Red Ice by Mike Boshier

Author:Mike Boshier [Boshier, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780473504823
Publisher: Okoromai Bay Publishing Ltd
Published: 2019-12-01T22:00:00+00:00

21

Admiral Carter’s Office, the Pentagon

Sipping coffee, Mitch produced prints from the information they had obtained.

‘Vorkuta appears to be the regional local center for the Urals Mining Company. They process the relatively small amounts of coal produced in that immediate region, before shipping it out by train. Here are lists of daily, weekly, and monthly tonnage shipments from there, broken down to types of coal, etc. They have many more sites around Russia and would seem, at least to the naked eye, to be quite legitimate,’ he said, passing the copies across.

‘These are files from the data drive you copied, and they all seem legit. The head guy is confirmed as Major Pavel Cherenko, but we knew that already. However, it confirms the tie-in to the military. A lot of the other data seems to be normal company stuff such as payroll, employee details and the like. However, Director Ingram over at the CIA is creaming over all of this – they’re always looking for tidbits of info they may be able to hook into and use to their advantage. As to the company known as Poteryannoye Sokrovishche, there was nothing showing on the main directory of the drive.’

‘But there was a folder. I photographed the contents,’ Deacon said.

‘Correct. And I said ‘not on the main directory of the drive’. There were a number of hidden, password-protected sub-folders that were quite interesting.’

‘Go on,’ the Admiral said, beckoning Deacon to pour them all more coffee.

As Deacon grabbed the coffee pot, Mitch continued, ‘We have broken the passwords to two of the folders. They refer to this company PSO. Officially, it doesn’t exist. It’s run by a Lieutenant General Dmitry Yermilov, which is surprising being it’s a smaller subsidiary, but this guy Yermilov is four ranks above Cherenko. This site at Vorkuta is the central processing plant for what PSO supplies.

‘And what they supply is,’ Mitch stopped to take another mouthful of coffee, much to the annoyed look from Deacon, ‘what they supply is standard minerals such as copper, fluorspar, cobalt, etc. as well as about a dozen of the seventeen classified rare earth minerals. They have also been processing significant amounts of silver and gold, and, in particular, diamonds.’

‘Wow, they have a diamond mine,’ Hythe joked.

‘Well, that’s where it gets interesting. All of these minerals and gold are shipped from their one working mine eighty miles north of Vorkuta that we knew nothing about. The heavy stuff, including silver and gold, is shipped under guard by rail, but the smaller rare earth items and the diamonds are flown to Vorkuta by helicopter, and they come directly from Amderma. None of this appears to be recorded officially. The quantity of standard minerals is added to the totals from the Vorkuta mines, while the rare earth, silver, gold, and diamonds never show up in official paperwork.’

Looking at the data, Hythe asked, ‘How much are we talking about?’

The Admiral cleared his throat and said, ‘Tens and tens of millions of dollars, possibly hundreds of millions.

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