"Must go to an upper level where it's crushed to powder and the gold is recovered and refined."
The guards led them to a massive iron gate mounted on equally massive hinges and weighing close to half a ton. It was designed to keep more than chickens cooped up. Two other Tuaregs waited on the other side. They nodded and exerted every muscle in pulling open the gate, then silently motioned for Pitt and Giordino to move inside. One guard handed them dirty tin cups half filled with brackish water.
Pitt gazed into the cup, then at the guard. "How creative, water garnished with bat's vomit."
The guard couldn't understand the words but he easily read the savage look in Pitt's eyes. He snatched back the cup and threw the water in the dirt and kicked Pitt into the chamber.
"That'll teach you to look a gift horse in the mouth," Giordino said, smiling broadly as he emptied his cup on the ground too.
Their new home was 10 meters wide by 30 long and lit by four tiny light bulbs. Four-tiered wooden bunks were arranged the length of both walls. The dungeon, for that's what it was, had no ventilation and the stench of crowded living conditions was ghastly. The only sanitary conveniences were several holes sunk in the rock along the rear wall. In the center were two long eating tables with crude wooden benches. There had to be, Pitt guessed, more than three hundred human beings crammed in the nauseating area.
The bodies slumped in the nearest bunks looked to Pitt as if they were comatose. Their faces looked as expressionless as cabbages. Twenty men were huddled around the table using their hands to eat out of a community pot like starving maggots. None of the faces looked frightened or worried; they were far beyond showing ordinary emotion; they were drawn and haggard from lack of food and exhaustion. They moved mechanically like living cadavers, staring through eyes dead with defeat and submission. None of them gave Pitt and Giordino so much as a glance as they made their way through the sea of human misery.
"Not exactly a carnival atmosphere," muttered Giordino.
"Humanitarian principles don't count for much around here," Pitt said in disgust. "It's worse than I ever imagined."
"Much worse," agreed Giordino, cupping a hand over his nose in a futile effort to ward off the smell "The Black Hole of Calcutta had nothing on this dump."
"Feel like eating?"
Giordino winced as he stared at the remains of the slop clinging to the sides of the pot. "My appetite just filed for bankruptcy."
The nearly unbreathable air and lack of ventilation in the dungeon-like cavern raised the heat and humidity from the packed bodies to unbearable levels. But Pitt suddenly felt himself turn as cold as if he'd stepped onto an iceberg. For a moment all the defiance and anger left him and the horror and suffering seemed to dissolve and fade as he recognized a figure bending over a bunk in a lower tier against the right wall of the cave. He rushed over and knelt beside a woman who was tending a sick child.
"Eva," he said gently.
She was bone weary from forced labor and lack of food, and her face was pale and marked by welts and bruises, but she turned and stared at him through eyes that gleamed with courage.
"What do you want?"
"Eva, it's Dirk."
It didn't sink in. "Leave me alone," she muttered. "This little girl is terribly sick."
He took her hand between his and leaned closer. "Look at me. I'm Dirk Pitt."
Then her eyes widened in recognition. "Oh Dirk, is it really you?"
He kissed her and gently touched the bruises on her face. "If I'm not, someone is playing a cruel trick on us both."
Giordino appeared at Pitt's shoulder. "A friend of yours?"
Pitt nodded. "Dr. Eva Rojas, the lady I met in Cairo."
"How did she get here?" he asked in surprise.
"How did you?" Pitt asked her.
"General Kazim hijacked our plane and sent us here to work in the mines."
"But why?" queried Pitt. "What threat were you to him?"
"Our UN health team, under the supervision of Dr. Frank Hopper, was close to identifying a toxic contaminant that was killing villagers all over the desert. We were on our way back to Cairo with biological samples for analysis."
Pitt looked up at Giordino. "Massarde asked us if we were working with Dr. Hopper and his group."
Giordino nodded. "I recall. He must have known Kazim had already imprisoned them here."