by K. T. Tomb
“Um. Make yourself at home? I’ll just go finish showering,” Travis said.
The woman raised an eyebrow in imperious fashion as he scuttled ungracefully back into the bathroom. The quality of the water pressure in the shower was so bad that it took far longer than he would have liked to finally free himself of soap, so long in fact that he was sure the woman would have left by the time he returned. To his relief she had not, although in his haste to get dressed, he had mismatched the buttons of his shirt.
“My name is Travis Monahan.”
He couldn’t think of anything else to say. The earlier brilliance he had shown in knotting up the Multimetal corporate stiff escaped him utterly.
“Bianca Izmaylova. I saw you at the dock and the press briefing.”
Again, she didn’t phrase her statements as questions. Straight to the point, which was impressive, considering her eyes were still dilated with what was evident fear. Travis simply nodded for her to continue, reasoning it was best to let her say what she had to say without interruption.
“You are a reporter. I have a story that I need to tell you, but you cannot publish it, not at least until I am far away from here, understand?”
“Of course,” Travis said.
“I am an administrator for Multimetal. I travel frequently between the ports all across the coast, booking in shipping manifests, ensuring that the right amount of mineral is going on the freighters. I was hoping to tell one of the journalists here what I have found out, but none of them have any balls. They just report whatever Yuri says.”
Travis’ interest was piqued.
“Wait, who is Yuri?”
“The export manager. You made him look really stupid today, so he’s very angry with you. I wouldn’t worry, he is like a jellyfish, yes? No spine at all. He is partly why I am here,” Bianca said.
“You were sent by him? Why does Multimetal want to interfere with the press?”
Travis tried to bluff his way through. Perhaps Bianca would slip. If Multimetal had already identified the adventurers as being suspicious thanks to his own actions, and not Fiona being a loose cannon, he’d never hear the end of it.
“Wait,” Bianca held up her hands. “Hear what I have to say.”
She reached into her small bag and withdrew a neatly folded piece of paper and handed it to Travis. He looked it over.
“I can’t read Russian, I’m afraid. What does it say?” Travis said.
“This is a shipping manifest I was forced to sign in at our shallow dock close to the new mine, without being allowed access to inspect the containers. That’s never happened before, and I was told not to mention the event to anyone. This is only a copy, but my signature is on it. Whatever was in those containers I think is illegal, and I’m implicated in whatever crime has been committed. It may be coincidence, but if you look at the date at the top of the paper, you’ll see something else.”
Travis looked.
“This is two days after the cargo ship went missing.”
“That’s right. The Yugo stopped all contact with us, and then another ship arrives in port in the middle of the night and leaves these containers. I never saw the ship, and maybe I’m clutching at straws, but I think there has to be a connection. I shouldn’t be here telling you this, if I am discovered betraying the company…” She trailed off, and Travis’ imagination filled in the rest.
He was sure that it would mean slightly more than the termination of her employment contract.
“I appreciate what you’re saying, Bianca, but this isn’t much to go on. There’s no story, and no proof. It’s just a shipping manifest. What do you want me to do with this?” Travis said.
Bianca said nothing, but took out her cell phone and fiddled with it for a few seconds. She flipped the phone around so that the large touch screen was facing Travis. The resolution of the picture was good enough that the three men in the picture were clearly visible, although one of them had his back to the camera. Travis instantly recognized the mustachioed coast guard captain, and the back of Yuri’s head. The third man in the picture was a man in his early fifties, Japanese or Japanese descent and impeccably dressed in what appeared to be a tailored Italian suit.
“What am I looking at?” Travis said.
“If you see in the background here, this has been taken at the new mining site. There’s the wheel of a truck here, and to the right over the Japanese man’s shoulder, that’s the goods in the office where I usually work.”
She pointed to a temporary structure, barely more than a shed. Travis wondered what someone with her clear intelligence and good looks was doing working in such a desolate environment.
Bianca continued. “What I am wondering is why the coast guard is sending their top man in the area to a mine, and to meet with Hideo Korusaki of the Himiko Corporation, of all people. He’s a major competitor.”
The name set alarm bells ringing in Travis’ head.
“Himiko? I know the company. We ran an investigation on them last year, turns out they were illegally extracting amethysts from a secret mine in Japan.”
The memory was fresh and immediate. That caper had ended with the Japanese authorities arresting the chief executive of Himiko following a not-entirely legal raid conducted by Savannah and himself. Bianca was regarding him suspiciously.
“Exactly what kind of journalist are you?” she asked.
“The investigative kind, I guess.” Travis grinned what he hoped was a disarming smile. “Anyway, the picture. What does it mean? I guess the coast guard might be ensuring that the dock at the mine complies with health and safety guidelines, right?”
“Travis, you really don’t know Russia. The coast guard doesn’t care about that here. There’s only one reason I can think of for these men to be meeting, and it means corporate fraud on a massive scale. And I mean to expose it, but I need your help. You must help me.”
Travis considered the options. In theory, the Adventurers were in Russia to protect the interests of a shareholder in the UK, who had engaged Fiona in exchange for her liberty to find a missing ship full of gold. What if the gold wasn’t missing at all, but had in fact been hidden by the very company who had mined it in the first place? To whom did Travis owe his loyalty in this? That was his quandary. He could care less about the shareholders, or the company. He would like to think it was the truth that he served. That the quest for knowledge was the primary goal as it was in his work as an anthropologist. A secondary motivator was in play, however. The Himiko Corporation being involved, for whatever reason, was too much of a coincidence. They had shown him in Tochigi that they were not above bending the law to advance their goals, using hired thugs and intimidation to get their own way, not to mention corruption on a grand scale. Their presence here could mean only one thing – that elements of Multimetal’s hierarchy were engaged in some very dirty business, indeed.
“I’ll help you,” he said, “but I need to consult with my team. They’re in the next couple of rooms on this floor.”
Bianca followed him out of the door to the adjacent room, where they brought Thyri up to speed. She seemed intrigued, but between her familiar, impassive aloofness and Bianca’s cool demeanor, Travis was beginning to feel like the only person not playing with closely held cards.
“I suppose we should bring Fiona on board too, right?” Thyri said.
Travis thought perhaps she would be more of a hindrance than a help, but agreed reluctantly. His initial reaction proved to be prophetic, as Thyri returned from Fiona’s hotel room bearing a scrawled note, but no Fiona. She read it aloud.
“‘Guys, I know this was all my idea, but me and the guy from Greenpeace are going to go screw over this new strip mine. If I end up back in jail for it so what, this is important. Don’t be mad at me.’ Signed Fiona, with a kiss on the end.”
Thyri tossed the note on her bed and sank into a chair, head in her hands.
“Sabotaging the strip mine? What kind of journalists are you?” Bianca said.
This time Travis felt that she would not be so easy to convince of their writing credentials.
“Alright,” he said, “I’ll level with you. We’re not reporters. We’re freelance investigators, hired by a UK based shareholder of your company. We’re here to find the missing ship. There are concerns that Multimetal isn’t trying hard enough. Now you say that you think the boat isn’t missing at all, and something fishy is going down at the mine, where our colleague has just flown off to with no idea of what she’s getting herself into.”
Bianca smiled, which to Travis felt like entirely the wrong reaction to this revelation.
“Good. I suspected you were not the usual brand of reporter when you managed to offend the only spokesman you would get any information out of at the press conference. I think I will go with you on the next part of your investigation.”
Again, Bianca had left no room for debate. The only question was what to do next. Fiona was undoubtedly in danger, but there could also be the possibility of nipping this whole affair in the bud before it escalated, if the evidence Bianca had gathered could be put into the right hands. In the end, it was Thyri who decided. She raised her face from her hands, where she had clearly been thinking hard.
“As much as I would like to let Fiona stew, we can’t leave her to walk into more danger than she can handle. Bianca, how far away is the mine, and can you get us there?”
“Three hours over some rough roads. My car can make it, but we should take the last mile or so on foot to avoid being seen.”
Great, thought Travis. Hiking through sub-zero Russian wilderness, at night, into perils unknown.
If Fiona was still alive, he might be forced to kill her himself.
Chapter Six
Bianca’s car turned out to be more like an armored personnel carrier than any conventional civilian vehicle. Huge tires provided an impressive ground clearance, and while it looked cumbersome, similar to the preposterous Hummers Travis had occasionally seen in Atlanta, the Russian vehicle proved to be relatively nimble and had an excellent power to weight ratio. Bianca steered the monster with the cool focus of a rally driver, although much slower to guide them over the permafrost tracks that served as roads into the wilds. As far north as they were, the light in the sky disappeared with such rapidity over the western mountains, they were soon forced to slowly creep along the coast by the light of the headlamps alone. Travis had the curious sensation of being completely displaced from the Earth itself, it was like rolling across the steppes of some distant planet so far from the sun that summer never came and all life was frozen, pulled out of time itself to perpetually orbit, unchanged by the passing of eons.
The headlamps illuminated the thin wires of trees on the roadside; in that monochromatic world they were as fissures in reality itself, cracks in a universe that was only darkness and ice. Objectively, Travis thought he should feel trepidation at the way he was thinking, at least some kind of fear at the prospect of going out into this forbidding environment. Instead, he felt a sublime sense of calm, like Thyri, Bianca and himself were the only people for a million miles. It was serene, and he sat in the back of the vehicle as it rolled gently like a ship on the Sea of Okhotsk, now sitting silent and invisible out of his right hand window as they headed northwards toward the new mine.
Bianca spoke into a Bluetooth headset as she drove. Who she was talking to was a mystery, as was the discussion itself – at least to Travis, as he spoke no Russian. Thyri, who sat in the front seat, and spoke conversational Russian herself, would be able to at least pick something up, but she would be unable to relay any information to Travis without giving away to Bianca that she knew what she was saying. Travis was attempting to figure out how they could eavesdrop – not because of any suspicion that this new ally they had made was double-dealing, but because of his own natural curiosity – when Thyri turned in her seat and showed him the screen of her cell phone. Travis was about to speak, when he caught her eyes and realized, for whatever reason, that Thyri wanted the information exchange to remain private. The screen showed a text message from Fiona.
It read; “North Warehouse. Found gold while looking for dynamite. Greenpeace got caught but ran. In deep shit HELP”
Travis typed into the reply field, but handed back the phone instead of sending the message he wrote, not that it would have done any good to send it anyway. Fiona’s message was two hours old, and must have been received back in Magadan before they left. But if that was the case, how is Bianca talking on the phone? Travis considered the possibilities. She could have a satellite phone in this vehicle, and that was what is connected to the Bluetooth headset. Now that he thought about it, an administrator for a mining company would surely not be on a high enough salary to afford such a hi-tech truck designed for tackling this terrain. It was possible it was a company vehicle, but even so, it was unlikely that Multimetal would provide such an expensive asset to low level employees. Bianca removed the headset. Thyri took the initiative to investigate.
“Bianca, who is that Andrei you were talking to just now?”
Evidently she had heard a name during the conversation, but was at least trying to hide how much Russian she knew. It didn’t work. Bianca was far too cute to be outfoxed that easily.
“I suspected you spoke Russian, Miss Ragnarsson,” said Bianca. “Andrei is a friend. He will be able to help us when we get to the mine. We will need his help to retrieve your friend, and, if things turn out… badly, for us.”
Travis decided to change the subject. He would rather not countenance what a bad situation might constitute.
“We need to get into the north warehouse to collect our girl, but we need to get there fast. I think we should scrap the idea to hike the rest of the way, and chance it that we make it through in this truck. Does the security at the mine know this vehicle?”
“Of course. I am quite often working at this place; they know me well. There is, of course, a higher risk of being seen if we drive there, but also of course, the risk of being caught breaking in on foot would immediately raise suspicions. We can be there in, say, twenty minutes driving. If we are going to walk, we will need to pull over soon.”
Travis peered out the windshield at the Russian tundra. It seemed clear to him – and he didn’t think that it came from any reticence about hiking in arctic winter – that if they tried to take the stealthier route, they would arrive at the mine if not half dead from cold, then at least exhausted and unable to conduct any manner of effective rescue.
“How many people are going to be at the mine at this time of night, in this temperature, anyway?” Thyri said.
“Even though it is so cold, there will still be security. This is an important asset, after all. Maybe a dozen men, and they will be armed. Nothing major in that regard, pistols and hunting rifles. There are bears in this region, but they are hibernating. Mostly!” Bianca said, laughing at the look on Travis’ face in the mirror.
She evidently thought that the mention of bears scared him. While of course he had no desire to meet one tonight, it was the prospect of facing men with guns, armed as he was with only some warm weather clothing and a smile.
“Ok,” he said, trying to shake the mental flashbacks of the smell of cordite and the strange burning sensation of bullets entering his body. He succeeded by thinking about brandy, whisky, gin, how good they tasted. How great a bottle of wine was. “Ok. We drive it. If we come up against any nosey security, we’ll have to bluff it. Thyri, I have to say this is the last time I will ever work with Fiona, if we don’t end up in a gulag.”
His voice was a little choked; a psychosomatic affect, no doubt from thinking about bullets and booze in quick succession. He cleared his throat as surreptitiously as possible. Thyri merely nodded. Clearly, she was regretting going along with one of Fiona’s wild ideas herself. Bianca spoke instead.
“In that case, my American friends, I recommend that both of you get in the back, and cover yourself in a blanket or something. Just in case we get sto
pped, of course.”
She pulled the SUV over, and Thyri joined Travis in the back seat. The temperature inside the vehicle dropped so quickly with the doors opened that Travis was thankful for the thick fur blanket that Bianca had stowed in the trunk. Thyri top and tailed with him, which was not the most comfortable position, but with their heads down and the blanket pulled up they looked like a shapeless black nothing, and not two human beings at all. They bumped along in this manner for twenty minutes, before they felt the surface of the road change from permafrost to frozen cement. Travis could, by peeking from under the fur blanket, see through the window by his feet where Thyri’s head laid. There were some kind of powerful lighting rigs in use, although he couldn’t see enough to work out how many there were or where the sources were situated. The light seemed to bounce from every surface outside, which meant the interior of the SUV was filled with a bright white glow. Travis imagined it must be like being at the heart of a nuclear explosion. He also realized that it meant that anyone who looked inside the vehicle would have an excellent chance of noticing something amiss with the asymmetric shape on the back seat. It was too late to change the plan, so he hunkered back down under the fur and hoped for the best, as he felt the engine slow down, and the vehicle come to a slow stop.
Chapter Seven
Travis and Thyri stiffened under the fur blanket as they heard the driver’s side window lower. Bianca spoke briefly in Russian to a man, who responded briefly in the same language. The window was raised again, and the SUV moved forward slowly.
“We are in,” Bianca said. “The gate guard is freezing in his little shed; he didn’t even look in. You can come out now.”
Travis and Thyri untangled themselves from each other and sat up. Bianca, true to her word had brought them into the mine itself with no trouble. Travis’ eyes took a moment to adjust from the total darkness under the blanket, where they had been hiding, to the artificial daylight of the mine site. There were several excavation vehicles dotted around the compound, but it appeared that the mine was far from being operational. Several large, corrugated iron warehouses stood out starkly against the bleak landscape, and looking where they had come from toward the entrance of the mine Travis could see a chain link fence and a small guardhouse. Apart from these features, there was nothing. No vegetation, no people, nothing. Travis actually missed the austere architecture of Magadan. He felt agoraphobic in this place, and exposed. It would be impossible to take cover anywhere if they were discovered in their attempt to extract Fiona. Bianca parked the car by one of the warehouse buildings.
