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Colonel Roger Mellows, Earl of Stantferd, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the UK read the text message on his mobile phone feeling perplexed. "Don't commit to Gen. Jeogh, be positive.- M.Lander". A soft ping of his intercom broke into his thoughts. "Colonel, the general is here with Aryeh Salawi." Colonel rose to greet his guests even as the door opened. He shook hands first with the obese General Goan Jeogh, the ruthless  military dictator of Shwarda managing to hide all his abhorrence behind a wide glib smile. Aryeh Salawi was an anti-thesis.  A computer whiz with a successful software start-up, young and suave, looking like a million bucks- he was  nearly a billionaire- and he seemed genuinely pleased to have this meeting.

When they were settled into plush seats around an antique table and refreshing sherbet was served, Colonel Mellows breached the subject of the meeting. "The papers you sent yesterday seem to be in order. The boffins are yet to give me summary report. May I inquire what sort of  help I can be of, in this matter?"

The general smiled widely at him. "Minister, you are guessing already Eh? There is gold in Shwarda." He slapped the shoulder of Aryeh and continued. "My friend has furnished you with the findings of his gas exploration team. I want out of Shwarda. With Ethiopia on the East and Sudan in the West we are being killed by lack of water and the lack of trading routes. You take whatever you want, I get 30% of the gold. That is why I came personally. This is to be our secret agreement."

Aryeh nodded resignedly at Colonel Mellows as if saying "You handle him." 

The meeting lasted fifteen more minutes. Nothing was agreed upon except that in two days a viable contract will be worked out including Salawi Group's Sal Oil as an active member of the project. It was in the evening when Colonel Mellows met with Dr. Merin Lander- The head of the Geological Survey of Britain. He was surprised to find two new faces waiting for him along with Dr. Lander- Regina Warfiel, Secretary to  the PM and Dr. Cruin Holts, geo-physician, professor of history and author of the famous book "Lost Cities Hollow Earth". Dr. Lander made the introductions and then invited Dr. Cruin to give his briefing first, as he would be leaving immediately afterwards, the Africa matter was classified information after all.

Dr. Cruin, pleased with the attentive and eminent audience began: " What are the common points of the following cities- Atlantis, Babel, El-Dorado, Aztlan and Huine. All of them are lost cities, records with their names and descriptions are numerous but the cities themselves were never found. All of them date back to more than a thousand years. All of them had a fantastically advanced technology. All of them had untold riches. In my book I have surmised that it is impossible for such numerous reports to exist from around the globe- many more lesser known civilizations have disappeared, like the Harrapans  near Indus river- so many reports without any basis or a grain of truth in them. So where did these people go. To quote Sherlock Holmes: *That when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth!*

We know that they are not living besides us, they have not left Earth so the only possibility is they went down. Into the belly of the planet, if you will. I have devoted three chapters to linking various underground and undersea finds with these cities.  We have not yet found them but that does not mean that they are not there in the Hollow Earth. It would be childish to think that just because we can't find them, they never existed. And we have records that they did. Now the likelihood of the cities being underground is far more than being under the ocean, simply due to heat and pressure which human or human like bodies can handle.

It is a fantastic project to invest in I assure you..."

"Thank You professor!" Dr. Lander interjected. "Several excerpts of the book are  being mailed to all of you for further reference." The door opened as if on cue and a tea service was rolled in. Dr. Lander excused himself and went to escort Dr. Cruin out. When he returned Colonel Mellows stabbed at him. "What the Shiite was all that about Dr. Lander?" Ms. Warfiel added. "Am I wasting my time?" Dr. Lander smiled apologetically and replied. "Give me a few minutes only. Please be assured that I don't believe in fairy tales." He switched on the the screen.  "This is the detailed composite that Sal Oil gave us." He clicked another two pictures on screen in place of the first. "This is the satellite photos we have of a few days before." Then he clicked again and a fourth picture with multicolored lines appeared. "This is all the three pictures adjusted one over the other. Look at the red lines, they look like squares and semicircles- definitely man made structures or remains of them. See how the blue shaded area includes them all, that shade is the Sal Oil gold vein."

"Impossible!" Ms. Warfiel exclaimed. "What?" Colonel Mellows blurted out impatiently. Dr. Lander explained. "I am only the messenger. The photos show golden ruins just more than a kilometer below the surface. And more." He pointed out to a greyish band crossing the photo all the way from right to left. " This is a band showing an underground river and what you see here." He pointed to several bright yellow spots. "These are radiation signatures. Low level but definitely radiation. There is definitely something weird down there. I don't know what but it will be big, earth changing big."

"Aryeh Salawi did not say anything about this." Colonel Mellows stated.

"He does not have the satellite imaging we have access to. He only detected traces of gold and probably Irridium."

"What Irridium?"

Dr. Lander pointed to a couple of jagged blobs. "These are probably worth hundreds of millions. But they are spread all over, from way over in Sudan to well into Ethiopia. And that is a problem. If a mining operation is set up. They will probably destroy what is below and god knows what technology or records we will loose forever."

"Are you sure about this?" Ms. Warfiel asked.

"I  have ordered for fresh satellite images, we will get them tomorrow. And I am sending a team there to verify Sal Oil's findings and do some sampling and scanning of their own. In four days we will know for sure."

The next day around noon Colonel Mellows got a call from Aryeh Salawi. "Minister there has been an.. unexpected development. Brown Corp., the American mining corporation has sent a proposal to Ethiopia, Shwarda and Sudan for mining and excavating rights. I can hold the General only for a day or two before someone from there comes to negotiate. Most of the gold is in Shwarda you know."

"And Irridium?" The colonel asked

"Irridium deposits are wide spread, but they are not so much as to be singly very profitable."

"Only a few hundred millions. Eh. Let me call you back by evening. We will work something out."

Colonel Mellows punched a code into his laptop and within seconds the Deputy Director of CIA was on screen from Langely. "That was fast. Brown Corp."

The Deputy Director smiled at him. "Hollow Earth is too much to stay out of."

"I will speak to the PM. Lets do a joint venture."

"Tel Aviv knows too."

"Why not! OK lets do this the right way. As you say nobody wants to loose out on Hollow Earth and the mountains of gold."

"Of Course! Gold is always a great attraction. We don't have much time though, before the news leaks further.. East."


That evening General Jeogh had an agreement signed by the UK government and Sal Oil. Brown Corp. bought into another agreement with Shwarda for survey and mining, while Green Earth, a Haifa based company signed a deal with the Sudanese. A multinational team led by Dr. Lander set up base in Shwarda within the week. Sal Oil was bought out by Brown Corp in a two and a half billion dollar deal. Sal Oil gave away one third of the amount to a trust for providing free education and food for the children of Shwarda.

Two months down the line  hundreds of  million dollars had been spent in setting up operations in the three impoverished nations. Hundreds of miles of roads, scores of housing structures and supporting commercial establishments were coming up. Ground water was tapped and water harvesting plants were set up. In Sudan a state of the art Israeli desalination plant was being built. And In Shwarda with General Jeogh having fled the country, elections would be held under UN supervision. The African Nations held felicitations for the companies involved and proposed statements in the UN thanking the nations involved. UN working committee decided to hold a special program for this. It was here that the fraud was discovered and that too via a brazen joint announcement by Aryeh Salawi and Dr. Lander by a video conference from Moscow.

There was no Hollow Earth, the scans and the photos had been faked. Aryeh had used his software start-up which linked up to satellites for weather and geological data to fake the images and Dr. Lander was in the right place to perpetuate the fraud. The result was hundreds of millions of investment in the impoverished African nations to set up mining operations. The actual gold deposits were just a fraction of those expected  but Irridium was all there. The internet was awash with praise and condemnations for this debacle. The companies invested in the project went ahead with mining for Irridium while the governments withdrew.

What nobody noticed  was that the radiation signatures showing in the satellite images had shifted significantly over the past two months. Due to doctoring of the images this detail had not shown up and now nobody cared to listen to scientists say that something, some machine probably, as the heavy metals which the images indicated did not occur in the earth naturally, was moving towards the Atlantic nearly a mile below the ground.

**Photo Credit:** Pixabay.com

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