was his means of escape after his mother had run away with an American GI, leaving him in the care of an alcoholic father prone to violence. The young Bolcke’s mountain hikes fostered a love of geology, which led to a degree in mineral resources engineering from Austria’s University of Leoben.
He took a job at a copper mine in Poland, and before long was hopscotching the globe, working tin mines in Malaysia, gold mines in Indonesia, and silver mines in South America. With an uncanny ability to locate the richest ore concentrations, he boosted recovery rates and profits everywhere he went.
But in Colombia, life threw him a twisted bone. Bolcke took an ownership interest in a small silver operation in the Tolima district. His astute analysis of the claim revealed a more valuable deposit of platinum alongside his property. He secured the rights and struck a major deposit, making him wealthy in a matter of months. While celebrating his good fortune in Bogota, he met the vivacious daughter of a Brazilian industrialist and soon married.
He led a storybook life for several years, expanding his riches from the mine—until one day he returned to his home in Bogota to find his wife in bed with an American consulate worker. With a fury he never knew he possessed, he shattered the man’s skull with a rock hammer. His wife came next, her throat crushed by his thick, burly hands.
A Colombian jury, well greased by his defense attorneys, acquitted him on the grounds of temporary insanity. He walked away a free man.
He was free physically, but not psychologically. The event reopened childhood scars of abandonment, while slashing new wounds. A bloodthirsty anger flooded his soul—and refused to recede. He sought revenge, turning to the easiest victims he could find: helpless young women. Cruising the slums of Bogota at night, he would hire young prostitutes, then beat them unmercifully to vent his rage. Nearly gunned down one night by a watchful pimp, he finally abandoned that outlet for his rage and left Colombia, selling his remaining interest in the mine.
Bolcke had invested in an underperforming gold mine in Panama and he relocated there. Years earlier, he had studied the mine’s operations and knew it had been mismanaged. A privately held American firm with other holdings owned it, and to take control he was forced to purchase the entire company. But to enable the deal, he had to forfeit a portion of the mine’s equity to Panama’s corrupt government, headed at the time by Manuel Noriega. When the U.S. military ousted Noriega, the succeeding government laid claim to the mine and harassed Bolcke into amassing a mountain of legal bills before he reacquired ownership at a considerable cost. He blamed the Americans for his losses, inflaming an already deep-seated hatred against the country.
As part of the mining conglomerate, he found himself ironically owning a small enterprise in America: a trucking firm, several commercial freighters, and a small security business. What began as a minor annoyance turned into a major opportunity for revenge.
Every night the vision of his wife with the American officer haunted his dreams, replaying his childhood abandonment, and every morning he woke enraged. The perpetrators, though both long dead, remained targets of wrath, and, by association, their country of origin. The anger never left him. But rather than venting it through random violence, he turned down a new path of vengeance. Using the skills and knowledge from a lifetime of mining, he initiated his own economic war of retribution.
Bolcke’s joyless dark eyes, set in a lean, hardened face, probed his visitor while his hands flattened on the desk.
Pablo spoke uneasily. “I am not eager to return to America right away. My understanding was that I would remain in Panama City for several weeks before the next phase.”
“We had an outdated delivery schedule, and now the time line has been moved up. The shipment is being made in four days. You’ll need to return at once.”
Pablo didn’t balk. The ex–Colombian Special Forces commando never refused an order. He’d worked for the old Austrian for more than a dozen years, since first being hired to help quell a labor unrest at the mine. His unwavering loyalty had been well rewarded over the years, particularly as his boss drifted further over the line.
“I will need to assemble a new support team,” Pablo said.
“There is no time. You will be assisted by two American contractors.”
“Outside help cannot be trusted.”
“We will have to take that chance,” Bolcke snapped. “You lost your entire team. I can give you some of Johansson’s men, but they are untrained in your line of work. My Washington representative assures me these contractors are reliable. And besides,” he said, looking Pablo in the eye, “they accomplished what your team could not. They recovered the supercavitation data.”
Bolcke slid Pablo a smaller envelope.
“The phone number of our man in Washington. Contact him when you get in and he will arrange a meeting with the contractors. All other arrangements are in place, so you simply need to make the acquisition and delivery.”
“It will be done.”
“The company jet will be standing by tomorrow to take you into the country. Any questions?”
“This female investigator and the people from NUMA—are they a problem?”
“The woman is of no concern.” Bolcke sat back in his chair and further contemplated the question. “I don’t know about the NUMA personnel. Perhaps they are worth monitoring.” He gazed back at Pablo. “I will take care of it. Proceed with the plan. I will be in Beijing waiting for your confirmation.”
His eyes grew darker as he leaned forward. “I have been working toward this moment for many years. Everything is in place. Do not fail me, Pablo.”
Pablo puffed out his chest. “Do not worry,
31
ANN HIT THE OFFICE RUNNING AT SEVEN IN THE morning, inspired to investigate Pitt’s potential link with the ship hijacking. Her first stop was Joe Eberson’s replacement as the DARPA director of Sea Platforms Technology, Dr. Roald Oswald. She had met the scientist a few days earlier and wasn’t surprised to find him already at his desk, working on a status report.
She poked her head through the doorway. “May I intrude on your morning silence?”
“Of course, Miss Bennett. I could use a diversion from the depressing state of our new submarine’s delivery schedule.”
“Please, call me Ann. Will there be a launch without the supercavitation device?”
“That’s our dilemma. The collective loss of Eberson and Heiland has put us back months—if not years. The vessel’s capabilities are cut to the bone without the device. There will still be merit in testing the propulsion system, I suppose, if we can ever complete the final assembly.”
“What’s holding you up?”
“Critical material delays, I’m told.”
“Would any of those materials include rare earth elements?”
Oswald took a draw from his coffee and probed Ann with his pale blue eyes. “I don’t have enough information here to answer that. But, yes, certain rare earth elements play a significant part in the
“I’m exploring a possible link between Dr. Heiland’s death and a hijacked shipment of monazite ore containing high concentrations of neodymium and lanthanum. How important are those elements to the
“Very. Our propulsion system relies upon a pair of highly advanced electric motors, which in turn power two external jet pumps, as well as the rest of the vessel’s operating systems. Both components contain rare earth elements, but especially the motors.” Oswald took another sip of coffee. “They utilize permanent high-intensity magnets to achieve a multigenerational leap in efficiency and output. These magnets are produced under exacting standards at the Ames National Laboratory, and they contain a mixture of several rare earths, most certainly including neodymium.” He hesitated a moment. “We believe that Heiland’s supercavitation system relies on some
