Chapter 40

Marcy was busy on the phone, her clerks just as busy. I decided to stay out of the way.

I went to my office and opened the State Department’s fancy world search Google program that I knew they paid a bunch for and was the best that could be bought. I wanted to look at Polokwane and the surrounding areas again. What I wanted to know was what made this location attractive to the Iranians?

I had looked when we were getting ready to kill the Prince, but not with any other ideas.

To the east was the national game preserve - butted right up to the line - so there was nothing there. Or was there? The game preserve was five hundred thousand acres.

To the west was an abandoned mine; it looked like it had been closed for decades. To the north from the satellite it looked like someone had done extensive testing there, or could the terrain look that way from heavy shelling or bombing in the past? I knew of no wars in that area which would have used those kinds of weapons.

To the south there was just land; it looked like nothing exceptional. I went back to the abandoned mine and kept blowing the picture up. When it got large enough I moved the pointer around again and still saw nothing worthwhile.

When the courser passed over the complex of junk and falling down buildings up popped a name, Brazil Mining and Minerals - BM&M. Damn, we had used their plane to fly from South America to South Africa in the mission to kill the Prince.

I had the company president’s number in my cell phone. Alanza Fernando and I had met when I was Ambassador to Uganda; he was easy to get along with. BM&M had contracts in South America and most of Africa where it was safe. He was at a meeting I had to attend while I was in Uganda

We talked 30 minutes about a lot of things before I could direct the conversation to the abandoned mine. One of the things that held the conversation was he knew several of my Embassy employees in Brasilia. He was a frequent visitor there.

“The property you have near Polokwane - what are you going to do with it?” I asked.

“Nothing. It is worthless for our mining business; every square mile had been tested for minerals and any deposits that would make us money. There is nothing there but rock and dirt,” he replied.

“Not even rare earth minerals? I thought Africa was the hot spot for them,” I said.

“Other parts of Africa - but nothing in that part,” he said.

“It has been on the market several times in the last twenty years, the cattle ranchers do not even want it for pasture,” he said.

“To be honest I am in the process of buying the other Polokwane mine to make into a training facility but I need more property away from the game preserve for safety reasons. Are you still interested in selling it?” I asked.

“Absolutely! But you would have to take the whole parcel off our hands. The property borders all three sides of the piece you have bought. I’m looking at the computer as we talk. We gave five dollars a hectare American twenty four years ago. The stock holders would want to make some money.

“Ten dollars American per hectare,” he said.

That is roughly twenty five dollars an acre, I figured.

“How big a parcel is it?” I asked

“Two hundred and fifty thousand hectares,” he said.

Damn - that is a little over six hundred twenty thousand acres, two thirds the size of the King Ranch and a bargain at six and a quarter million dollars at our land prices. Better yet, that takes both mines off the market for the Iranians. There were no other large abandoned mines or any mines for that matter in the northern half of South Africa.

Whatever Iran wanted them for, us buying both of them would close the door in this part of Africa. I wondered if the mullahs knew the mines could still be productive. According to old information on wiki there were miles of manmade caverns and tunnels.