Death on the Silk Road

by Russell Miller

  “I looked into that,” Roger answered quickly. “There is only one place that I was able to find. It is the Ulbinskiy operation in Oskemen. The place is a joint stock company. Major stockholders include the Kazakh firm KATER, which is an umbrella organization for this country’s nuclear industries, and the Russian financial group TVEL.”

  Pearlman glanced in astonishment at his new assistant.

  “Then it must be the Russians,” Emmett exclaimed. “They don’t want any competition they don’t control.”

  “Yeah maybe,” the station chief replied. “On the other hand China is on our Eastern border and they already control 40% of the world’s lead and zinc production. Everyone knows they are anxious to control the international supply of rare-earth. I think they could be a good bet.”

  “Perhaps,” Emmett replied unconvinced. “Anyway what can I do to help?”

  “Connelly wants to get out of there before anyone else gets killed,” Pearlman replied. “You can’t blame him. The roads are closed because of snow. There is no way they can drive out, and no way someone can drive there to extract them.”

  “I also want him out. We owe him that. He has always played square with us, and if he wants to get out of there, then I want him out of there.”

  “Alright,” Pearlman agreed, “I have a plan, but we need some people in Washington to go along with it. We are going to lose the satellite any minute, so I’ll send you a message with more of the details, along with the names of people we would like you to see. OK Emmett?”

  Emmett had been wondering how to get Connelly extracted after his discussion with Vincent. Now he was pleased to hear that someone had a plan.

  “All right I will do whatever I can,” Emmett’s voice was already fading.

  Pearlman closed the circuit and turned to Roger. “That was damned impressive what you told the old man. How did you know all that crap about beryllium?”

  “It was on that fact sheet I gave you to review.” Roger answered, as he helped to close down the DOS and turn off the lights.

  25

  Tekeli

  Charlie tried vainly to concentrate on finalizing the recommendations that would complete his part of the project. It was becoming increasingly difficult to focus on the job at hand. His mind kept reviewing, and re-reviewing, the circumstances that led up to the danger they were now facing. Even the lounge, with its garish yellow sofa, and red plush overstuffed chairs seemed to be threatening, and the walls more confining than they ever seemed in the past.

  Dave had taken to walking up and down the hallway, attempting to relax. Charlie could hear him padding towards them in his stocking feet. Charlie rose, stretched, and waved to him as he passed.

  He decided to go into Henry’s room, and remove the personal items from the body. He should have done it earlier, but the shock was too great then. He and Dave had talked about moving Henry’s remains to the ice house when they could, but he knew Trevor would want to send anything of value back to whatever dependents he could locate.

  Charlie had kept the room key, and he put it into the lock. It turned easily. There was only a faint light coming through the open window curtains, and the body covered with the white sheet presented a ghostly image. He felt his stomach turn once again recalling Henry’s face and bulging eyes he had witnessed the night before.

  He turned on the lamp, and went through the papers on the desk, trying to put-off checking for the poor man’s valuables as long as he could.

  “Can I help?” Dave asked coming into the room.

  “I think we are going to have to move old Henry to the ice house and put him with Andre,” Charlie replied. “We can’t leave him here indefinitely.”

  He threw back the sheet and was repulsed once more by what he saw. Henry’s perpetually pale complexion was now turning a ghastly blue. He braced himself before reaching down and removing Henry’s watch.

  His trousers where hung on a peg on the door, and Charlie removed the wallet. There was nothing inside except a little cash and a few credit cards, along with a faded photo of a man and wife that Charlie guessed was more than twenty years old.

  He handed the wallet to Dave before making sure there was nothing on the bed that might provide a clue to who had taken Henry’s life. There was nothing. The bed and the room seemed completely undisturbed. There apparently had been little resistance, and Charlie wondered if Henry had even seen his attacker.

  Charlie went over to the door and examined the lock. There was no sign of a break-in or scratches on the door that might indicate the lock was forced.

  “Shall we do it now?” Dave asked, looking out the window. It has stopped snowing, and he thought that it might be as good a time as any.”

  The two men went back to their rooms for their coats.

  Before leaving his room, Charlie locked Henry’s meager belongings in his carry-on bag. He then tried to call Trevor to see if he had heard anything from the embassy about getting them out.

  Nothing. Just what was now becoming a too familiar crackling on the line. He tried once again. Still nothing. He swore, and left his room making sure to lock the door.

  Dave was already in Henry’s room staring at the body. “He was a good man. What a shame to go that way. Particularly after the hard life he lived. Do you have any idea, Charlie, who the hell might be doing this?”

  “None. Absolutely none. I keep turning it over in my mind but nothing results. I believe it must be someone who wants to prevent us from reporting on what we have found here. Who that might be completely escapes me.”

  The two of them carefully wrapped Henry’s body in the sheet. The blood was dry but the sheet remained stained around his head. When they lifted the body, they both noticed that blood had seeped through and stained the bedding beneath. Charlie wondered if they should try and remove the leather thong around his neck, but decided against it.

  Henry’s body was heavier than both of them had thought, and it was difficult maneuvering him down the narrow stair well. Elaina and Nadia looked on silently from the hallway. Neither asked where they were taking Henry. They both knew. “Nadia finally asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  There was no response from the men, who had reached the bottom of the stairs. They set the body on the floor in order to catch their breath. Once they got outside, they knew they would be unable to put him down until they reached the icehouse. While they were resting, Charlie tried the door to the empty room. It was locked securily.

  “Ready?” Dave asked. Charlie nodded and together they both stooped and lifted the lifeless form of their friend.

  Outside, it was a pewter colored sky, and the promise of more snow was heavy in the air. They trudged through the drifts, which were up to the knees of both men.

  Charlie noticed a small group of miners on their way to the brewery pause and watch the strange procession. He was sure they were wondering who or what was inside the blood stained sheet.

  None of them offered to help, and neither of the consultants expected them to. The Russians had remained belligerent during the entire time of their visit to Tekeli, obviously viewing them as the enemy. Even considering this relationship, Charlie found it difficult to believe they were the ones who had killed Andre and Henry.

  By the time the two men finally reached the icehouse, Dave was breathing heavily, and his usual ruddy complexion had turned a bright crimson.

  Charlie was glad that he had taken Andre’s coat, but he was still cold.

  The two of them lifted Henry and placed him on a slab of ice next to Andre. Stretched out side by side the two dead consultants made a tragically odd pair. One covered with a dirty trench coat and the other by a bloody sheet.

  “We will have to figure out how we can get them back to their families, but right now I don’t’ know how,” Charlie said.

  “Maybe we should have a Viking funeral for them, if we can’t figure out anything else,” Dave told him.

  “What----what?” Charlie asked perplexed. />
  “Set a fire, and burn down the ice house,” Dave replied.

  “It’s too damn cold to get a fire going, hopefully we can think of something else. Let’s get out of here before we freeze to death,” Charlie told him, heading out the door.

  Dinner that night was a sad event, each one wondering what would happen next.

  After they finished, Charlie stayed behind toying with his coffee, and watching the manager and her helper clean off the table. He had never paid much attention to the women on the staff before. They were just there, cooking, cleaning, and otherwise out of the way.

  “Can I get you anything else Mr. Connelly?” The manager was a tall woman with dark hair, dark eyes and an olive complexion. Probably in her late fifties he thought. She may have been attractive when she was younger, but now her face bore the faint creases associated with a troubled life.

  “No, no Madam Manager—“

  “Call me Riana,” she offered.

  “All right Riana. You do a fine job, particularly under the circumstances. I was just wondering where you live? I never see you or your helpers coming and going, but you are always here.”

  “We have small rooms behind the kitchen where we stay when the hotel is open.”

  “And when it is not, do you live in town with the others?”

  “No Mr. Connelly we do not. We are not really Russian, we are Kazakhs, and we live in the hills close to town. Why do you ask?”

  Charlie ignored the question. “Is there possibly a separate entranceway to the hotel behind your rooms?

  “No there is not. Would you like to see for yourself?”

  “As a matter of fact I would,” he told her rising from the table. “I am sure you realize that someone is trying to kill us, and assuming it is not you, I wonder how they are getting in without our knowing it.”

  The manager led him behind the kitchen where there was small dormitory type room with two bunk beds, and a closet. Charlie looked around the room before cautiously opening the closet door. Inside was only women’s clothing, hung neatly in rows.

  “You can see there is no doorway here,” Riana told him impatiently.

  “I can see that,” he replied, shoving the clothes aside to examine the back of the closet.

  “Is there a duplicate set of keys to our rooms?” Charlie asked unwilling to give up.

  “No there is not.” She replied, in a tone leaving little room for uncertainty. “Duplicate anything is for the more expensive hotels. Not here,” she told him emphatically. “I do have a master key,” she said pulling a small key on a large ring from a pocket in her skirt. “I keep this on me at all times, except when one of the girls needs it to clean the rooms.”

  “I know why you are questioning me. I don’t blame you. I have been wondering about it myself. We all have. My girls and I are just as terrified as you are, but there is nothing we can do.”

  Charlie had nowhere else to go with the question, so he thanked her, and returned to his room.

  Walking down the hallway, he made a point to check that all the other doors were tightly closed. A sliver of light was apparent under Dave’s doorway, but the girls’ were dark. They had apparently already gone to bed.

  If any of them had been lax before he was sure they were more careful tonight. It was obvious at dinner that Henry’s death was on everyone’s mind, and they were all concerned what might happen next.

  Once inside his own room he was careful to lock his door. It was too early to go to bed, and he was too exhausted to work.

  He turned on the short wave on his nightstand, and found the BBC. The sound of Big Ben announced that the news from London was just starting. He decided to lie down and listen to what was going on in the outside world, hoping it would take his mind off what was happening at Tekeli.

  It didn’t work.

  Two Muslim men were arrested taking pictures outside of a nuclear facility in New Brighton.

  He recalled the phrase “walking back the cat,” he once heard Emmett Valentine use to describe a thought process starting at the end, and working back to the beginning. The most recent event was the murder of Henry Butts. The chain of events, Charlie decided, leading up to his death seemed to start with the miner’s note slipped into his pocket at the presentation, but he was having difficulty forming a nexus between the death and the note.

  There were riots in London in response to cuts in social welfare

  As he played and replayed the film of events in his mind, things seemed to become more clear, or at least less cluttered. He was better able to determine the pieces that were missing, by focusing on those he had. Tomorrow, he decided, he would have to talk once again with Riana. She had not told him all she knew. He was certain of that, and he thought he now knew why.

  There were heavy rains in the northern part of Great Britain, and moving over the Channel.

  Charlie Connelly no longer cared about the weather over the Channel, or any of the rest of the news from the BBC, because he didn’t hear it. He had fallen asleep, leaving the London reporter to continue without his distant listener.

  26

  Charlie wasn’t quite awake, but he wasn’t fully asleep either. He sensed, more than saw, someone in the room standing beside his bed, with his back to the shadows.

  Charlie opened his eyes to see a figure bending over him, and immediately felt a cord tightening around his throat. He tried to yell out, but could not as the cord grew tighter and tighter.

  He fought the air, knocking the radio from the nightstand. It landed with a resounding thud. The BBC was reporting on a falling Euro, but Charlie didn’t hear. He was fully awake now and consumed with fear. As the cord tightened, he could feel his breath rushing from his lungs and blood rushing to his face. He desperately wanted to cough, but could not.

  Suddenly Charlie saw the outline of a man, clothed entirely in black, standing over him. At the same time, his hand landed on the man’s head and grasped onto an ear. He could feel it through the heavy woolen hood covering the man’s head. He hung on tightly, and twisted it with all the strength he had remaining. He heard a curse in an unintelligible language, accompanied by a slight loosening of the cord around his neck. It was just enough to allow Charlie to twist to one side and get his legs positioned between himself and the body of his attacker. He shoved with all of his might, and the black-clad body staggered a few steps backward.

  Charlie leapt from the bed, landing off balance. The man butted him in the midsection. And he landed back on the bed, his breath escaping in a mighty puff of air. The man hesitated, fumbling for a knife tucked in his belt.

  The hesitation gave Charlie a chance to find the gun underneath his pillow. As the man advanced, wildly swinging his knife, Charlie got off a shot at close range. The man dropped back clutching his cheek, and bolted from the room.

  The two of them raced through the darkened hallway, and down the stairs. On the bottom floor, Charlie noticed the door to the room Roger had occupied was slightly ajar.

  The man fled out into the night, Charlie following close behind. The night air was frigid, but the moon shone brightly outlining the two figures plowing through the deep snow. Behind them, the hotel lights were flicking on in all the rooms; their occupants trying vainly to identify the figures running across the snow.

  The two men blundered through the woods, cracking branches and scattering snow with each heavy step. Charlie considered taking another shot, but decided that it would be futile. He didn’t want to stop for fear the man might duck through the trees and get away. He was heading for the mine, and if he got there he would lose himself forever.

  Charlie didn’t want that to happen, and he kept up his pace. He still felt short of breath. His throat still raw from having been strangled. The cold air seared his lungs like a hot knife. He felt himself fading, but he could not let the black clad figure escape in the dense woods.

  Charley’s feet felt like blocks of wood, and the muscles in his legs were screaming for relief. The snow was s
lippery underfoot, and the man in front would zig then zag to prevent a second shot.

  A cloud cover moving-in hid the few remaining stars, and made the running figure more difficult to distinguish from his surroundings.

  “Stop!” Charlie shouted, “you son-of-a-bitch,” he added under his breath. The man didn’t answer, but darted into a thick stand of birch. His black figure was starkly outlined against the white bark. The trees low hanging branches poured snow over his disappearing shoulders giving him a ghostly appearance s he ran.

  If the man was who Charlie thought he was he was far more familiar with the terrain. But Charlie was mad—damn mad, and even though his breath was coming in short painful bursts his fury drove him forward.

  Charlie could feel himself fading, and he desperately squeezed-off another shot. The Beretta barked in the night, its echo resounding through the forest. The bullet missed its mark, kicking up a scattering of snow to the right of the fleeing figure. Startled, the man leapt to his left, losing his balance, but caught himself with one hand, preventing a fall. By the time he straightened, he was only a short distance ahead.