The Medusa Stone

The Eritrea-Sudan Border

Gianelli felt like a conquering Caesar as his trucks rumbled into Eritrea. He sat in the passenger seat of the lead vehicle, the windows rolled down so he could smell the dry desert and hear the bellowing of the big twelve-cylinder turbo-diesels. Chuckling, he realized that the heavy-duty transporters loaded with mining gear and provisions weighed twice as much as the CV.35 light battle tanks Mussolini had used to invade Abyssinia. Kitted out in de rigueur khaki, with a bush hat clamped on his head and sunglasses protecting his eyes from the worst of the driving sun, Gianelli was at the very pinnacle of his life. Everything up to this moment, every deal and every decision, had led to this instant. Leading the trucks back to the mine that his uncle had opened decades before was the culmination of his existence. Let others wonder at his wealth and power — they were nothing, merely an extension of what had been handed to him through his family, a quirk of genetics. This was what he saw as his destiny.

Soon after the Eritrean refugees had left their camps in Sudan under the leadership of a nomad prince, Mahdi had approached Gianelli with his idea of searching ahead of the column so they could reach the mine more quickly. The refugees were covering only a couple of miles a day, and the lethargic pace rankled the Italian. Gianelli agreed and sent out a scout truck. Three days later the radio call had come saying they had found the mine in a bowl of land at the end of a narrow valley after hearing an explosion. Gianelli ordered the main convoy to bypass the refugees and speed to where the advance scouts waited. A short time after, another call from them reported a Toyota Land Cruiser driven by a white man was attempting to flee the valley. Gianelli’s first thought was the fools had given away their presence to Mercer, but realized that Mahdi’s people wouldn’t have made such a blunder.

He instructed the Sudanese rebels to stop the Toyota and made it clear that Mercer was not to be harmed. He learned a few hours later that Mercer had escaped through a mine field at the cost of one of Mahdi’s men. Gianelli cursed the whole team over the radio until his fist nearly crushed the microphone. Mahdi listened to the exchange as he sat on the back bench seat of the ten-wheeled Fiat truck. When his turn came, he took Gianelli’s wrath without comment. His employer was fully in his right. Mercer never should have escaped. His men’s failure was inexcusable, and their punishment, when the cargo trucks reached the valley, would be more severe than Gianelli’s verbal tirade.

The radio crackled again, and he snatched up the handset. “Yes?”

“We are back at the valley now and have it secured. The American left only three people here, Eritreans. They have some excavating equipment but are not working at the mine.”

“What are they doing?” Gianelli asked the leader of the advance detachment he had sent out to leapfrog the meandering refugee column.

“They were just digging into the side of one of the mountains. They haven’t said yet what they were looking for.”

“They knew about my uncle’s mine, right?”

“Yes, sir,” the soldier replied, then lowered his tone, knowing his next statement would not please his superior. “The man left in charge here said that there were no minerals in the mine. He told us the American explored the shaft and said there was nothing in it of any value.”

“That can’t be right,” Gianelli stammered, the buoyant mood that had carried him across the frontier evaporating quickly.

Despite their increased speed, it took eight hours before the convoy eased between the ramparts that guarded the bowl of land called the Valley of Dead Children. Listening to the chatter of the men in the backseat with Mahdi, Gianelli learned that they knew of this place and held it in superstitious dread. He asked Mahdi about it, and the soldier couldn’t give him a definitive answer. He told his employer that the region’s taboo went back many generations, but no one knew its origins. The myths surrounding it had spread as far as Sudan and Ethiopia.

“Rubbish,” Giancarlo said dismissively.

His expression was fevered with anticipation, a sense of history weighing on his shoulders. The valley looked nothing like what he’d thought as a child, but now that he was here, he could imagine it no other way.

Across the open pan, he saw the skeleton of the head gear rising out of a watery heat mirage, recognized the support buildings next to it, and after a few minutes, saw the open Fiat his advance scouts had driven. His heart pounded with eagerness.

The trucks lumbered to the abandoned mine, wheezing as their overworked engines spooled to silence, air brakes hissing. Gianelli launched himself from the cab, running across the desert to the rim of the open shaft.

Joppi Hofmyer was the first to join him.

“This is it,” Giancarlo gasped. “Two lifetimes of work, mine and my uncle’s, and here it is.” He gave no consideration to the earlier news that the mine was empty. It was a possibility he would not allow.

There was no way the mine could be worthless, he thought. Enrico had been sure there were diamonds in the area, had died believing it. Gianelli had always felt that if his uncle’s plane hadn’t been shot down during the war, he would have given the family proof. Mercer hadn’t taken enough time to properly explore the subterranean tunnels, he told himself, nor did he have the proper equipment for a thorough search. The diamonds were here.

“Yes, sir,” the South African replied uneasily. “Ah, Mr. Gianelli, I’d like to know how you want to handle this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Now that we’re here, do you want me to take charge of the men, or are you going to be issuing the orders?”

Gianelli’s laugh was a quick barking sound. “Joppi, my friend, I am one of those people who knows how to hire others for their knowledge and abilities. I’m paying you because you know how to extract minerals from the ground, an art that I know nothing about. From now on, you are in complete control. However you want to handle this operation, whatever steps you feel necessary, are fine. Consider me nothing more than an interested observer.”

Hofmyer turned away, more disturbed by Gianelli’s sudden bonhomie than he cared to admit. “Okay, you fookin’ kaffirs,” he bellowed at the Sudanese troopers clustered near the trucks. “Until those refugees get here, you bastards are going to be miners. You take orders from Mahdi, and as of this moment Mahdi takes orders from me. Once I get the checklist, I want ten men unloading the camp stores and setting up the tents.

“I want the rest of you unloading the mining gear, separating underground equipment from surface stuff. If you don’t know what something is, ask either me or one of the other white miners and don’t forget to call him Baas.” The four other South Africans grinned at this. “You boys,” he said to the whites, “I want the explosives off-loaded and placed in a protective redoubtment no closer than five hundred yards from the mine or the camp. Now, someone bring me the three kaffirs who were already here when the scouts arrived.”

Habte sat handcuffed in the shade of the scout’s Fiat with the two Eritrean equipment operators. Neither of the hired workers understood what was happening. Their fear was palpable, but ever since Asmara, Habte had been expecting something like this. He figured that these men were allied to the ones who had attacked Mercer and Selome in the market square. As of yet, the Caucasians he had seen at the Ambasoira Hotel had not made their appearance. When they did, he knew that he could expect little help from them. This time the enemy of his enemy was not his friend.

Two Sudanese rebels approached and gestured with their rifles for the trio to follow. Led back to the open mine shaft, Abebe began praying aloud. Habte had faced death many, many times before, and he would not let his own fear show.

Joppi sauntered over a few moments later, his gut sagging over his belt. With an expert eye he looked over the three captives, fixing his gaze on Habte, recognizing him as their leader. With a casualness that belied the brutality of the act, he stepped forward, planted his hands on Abebe’s shoulders, and shoved him into the pit.

Abebe’s scream echoed up from the shaft, diminishing like a siren until it was cut off with an undeniable finality. Habte didn’t so much as blink when Joppi’s eyes bored into his, waiting for a reaction that the Eritream refused to give. They were locked in this frozen tableau for several breaths.

“Oh, you’re an uppity nigger, aren’t you?” Hofmyer finally said. “You want me to push your other friend in as well, or do you want to start answering some questions?”

Habte willed himself not to say that the South African hadn’t asked any, knowing such a retort would cause the murder of the other equipment operator. He allowed his eyes to drop in a pose of submission that Joppi interpreted as a victory. Like many others from his country who hadn’t taken the time to understand traditional African ways, Joppi believed Habte’s silence connoted acceptance. “That’s better, now. Why don’t you tell me what you were doing at the far end of the valley?”

Balancing his desire to defy the Boer and his realization that the longer he was alive the better his chances were for escape, Habte told Hofmyer everything.

An hour later, the trucks rumbled away from the Italian mine so they could set up their camp a short distance from the ancient one.