Canidy found it and pointed. Lindbergh’s guess had been off by no more than two or three hundred miles.
Baker next handed him a sheaf of photographs: brand-new ten-inch square aerial photographs, some eight-by-ten-inch prints, which were also new, and some other photographs that appeared to have been blown up from old snapshots.
These showed a small town of frame buildings with several huge excavations around it. The excavations were so huge that roads leading to the bottoms of the pits had been carved into its sides. There were also smelters and mountains of smelter and mine tailings. There was an airfield, which looked unpaved except perhaps with mine or smelter tailings, which were often used for that purpose. The ” tower” was about ten feet off the ground, and none of the airplanes on the parking ramp was multi engined.
“What we have to do, in absolute secrecy,” Baker said as Canidy worked his way through the pictures, “is remove from Kolwezi ten thousand pounds of a very special cargo and bring it here.”
“What kind of cargo?” Canidy asked. “An ore,” Baker said.
“Please do not ask any further questions about the ore. All you have to know is that it is a dry, nonexplosive substance.
Some of it has the characteristics of ordinary dirt, and some of it is what they call spellings, which means with rocks in it. The rest of it is in the form of smelter residue. it will all be packed in canvas bags, each weighing approximately ninety pounds.” Canidy nodded.
“That’ s a lot of weight,” he said.
“But it’ s within the weight range limitations of several of the flight plans Colonel Lindbergh laid out.”
“What did you say, Dick?”
Stanley Fine asked, shocked. “I don’t think you should talk about that,” Baker said. “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Canidy flared.
“Stan, the transport expert who laid most of this on was Colonel Charles Lindbergb. But don’t say anything. The President thinks he’s a Nazi sympathizer.” Fine shook his head in disbelief. “The departure point will be Newark Airport,” Baker resumed. “You will fly the bomber stream to Ireland, via Gander Field, Newfoundland and from Ireland to Portugal and then down the west coast of Africa, stopping here, and here, and here. To Kolwezi. There will be a crew of three. We have recruited a pilot and copilot from the Air Transport Command. They were both formerly Pan American pilots who have flown to South Africa before. Not, it is germane to note, in land aircraft. They flew Sikorsky seaplanes.
“But they have received transition training, so they are C-46 qualified, and they will transition both of you into the C-46, so that if it becomes necessary you can fly the aircraft. Coming out of Kolwezi, there will be a passenger.”
“Who?” Canidy asked. “Grunier,” Baker said. “Grunier?” Canidy asked.
“Oh, Christ! Again?”
“We hope to have his family in England within two weeks,” Baker said, again ignoring him.
“That was his price for his cooperation in this, and we met it.”
“He’s in the Belgian Congo?” Canidy asked. “He will be,” Baker replied, “That’s one of the things holding us up. We have to put him in and then make sure he’s in place before we send the airplane.
“What’s he going to be doing there?” Canidy asked. “He’s going to make sure that the bags contain what we’re paying for,” Baker said.
“We’re going to send a substantial sum of money into the Belgian Congo with him to pay for all this. An even more substantial amount will be paid after you pick it up.”
“How much is ‘substantial’?” Canidy asked, Baker thought it over before he replied. “The deposit was a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Swiss francs, gold coins. The payment due on delivery is four hundred thousand.”
“And why do we trust Grunier? Not only with a hundred thousand dollars, but after what we’ve already done to him?”
“Because we told him that it would be even easier to send his family back to France than it was to sneak them out,” Baker said matter-of-factly. “And because he has been told that if he does what we want him to) his family will be brought here and he will be given a job in Colorado.”