“I can’t say, but it could be a possibility. It’s clear that Goyette is after the ruthenium.” He explained his visit to the Miners Co-op and the chance encounter with the man he’d seen at the GWU lab. He recited the portion of the journal entry he had read, and pulled out his notes for Yaeger.

“Max, last time we talked, you indicated that there was little, if any, mining of ruthenium taking place,” he said.

“That’s correct, just a small quantity of low-grade ore being produced from a mine in Bolivia.”

“The mining co-op has a finite inventory left. Do you have any data on potential deposits in the Arctic?”

Max stood motionless for a moment, then shook her head. “No, sir. I find no mention in any recorded surveys or mining claims that I have access to, which mostly date from the 1960s.”

Pitt eyed his journal notes, then said, “I have a record from 1917 that a quantity of ruthenium called Black Kobluna was obtained some sixty-eight years earlier by a number of Adelaide Peninsula Inuit. Does that mean anything to you, Max?”

“I’m sorry, sir, I still don’t find any relevant mining references,” she replied, a hurt look in her transparent eyes.

“She never calls me sir,” Yaeger muttered quietly.

Max ignored Yaeger as she tried to generate an added response to Pitt.

“ The Adelaide Peninsula is located on the north coast of Nunavut, just to the south of King William Island. The peninsula is considered an essentially uninhabited landmass, historically occupied at certain seasons by small groups of migrating Inuit.”

“Max, what is meant by the term ‘Black Kobluna’?” Yaeger asked.

Max hesitated while accessing a linguistics database at Stanford University. She then tipped her head at Yaeger and Pitt with a confused look on her face.

“It is a contradictory phrase,” she said.

“Please explain,” requested Yaeger.

“Kobluna is an Inuit term for ‘white man.’ Hence it is a mixed translation of ‘black white man.’ ”

“Contradictory, indeed,” Yaeger said. “Perhaps it means a white man dressed in black or vice versa.”

“Possibly,” Pitt said. “But that was a remote section of the Arctic. I’m not sure a white or black man had even set foot there by that point in time. Isn’t that true, Max?”

“You are nearly correct. Initial exploration and mapping of the Canadian Arctic came in a British-inspired quest for a northwest passage to the Pacific Ocean. A large portion of the western and eastern regions of the Canadian Arctic had been well charted by the mid-nineteenth century. The middle regions, including a number of passages around Adelaide Peninsula, were in fact some of the last areas charted.”

Pitt glanced at his notes from the Miners Co-op. “ The record indicates that the Inuit recovered the ruthenium in or around 1849.”