Murmansk Stone

Snuggling into Litell's side, she curled up on me. I used the chance to make light conversation, in Russian, because why not. She would tell me something, like, she grew up on a farm outside of Irkutsk. I got the word farm from house, which I knew, and bolshoi (big) land, and a hoe-pulling motion. We kept talking for over an hour, until the food yell arrived, and we had to stand up.

I was getting better. She only had to use a word once and I figured it out, and then I had it, and I could move on to the next word. My word endings were crap, though.

Once upon a time, LONG ago, I had a roommate that took Latin. He had a book and kept talking about cases. English doesn't have them. You change the word ending based on how it's used in the sentence. 'The barn is big' vs. '...color of the barn...' makes the word 'barn' have a new ending. It SUCKED, my roommate always yelled, what the eff do they mean.

He got a D in the class and I could tell it was not for lack of trying. He just didn't get the ideas, he said.

It also could have been that his 'trying' was interrupted by a lot of beer runs and playing mario brothers and then sleeping late.

Regardless, Russian had a lot of these and she kept correcting me until I started getting the hang of things.

The food was Amazing!

Stir fry with lots of rice and beans and veggies, I 'liked me some of that' as they say in the South.

I can recommend a couple of things for learning languages. First, have a lot of sex. Then, sit around talking with 12 naked beautiful female speakers of that language and explain things back and forth to each other in simple terms.

Ytensi, a taller almost-blonde girl, had some books with her, one of which was a chemistry textbook since she had been at University. She lent it to me. I used my phone's camera-translate and she pronounced things so I got most of the concepts down.

My obsessive brain kept at this well past midnight and then I just collapsed and slept ("No Sex for Kevin when Brain Hurts.").

Still, it was immensely fun and I loved the exercise.

In the morning (about 8), I got a text on my phone that woke me.

"Bring girls Now to Amex office for passports. Then go to ____ (address) Gold shop. Make friends. Have sex with Chimeg and Mandak. Before lunch. Instructions follow."

I called out and we all got up, trying out my new Russian skills. More or less, I said, "Awaken. We eat breakfast fast, street food. We go to Amex office now, leave fast."

They applauded my Russian-language efforts, got dressed quickly in their new clothes, and we set out.

The Amex office did indeed have packets waiting for us. Each girl found they had a brand-spankin'-new U.S. passport, which delighted them to no end, jumping up and down happy. I didn't worry about it too much, because if I did, I would go down a rabbit hole of how the Chair was doing this magic.

Grabbing some street food was easy - they had lots of kinds of it near the downtown area. Everyone seemed to be selling khuushuur, which is a meat-filled pastry a lot like hand-held dumplings. The British had the same idea, calling it a Cornish pasty, but the idea is pretty universal.

The closest thing in America is probably a 'hot pocket' or a stromboli, or a burrito. Hand food is hand food.

Heading to the address I'd been given (on public transport because why not), we were noticed only slightly - the girls had gotten clothes that blended in pretty well, per my request - but the three of them that were blonde stuck out because very few Mongolians are blonde.

The gold shop was way on the outskirts, and wasn't so much a retail place as what looked like a car-repair place (behind a tall outer wall and a second layer of fencing) that had been re-purposed to have a lot of cement-walled small offices around a central furnace area where they did casting.

The lady that came out could have been young or old, I had no way of knowing. She could speak English really well, though. "Can I help you?"

"I'm looking for Chimeg and Mandak."

"That's Mandak. I'm Chimeg."

Mandak was a gal that looked like she might have been in high school but was totally dirty, covered in soot but smiling.

My phone buzzed. I looked at it and it said, "Tell them you have some raw gold you need re-melted and cast to 100 gram bars, including assay purity and imprint. Negotiate price to be 10% below market, at _____ per bar, so let them have 10% profit. Quantity 10 kg."

I knew how to negotiate and asked for a price below this, then let them talk and decide themselves.

"How much?

I admit, even with my being a science geek in my previous life, I didn't have in my mind really well what the price of gold was per gram, or how many grams were in 10 kg.

Their eyes got big.

"Why so much? Is this legal?"

"Yes. It is legal. I have raw gold but need it weighed and marked properly. I respect your ability."

"You do not know us."

"You have been recommended highly."

They debated this, then wanted to invite me to tea to discuss this further. I could tell they wanted to know me better so they didn't get involved in a mafia transaction.

They closed some gates and we went through a bunch of hallways into a lower level and up again, then a back room. We had tea, and we talked about where we'd come from ("Irkutsk"), and the girls were on a package tour.

Mandak and Chimeg warmed to me over the next half hour, having tea, and I asked them if there was a place where the girls could watch TV for a while quietly while the three of us talked?

This was immediately done. Mandak and Chimeg led me to an apartment, nice and clean with tile walls and very small glass-block windows near the ceiling. The house was a fortress.

Of course, it had to be - they were gold merchants.

I asked if I could use their shower, I hadn't showered in the morning, at which point they led me to a nice (Asian-style) shower where there was a wand and the tub drain led out of the tub, so the water went down the center floor drain.

Some parts of Asia were not that western.

They both got busy disappearing and coming back clad in bras and panties, stripped me off completely, and then stripped off themselves. I was bathed by doing the Asian Squat (sitting on one's heels) and they rubbed me with soap and rinsed me off.

I helped each of them, much to their surprise, and we got all clean.

Some of the water coming off was brown; Mandak had been in the coal room earlier moving coal around and she was happy to get clean. They didn't expect business that day.

For a family that had a gold business, they didn't have many furnishings, and I could tell times were kind of tough.

Finishing up, we went back out into Chimeg's bedroom and I sniffed her all over, taking in the soap scent but also her natural one. Telling Mandak to help by playing with Chimeg's breast, I licked her up and down and got a good reaction, then pushed in, missionary style, looking at her beautiful face smiling up at me.

She didn't come. I don't think she expected to.

Coming with some big grunts, I relaxed and rolled on my back. We waited about a half hour and talked about what was involved in their doing this work for me. Besides melting down the gold, they would precisely control the temperature so only the gold melted and the impurities would float or sink. Then, they'd stir it and pour it into bars - they had a way to do that for 100 gram sizes - and as soon as it was cool, they'd run it through an assay machine that would tell them the quality.

The last step was stamping the purity on the front and adding an imprint mark. They had one, but if I wanted a new special one they could do that, too.

I said, yes, a new one, in the shape of four overlapping circles. They wanted to know what shape, and I had them lie on top of each other just offset so their nipples almost touched. This required some pushing in and arranging, which I was happy to help with.

I wanted to make love with Mandak next, but I decided I wanted an orgasm out of her first; she was the younger one. I licked her capably with some fingers to help, and there was some happy noise bouncing off the walls.

Chimeg watched and played with Mandak's breast, just like I'd asked Mandak to do for her.

Mandak was a virgin.

She screamed, too, but then we got into the motion of things and made some significant joy.

I was an attentive lover, I thought. She didn't come while we were making love, but she seemed so happy to be there it was enough.

After our enjoying each other, we dressed again. I told them that from now on, they had to be totally honest with me, but I would always allow them to have a 10% profit above their expenses, and that included valuing their labor at 10% above market rates.

They were happy about this, for sure!

On a whim, I asked if they could work with other metals besides gold and they talked between themselves. Silver, they said, was easy. Platinum would be hard, but possible. They could do medium volumes but weren't a big outfit, 'like in America'. I didn't know of any companies that did what they were doing back home, but then again it wasn't my area of expertise.

We rejoined the girls and everyone was all smiles, all around.

Before leaving, I got instructions and phone numbers, and we left.

Meekatharra, Australia

Walking down the block back to the bus stop, my phone buzzed.

"Pack and go to the airport now. Private plane flight. Tell the cabs to drop you at _____, across the street, say nothing about traveling to the cab drivers."

The girls were surprised we were leaving so soon, but shrugged it off and we got on the road quickly.

I left a very nice tip for the lady that housed us, but instructed her to just not mention anything about us to anyone, and remember us as being Japanese.

Ulan Bator airport indeed had a private / corporate plane area. We got to the office desk, I told him some numbers that had appeared on my phone and we were off.

The Gulfstream G650 holds 19 people and our pilots were waiting, so we trooped on and took off. They already had a flight plan - we were going to Meekatharra, Australia, a bumblefuck town and I had no idea why.

The girls and I got to talking in both Russian and English, switching off between them and correcting each other a lot. Admittedly, this got me tired and I took a nap there for an hour or two.

Ten hours of plane flight put us landing at almost 10 pm.

Getting off, I found we had no rental car and thus no way to get to a hotel, but my phone pinged me with the hotel's phone. Happily, they came to get us quickly.

The hotel looked like it had 10 rooms total, a real working-class place with a bar out front. The two ladies who ran it (older rough-and-tumble lesbians if my guess hit right) took good care of us and gave us a very late supper of steak and potatoes.

I hung around until about midnight chatting with them, giving away almost nothing of our situation except we were 'geology students' and had come to look around.

Happily, the motel was well separated from the town proper and had almost no neighbors.

They mentioned it was the 'uff saizun' ("off season"), and we were the only guests, so they were happy to see us. I told them we didn't want maid service, we'd do that, and they laughed and the older one (with a giant smile and spark in her eye) said, "Dayum-well-baetaah, weren't ganna lift no fingas fer bright-eyed tight-assed sheilas can-doo they own damn work!"

This turned out to be a joke and we all laughed once it was translated into Russian.

I still had no idea why we were there.

The pilots had told us they'd be back in 6 days "per the plan" so we were there for a while, at least. Still, we were tired and headed off to our rooms to bed.

Each room had two doubles and they were nice enough, I figured. I'd slept in far worse. They were clean but the furnishings weren't new since before I was born, and that was fine by me.

I got to sleep in no time (with only one bed-warmer next to me) since I had just been chatting on the plane most of the time (minus two blowjobs that I accepted as pleasant gifts).

In the morning, we were all awakened by our cellphone alarms (which we hadn't set), and had directions to fetch duffle bags from a pickup outside, then shower and dress in the hiking clothes in them. We had to fill the water jugs for a long drive and bring packaged food along for 3 strenuous days, it said.

Each duffle bag had initials, one for each of us; the hiking boots fit everyone and I counted that as a minor miracle.

The breakfast the ladies cooked for us was ham and eggs and pancakes and toast and butter, and lots of it. I stuffed myself, frankly, since I hadn't eaten much on the plane and I'd only had a little bit of the steak the previous night.

Eating a steak right before bed is a great way to get heartburn.

Besides the pickup truck we'd gotten duffles from, around the corner of the building there were five other large Ford F-650 diesel pickups waiting, fueled up (two fuel tanks!? Who were these people?) and ready to go.

I had no idea where we were headed, but as we got into them, a map appeared on my phone, so it was 'follow me' and we drove off.

I gave some thought to only driving in 3 of them (we'd have easily fit) but there had to be a reason for having them, so sure, why not. Enough of the girls knew how to drive that we were good for drivers. Not everyone did; in Russia, not everyone has cars or trucks.

The destination showed as 3 hours away, but only the first 20 minutes turned out to be what normal people would call 'road'.

To describe the trip as unpleasant would be to greatly simplify it.

Once that first 20 minutes of paved road was done, we had GPS directions on our phones for setting out across flat desert ground, mostly in tire tracks of a sometimes-road, but plenty of times there was just no other obvious way to go and we drove through the scrub brush.

Finally we pulled up to a ravine of sorts where we could stop for a while and stretch. The next bit was down the ravine, and our phones directed us to bring the large, empty backpacks we'd found in the trucks as well as our real backpacks.

What?

I was very confused.

I was only confused until we got there.

Along the gulch we were in, underneath a rock overhang, was a solid hunk of gold.

To say solid, I mean that it looked solid from a slight distance. Up close, we walked up to find it was divided into 10 cm cubical blocks (a little smaller than a 2-slice toaster), piled together tightly to make one solid block. I could pull out one of these and found it was super-heavy, 20 kg, about 40 (American) pounds. We could lift them, but it wasn't a one-handed thing.

I recognized the way the pillars supported the rock face going deeper and knew the hole would be big, and the amount of gold I was looking at, just right there, had to be worth an immense fortune.

My phone pinged.

Frankly, I didn't know I had a signal way out there since the navigation had been a topo map with a line drawn on it and waypoints.

The text read: "Fill trucks to weight limit + 10% counting people and remaining fuel. Transport to four shipping containers on trucks outside hotel. Pull 80% from gold, 20% platinum. Platinum is NE 100 meters. Iridium 100 meters farther, leave this for later. One crew stays behind and gets gold pre-positioned for next run if needed. Keep operation going 24 hours for next 4 days, sleep as possible. Always top off water and fuel. Urgency is important, but secrecy is more important."

I rephrased these instructions and we got busy.

The bottom of the gulch was about 100 meters from the trucks as it was and there were no good driving routes to get us closer. We had to hoof it.

Well then.

At one cube per trip, 20 kg, filling the pickups to their nameplate capacity meant 15,000 kg (they were big, seriously heavy-duty trucks). So, each pickup fill-up would take 750 walking trips. At 4 minutes per trip, that was 3000 minutes per truck, divided by 10 people, 300 minutes made one truck per 5 hours of loading?

This would not work, not at 2 cubes per trip, not at four, considering the ground to cover was climbing upwards? Not Happening Easily, for sure!

We looked around and started walking through the scrub brush.

The bottom of the ravine was flat enough, we just had to find a way to drive there.

Hunting took some time, but we found a route, and I drove it carefully, using one the girls as random rock movers to make the way flatter.

Twenty minutes of clearing, and we got the first truck down there. Turning around was a trick, but we figured that out and I didn't worry about banging up the bumper on rock outcropping. Just one of those cubes at 20 kg * $50/g was $1m. We could throw away the trucks at the end if we wanted.

Truck capacity of 15,000 kg / 20 kg per cube meant 750 cubes, but that'd fill the back of the truck bed and it might ride nose-up like that. Putting them all over the floor of the back seat made the load more even, I thought.

Right up close, we got the first truck filled to max capacity in no time, and I drove stiffly out and up the slope to where we'd parked the other trucks. It wasn't that steep by my route, but there was some slippage and four-wheel locked mode was definitely needed.

All six trucks got filled up and we headed back to the hotel.

This process repeated over and over, for four days straight.

As soon as we'd filled one shipping container (by mass not by volume, my God), we closed it and opened the next, moving on. We traded off sleeping in the trucks on the way to and from the site.

A text appeared after we'd filled the first two that more containers would be showing up, and these would be shipped out, "You will see them later."

Ten more shipping containers, mounted as the back of a semi-truck, showed up, and we had to lift the cubes from the truck bed to the container back.

That sounds simple, lifting a cube from the back of a truck to another truck, but each cube was 40 pounds and oh my god, does that wear you out fast!

Luckily or not (and I don't believe in coincidences), no one was nearly close enough to see us loading them, and the place seemed so sparsely populated that there were precisely zero people walking by.

At almost 8 hours per trip, we made 12 back-and-forth trips during those four days, choosing to stay together instead of leaving when the first one of us was done. I didn't want someone stranded or getting lost in the desert on the way to and from the site.

We filled 33 shipping containers to 90 percent of their max payload, one layer deep across the bottom of the container. More than that, it would slide around and it wouldn't handle two layers thick for the mass requirements.

As soon as we filled up a container, we locked it from the duffle bag of locks and some shipping company took them off somewhere, I didn't know where.

Driving back and forth, it occurred to me that if someone parked their empty truck in the middle of our bunch, they'd have a hell of a surprise! Imagining the conversation, I pictured it as, "Uh... someone filled up your container, dude." ... "With what?" ... "Oh, like a billion and a half dollars worth of solid gold cubes."

We laughed at that idea.

The girls took this all in stride. Somehow my influence on them worked, and though we were tired, we got good naps going to and from. One person would sleep, the other drive, and we all got very good at sleeping in trucks driving over bumpy ground.

Looking up some info on my mysteriously working cellphone, we were transporting about a quarter of the entire world's annual production of gold, just by ourselves, in pickups.

Life is very odd.

Getting back to the hotel (and I'd been explicit with the owners about secrecy) on the fourth day, I got a text that we'd done our last run, so we should take showers and get to the airport. We were to bring along two cubes per person in our backpacks.