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Jonty also saw the iron embedded into the salt floor, mostly corroded away. He’d seen them before in the upper levels, but those were in much better condition.
“They installed tracks to haul out debris,” Konrad said. “It’s typical for the mine.”
“But it also could have been used to haul things in,” Eli noted.
Konrad nodded. “That’s true. This level is unique. It was not opened by miners centuries ago. It’s only fifty to sixty years old.”
And not all that reinforced, Jonty noted.
Something else caught his eye.
It wasn’t the gray-green salt rock that dominated. This was more crystallized, clear, with hints of yellow. He bent down and lifted a small chunk, examining it in his helmet light.
“The miners call it szpak,” Konrad said. “Starling, like the bird. It’s fibrous salt and rare to find on the upper levels. Down here, it’s common. When the miners’ picks broke it, the pungent smell of sulfur leaked out. Quite a surprise to them. They thought themselves close to hell when that happened.”
Jonty examined the chunk with his fingers, the crystals sparkling in his lamp.
“Go ahead,” Konrad said. “Keep it. I do, when I find some of it.”
Jonty grinned and pocketed the small rock.
They crept ahead, negotiating the debris, heading deeper into the drift. The tunnel width and height were less than on Level IX, but the ventilation seemed the same. And for that he was grateful.
Konrad stopped the parade, his headlight focused on one of the white signs common in the levels above. This one not affixed to the wall, but propped on the floor at a junction with one of the offshoots.
TARNÓW.
A city in southeastern Poland.
“We need to check these offshoots,” Konrad said. “There’s one here, and another farther down. Two of us take this one, two take the next. Just keep in a straight line, don’t venture off, and let’s see if there’s a chamber called Warsaw down either of them.”
Konrad and Eli walked ahead.
Jonty and Vic turned into the offshoot marked TARNÓW. The passage stretched about twenty meters, where it opened into a small chamber about ten meters square, one side protected by wooden cribbing, leached with moisture.
“This could have once been a place for storage,” he said to Vic. “Crates stacked. That sort of thing.”
“Nothing here now.”
They headed back and learned that Konrad and Eli had found nothing, either. So they kept going down the drift, passing two more offshoots marked KIELCE and RADOM.
More Polish towns.
“There seems to be nothing down here but empty chambers,” he noted.
Eli waved off his pessimism. “Which were once surely filled.”
“When Vic called earlier about coming here,” Konrad said, “I asked around. Most of the guides working now came long after the Soviet downfall. Some of the retired workers might know about this level. I’ve heard stories that things were stored deep back in the 1960s and 1970s.”
Jonty was concerned about those inquiries. Bad enough they had to involve Konrad, they certainly could not afford any more nosy eyes and ears. The good part was that they were in the home stretch.
“From now on,” he said, “let’s keep this between us.”
“Of course. I understand. Vic made all that clear. You don’t have to worry about me. I was careful with my questions.”
They kept following the drift, passing another offshoot labeled LÓDZ. Not every offshoot was labeled. Only a few here and there. Farther on they came to two more bearing signs.
BYDGOSZCZ and GDANSK.
Then the drift ended at an unexcavated rock wall.
“We’ll need to explore each of those offshoots we just passed,” Konrad said.
But Jonty had been thinking. “Maybe not.”
He wasn’t entirely sure that he was right so he asked, “Am I correct that Tarnów is in southern Poland, east of Kraków?”
Konrad nodded. “That’s right.”
“And Gdansk is in the north, on the Baltic Sea. Tell me where Kielce, Radom, and Lódz are located.”
“They run south to north from Tarnów to Warsaw,” Konrad said. “I’ve been to all of them.”
“And I assume that Bydgoszcz
is north of Warsaw?” he asked.
“It is. About two hundred kilometers,” Konrad said. “As is Gdansk.”
The Soviets were, if nothing else, simple in their thinking. Why complicate matters when something easy could accomplish the same goal?
“The towns tell us where to go,” he said.
He turned and headed back to the offshoot marked BYDGOSZCZ.
“This town is north of Warsaw. Which one is immediately south?”
“Lódz,” Konrad said.
Jonty pointed. “Which is back there about thirty meters. What we’re after is in between.”
It had to be.
He walked down the tunnel about twenty meters until he came to an unmarked offshoot. He motioned to Vic, who hustled ahead and stopped at the next offshoot.
“Lódz?” he asked his associate.
“It is.”
Jonty pointed. “This has to be Warsaw.”
He did not wait for a reply, simply headed down the tunnel, which ended at a partial cave-in similar to the one he and Vic had seen last evening. A barrier, but passable. He squatted his stout frame down and squeezed under the ledge.
The others followed.
Their lights revealed another empty chamber, similar to the one Jonty saw at the end of the other offshoot.
A dead end?
Konrad, though, seemed intrigued, studying the far wall, his light tracing a path up and down.
“What is it?” Jonty asked.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Cotton darted left, momentarily out of the line of sight for the doorway. Then he rushed toward the open portal, slamming its heavy paneled door shut and engaging the iron latch. That should stop Sonia’s advance long enough for him to make his escape back the way he came. He noticed, though, that all the rooms on this level faced an inner courtyard, with a covered arcade wrapping the entire upper floor. A closed door to his left opened out to the loggia, as did two mullioned windows. It would not take Sonia long before she readjusted her path and came at him from that angle.
At least his instincts had been right.
