Jonty did not like the look of the wooden staircase leading down into blackness. Konrad had led them off the main tourist routes of Level III to an elevator used exclusively by the miners, where they’d descended to Level IX. Not the same area they’d visited last night. That was nearly a kilometer away. But the tunnels here were similar. They then wound a path through them, following Konrad into one of the offshoots where they found the old staircase.
“It doesn’t appear it can handle our weight,” Jonty said.
“Stay to the outside on the rungs and we should be fine. I’ll go first.”
Konrad began to descend. Slow and deliberate, hugging the interior side where supports helped hold the load. Eli went next, Jonty followed, with Vic assuming the rear. The wooden rungs were battered, the saw marks still evident at their ends, many of the nailheads corroded away, causing the risers to rattle loose. The only light came from their helmets, the beams herky-jerky with their slow, cautious descent.
The staircase seemed to go forever at right angles down. It took a few minutes to make it back to solid ground. Level X was a mess, the tunnel ahead littered with salt blocks, the walls and ceiling crystallized with dripstones, more precipitated salt icing the walls and timbers.
“I told you this was dangerous,” Konrad said. “If it’s any comfort, we haven’t had a cave-in anywhere in decades.”
That wasn’t much solace. Added to the problem was the fact that no one above knew they were even here.
“Salt makes for a really good support,” Konrad said as he found the map and studied it again. “This tunnel goes for about half a kilometer. There are several offshoots. We’re going to have to explore them to see if there’s a chamber named Warsaw.”
Vic noticed something in the floor and bent down to examine it. “A rail line?”
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 ŁÓDŹ. Not every offshoot was labeled. Only a few here and there. Farther on they came to two more bearing signs.
BYDGOSZCZ and GDAŃSK.
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 Gdańsk is in the north, on the Baltic Sea. Tell me where Kielce, Radom, and Łódź 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 Gdańsk.”
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?”
“Łódź,” 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.
“Łódź?” 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.