Vermilion Drift

by William Kent Krueger

  Which brought back to him the dream he’d had the night before: his father’s death. He could never predict when the nightmare would visit him, but it inevitably left him feeling broken and empty and unsure. He looked through the windshield streaked with rain and wondered, Christ, could the day get any worse?

  Cavanaugh had sped through Gresham and was so far ahead that Cork couldn’t see the Escalade anymore. Less than a mile outside town, he began to encounter the protesters. They wore ponchos and rain slickers and sat on canvas chairs and held their placards up as he passed.

  No Nukes Here!

  Stop the Madness!

  Not in Our Backyards!

  Washington—Go Radiate Yourself!

  At the moment, there were maybe twenty protesters, which, considering the rain, seemed like a lot. They were an earnest and committed body.

  A legal order restrained anyone from interfering with entry to the Vermilion One Mine, but as Cork approached the gate, a tall, broad figure in a green poncho stepped into the road and blocked his way. Cork was going slowly enough that it was no problem to brake, but he wasn’t happy with the aggressiveness of the move. When the Land Rover had stopped, the figure came around to the driver’s side, lifted a hand, and drew back the poncho hood, revealing the scowl of Isaiah Broom.

  Cork rolled his window down. With as much cheer as he could muster, he said, “Morning, Isaiah.”

  Broom looked at him, then at the closed gate of the mine entrance, then at Cork again. He had eyes like pecans, and he had the high, proud cheekbones that were characteristic of the Anishinaabeg. He was roughly Cork’s age, just past fifty. Cork had known him all his life. They’d traveled many of the same roads, though never together. They were not at all what anyone would call friends.

  “You going in there?” Broom asked.

  “That’s my intent, Isaiah.”

  “You know, a lot of us Shinnobs are wondering about your allegiance these days.”

  “My allegiance, Isaiah, is to my own conscience. So far, I haven’t done anything that worries me in that regard.”

  “These people,” he said, nodding toward the mine operation, “they don’t worry you?”

  “These people are my neighbors. Yours, too, Isaiah.”

  “They’re chimook, Cork,” he said, using the Ojibwe slang for white people. “Are you chimook, too? Or are you one of The People?”

  Broom had called himself Shinnob. That was shorthand for Anishinaabe, which was the true name of the Ojibwe nation. Roughly translated, it meant The People, or The Original People. Cork supposed that in this way the Anishinaabeg—as they were known collectively—like every human community, thought of themselves as special. Broom and the others were there because the southern boundary of the Iron Lake Reservation abutted the land holdings of the Vermilion One Mine.

  “At the moment, Isaiah, I’m just a man trying to do a job. I’d be obliged if you’d step back and let me be on my way.”

  “‘In terms of the despiritualization of the universe, the mental process works so that it becomes virtuous to destroy the planet.’ Russell Means said that.”

  Broom was fond of quoting Russell Means, who was Lakota, and also Dennis Banks, who was a Shinnob. In the early seventies, these men had been among the founders of the American Indian Movement. Broom had known them both and had himself been present at the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties march in Washington, D.C., which had ended in the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs office. He’d continued to be a voice for activism in the Ojibwe community. He’d run several times for the position of chair of the Iron Lake tribal council but never won. He spoke hard truths frankly, but for most Shinnobs on the rez, his voice was too loud and too harsh to lead them.

  “I’m not here to destroy the planet, Isaiah, that’s a promise.”

  Broom looked skeptical but stepped back. Cork rolled up his window and went ahead.

  At the gate, he signed in with Tommy Martelli. Martelli’s family had been in mining for generations, and Tommy had himself worked the Vermilion One straight out of high school and after that the Ladyslipper until his age and hip problems made him become, as he put it, “a damn desk jockey.” He wore a short-sleeve khaki shirt and nothing on his head, and, as he stood at the window of the Land Rover, warm summer rain dripped down his face from the silver bristle on the crown of his skull.

  “Mr. Cavanaugh said you’d be right behind him,” he told Cork. “Got us a real puzzler here. Haddad chewed our asses good, like it was our fault.”

  “What’s going on, Tommy?”

  “Nobody told you?”

  “When he called me, Lou said some threats had been made.”

  “There’s more to it than that, Cork. But if the boss didn’t tell you, I’d best keep my mouth shut.” He reached out for the clipboard Cork had signed, flashed a smile not altogether friendly, and said, “Love to see you figure this one out.” He moved back to his little guardhouse, and Cork drove through the gate.

  For a hundred yards, the pavement cut through a stand of aspen mixed with mature spruce. The road climbed up a steep slope, rounded a curve, broke from the trees, and suddenly the old mine buildings stood before him. They were dominated by the headframe, a steel tower a hundred feet high and covered with rust, which stood above shaft Number Six and supported the hoist for the mine elevator. The largest of the buildings, Cork knew, was the engine house. The other buildings, most in disrepair, had served other functions during the sixty years the mine had been in operation: a single-story office complex; the wet room, where the miners had peeled off their muddy clothing at the end of their shifts; the dry house; the drill shop; the crusher house. The buildings were backed by a towering ridge of loose glacial drift where a small forest of pines had taken root. To one side of the office building entrance stood a tall flagpole that pointed like an accusing finger at the dripping summer sky, and from which a soaked Old Glory fluttered limply in the breeze.

  The potholed parking lot was nearly empty. Cork pulled next to Cavanaugh’s Escalade, killed the engine, and got out. The air was an odd mix of scents: rainwater and sharp spruce and the flat mineral smell that came up from deep in the mine. He walked to the front door of the office and went inside, where he found a small reception desk, sans receptionist. There was a corridor running lengthwise, lined with closed doors. The place had the feel of one of those storefronts he’d passed in Gresham, a business long abandoned. He listened for the sound of activity or voices. Except for a newly mounted wall clock that noted the passing of each second with a brittle little tick, the place was dead quiet.

  The phone at the reception desk rang. No one came running to answer it. Finally Cork leaned over and lifted the receiver.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Margie?”

  Cork recognized Lou Haddad’s voice. “Nope. It’s O’Connor.”

  “Cork? Where’s Margie?”

  “Got me, Lou.”

  “Well, come on down. We’re waiting for you.”

  “Where?”

  “End of the hallway, last office on your right.”

  As he hung up, Cork heard the flush of a toilet, and a door halfway down the hall swung open and Margie Renn hurried toward him.

  “Just powdering my nose,” she said, smoothing her silver hair and her blue skirt. “Tommy was supposed to call and let me know you’d arrived.”

  “Ta-da,” Cork said with a little dance step. Margie didn’t seem to appreciate his humor.

  “Let me call Mr. Haddad,” she said.

  “I already talked to him, Margie. I’m on my way there now.”

  “Let me show you.”

  “End of the hall, last door on the right. Right?”

  She seemed disappointed that he didn’t need her assistance, and Cork figured that, in the limbo that was the Vermilion One Mine these days, there must not be much for her to do except sit in the empty corridor and listen to the damn wall clock chopping seconds off her day.

  THREE

>   The Iron Range was a great melting pot of humanity, and Lou Haddad’s Lebanese family was not at all unusual. They’d come to the Range several generations back and had, for as long as Cork could remember, run a grocery store on the corner of Oak and Seventh Street. Lou’s father had been different from the rest of his family, however. He’d chosen to work in the mine, the Vermilion One.

  When they were kids, Cork—and just about everybody else—had called Lou Haddad Louie Potatoes. This because the guys who delivered the store’s produce and who were reputed to have had mob connections once spotted Lou munching on a slice of raw potato. They’d given him the name jokingly—everyone in the mob had a nickname—but it had stuck. Growing up, Cork and Louie Potatoes had been good friends. They went to the same church—St. Agnes—were in the same grade, and their families’ houses were only two blocks apart. They both loved fishing, ran around with the same group of kids, double-dated. After graduation, Haddad had gone to a Jesuit college, Fairfield University in Connecticut, and become an engineer. Cork had gone to Chicago and become a cop. And when they were ready to raise families, they’d both come back home. They’d often done things together with their wives as couples—gone to movies, played bridge, picnicked on the lake. But after his wife died, Cork found himself turning down the overtures and spending his time alone.

  Haddad stood at the open door. He was Cork’s height, missing six feet by an inch, with thin gray-brown hair and, normally, a ready grin. At the moment, however, he looked like a man chewing ground glass.

  He shook Cork’s hand, said, “Thanks for coming,” and stood back so that Cork could enter.

  It was a small conference room and smelled musty with disuse. It held a central table surrounded by half a dozen folding chairs. There were already three other people waiting. Two of them Cork knew: Marsha Dross, sheriff of Tamarack County, and Max Cavanaugh. The stranger was a woman in jeans and a light blue sweater. Cork greeted Dross, and Haddad introduced him to the woman.

  “Genie, this is Cork O’Connor. Cork, Genie Kufus, from the Department of Energy.”

  “Actually I’m a consultant for the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management,” Kufus clarified.

  Eugenia Kufus was lovely and small, and her eyes sparkled in a way that reminded Cork of the bounce of sunlight off water. Her smile was delightful and disarming, and, because it seemed very personally directed at him, Cork was momentarily flustered. Was she flirting? He thought it ridiculous that he even wondered, and absurd that he couldn’t tell, but since Jo had died, he’d found himself on very uncertain ground where women were involved.

  “Long time since this place saw any business,” Cork said, trying to regain composure.

  Max Cavanaugh said, “For the last year, we’ve been focusing mostly on getting the mine prepared for inspection. A lot of work necessary in the power house and lift operation. Lou has overseen most of that process. We opened the offices here just a couple of weeks ago to accommodate Genie and her people. Lou has an office down the hall, and so do I. And we’ve upped security, of course.”

  “Any trouble getting through the gate?” Haddad asked.

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Cork said.

  “Good.”

  They gathered around the table, and Dross passed Cork three sheets of paper, each with creases showing that the sheets had been folded into thirds, as if to fit into envelopes. Centered on each sheet was a single line of text, the same line: We die. U die. All the notes had been printed using a red font that made the words look as if they dripped blood.

  “I received one,” Haddad said, “Max received one, and Genie received one.”

  “Mailed?” Cork asked.

  “No,” Haddad replied. “We found them in various places. Mine was on my car seat when I came out of Nestor’s hardware store in Aurora. I never lock my door when I’m in town.”

  Cavanaugh said, “Mine was inside my morning paper.”

  “And mine had been slipped under the door of my hotel room,” Kufus said.

  “No fingerprints on them or on the envelopes,” Dross told him. “We’ve checked.”

  “When did you get them?” Cork asked.

  “Two days ago,” Lou said.

  Cork looked at the woman from the DOE. “You’re here to survey the mine, is that right, Ms. Kufus?”

  “It’s Genie, and yes. I’m heading up the team that’s been sent to assess the geologic integrity of the Vermilion One site.”

  “Geologic integrity?”

  “Its suitability for long-term storage of nuclear waste.”

  “Ah.” Cork studied the sheets. “Ink-jet printed.” He held one of them to the light, checking for a watermark. There was none. He shook his head at the bloody-looking print. “I don’t think I have this particular font on my computer.”

  “It’s called ‘From Hell.’ Free download off the Internet,” Dross said. “Big around Halloween, I understand.”

  “Have any of you received any other threats?”

  “No,” Haddad said, then looked to the others for confirmation. No one contradicted him.

  “Has anyone else received one of these?”

  “Not that we know of,” Haddad replied. “Just us lucky three.”

  “Did anyone see the envelopes being delivered?”

  Dross shook her head. “My guys canvassed the areas, came up with nothing.”

  “Is there any reason to believe that it’s not just part of the general anger that the DOE’s proposal has generated, that it’s not some crackpot letting off steam?”

  “Do you want to take that chance?” Dross asked.

  Cavanaugh said, “Cork, if you wouldn’t mind accompanying Lou, there’s something else you need to see.”

  It was raining harder now, coming down in warm, gray sheets. Haddad, Dross, and Cork huddled in the old Mine Rescue Room next to the headframe. There was a guard on duty in the Rescue Room, a big guy who wasn’t familiar to Cork. The name tag on his company uniform read “Plott.” He sat in front of a bank of monitors, each showing a view of a different area of the property: the front gate, the mine office, the engine house, the other mine shaft openings. He had an FM radio going, but he’d turned it low when they came in so that it was barely audible. He watched the screens with a dedication that Cork was pretty certain was mostly show for those who’d intruded on his territory.

  “What do you know about Vermilion One?” Haddad asked his companions.

  “Among the oldest and deepest of the underground mines on the Iron Range,” Cork replied. “Closed when we were both kids. What, thirteen?”

  “Thirteen,” Haddad confirmed with a nod. “Summer of nineteen sixty-four. My father was laid off. Sad day for a lot of folks. Do either of you understand Vermilion One, geologically?”

  “I’m not from the North Country, Lou,” Dross replied. “All I know is that there’s iron in them thar hills.”

  “That’s okay. Most people who aren’t Rangers don’t know much beyond that.” He pronounced the word “Ranger” as “Rain-cher,” which was how the old-timers on the Iron Range often referred to themselves.

  While they waited for the cage to be lifted to the surface, Haddad explained a few things. The area in northern Minnesota known generally as the Iron Range was actually composed of three distinct ranges: the Vermilion, the Mesabi, and the Cuyuna. Because the Vermilion Range contained hematite, iron in nearly perfect concentration, it was the first area to be mined. The Vermilion One had begun as a pit mine—several pit mines, actually—then had gone to underground excavation. The first shaft had been sunk in 1900. By the time the mine was abandoned, it had reached a depth of nearly half a mile.

  “Why abandoned?” Dross asked.

  “New methods of mining and processing made taconite—that’s the low-grade form of iron ore that runs like a great river through the range—more profitable, and digging enormous pits became the way. The Hull Rust Mine outside Hibbing is the largest open-pit iron mine in the world.”
/>   “Grand Canyon of the North,” Cork said.

  “That’s what they call it,” Haddad confirmed.

  “The depth of Vermilion One, is that the reason the DOE is interested in storing nuclear waste here?” Dross asked.

  “One of the reasons. The other is the geologic stability. We’re standing on an extension of the Canadian Shield, the oldest exposed rock formation in the Northern Hemisphere and one of the most stable. The chance of seismic activity here is next to nothing. Compared with the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage site, which experiences several hundred seismic events every year, this place is about as dull as a nun’s sex life. When you’re thinking long-term safety of the nuclear waste we’ve generated, this is an attractive site. Plus the fact that there’s fifty miles of tunnel already excavated, so the storage areas have pretty much already been created. A significant cost reduction.”

  “But if it does leak, it could contaminate the headwaters of a couple of the largest river systems in North America,” Cork pointed out.

  Haddad said, “There’s that.”

  “What do you think of all this, Lou?” Dross asked.

  Haddad glanced toward the security guard, whose eyes were glued to the monitors, and didn’t reply.

  Through the open window of the Rescue Room came the sound of the cage rattling up. They stepped outside, put on the hard hats Haddad had distributed, and stood next to the shaft. The cage arrived in a rush of cool air that smelled of deep, wet rock. Haddad threw back the gate. After they were in, Haddad reached to a button mounted on the framework and gave it three rings.

  “Connects to the hoist operator in the engine house,” he explained. “We communicate everything with the rings.”

  “What if we get stuck down there and the ringer fails?” Cork asked.

  “The shaft has an antenna that runs from the lowest level all the way to the top. I just give a signal with this.” He tapped a pager that hung on his belt.

  They began a rattling descend. There was a single lightbulb in a fixture at the top of the cage, and, as they dropped, Cork could see the hard face of the rock that had been cut for the shaft. The walls were streaked red, as if a great flow of blood had run there.