by Tom Norton
John replied, “Let’s see if we can get anything out of this. Those numbers you wrote down must be drilling depths.”
“I think so, but 4200 meters is outlandish. I don’t think the steam is produced at that depth, but I can’t say for sure.”
“How about the 20 meters?”
“I would think at 20 meters the steam would be naturally venting to the surface like it does several places in Iceland.”
John said, “We don’t know crap about any of this, but we have some research and engineering papers we can look at. More drill pipe? Crap, they couldn’t be using it as fast as those trucks brought it in. Rick, remind me to calculate how much drill pipe is on one of those trucks.”
John continued, “Father, on your notes here, what catches my eye are, professor, Geology Department, regulations and pitch, whatever that is. Well between this and everything we copied at the library, it ought to keep me and Rick busy trying to make sense of all this. You are sure there was nothing about a skeleton or gold or even hiding something?”
“Not that I heard.”
“Good job Father, we’ll be in touch.”
At the hotel room with Rick’s laptop connected to the hotel Wi-Fi, they again looked at the older Google aerial photos and site 22 was drilling and 23 had just been cleared of brush.
John said, “Nothing there, let’s bring up the files we copied on the DVD.”
Rick said, “These are old engineering drawings and stuff, nothing current. Are these sites different than the others?”
“I don’t know, go to the status page.”
John said, “Here it is. It looks like most of the sites were abandoned.”
“Looks like it. The priest said drilling for the steam deposits isn’t much more than a good guess.”
“Let’s go through the regulations again and see if they mention professor, Geology Department, pitch or the 500, 20, 800, 4200 numbers and the two kilometers. Maybe we can get some idea what the drillers were talking about.”
The two read and studied the regulations and the terms of the contract between Iceland and Masters and Miller whose headquarters was in London where the engineering drawing originated. None of the numbers were present, but of interest was that the University of Iceland Geology Department would oversee the drilling and determine if a site was a viable steam producer. Upon production of electricity, the government would purchase the electricity from Masters and Miller. Nowhere was the term pitch mentioned in any of the papers.”
Rick said, “That could be the barmaid’s name.”
John commented, “I don’t know, but when we finish here tonight, I intend to find out.”
“There’s pages of this stuff and either I don’t know about it or it doesn’t seem to help us any.”
After looking at a few more pages and the fourth beer for John, he said. “I’m going all in on this thing.”
Rick asked, “What’s all in mean?”
“It means, I get that damned operated on Neanderthal, the gold disk, our data and any other damned thing I can get.”
“Well that’s a tall order considering where we are on this.”
John answered, “We know who has it, we just have to get it back.”
“And what is any other damned thing mean?”
“I smell money and a lot of it. I wasn’t always a professor you know.”
“Yeah, you’ve said that. Just what were you?”
“I wasn’t digging artifacts, I was smuggling them.”
“Smuggling?”
“Egypt and Syria to London. Almost got caught. Knew one hell of a lot about ancient artifacts and one thing led to another.”
“Well that’s interesting, Professor.”
John said, “What are your long range plans Rick? I’ll guarantee you it won’t be with a college degree after the University of Berlin and those students get through with us.”
“I don’t know, any money in smuggling?”
“Yes, and I smell a shit pot full of money involved in this deal.”
“That being the case, how dangerous is it?”
John replied, “Depends on how much money is involved.”
“Well how much do you figure a complete Neanderthal skeleton is worth on the black market?”
“At least a million pounds?”
“Maybe they’ve sold it already.”
John replied, “Everything indicates they aren’t interested in selling it.”
Rick said, “That means a lot of money and a lot of danger then.”
“Probably one or two people here know what I look like and my mother wouldn’t recognize me with this beard and mustache. You’re not much in the facial hair department, so I’m thinking one of those stocking caps like the fishermen wear here, and some glasses. They have probably only seen a picture of you, if that.”
“Ok, but the first bad guy that looks sideways at me, I’m jumping ship. So, now what?”
“I’m thinking we should bug the assistants or the professor’s office.”
Rick replied, “I don’t think so. With your disguise there would be someone following us all over the university or they would just call the police.”
“Rick, you’re a natural at this sort of thing.”
“Really?”
John said, “It’s the drill sites then, we bug them.”
“We can’t drive in there and its kilometers off the highway. And setting out there in the bushes will get damned boring and damned cold. We would have to be awful close for a small transmitter and receiver setup.”
John replied, “We will just leave a recorder. How long can we record?”
“The one I have for classes is voice activated and good for two hundred hours.”
“There you go. That’s what we need. All we have to do is get it on the site in their office or something.”
“And then go get it and we won’t understand a word on it.”
John said, “The priest.”
Rick replied, “Don’t you think asking the priest to listen to two hundred hours of audio is a little much?”
“We can ask. If he won’t, we’ll have to have someone in Europe do it.”
“I don’t have my recorder with me.”
“I’ll buy two, one for site 22 and one for site 23.”
“Why site 22?”
John replied, “That’s probably where Sam is for safe keeping. The professor and the assistant are at site 23 a lot, so we will have both of them covered for two hundred hours.
The plan was to plant the audio recorder on sites 22 and 23 on Friday night when the crews were in Reykjavik. The assistant and professor wouldn’t be there and the site would probably have a light security presence.
It was five kilometers from the highway to site 23 and then another seven kilometers to site 22 three kilometers back to the highway from site 22.. That was at least fifteen kilometers of walking in the wilderness. If for some reason they couldn’t plant the recorders in one night, they would stay in the countryside another night.
They had two days to prepare for their mission, which required acquiring audio recorders and buy camouflage clothes to match the green treeless surroundings where they would be walking. They printed out a detailed map of the area and knowing they couldn’t leave the car parked on the highway for two days, arranged for the priest to drop them off and pick them up again. It might require several trips to pick them up, because there was no cell service in that area.
A couple space blankets and some canned heat were bought along with enough food and juice for two days.
Friday afternoon the priest drove the two out of sight of both site roads and let John and Rick off. In minutes they were well into the green arctic tundra like landscape and nearly invisible.
The ground was very irregular and far from flat as the country was a myriad of ancient lava flows and ash deposits.
Rick said to John. “How far do you think we’ve walked?”
“A couple kilometers. We keep follo
wing this compass heading and we should be paralleling the site 23 access road.
Another couple kilometers and getting dark, Rick said, “I can hear generators up ahead.”
Getting up on some high ground they could only see the top of the drilling rig about a half kilometer ahead.
John said, “Let’s try to keep something between us and them and we should be damned close by dark.”
“Well I don’t want to die on an empty stomach, let’s eat something before we get shot.”
In the dark the two sat with field glasses in one hand and a cheese sandwich in the other.
John said, “Almost all the vehicles have left or are leaving. We have a drill rig and three trailers. One of them appears to be sleeping quarters, one a tool and parts shed and the third an office and cafeteria. And one hell of a lot of drill pipe stacked up. More than we calculated came in on the trucks.”
Minutes later Rick said, “One vehicle left in site, lights out in the tool trailer and the last vehicle leaving closed that gate across the access road.”
John asked, “Do you see anyone, I don’t. Let’s wait until we see someone.”
Rick said, “There is a guy in the office and he just turned off the computer.”
“Anyone else?”
“Doesn’t appear to be and it doesn’t look like he is talking to anyone.”
“Well he surely isn’t going to stay in the office.”
Rick said, “The lights are out in the office and a big screen TV came on in the cafeteria part. A soccer match.”
John replied, “It can’t be this easy. That guy is just fire watch, they don’t have any security at all.”
“Why would they need it?”
“No need in both of us getting shot, stay here. It’ll take me a while to get the recorder hidden, but that small remote microphone is going to make it easy.”
Rick replied, “Ok, but if they torture you, I’m not out here.”
“It’s a deal.”
The fact that it never completely gets dark at that time of year made a quiet approach to the trailer easy and when close John could hear the TV that was on obviously too loud. After an hour of looking over the situation and cheap trailers being what they are, John wedged the very small microphone in a rubber window seal and ran the very thin microphone wire behind some junk and to where he buried the recorder he had turned on.
Ten minutes later he was back to Rick saying, “Done deal.”
By the time they walked the seven kilometers to site 22, it was getting lighter although it was one thirty in the morning. At a close location with some rare small scrub brush, they glassed the area and could see that this was going to be another matter. It was a small geothermal power plant with the hiss of steam and the hum of electricity and there were at least three vehicles and an occasional worker in a white hat walking around. All of the outbuildings were new wood and metal structures and what appeared to be the administration office had modern doors and windows.
After an hour of looking over the situation, John said, “We are going to have to do what we can do. The large workshop blocks the view from the rest of the site. I can get a recorder in there, and that’s about it. Stay here.”
John made his way to where the building would hide his approach to it and he made his way to the building. Out of sight of Rick, he planted the audio recorder and returned.
“Let’s get the hell out of here. Our first scheduled pickup is in four hours and we have plenty of time to make it.”
The priest was hailed down and John and Rick jumped into the vehicle that was a warm welcome relief from the bitter cold wind that was blowing.
The priest asked, “How did it go?”
John replied, “I did the best I could, we’ll just have to wait and see.”
The next weekend the same procedure was followed with a great deal more caution because one of the recording devices may have been discovered. The conditions were the same at site 23 and site 22, so apparently they hadn’t.
The three went immediately to the church where the priest had church functions, the priest keeping the recorders and John and Rick went to their hotel to cleanup, eat and spend the day.
The Priest called in the morning and said he would start on the recordings, but had to knock off about noon. For them to come by after three in the afternoon.
At three they arrived at the church and the priest said, “I listened to about four hours of tape that included what sounded like a soccer match. During this time the phone had rang and someone answered it and the conversation was yes’s and no’s. The next audio was again the phone and a person saying he would come down and open the gate. Then it was a radio on a weather station and this person made a call. Something to do with a load of pipe and where to stack it. Then what sounded like a generator starting in the background and it ran continuously, I assume keeping the recorder on. After an hour of nothing there was a conversation pertaining to drill pipe and the problems they were having with a drill being stuck at seven hundred meters. That’s as far as I got.”
Rick said, “It looks like the recorder is going to be on constantly due to the generator except on the weekends.”
John said, “Yep, and that means listening to over a hundred hours for each site.”
The priest said, “I can’t do that.”
“What if we filtered out all the audio that wasn’t pertinent?”
“I suppose.”
“Well father, we will take the recorders and get back to you and bring you a little bit at a time. We’ll be two weeks listening to those damned things unless we just give up.”
“That will be just fine; I will work it in somehow.”
With two more recorders, John and Rick spent an entire week in the hotel room filtering out the conversations between people and any one sided phone calls. Hours at a time were delivered to the priest for interpretation and he took down pages of notes.
At weeks end, John and Rick were at wits end getting almost no sleep and listening to generators run while they watched soccer games on TV.
John called the priest and the priest said that he was way behind, but he was getting interesting conversations. John asked him to keep at it because he and Rick were going to finish the recordings or die trying and mentioning he had been drunk for a week.
The last recordings were delivered to the priest by Rick and then he and John crashed in the hotel room.
Saturday afternoon the priest called and said he was about half through with the site 23 recordings and they should meet and it would help if they would write down the conversations as he interpreted them.
That evening they were all together in the church and the priest had made a copy of the notes he had completed.
John said, “My God; oh excuse me Father,”
The priest replied, “He’s mine too, go ahead.”
“There must be fifty pages here.”
“Tell me about it! Here are black markers, just read through it fast and throw out what you think isn’t pertinent.”
John gave half to Rick and they started and when complete, John said, “Yep, there’s something funny going on and the professor and the assistant are in it up to their you know what.”
The priest replied, “That’s my opinion. Let’s go through what you’ve got and see if we can make heads or tails of it.”
The three did this and of interest were discussions with the Professor and someone named Robbi that was probably the assistant. These discussions were limited and were about steam production, numbers of meters of drill pipe, that pitch again, something they referred to as stuff several times and numerous references to site 22.
There were numerous one sided calls to someone that appeared to be in London, but it was in Icelandic to the person on the other end. Enormous amounts of English pounds were discussed and it was needed in Iceland. In these calls to and from London, the stuff was always mentioned.
Discussions with the Professor and Robbie also mentioned stuff,
but in much smaller amounts.
There were more discussions of interest and when completed, John said, “Well, it’s certain the Professor and that Robbi are getting paid off, but for what?”
Rick replied, “What’s this stuff and pitch? There’s so damned much background noise that may not even be what they are saying.
John said, “Stuff is something you don’t want someone to know what it is. Pitch, I don’t have a damned clue; sorry again Father. Nothing about skeletons, Neanderthals or gold disks. We might be barking up the wrong tree on those, but I still smell money here and a lot of it. That professor and Robbi aren’t doing too bad. Rick, get on the Father’s computer and see what pitch means.”
“In moments he had scanned down the websites and blogs and said, “It’s what we think it is, like tree pitch and the pitch of a roof, that’s about it, nothing related to us.”
The priest said, “The person said ninety degree and ninety five degree pitch, maybe it is a roof.”
John replied, “No building has ninety degree pitch roofs, it’s something else. Maybe a local terminology or something. We’ll see if it comes up in the site 22 recordings. Me and Rick will take the notes. When will you be free again, Father?”
“Between noon and five and then from seven on.”
“Good, we’ll be here at noon.”
At noon the three started and as John and Rick were aware, there was very little conversation and what there was, being yelled over vehicle engines running. They noted what the priest was interpreting and it was in reference to two thousand meters of drill pipe unloaded and frequent talk about the maintenance on the drill derrick and changing and repairing drill bits. They yelled to each other about welding on the derrick and one guy told another to see how the derrick was coming. Again the term pitch was used when talking about working on drill bits.
