“You’ve already told all this to me!” Zara said. “What I want to know is how you suggest we escape?”
Sam continued, as though Zara had said nothing. “If we can accept the Garamantes had the technology to build a pendentive, we can also accept the hypothesis that they used an elaborate underground irrigation system, and founded prosperous Berber kingdoms or city-states in the Fezzan area of Libya and Chad, in the Sahara desert.”
“You think they built irrigation tunnels between their other cities?”
Sam nodded. “Known ruins include numerous tombs, forts, and cemeteries. The Garamantes constructed a network of underground tunnels and shafts to mine the fossil water from beneath the limestone layer under the desert sand. The dating of these foggara is disputed, they appear between 200 BC to 200 AD but continued to be in use until at least the 7th century and perhaps later. The network allowed agriculture to flourish, but used a system of slave labor to keep it maintained.”
“What are you going to do? Find these foggoras and walk out of here?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Sam turned off his thermal suit. The power slowly shut down and the light faded. In the darkness Tom snored. Sam gently pushed his back with his boot. Tom rolled on his side and stopped snoring. The cavern became silent as it was dark.
“What now?” Zara asked.
“Now we rest.”
“After that?”
“We’re going to go find a way out of this mess.”
Sam listened to her shuffle on the ground, as though she were uncomfortable and trying hard to find a position to sleep.
She asked, “What about the people you work for?”
Sam smiled at the naiveté. “Will they come for us?”
“Yes.”
“They could risk serious international relations if they were seen coming in weapons blazing to retrieve two American treasure hunters.”
“But will they come?” she persisted.
Sam said, “You bet your ass, they would. The people I work with would turn the world on its axis to save our lives. They’d come in guns blazing until they found us, if…”
“What?”
“If only they had any idea we were missing. I carried a GPS tracker, but it’s on one of the camels we lost. As far as my people know, I’m wandering around aimlessly across the Sahara — which means we’re on our own.”
Zara made no reply. Instead she sat, rigid, in the dark. Pensive. Sam rolled over. Happy to leave the conversation alone for the night. To a small degree, he still felt a certain level of guilt that he hadn’t planned his mission better. If he could have communicated with his team on board the Maria Helena they would all be out of this mess by now.
The ground was hard and uncomfortable. Sam had slept in worse places over the years, but his mind struggled to switch off. After about five minutes the silence was broken.
Zara asked, “What do you think happened to your agent?”
Sam paused. “Who?”
“The diamond smuggler.”
Sam didn’t wait to think about it. “He would have been executed.”
“How do you know he was killed?”
“Because he didn’t show up at the rendezvous point in Morocco.”
“So you think General Ngige’s men got to him?”
“I’m certain of it. Satellite images showed his forces in pursuit the day before we lost contact with him.”
“So maybe they captured him and he’s still alive?”
“No. General Ngige doesn’t take prisoners unless they’re valuable. And the General didn’t make any requests, so we know he didn’t keep our man alive. Simple as that.”
She asked, “What was he like?”
Surprised by the question, Sam thought about it for a moment. Zara didn’t strike him as being a sentimental kind of woman. There was no reason he could see that she would be interested in an American agent. “I don’t know. I never met the man. I got out of the military years ago.”
She laughed. “That’s right. You’re here, strictly as a treasure hunter.”
“Right,” Sam confirmed.
“What do you know about him?”
“Nothing.” Sam thought about it for a moment. “Not much. He held dual citizenship with the U.S. and Egypt. His brother still lives and works in the region. His father was a desert dweller. A Saharan nomad, who’d survived by trading throughout a series of sandy outcrops. We know nothing about his mother. She probably died when he was very little.”
“What was his name?” She spoke the words softly. There was a little tenderness that he hadn’t heard in her voice before.
“Mikhail. I don’t know his last name. He had an excellent reputation in the region.”
She made a sound. It was barely audible. But in an instant, it told him all he needed to know — and why she was so interested in the man.
Sam said, “You knew him?”
He felt Zara throw her arms around his neck and hold tight. Wet tears rolled onto his neck.
She said, “Yes he was my lover.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Mikhail stood up to stretch. There was a slight bend in his spine, but it was as close to freedom as he would receive during his stay at the Lake Tumba Lithium Mine. He’d lost count of how many days he’d been there. None of it mattered to him. Inside the mine life and death came around every other day. If he wanted to live, he would have to beat everyone around him. He’d lost a lot of weight. If he lost any more strength he might not make it. Few people lasted in the mine very long. Those who did had to make friends fast, or beat some very powerful enemies.
Dikembe was one such friend Mikhail had made. He was the largest man Mikhail had ever met. He had to be almost seven foot tall and solid. Rations were served to those who pulled the most amount of lithium brine out from under the mountain. Dikembe, who was the largest, had been pulling massive amounts of the liquid brine for many years. He was given whatever rations he required.
In order to keep control of his slaves, General Ngige provided the same amount of food and water to the men of the mine every twenty-four hours. The prisoner count fluctuated somewhere between five hundred and a thousand men. It didn’t matter if this number increased or decreased, the same amount of rations would be provided, so long as the prisoners carried the required amount of lithium brine to the surface.
All lived below the cold sunken earth, in a labyrinth of mine shafts, tunnels, and excavation sites. There were eighty-four individual levels. Mines involved shafts which were vertical and tunnels which were horizontal. It had a series of mine shafts driven along opposing arms, so that there would be plenty of additional ways to reach the surface if a cave-in occurred along any one tunnel or shaft.
The Lake Tumba Lithium Mine had existed for nearly four decades as a gold mine. When the gold veins ran out, or were no longer profitable the mine was sold multiple times until it failed to find a bidder.
Once there, it sat dormant until General Ngige discovered a new purpose for it. A working mine has always been useful as a prison. It served as a deterrent and for the purpose of producing gold. Only, now it served an additional benefit of providing the highest yielding stores of lithium brine in any mine in the world — which made it one of the most valuable pieces of soil anywhere in the world.
If the legends were to be considered true, General Ngige and Dikembe both had an intricate knowledge of the mine, after being forced to work it nearly twenty years ago as children. Both men vowed to change the world they lived. Dikembe prayed to make it a better place, while Ngige wanted nothing but revenge.
Mikhail watched Dikembe finish his bowl of food. Rice, mixed with fish. He ate like an animal. Quick, without leaving a scrap of food and ravenous.