The American Mission by Matthew Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

considerable force. The rock split easily down the middle, exposing a hollow center filled with glittering purple crystals. Sifa picked up one half and looked at their find with an expression of sheer wonder.
    â€œWhat is it?” she asked.
    â€œIt’s a geode. Sometimes an air bubble in the lava will form into a rock with the conditions just right to grow crystals inside. These purple ones are called amethyst. In the cities, women like to wear jewelry made from these crystals. If you’d like, I can help you smooth and polish the edges. It’d make a nice gift for your mother.”
    Sifa’s face assumed a look of determination. “I have made up my mind,” she said with the absolute certainty of youth. “I am going to be a geologist like you and travel the world looking for valuable . . .minerals.” She rolled the last unfamiliar word off her tongue with a deliberate slowness.
    Marie smiled and was about to reply when a glint of black in the corner of her eye caught her attention. Just about any other geologist would likely have missed it. It was such a small thing. But for Marie, a number of data points that she had picked up almost subliminally clicked into place. This was why Karic had wanted her on the expedition. Geology was a hard science, but successful prospecting favored intuition. Without having to look, she somehow knew what was buried there under the sand. Coltan. With a small trowel from her backpack, Marie turned over the sandy soil and inspected the silicates. The black flecks in the sand could be coltan. She separated out enough of the material to run some simple chemical tests.
    After fishing around in the bottom of the pack, she pulled out a small pan with a zinc plate on the bottom and two bottles labeled POTASSIUM HYDROXIDE and CHLOROHYDRIC ACID . She mixed the ore and chemicals in the zinc pan. The solution foamed up rapidly with an audible hiss. This field test was far from definitive. To confirm the presence of coltan in commercially exploitable quantities, the team would need to dig a series of slit trenches and use the diesel-powered water pump that the porters carried broken down in pieces to force the material down a sluice that would separate the heavier coltan particles from the sand and clay. Karic would insist on this step. The textbooks and company operating manuals demanded it. Marie knew in her bones that it was unnecessary. She was standing on a large deposit of one of the most valuable minerals on earth.
    The sun was setting and the meadow was lit by the soft light of early evening. It was, as she had told Sifa, a truly beautiful place. Because of the techniques involved, coltan mining was exceptionally destructive. For an instant, Marie had a vision of the lush clearing turned into a moonscape of craters and trenches, the river thick with mud andthe soil poisoned with heavy metals. Sifa and her family would again be refugees.
Could she trade Sifa’s village for her own? Could she live with herself if she did?
    â€œWhat is it, Marie? Are you all right?”
    â€œYes, I’m fine.”
    â€œDid you find something?”
    Marie hesitated. Then she made up her mind.
    â€œNo, Sifa,” she said emphatically. “There’s nothing of value here. We should get back to the village. They’re probably waiting on us for dinner.”
    She would not take the devil’s bargain. If this deposit was not the answer, she would find coltan somewhere else, somewhere uninhabited.

4
    J UNE 13, 2009
    C ONAKRY
    I t was a familiar dream. It had been with him for the better part of three years, a part of his life that he would gladly leave behind but knew that he never could.
    He stood alone in the desert. He was barefoot, and the hot sands of Western Sudan were painful to walk on. The bleak uniformity of the landscape was broken only by the occasional scrub bush or stunted acacia tree. His feet burned as he walked toward a mountain that he