to power. You know how the old man talks,” Pearlman told Roger smiling affectionately. “He thinks that we may be entering a new form of Cold War for natural resources. But, he is afraid that America has become too damn green to win it.”
The station chief returned to his desk, and began fumbling through the top drawer. He found what he was looking for and offered Roger a glass half filled with smoky scotch. “Talking so much always makes me thirsty.”
“Ok, Ok,” Roger replied, accepting the drink and returning to his chair. “So now how does that impact me, and the change of plans?”
“Emmett wants you to stay here in Almaty for awhile until we can figure out what the hell is going on. We first thought that we would send you over to the oil fields to nose around…maybe figure out what happened to Durand. Now he has decided that before we do anything drastic with you, we build your cover a little bit more. With all the focus on the Mideast now he can’t afford to lose you. He could never get a replacement.”
“You have no idea how comforting that is to me,” Roger observed wryly. “And?” he prompted.
“And you are going to become an honest to God Cultural Attaché’ starting now.”
“Now?”
“Yes now!” Pearlman bellowed. “We have a Navy choral group coming through here. They are going to be putting on a concert of sea shanties for the Ambassador’s party. Then they have a concert at Al-Farabi University. You are going to be their baby sitter. I’m pretty sure I could come up with a little better term for your job description, but right now I can’t think of one.” Pearlman poured himself another drink from his bottle before returning it to his former hiding place.
“So what will that entail?”
“You mean what do you do? Well kid it’s like this. Your major role is keeping them sober, and getting them to their appearance on time. Before they get there, you check the microphones, you check the stage, You check the toilets in the room to make sure they work properly, then you make sure the curtains work, but most of all….now hear this…you keep the sailors away from the punch bowl, and the embassy wives. Later you make certain that none of them try to bang the university coeds. Got it? This is, after all, a predominately Muslim country.”
Roger understood, but it didn’t sound like what he expected a foreign intelligence agent would have to do. They had told him at the Farm that an agent’s life would be composed of hours of tedium, occasionally punctuated by moments of sheer terror. This didn’t seem to fit either category.
“By the way, you will need a date for the party. Why don’t you take Mei Lyn?” Pearlman sugge
sted. She is a good friend of the Ambassador’s wife, and could make you look good.
“Me too maybe,” he added with a smirk.
Perhaps this will not be as bad as he first thought Roger decided leaving the office.
18
Tekeli
After waving goodbye to Roger, and his unexpected passenger, Charlie turned and walked toward the administration building. On the second floor, he found the file he was working on the day before. Andre had returned to the mine, and Henry and Elaina were reviewing the payroll records they had received from Sammie. Dave Dieter sat with his boots on the desk. The results from his test samples were spread across his lap, as he gazed distractedly at the snow falling outside the window.
Things were once again resuming a rhythm, with the consultants doing what consultants do---working on their final report. Business produces and sells products. Consultants, on the other hand, produce and sell reports--with heavy emphasis on length and secondarily content.
Before Charlie left Chicago, the General Bank had mailed him a folder of economic data describing Kazakhstan’s position in the world economy. Today Charlie pored over the pages relating to the lead and zinc markets.
The minerals were experiencing resurgence in their importance. During the 1990’s, the market was considerably depressed. More recently, there had been an increase in their importance, due to an international expansion of industrial markets. Another factor driving up their value was the military expansion in China, and Russia, as well as in the U.S.
Now, as America became more deeply involved in the War on Terror, basic armaments such as warheads and bullets, as well as X-ray facilities, isotope containers, and shielding in nuclear power stations required increasing amounts of ore from mines such as Tekeli.
Charlie rubbed his eyes. Pretty dull stuff, but that’s was consultants do…pretty dull things. He looked back blankly at the data tables spread across his desk,
Elaina attempted to stifle a yawn, giving up any effort to conceal her fatigue.
Henry glanced at her irritably, before returning to his task of attempting to make some sense out of the erratic and incomplete payroll records he had been studying.
Charlie rose and stretched. Noticing Dave gazing out the window, he walked toward him, and took a chair beside his desk. Startled, Dave turned toward him, a sheepish grin spreading across his weather-beaten face. He laughed, “This is really at the end of the world. It is even bleaker than southern Illinois in the winter.”
“Have you any idea what the samples might be. The ones that Andre gave you to analyze.”
“Oh those. No, not really, I think I told you that my equipment is less than perfect for determining unusual substances. I hadn’t expected to be looking at stuff like that,” Dave said apologetically.
“They are unusual then?”
“Yeah, yeah, pretty unusual.”
“Want to hazard a guess what they are? I won’t hold it against you,” Charlie assured him.
“Do you know what rare-earth is?”
“Never heard of it.”
“It isn’t an it. It’s a them. There is a whole bunch of them.”
"Whole bunch? Is this another technical term that we poor peddlers are not intellectually equipped to comprehend?”
Dave looked at him before responding. “Exactly, that is why I am about to enlighten you--my uninformed associate. Rare earth minerals are a grouping of 17 chemically similar elements that are usually found together in ore, and then are later refined and split apart. Their primary use is in magnets and semiconductors, and a lot of other technologies that have both military and commercial applications.
“To give you an idea of their importance,” Dave continued, warming to his subject now that he had captured Charlie’s full attention. “They are sometimes referred to as “21st Century gold because of their importance in such high-tech applications as laser-guided weapons, and hybrid car batteries.”
“Where is this stuff? Or that stuff---or however the hell you refer to it --found?” Charlie asked.
“Just across the border from us, China controls more than 90% of current global supply of rare earth metals, and they are making damn sure they stay that way by establishing tight export quotas. Which, by the way, they usually decide to ignore. It has been widely reported that storage facilities built in recent months in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia can hold more than the 39,000 metric tons the Chinese released last year.”
“So What?”
“Well I will tell you what. Putting restrictions on exports of this stuff, as you refer to it, will increase costs for companies in lots of critical industries around the world reducing their ability to compete with China. It could also restrict America’s development and production of products critical to our national defense.”
“Damn clever these Chinese. In other words Dave, demand is artificially created to exceed supply.”
The engineer paused for a moment. “Well yes I guess you could put it that way, if you want to.”
“Do you know Dave, if any of these elements are available in the United States?” Do we produce any rare earth?”
“Not really. The U.S. and Australia have deposits, but lack the expertise in extracting and refining them….at least in a manner that satisfies the environmentalists. Mining in our country and other places fell off several years ago, primarily because of ecological concerns. A further problem is that a new mine can take a decade to develop and a process for refining rare - earth elements can take almost the same amount of time.
“Those crazy greenies again huh?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Dave replied more cautiously. “Rare-earths have a clean, futuristic image. The problem is extracting and processing them can be dirty, dangerous work. They tend to blacken the soil around the mine with waste and pollute the water with hydrochloric acid, while at the same time filling the air with radioactive dust, so they may have a point”
“So if our pit here contained one of these elements, in addition to lead and zinc, it could make its ownership and control far more valuable than we first thought?” Charlie asked.
“Well yeah…yeah…yeah I guess you are right. I never thought of that exactly in those terms... Maybe it could.”
Charlie studied his friend’s serious face. “To China?”
“Sure, of course, but not just China. They are pretty close to us, but so is Kazakhstan. If this country knew that this mine also contained rare-earth they would sure as hell want to retain control over the place. It could make the mine as valuable to them as their oil.
"Really?”
Well maybe. That might be something of an exaggeration, but pretty damned important. And don’t forget Russia,” Dave added.
“Russia?”
“Sure, they need rare-earth elements as much as anyone. They are increasing their military development again, and also gearing up their industrial production. It would also be valuable to them. And they are just up the street, so to speak. Russians already manage the mine, so it would not be much of a stretch for them to step in with both feet. Then they would have better control of the output.
“And don’t forget the good old USA,” Dave added as an afterthought. “I am sure that the U.S. would love to have a reliable supply of some of the rare-earth elements---other than China. I remember that some time ago the Santa Fe Gold Corporation signed a joint venture agreement with Kazakhstan to explore over three million hectors in the northeastern part of the country not very far from here.”
“So what do you think, Dave?” Where does all this leave us?”
Dave rose, stretched, and looked at his watch. “You know what I think. I think its happy-hour time. We have solved enough of the world’s problems for the day.”
They approached Henry, who was still bending over his columns of payroll numbers, and patted him on the shoulder. He looked-up startled.
“Come on, its quitting time for Brits. Let’s have a drink before dinner.” Charlie suggested.
<
br /> There was no argument from him, and the three men left for the hotel together.
Nadia and Elaina watched them leave, looked at each other, and returned to their work.
19
The men were surprised to see that the lounge was empty. Usually Andre was the first one there, spread across the yellow plastic leather chair, wine glass firmly in hand. After brushing the snow from their coats, they began to speculate where he might be.
“Probably still in the mine,” Dave offered, returning from the empty kitchen.
“No,’ Henry countered, “He is probably taking a nap. That’s’ what I should have done.”
“Too close to dinner,” Charlie concluded, coming from his room with the bottle of Stolie he had opened earlier.
Death on the Silk Road Page 16
