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"Two reasons," Seagran soil, the mine would have to be operated in secret If the overnress in those days penny pinched the Arh funds to include a ardless of the potential profit"

"It would seeainst a stacked deck"

"It was a tay street, Mr President There was no doubt in Brewster's an shipping the ore, he and his crew of men would be murdered by paid assassins of the Societe des Mines de Lorraine That was obvious from the Society's fanatical insistence on secrecy And one other little matter It was the French and not Brewster who edy"

"You have to give theael hoax was the perfect cover for eventually killing off Brewster and his entire crew After all, how could anyone be accused ofnine men in the Arctic when it was a matter of public record that they had all died sixaccident?"

Seagram continued, "We're reasonably certain that the Societe des Mines spirited our heroes to New York in a private railroad car Froe on a French ship under assumed names"

"One question I wish you'd clear up," the President said "In reading over your report, Donner here stated that the h the US government That piece doesn't fit"

"Again, a cover story by the French," Seagram replied

"The Jensen and Thor files also showed that the drilling equipton, DC, bank The account, as it turns out, was under the name of the French ambassador It was simply one more ruse to cloud the true operation"

"They didn't miss a trick, did they?"

Seagraht, they had no idea they were being led down the garden path"

"After Paris, then what?" the President persisted

"The Coloradans spent teeks at the Societe office, ordering supplies andWhen at last all was in readiness, they boarded a French naval transport in Le Havre and slipped into the English Channel It took twelve days for the ship to pick its way through the Barents Sea ice floes before it finally anchored off Novaya Zemlya After the men and equipment were safely ashore, Brewster shifted the Secret Arear and ordered the captain of the supply ship not to return for the ore until the first week in June, nearly seven months away"

"The plan being that the Coloradans and the byzaniuone by the time the Societe des Mines ship returned"

"Exactly They beat the deadline by twoto pry the precious ele work, drilling, blasting, and digging through solid granite while stabbed by fifty-degree-below-zero te the Continental Divide of the Rockies, had they ever experienced anything like the frigid winds that howled down across the sea froreat polar ice cap to the north; winds that paused only long enough to deposit the terrible cold and replenish Bednaya Mountain's per on toward the Russian coast just over the horizon to the south It took a frightful toll on the men Jake Hobart died from exposure when he became lost in a

snowstorue and frostbite In Brewster's oords, `it was a frozen purgatory, not fit to waste good spit on"'