PROLOGUE
22 April 1938
The walk was exhausting. He knew it would be hard going, but he was not expecting to be so tired.
They had already dumped all the incriminating samples in the middle of Lake Elmer. It took them most of yesterday and all of this morning to finish the task. Breaking the outcrop, into tiny pieces, covering it up with moss and snow, and carrying the rock chips to camp. They had dug a hole through the ice: as one of them kept scooping the ice so that the water would not freeze, and close the gap, the other one would carry the rock chips, and dump them in the freezing waters.
Now, he is behind him as they walk the shores of Lake Elmer, toward Lake Kallio, a much deeper lake. You could fish big grey trouts here, as the one he got last summer. It was a monster, weighing close to twenty pounds, a round, compact, angry, grey trout. The taller guy is walking in front: he always wants to walk in front, as if he knew the terrain better: or as if he was more experienced. He just wants to take the lead at all times. Another subtle way of letting everybody know that he knows better, that he is smarter, that he is the leader. He is also the one walking light: the hand held drill is carried by his younger companion. They had left a rack full of rock carrots at Kallio, conveniently stored on wooden boxes, and he had told him that he wanted to give these samples a second look. He wanted to be sure, before leaving for good. The going is tough: although most of the ice on Lake Elmer is still thick and solid, and could easily have held their weight, the ice on the lakeshore is soft and could not be walked on, that is, unless you wanted to get your feet and legs wet up to the knee, or worst, go under in cold, almost freezing, crystal clear water.
And freeze to death.
The ice on lakes melts near the shore first: then, as you go from winter to spring time, and the air temperature goes up, it thins towards the centre. The layer of ice covering the lake loses its strength by developing tiny, vertical, and irregular veins, or canals, filled with warmer water. Given time, these veins become large cracks and the ice separates and melts. Thus, it was not possible to walk on the flat and unhindered surface of the lake. They had to walk through the forest, a very thick, century old, pine tree forest. This particular piece of wooded land had probably never seen human beings passing through before, but moose and beavers. When the drillers moved their rigs on Lake Kallio they moved it by the lake. The ice, at that time, 4-5 feet thick and rock solid.
The sky is dark and full of low clouds, no more than a few hundred yards above them, being slowly pushed south by the cold wind, intent on releasing a heavy load of late snow at any moment now.
They reach the swamp and the small stream connecting Lake Kallio to Elmer’s, about three hours later. The going is easier, now, between the two lakes. Only low bushes and grass cover the swampy grounds. They have just to be careful not to fall through the thick but soft layer of snow and ice covering the ground, and wet themselves. One rusting tracked vehicle, broken a few weeks earlier, is parked near the shore. The drilling company would tow it, next winter, or put it on a barge, this summer, to bring it to town for repair.
The steel rack on which the core samples are stored, is sitting in a small clearing on the shore of Lake Kallio, conveniently close to the small stream. He takes his rucksack off his shoulders, takes is hat off, and bends over, to move the boxes from the rack to the ground. This is when he hits him on the back of the skull with the back of the axe he is carrying. He hits him at the base of the skull, a solid hit. He goes down, no screams, instantly unconscious, probably dead already. He checks his pulse. He is dead. No blood is spilled. He checks his rucksack and finds what he is looking for: a deformed rock, covered by what looks like muddy dirt, but rock solid. The thing weights about eight to ten ounces.
His door to riches. If this is what he thinks it is, and if he can have it cleaned properly, and if he can sell it without raising any suspicion. But that is for later. Now he has to get rid of the body.
He carries the corpse, still warm, toward the middle of the lake. He comes back and carries, one at the time, two wooden boxes full of rock samples. They must weight close to one hundred pounds each. He rests them near the dead body. He undresses it and leaves it in his underwear. Then he ropes the boxes tightly around the body. Very tight. The body will not float, later in the spring, if kept down by the weight of the rocks. Assuming that hungry trouts and pikes have not dined on it before, as they will most likely do, what, after six months under the ice and no food to eat. Next, he drills four holes in the ice, a foot apart. Then widens the hole with the axe. The hole must be big enough to let the body trough, that is, at least four feet wide. He expects the ice here to be 4-5 feet thick, and still very solid. As it happens, it is just three feet thick, and mellow. Easier to drill and dig trough than he thought. It is snowing hard now and it is getting dark. He has to get back to camp as soon as possible. He cannot get lost: he knows his way, but the going at night can be tricky and dangerous. The hole is dug, big enough for the body and the boxes to pass trough. He slides the package in, and it goes down immediately. He does not look at it any longer than required, but to make sure it goes under. The water here must be three hundred feet deep. It’s time to leave: he packs the dead man’s clothes in his rucksack, tosses it over his shoulders, and walks back to camp.
It is dark by the time he reaches camp. It is snowing hard. He is very tired and decides to go to bed first. He does not even take his time to eat a bite. He will burn the dead man’s clothes, and rucksack tomorrow morning. He is expecting nobody here sooner than tomorrow afternoon, anyway.
As he wakes up, he goes immediately to task. He knows that he has no more than a few hours left before he can safely leave camp, that is, before the other one shows up to pick him up.
He will pick up nobody.
He pours about two gallons of fuel into a jerry can. He takes the fuel from the fifty gallons tanks resting beside the tents. These are the tanks that feed fuel to the stoves inside the tents themselves. Then pours the fuel into a steel barrel sitting on its bottom, its upper end cut open. This is what they use as an incinerator to burn garbage that can burn, instead of dumping it in the forest.
“What are you doing buddy.” Whispers the man who has been watching him labouring with the fuel and the clothes he knows to belong to the other fellow.
“Holy shit.” He thinks, “Who is this?” He jumps, heart thumping. He turns around and attempts a grin, as he salutes the man, and tries to explain why he is in the process of burning his companion’s clothes. As he talks he gets closer to him. But he is nervous, and it shows. He is now about four feet from the guy, and has every intention to kill him as well. He has gone that far. He will go further. As far as needs be. As he stands in front of the man trying to explain himself, he puts casually, but not casually enough, his right hand into the large pocket of his parka, where he hides the knife he intends to use to kill the man with.
But the man has already seen him coming, knows what he is trying to do, and he is ready for him. As he sees the knife, a six inch affair he has seen him carrying before, he steps back as quick as a cat, raises his gun and fires a shot not an inch from his right foot.
This stops him dead.
“Put that knife down, turn around and finish your job properly, you asshole. I mean finish burning these clothes. And do it properly. You really thought I did not notice the two of you become secretive, all of a sudden, and, a few days later, ask the crew to stop the drilling with more than five holes left to go? And, to top it all good, we come here to pick your buddy up, and you ask me to wait at the end of the road for two days, while you look for him, all on your own? You think I am an idiot, do you. Or were you thinking of doing me to?”
And he watches, as the job of burning the clothes is finished. His gun at the ready, he wants to know what has happened, and why. And he gets the full story. The man in front of him is terrorized now, and shaking badly. He must realize how much of a fool he has been. He had planned the murder of his companion and thought his plan would work, and that he would get rich, quick. Now he sees himself gagged, and in jail. Or worst, dead, his body thrown in the same hole he has sunk his companion in.
“The last thing he thought of was seeing me here, now.” Thinks the man with the gun.
He is happy: he thought he had to get rid of two people, and one of them has already done half the job for him. Not bad, not bad at all.
“Now, before I kill you too, you are going to show me what you did with this buddy of yours.” He orders.
And he explains. But the man does not trust him and wants to see for himself. So they walk back to Lake Kallio, in the middle of the snow storm. Well not a really bad one, since the wet snow is falling heavily but it is not that windy.
The killer is in front: the one with the gun follows him, ten feet back, and watches him like a hawk, the gun at the ready.
He intends to kill him, and get rid of his body the same way the other one was disposed of: not bad thinking. They reach Lake Kallio but they have a hard time finding the spot where the body had sunk. There is too much snow already, and the man’s not thinking straight any longer. He is scared shitless.
As they keep looking, the man starts talking.
“I know you want to kill me. But think twice about it. You would not know how to sell what I have in my pocket. You do not have the connections I have, and you would be caught. How could you explain that you own a stone as large as this one? Where would you have found it? Where are you going to have it cut and polished? You’d kill me for nothing, and you’d be caught, for the premeditated murder of two people.” He screams now. He cannot think clearly any longer: he thinks he is going to get killed.
“Shut up, kneel down, put your hands on your head and don’t, don’t move.” As the man does what he is told, the other one raises the gun, intent on shooting him right on the temple.
CHAPTER 1 – NORTHERN QUEBEC
Northern Quebec is a beautiful, if not a very friendly place. The landscape is graced by gently rolling hills, covered by very dense, mostly virgin, pine forests: skinny pine trees. The skinnier the pine trees the closer you are to the North Pole. The valleys are filled with water, mostly lakes, sometimes swamps and rivers, or both.
In winter the ground is covered by feet and feet of snow and lakes and streams are frozen solid. Sunny and crystal clear skies are the norm but for the few days in which the snow falls by the trillions of large, weightless flakes, or when a snow storm hits and hurls the smallest of icy pebbles at your face, and you find yourself in an environment so utterly white that no shades of grey help you find your way. No way to know where you came from, where you are going to, where you are. You are lost in the white of the storm. That is, if you are a Caucasian going north to fish, and only in the summer months. Not if you are a native, and you live here, year round: you would find your way, if you were a native, snow storm or no snow storm. You would distinguish grey shades from grey shades: you’d find your way. But apparently natives get easily lost in big cities.
Nobody’s perfect
The very short spring and summer offer a different view of this northern landscape. Its gently rolling hills have been repeatedly sculpted during ice ages by countless advancing and retreating ice. This has left the ground covered by millions of lakes, small, medium and large, filled, literally filled, with fish: trout, grey and speckled, and pikes, real monsters, fighting for food with their trout companions.
It is in winter that drilling for ore is generally done despite the very harsh conditions, cold that can peak at 30/40 degrees below zero. This job is done in winter because it would otherwise be impossible, or utterly expensive, to move heavy drilling rigs and equipment through swampy strips of land and lakes. In winter everything is frozen solid, and you can travel unhindered almost everywhere. You only need to dress well, very well indeed.
A few small towns and villages, scattered miles and miles from one another, are inhabited by (mostly) white people when there is a reason for them to be there. In other words, when there is ore to be mined or discovered: gold, silver, copper. There would be no reasons whatsoever for these people to freeze for close to eight months per year, plus being eaten alive by mosquitoes for two months in summer, if it was not for the money.
These are frontier towns, a few bars, a police station, a church and the local inn, plus a few striptease joints, well attended. People living here are hardened by the wheatear, and are tough. They talk tough, they walk tough, they marry tough, sometimes fight tough and viciously, and drink tons and tons of beer. And don’t do your smart ass act when one of these guys around and drunk. These tough guys fear only their foreman, when working in the bush, and their wife’s, when they jump work and get drunk in town. Foreman and wives are not feared because they’re smarter or, possibly, physically stronger: they fear them because they fight sober whereas the tough guys are always drunk when they pick a fight.
So, they are beaten shitless, most of the time.
One of these small places, up North, is Chibougameau, a few thousand miles North of Montreal, and a few South of the North Pole. A further 200 miles North East of Chibougameau, you find Lake Mistassini, a lake about 80 miles long and narrow by comparison. And Lake Albanel, running parallel to Lake Mistassini and, just South of Lake Albanel, Lake Elmer, a much smaller lake, about five miles by two, where our base camp is set, right in the middle of what I thought was a large deposit of iron ore but actually the repository of a much more sought after type of ore: diamonds.
This is where I almost got murdered, and where I had to fight for my life.
CHAPTER 2 – THE BEGINNING
May 1974- January 1975
It all started a sunny and warm day in Montreal. I, Frank Gauthier, twenty six, married, no kids, handsome, as handsome as you can be when you are twenty something, was sitting on a wooden chair in a small laboratory, two stories underground, in the main building of the University of Montreal.
Light bulbs, un-shaded, lit the small room.
This place is as close to a prison cell as it gets.
I am watching a solution, slowly, so very slowly, percolate trough a three meters high conical cylinder made of transparent plastic. The thing is five inches in diameter, and is filled with some sort of rubbery filter. The filtering is required to get the maximum concentration of strontium and uranium isotopes, the half life of which will give you the approximate age of the rock this solution comes from.
I am undertaking a doctorate in geology at Ecole Polytechnique, U of M, but I am bored stiff of sitting in a lab watching isotopes, which I could not see anyway, while other, more fortunate people of my age, are enjoying Montreal, finally out of a long winter, and now sunny and jolly, its downtown filled with the most beautiful mini-skirted girls in the world, all of them displaying all of their wares to us, hungry boys of all ages.
Montreal is a beautiful city. It sits on the namesake island in the middle of the Saint Lawrence River. Mont Royal, a large magnetic rock intrusion, now a park, dominates the town from its height of 600 plus feet. From its top you can see the high-rises of downtown Montreal, just below the mountain, the Saint Lawrence River and the city’s south shore, Longueil. On the east of the mountain you have a spectacular view of the lows rises of Montreal East spreading for miles up to the Olympic stadium, an oyster type of architectural wonder. The cost overruns when it was built were such that a special tax on cigarette was levied to pay for it. Montreal smokers are still paying to this day, for their Olympic stadium. The University of Montreal and its “penis”, a tower which hosts the University library, and the Ecole Polytechnique’s buildings, higher up, sit on the northern slopes of Mont Royal.
The Montreal cemetery’s also on this side of the mountain.
You do not want to leave Montreal: the city is that beautiful. And its inhabitants are very civilized, politically savvy, sophisticated, funny, life loving; and its girls: beautiful.
So I decided it was time to have some fun, do some good, earn some money, quit school, and go work in Africa. You might wonder what working in Africa, a continent not normally associated with cold and snow storms, has to do with this story; let alone having fun when all the mini-skirted girls are in downtown Montreal.
We will get there, be patient.
I had completed, successfully I might add, a Master in Engineering, so I was entitled to look for a good job and a promising, fulfilling professional career instead of watching strontium isotopes percolate through filters. With some help from the head of the Geology department I was trying to get a teaching job in Africa (my idea of fun and adventure, then) when here comes Jacques Boisvin, a guy in charge of an exploration campaign two hundred miles North of Chibougameau. This place is so far north you can smell the North Pole, and its side effects, most notoriously associated with such latitudes: the cold and the mosquitoes. The cold for about eight months out of the twelve available, and the mosquitoes, just a few weeks (thanks God) in July. But what the heck, good jobs in my field of expertise are not generally found downtown Montreal. And I am looking for adventure, after all. So, the hell with the girls, and their miniskirts.
If it wasn’t to be an African adventure, then a North Pole one would do.
Jacques needed an engineer to oversee this drilling campaign of his, but could find nobody idiot enough to spend the winter in a place even colder than Montreal. He sold me on this job by entertaining me for long hours about the incredible fishing opportunities, the Northern Lights, the shower I could enjoy once a week in Chibougameau, the nights I would spend discussing philosophical matters with the drillers and their foreman, the wonderful cuisine I would enjoy in the bush.
He forgot to mention the mosquitoes in the spring. But, then, it was an easy sell: I did not know any better, I had never been up north in winter.
I later on realized that the real fun in these places so far north is, in winter, sleeping in a tent, heated by a fuel stove, with temperatures reaching 30/40 below zero, and eating canned food. By the way, you cannot shower nor bathe in these temperatures. Water would freeze in the pipes (should you be lucky enough to have a tent equipped with a shower) should you choose to shower, and you would need to drill large, six feet deep holes in the ice to bate in the crystal clear water of the lakes you find around there. One has to say that the tents are six by nine feet affairs with plywood walls three feet high covered with a canvas, and heated by a fuel stove. A definite perk is your ability to chose the temperature of the water when you wake up in the morning: lukewarm when you put the bucket on top of the stove, melting ice when you put the thing on a stool beside the stove, solid ice when the bucket sits on the floor of the tent, whether close or away from the stove.
In the springs and summers, bating in the crystal clear water of the northern streams and lakes. Unfortunately, when you reach the shore, dripping with water and smelling real good and clean, you are eaten alive by mosquitoes: so many of them that the sun is permanently eclipsed. Hence, no need to wear sun glasses. And fishing … enormous pikes and grey trouts. I actually caught a pike ten foot long and a grey trout weighting seventy five pounds. Unfortunately I cannot properly document these achievements having finished all my films while taking pictures of the carrots ours drillers where stealing from the underground, for Jacques.
So Jacques Boisvin meets Frank Gauthier.
To tell the truth Jacques was repeatedly told that, although I was a gifted student, I had a shitty character. Jacques had one, too. That is why we ended up very good friends. Jacques taught me a lot. Married twice and divorced the same, he was still sound of mind and gifted by a very good sense of humour. Thanks to his sound and convincing advice I also married and divorced twice, I have a good sense of humour, but just one kid whereas he has four. Jacques hired me because he could not find anybody else more experienced and more gregarious. As a matter of fact I never asked him the question. Should I, he would say that he hired me because he could find nobody else.
That’s why Jacques has a good sense of humour.
My job as an engineer on an exploration cum drilling job was what one can define a staff job … I had the power to decide where to drill holes in the ground and when to stop them (eventually at the very end of the ore bearing layer … assuming that I could figure out where the damned think was) but the foreman, in other words the boss of the crew of drillers, was the one deciding, ultimately, if he wanted to do it the way I wanted. Knowing where he had to drill holes he would decide when and in which order to drill them.
Beside the unforgettable discussions about the meaning of life, we had a lot of fun on the job. The foreman, being paid by foot drilled, would have kept drilling to the core of the earth. I, fresh out of school and unaware of the dangers I was facing, was carefully monitoring the drillers to stop them one foot passed the ore layer. He would not tell me where the drillers were, in hope of drilling a few more feet and I, too proud to ask, would run around with my skidoo in search of the drillers. Sometimes I had to do it by foot: the skidoo was owned and maintained by the drilling company so you can imagine how often it would break down and how long it would take to fix.
I am in a better shape today thanks to my walking miles and miles in below zero temperatures.
Anyway, after the necessary interviews, and the “get to know each other better” interviews, I am hired to manage a drilling campaign, in winter, over Lake Elmer (frozen) and possibly part of the low ridge between Lake Elmer and Lake Albanel (bush or low tree forest, covered by feet of soft snow). The drilling grid is to be one thousand feet per one thousand feet, two hundred holes to be drilled, starting on the southern edge of Lake Elmer and going north toward Lake Albanel, if we still have time. We do not know how deep we need to go, nor the hardness of the rock we have to drill through, so we do not know if we will have enough time to complete the campaign before the ice and the snow starts melting.
From exploration logs made back in the ’30 we know there is iron ore, layers of magnetite embedded in layers of black schist. The original exploration campaign was done in 1938. Eight holes were drilled, two of which at a 450 degree angle: the six vertical ones over Lake Elmer and the two at 450 degree over the low ridge between the two lakes. Both the original magnetic survey, and the drilling, confirmed the presence of a body of rock responding extremely well to airborne magnetic survey, although its concentration did not justify economic exploitation of the same back then. The magnetic response logged on charts and field notes was such that it would have masked anything else hidden deeper down or concealed in between.
I have never conducted a magnetic survey myself: this is the work of geophysicists. From my geology classes, thought, I remember that this type of survey is carried out by flying over an area with a long cable attached to the tail end of an aircraft: a large magnetic field is created and sent to earth: the signal sent back is recorded. The stronger the signal fed back from the earth, the better the chance of finding a body of ore. This could be pyrite, a sterile conductor, or iron, copper, silver or gold.
“How confident are we that these logs are accurate: after all they were compiled and sent to the Ministry’s (of Mines) only to maintain the mining rights … they had little interest to record the truth .. and .. can you explain why they dug six holes over lake Elmer and only two over the ridge: and why at an angle!“ I ask.
“Well, we can be as confident as we want or need be over the log’s accuracy.“ Answers Jacques. “As you know the Bay James Hydro Electric project will start next year. We only want to make sure that the rocks are not rich enough to justify mining, so the area can be flooded. The hydroelectric project would be delayed and the Government would have to pay higher royalties to the natives for the use of their land... so... as for the two holes on the ridge, well, I have seen the logs and the rock there is sterile.”
“Can I have a look at the original documents: not because I am an expert. Because I am curious …” I say.
“Sure. But I do not have them with me right now. I’ll send them to you in Chibougameau later on.”
“When do I have to leave for Chibougameau?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. You will fly a Company Cessna from Dorval to Chibougameau where you will pick up your truck at “Fly and Drive” and drive to base camp next day. Stay at the Chibougameau Inn. It’s quite good. You have enough time to buy all you need from the list I gave you here in Montreal. Do not buy cheap. It is very cold out there.“
“Why stay at the Chibougameau Inn, have you been there yourself?”
“It’s the only one Inn in Chibougameau!!!”
“Ciao Jacques, have fun.”
It is early January and I am in Chibougameau. A few weeks later I get the promised logs. Having nothing better to do, I review them carefully but cannot see anything wrong with them. Our drilling has so far confirmed the findings, except for the area over the low ridge between the two lakes. The exploration crew back in the ’30 had a geologist in it. He was the one having recorded all and everything. The drilling campaign lasted almost three months, when they all came back. Any attempt, by me, to have two of the four crews sent there to drill have met a wall. It started with the snow being too thick and too soft, then with the snow melting too fast, then with the need to complete the drilling over the lake while the ice was still thick and strong enough, to finish with “I’ll send the crew up there when I want, not when you want … clear … ???”
And I had to live with it: period.
CHAPTER 3 – LAKE EILMER
March 1975
Here I am, in the middle of a lake, its surface covered by melting ice, slowly sinking, while standing on my skidoo. I had just left the shore of Lake Elmer to get to my pickup truck parked at the end of the gravel road linking Lac Albanel to Chibougameau, when the machine slows down and stalls, suddenly.
Panicky attempts to restart the engine fail.
Four o’clock in the morning, a full moon, the brightest of stars, silent spectators to my miseries and most probably unmerciful, lonely drowning in cold watery slush.
I am about to end, early, a just started but promising career as a highly trained geological engineer, right in the middle of nowhere.
I am not very happy. A lot of other people will not be happy either, should I die here and there.
Just think of the costs to the Canadian society for my graduate and post graduate education and surely, now, no way to pay that back through income taxes, sales taxes, VAT, import fees for French cheese, liquor duties to the SAQ for imported French wines, not to mentioned donations to churches and other charities, including your alma mater, should you make money through hard work or business deals.
I felt very sorry for them all. I am still wondering why I was thinking of paying my taxes when everybody says that, when facing death, all one thinks about is their mom or a quick rewind of your life, the speed of the said rewind being proportional, I guess, to the speed of the forthcoming death.
Well then, of course nobody knows for sure what one thinks of, in these short seconds before drowning.
Fortunately you are gifted with my version of the events.
The skidoo is sinking, slowly, and I with it. The nearest lake shore is 400 feet away, the driller’s shack I have visited a few hours ago, a bit further, but no way to be heard with all the noise the drilling gear is making .. And the wind blows the wrong way. And then what could they do to help: nothing. They cannot walk on water either. So, I will have to find a way out of this on my own.
As I scratch my head (figure of speech, difficult to scratch your head wearing a helmet lined with fur and skidoo gloves, while sinking) to figure out a way to save my life, the skidoo stops sinking. It is actually standing at a pretty steep angle, the back under soft melting ice, the front facing up as if it was looking at the moon, me on top of it, trying my best not to fall in the water balancing my weight the best I could not to make the skidoo sink further or, worst, tilt and throw me in.
It all started going downhill for me when, at two thirty in the morning, I woke up to go and check the drilling at site 4. By my calculations, perfected over three months of hard work in very freezing conditions, I am pretty sure that drill number 4 will reach the bottom of the ore layer at three o’ clock sharp. So I wake up, freshen up, dress up in warm clothes, start up the skidoo (it actually started) and drive to drill No 4 via the trail in the bush.
It is a wonderful ride, alone in the night, no lights (the skidoo lights are not working but the moon is) little snow left covering the ground, lots of broken branches which could damaged the machine and it’s driver (me), plenty of wildlife just waiting to jump on me and have an early breakfast.
I survive the run and get to drill No 4, in one piece, exactly at three a.m.
“Hi guys, how you doing”
“Whoff …”
“Are we getting to the bottom layer ?????”
“J’pense qu’hui mais j’sais pas…”
“OK, let me check …”
“R’garde, tué…”
These people, the drillers I mean, are men of action, if little education. When asked a question in their field of expertise, by the engineer, they always provide a thorough answer. Should they miss the question, or should the question be of topics outside their field of expertise, they would politely ask you to repeat the question or explain further. In this case they understood the question, and answered thoroughly. Should you think otherwise, it would mean that you have never worked with drillers before in the northern bush or, having done so, you did not understand them. In this case you might not have enjoyed your experience as much as I did, nor risked your life in the process of learning.
So I check the rocks carrots, and, here we are, we have reached the bottom of the ore layer. So I stop them. They, the drillers I mean, did not looked particularly thrilled to do so also because, in this specific section of the grid, they were able to drill up to one hundred fifty feet with one single crown, instead of having to change it every twenty feet or so. They were paid per foot drilled. They did not look particularly upset either.
Having told them what to do, I am ready to drive back to base camp, collect the few things I need for the drive, and leave for Chibougameau. I need to talk to my boss, Jacques Boisvin, in Montreal and I need to get him before he leaves for a well deserved vacation in the Caribbean. The crew will disassemble the rig in the morning and move it to the next site.
The drive back to camp is dangerous enough, thank you: the snow is melting fast and what used to be a snow and ice paved nice little trail you could drive on, is becoming a treacherous surface with plenty of roots and rocks which threaten to break the machine and me with it. I am also driving too fast because I don’t want to be late for my phone call to Jacques. I eventually get to camp, collect my field book, attach the snow shoes to the side of the skidoo, fill my rucksack with spare clothes, and I am about to leave when the foreman, Ballard, shows up.
Ballard’s a brute and a violent individual.
I understand that you need to be a tough cookie to control, and be obeyed by, a bunch of drillers in the bush. These people are only here for the money: once the job is completed, they will rush to spend all their earnings in booze and women: that is, unless they are intercepted by their wives or girl friends before they reach town. But Ballard’s more of a brute and much more violent than his job would merit: and he does not like me. He has done everything since we started this contract, to make my life difficult, very difficult indeed.
“So, you are leaving for Chibougameau.” It is not a question it is a statement.
“Yes, I need to be in town not later than 9:00 a.m. I should make it.”
“Drive the lake with the skidoo: the trail in the bush is too dangerous. You break anything, you won’t make it for your 9:00 o’clock appointment.”
I do not understand why he is being nice to me at 4:00 in the morning. It may have to do with me having been nice to him last night and congratulating him on his beautiful hand gun.
“Isn’t the ice too thin to drive on it?”
“No: it is thick enough. We drove it yesterday with the snow track loaded with drilling gear and it did not flinch. And that thing is twenty times heavier than yours and slower too: I would not chance driving the trail if I was you.”
“Well” I think “If the ice was strong enough to carry the weight of a machine twenty times heavier than mine at a very slower pace in warmer wheatear, it is surely safe enough to take the easier and shorter route to the road and get there in time. I have just to drive fast and not stop on the lake: I might sink. But if I drive fast, there should be no problems.”
So, I jump on my skidoo and start the engine. The skidoo smells awful: of gasoline. But then, it always smells awful of gasoline, oil, dirt and God only knows of what else. And then I am already savouring a short but good stay in Chibougameau. In the morning I’ll take a warm shower for as long as the water stays warm, I will ship the rock samples to Montreal, I will have a chat with Jacques over the land line, and I will eat a two pounds, juicy, T-bone steak for dinner. With a bottle of Bordeaux: not one of the best, since you cannot find them in Chibougameau, but Bordeaux nevertheless.
CHAPTER 4 – THE SECOND MURDER
22 March 1975
The skidoo has hit bottom. Problem is that I am not sure, now, that the shallow bottom will carry through to the shore. I have not yet fished lake Elmer, because of the ice, not because I was overwhelmed by work, hence I have no idea of the configuration of its bottom.
I could try to wade to the shore. This presents more problems than opportunities.
First, assuming that the bottom is shallow through the shore, I would get wet and probably freeze to death instead of drowning. I let you decide which would have been a better way to die (although, as you will see later, it seems that the foreman knows better)
I can try to walk, instead. Since I am no Jesus Christ, and since I really am a lucky bastard, I will use the snow shoes I attached to the skidoo before living camp. This is my only chance.
When faced with a decision to make, I normally decide very, very quickly. This time it is even quicker: the skidoo starts sliding further down: so it has not hit the bottom of the lake. The skidoo was probably resting on a somewhat stronger layer of ice which is now slowly giving away.
I cannot stand upright on the snow shoes, I would sink. I have to lie flat on them, as flat as possible, and try not to get too wet and reach shore as quickly as possible. Then I have to run to the drillers hut and quickly change clothes with the spares I have in the rucksack.
I might have a chance after all.
So I begin to crawl. Place one snow shoe a foot from the skidoo, lie on my stomach (boy it is cold), place the second snow shoe one foot away, in the direction of the shore, crawl on it, and repeat the process. After a few feet I realize that I will never make it if I keep my heavy parka on. It is already drenched, by the thin layer of water covering the ice and by my own sweat, and it is dragging me down. Same thing with the helmet: I cannot see what I am doing with the thing over my head and it is not keeping me warm. I guess that it was not designed to be worn while crawling on melting ice. So I throw them away and resume inching toward the shore.
I was right to lighten up, it looks like I am not sinking and I am by now moving at a somewhat quicker pace having learned how to lie on the snow shoes and how to move them fast.
I reach shore and what I think is safety in about 40 minutes.
I have not realized, while crawling, that the whirling sound of the drill had stopped; I was too busy in the process of saving my life, and had no time to guess if they had actually stopped drilling where they were told to. I also did not notice that the moon is now hidden by clouds and that the wind has picked up: it will probably snow in the morning.
Anyway, since the two drillers did not have a skidoo with them, I assume that they are soundly asleep in the shack. I am already savouring the heat of the stove and the good company of a bunch of jolly guys with whom to forget the nightmare and discuss philosophy.
The stove’s cold and the drillers are gone. And worst of it all, the shack is cooling fast, a cold northerly wind having picked up from the quite of the night. So they had a skidoo after all: they went to sleep in their tent at base camp. I take my shoes off (I have no spare in the back pack), change socks and shirt, put the light parka on and decide to lie on the camp bed in one of the drillers sleeping bag (smells horrible, but I need to keep warm). The drillers should come back in the early hours to move the rig. By then I will get some assistance and get back to base camp safely. I will not be able to talk to Jacques before he leaves town.
Too bad.
It must be about 6:30 in the morning and I am dozing, more than sleeping. I hear the sound of a skidoo coming in from the forest trail, but I am too cold and tired to get up. Whoever he is, he will have time enough to find me and eventually rescue me. So I stay in the sleeping bag to keep warm. But, half conscious, I wonder why the guy has driven through the forest instead of riding the lake.
The skidoo stops a few feet from the shack, and I hear the foreman talking to somebody. Now, this is strange. The drilling was stopped last night: the drillers should have normally slept in the shack, dismantled the rig in the morning, and then, they should have called the foreman by radio to bring in the snow track and move the drilling rig and equipment to the next site.
“I am sure he is gone under. I heard the engine stall as he passed on the other side of the bay.” Says the foreman.
Silence for a while from outside the shack. By then, you might have guessed that I was a little concerned, and that I had found refuge by hiding under the camp bed. This was done noiselessly although my heart was beating so fast that they could have heard it had they paid any attention to it.
The foreman is now searching the lake with his powerful flash light.
“Yeah, I see him: see .. there .. Three feet from the skidoo... he’s dead all right... what an asshole. He could have stayed on the skidoo and died of cold. It is much better to die of cold than to die of drowning. When you die of cold you sort of sleep through the process, and don’t even notice it coming. Drowning is different. You see it coming. But then ... what the shit … They say you have time to review all of your life’s worth .. so it might be better in the end.”
While they philosophy on life and death (mine), I am thinking that this bunch of murderers are probably seeing the parka and helmet I left behind, and think that my frozen body’s under them.
“A shame we cannot go and check how the asshole died. The ice’s too soft. And we are not supposed to meddle with a crime scene ... We might get in trouble with the police … So let’s follow the plan, pack up and leave camp in a hurry for Chibougameau to report that this asshole has run away with our skidoo after killing his idiot of an assistant last night with the gun he used to carry with him all the time ‘cause he was scared of bears .. And the gun carries his fingerprints all over.
“Shit: he has killed my assistant. Why’d he do that for?” I am thinking fast now. “He has tampered with my skidoo: he has probably cut the fuel line to make sure it would stall in the middle of the lake, with me on it. My assistant may have seen him doing so and he must have decided to get rid of a witness. But I was the intended target, not him. And he thinks that I am dead too, drowned in the lake. His story will be the only true story. No second opinion: that is, if I was effectively dead. But I am not: I may offer a different version of the events.”
I am terrorized, I am not thinking straight. I am framed well: the gun carries my fingerprints on it. I hate guns and I never carried, let alone use, one. This gun was the foreman’s: probably stolen. Last night he absolutely wanted me to handle it. And I did: not because I wanted to, but because he insisted so much, and he looked a bit drunk although no alcohol’s supposed to be available at base camp. So the thing has my fingerprints on it. I am in absolute, total, shit. I have been framed real tight. And there is no way to communicate with Chibougameau from here. The radio we have has a reach of about four miles. The Cree reserve, about 140 miles from here, on the shores of Lake Mistassini, is equipped with a long range radio, but the camp is deserted in winter. It opens around July for the short but rewarding tourist season. In winter you have to go to Chibougameau if you want to talk to the police, or anybody else as a matter of fact.
My assistant is dead, not that I particularly cared for him, what, he could not even drive the pickup properly and he was a true asshole if there is one, bringing booze in the camp from Chibougameau and having the cook regularly drunk: with everybody at base camp knowing that he did, but me.
I am still hiding under the bed as they leave. I am really scared but I am safe for now.
I figure that they will be all leaving the camp very soon: the time to get back there, collect the people and the few things they really need, leave with the snow track, get to the gravel road and then drive, by pickup, to Chibougameau. They will have to pass by site 4, where I am hiding, this being the only trail to civilization. It will take them about an hour to get to the gravel road and about another four to drive the two hundred miles to Chibougameau. Then, say, two/three hours to get their version of the events to the police. Chibougameau, being a frontier town, is staffed with three police officers and a sheriff, the Chief. Their job consists mostly in beating drunken drillers and Indians up before carrying them to jail to spend the night and get sober. Having been beaten up real good and having spent the night in jail to sober up, the drillers get beaten up again by their own wives who were not, of course, informed of their getting into town, and left by now with no money: it had all been spent on booze the previous night. Indians on the other end just go back to the liquor store and get drunk again. Their wives’ know better. All this to say that the Chibougameau police officers are not known, locally, for their intellect nor for their friendliness: they are known for their muscles. So, I figure another hour or so before they inform Montreal and another hour before they understand that they have to drive to Lake Elmer to check things out or, more likely, to secure the crime scene, prevent wild animal from messing it up, and wait for the help of specialists coming from Montreal. They will have to drive up here: They are not equipped with any chopper and you cannot land on half frozen lakes with a Cessna. But the drillers might reach town late, just to make sure things might get messed up even further, and the police would not leave town before the next morning.
So I have between twelve and twenty hours to get out of here: but where? I have no time to think about it now.
Right now I need to get out of here real quick because I will either be killed by the police as soon as they get a chance, or by the foreman who might realize that, not being dead, I might offer a different explanation of the events, or be jailed in Chibougameau and having to explain to a judge that I was framed, when every things, facts and fantasy, works against me including eye-witnessed testimony by a local guy, not necessarily a very respected one, but local, and working as a foreman for a local outfit.
I need to get back to base camp, get dry, dress warm, get some food from the kitchen, if I can, and get out: quick.
I am now hiding in the bush, in the sleeping bag I dozed in, a few hundred yards from the driller’s hut. I do not want to hide in the hut just in case they stop there again before leaving. I am waiting impatiently for the crew to pass by to go to Chibougameau. My window to get out of here starts from them passing by me. I have also to check that they all leave camp. After all, they think I murdered my assistant. So whoever would be left could just have been instructed to shoot me at site, should I get back.
As expected (I have always been good with planning and forecasting) two hours later, here they come: the tracked vehicle carries eight drillers. This means all drillers have left. And the skidoo following the tracked thing carries the foreman. This means that they have left the cook at base camp: it could have been worst. He is probably drunk by now, what, with all the booze my (former) assistant has brought him from Chibougameau.
I wait five minutes and start running toward base camp. The trail being what it is, it takes about one hour and half to run/walk the four miles separating base from site 4. I also have to be very alert should the foreman have forgotten anything which would require him to turn back to base before driving to town. So I have to keep my heart beat to a level at which I can still hear my surroundings.
As it happens I reach base camp safely.
I am now about 100 feet from my tent, hiding in the bush and trying to figure out where the cook is. They did not mention what I did with the gun after my purportedly shooting of my assistant. Probably it is still at the crime scene. Had they touched the gun they could have erased my fingerprints. So the cook should not have the gun. But he might carry his own. I never saw him carrying one, but neither did I see him drunk. So he might be carrying. I need to be extra careful.
Base camp is a clearing of the bush of about one hundred by one hundred yards. At its southern edge it meets the sandy beach of Lake Elmer. Eight tents: mine, my (former) assistant’s, the foreman’s, one each per crew of two drillers’, the kitchen. The cook sleeps in the kitchen.
I can see the body of my (former) assistant lying down, obviously dead, between my tent and the kitchen, but I do not see the gun. The snow around him is reddish. That is the blood I presume he lost after my (alleged) shooting. I really do not have much time to look around. My main concern is not to be seen by the cook, and not to be shot dead by him either.
Where the hell is the cook? He is probably drinking himself to oblivion in the kitchen. I approach carefully.. I am hiding behind one of the crew’s tent right at the back of the kitchen which, fortunately, is trice as big as ours and has windows. Plastic sheets stitched to the canvass. I peer through the window. He is half conscious (I hope) on his bed, a rifle across his chest. So they are being very, so very, cautious. So, it appears, is the cook. He must have been told that I was dead. He might be in the scam as well. The foreman knew that I had to come back to base should I have survived the ordeal. The cook has surely been instructed to shoot me at site, should I not be dead and show up. Me dead, the story would end there and then. But they forgot to take with them the booze he was hiding in the kitchen before leaving camp. The guy is obviously drunk.
No plan’s perfect.
I walk very slowly toward my own tent: I need the equipment. As I am going to open the door I remember that it creaks. Shit. So I open it so carefully that it does not creak. I am in, and I check for sounds first: all silent and quiet. The inside of the tent is a mess, as if somebody had fought for his life. Obviously my assistant was trying to escape me wanting to shoot him, and defended himself the best he could. My little desk is broken and my log book’s missing. Anyway I am here to collect what I think I will need to get where I need to go, not to read my field notes. I have no idea yet where to go. Sleeping bag (guaranteed -50, I hope they test this tings seriously and that it is not well whishing advertising), change of clothes, change of shoes, maps of the area, compass, knife, my geology hammer (as a potential weapon should I need one, not to crack rocks), a bottle of drinking water. No food. I have none in my tent. I will not go in the kitchen to pick some, not with the cook there drunk or sober (unlikely) with a shot gun at the ready. By the time I have packed the rucksack I wonder if I can carry the thing. It weights a ton. It seems I can carry it.
Open the door carefully, so that it will not creak. It does not. Peer through the opening to check that the cook’s not around with a loaded rifle just waiting to shoot me. He is not around to be seen. Check that the cook is still asleep in the kitchen: he is. Walk stealthily the first one hundred yard not to step on any dead pine tree branch, watch constantly over my back that the guy’s not there. And then run.
I also do not want the cook to see me because I do not want them to know, yet, that I am still alive. They will know soon enough. I feel I need as much time as possible to figure out what to do before they can organize a man hunt and find me, dead or alive. I thought of looking for the gun, what, with my fingerprints on it, and discard it somewhere else, but I am not sure that it will do any good. And I am too concerned about the cook.
And I am scared shitless, and I do not know where to go: as it stands now, I am just running away.
It is now about 11:30 in the morning. It will take me about three hours to walk to the gravel road. I have no choice but to walk it. Lake Elmer’s northern shore is separated by a low ridge from Lake Albanel, a big lake, about 50 miles by 5 miles, elongated in a North-East South-West direction. The trail leading to the gravel road where my pickup truck is parked runs, justly, between the two. I will have spent about five hours top, between the time I left site 4 and the time I will reach the gravel road. This should be enough time to get there well before any police officer’s around. But what if they have alerted the Cree and they, instead of the police, are waiting for me?