Digging Deeper: An Adventure Novel (Sam Harris Series Book 1) (11 page)

Once the harangue was over, they piled into the car with Black smoking cigarette after cigarette.  The ash blew back in her eyes and combined with the red dust to make her contact lenses feel like sandpaper.

They went from site to site as Black asked Ewen questions about the work.  Ewen was driving, and it became obvious that he was not familiar with the terrain.  And why should he be, he’s only here when Jim goes on leave. 

Black started firing questions at her. To her relief, she had adequate answers.  Also, she was called a lot on the radio to coordinate various things.  It was obvious that people thought that she was in charge of some aspects of the production. 

Whilst Ewen was wandered about on some gravel, Black turned to Sam. ‘I didn’t want you to do production. You’ve no training as a production manager.  You haven’t got the experience.  What if something goes wrong?’ 

‘I know,’ she said.  ‘I’m sorry.  It’s just that I think that the best way for me to get a feel for the way projects work is by trying to run production so that I can use the knowledge when I’m looking for new projects.  After all, I’m working with an experienced staff and I have two project managers within half an hour’s drive if anything goes wrong.’

‘You aren't supposed to think, Sam.  I do the thinking around here and I don’t want you to run production.  End of story.’

She had been well-warned about Black’s autocratic management style and she did not want to start off on his wrong side. 

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I jumped the gun.’

On that one trip, Black changed his mind about the mine plan five times. He was a true ideas man’, leaping from theme to theme like a bee in a bunch of fuchsias.  He left out stages in his plans, assuming people followed his logic, when often they just looked miserable and kept saying yes all the time.

Sam was determined not to get confused, so asked him to give her a list of the changes he wanted carried out with a priority rating.

Black smiled at her innocence.

‘That would be a complete a waste of my time, as the plans will change again often before I leave.’ 

He was a man with a lot of self-knowledge.

***

They got back to the office in the early afternoon.  Sam was starving.  Jean brought in a few small, dry bread rolls with some unidentifiable cold, dry, salty meat in them.  Sam ate two but could not drum up enough saliva for a third. 

Black asked Jean for a cup of tea.  Jean looked as if she was having a panic attack but composed herself and replied. ‘But there’s no tea left.  It ran out last week.  Can I make you a nice cup of coffee?’ Black’s face indicated that he would rather drink cyanide. Sam knew that the dreaded Mondongo customs were to blame.  They had been holding out for a bribe to let the Gemsite food container from South Africa out of the shipping port.  None of the projects had any tea left, and the food was running out fast. 

The meat soup at lunch was full of fat maggots, which the other management staff members did not seem to notice.  Sam knew grains of rice did not have one black end.  She had not got thin by mistake.  She got a real thrill from watching them all gobble the soup.  When they finished she asked innocently, ‘nice soup lads?’

‘Not that it’s any of your business but as it so happens it was very nice,’ replied Brian.

‘Oh, so you like maggots in your soup, do you?  I'm not very keen on them myself.’

Brian’s face was a picture.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You should look closer at the grains of rice in the soup. Some of them are alive.’

She smiled smugly and left them inspecting the soup with expressions of disgust. 

Revenge could take many different forms.

Most of the senior staff survived on alcohol and coffee and had not really noticed the lack of tea at the site.  This was a massive failing where Black was concerned.  When he was not drinking alcohol, he survived on a diet of tea and cigarettes and was quite indifferent to food, eating anything that he found in front of him.  He had to have tea.  It was not an option to tell him that there would be no tea until next week. 

Black was working himself into a tantrum.  He went bright red in the face and the veins on his neck stuck out like cables under his mottled skin.  ‘What do you mean ‘there’s no tea’?  How can there be no fucking tea?  I don’t fucking believe it.  What the fuck is Pedro up to?  Where is the fucking tea?’

Jean stammered, ‘I don’t know.  I’m sorry.  It’s not my fault there’s no tea.  We’ve been waiting for weeks.’

‘Weeks?  Weeks?  How can you survive without tea for weeks?  I’ll fire that fucking Pedro!  I need tea now.’

Jean cowered and looked defeated. Black fumed.

Then Sam innocently mentioned that she had some tea in her room.

‘So, go and get it,’ muttered Black, clutching the edge of the table with both hands. 

‘That tea has to last me for my whole contract,’ said Sam, allowing a note of doubt to creep into her voice.

‘I must have some.’

‘I don’t know if I have enough. Maybe you could have some coffee.’

‘Don’t fuck with me, Sam. Give me tea now.  Now!’

‘We could negotiate if you like.’

‘You little bitch.  Who the fuck do you think you are?’

Sam took a gamble. ‘I’m the little bitch with the tea,’ she said and winked.

Black looked astonished at this display of cheek.  Then he guffawed.

‘Well, I wasn’t expecting push back from you,’ he laughed.  ‘Get me some damn tea, or I’ll fire you right now.' 

Jean had been standing in the office with her mouth open for so long that it had gone dry.  She rushed off to boil a kettle.  As she later told Bob in the bar, ‘I’ve never seen the like.  Talking back to Black!  She’s like a tea bag herself: you have to put her in hot water to find out how strong she is.’

Jean made a big pot of strong tea, which they drank in silent appreciation, both deep in their own thoughts.  Sam could see that her feisty reaction had impressed Black. She had shown him her gutsy side and made him see that she could come in useful.  She watched his jaded reactions to all the sycophantic staff at Kardo sucking up to him all the time.  It was his fault that they were terrified of him but it was obvious that he needed someone less afraid of losing their job to contradict him when he was wrong.

When he asked her to sit in on his afternoon production meetings, Sam remembered to be diffident.  She had no idea what to expect but she was not going to turn down the opportunity of supporting her mercurial boss.  She had made a breakthrough with the tea and she was not going to waste it. 

‘I’m not expecting you to speak,’ said Black.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Sam.

Was that a grin?  She could not believe it.  Finally, finally!  She wanted to jump up and down.  She contented herself with a couple of fist pumps in the toilet, where no one could see her.

The production meetings followed a pattern that Sam grew to recognise.  Everyone who came to a meeting was humiliated, harangued and dismissed from the room to go and lick their wounds.  There was a prolonged session for one of the engineers who was responsible for only about five percent of what Black was ranting about, having only been at Kardo for two weeks.  That was company policy.  The incumbent in any position took the flak, even if the issue was the direct responsibility of their predecessor or they were replacing someone on leave.

Ewen had not had to take any flak.  The sun was shining out of Jim’s arse with great brilliance at the time due to the high production figures. Ewen basked in the reflected glory. 

Finally, Black let fly at Bob, shouting until he had one of his turns.  They were famous.  All the veins stood out on his neck and he looked in danger of having a seizure. Sam was amazed that he had not had a stroke or a heart attack yet.

‘The doctors gave him eighteen months to live a few years ago, as he only has half a liver left,’ said Jorge after the meetings. 

‘I’m surprised he's lasted this long.  He must smoke forty cigarettes during his marathon meetings.’ said Sam

‘I reckon he smokes about three or four packs a day,’ said Jorge.  ‘He gets raging drunk most nights of the week, and, as far as I can make out, he never eats proper food.   He's been doing that as long as I’ve known him.' 

No man likes to be belittled in front of a woman, especially one he has been rude to.  Sam could see that for some of the victims, being belittled by Black was normal.  But in front of her, it was unbearable.

‘What the fuck do you mean?  Why are so many trucks side-lined for maintenance?  Where are the fucking spare parts?’

‘They are stuck in Mondongo customs boss.’

‘You useless bastard, why didn’t you order them earlier?’

Sam knew that they had been begging for money for spare parts for months.  She also knew that Black knew that.  Holding her tongue was not easy.  She looked down at her lap. 

By the end of the afternoon, she was exhausted.  She had watched a continuous train of people get bullied and intimidated by Black.  He loved to humiliate people, and doing this in front of her inflated his ego even more.  Sam knew he had ensured that she would be even less popular.

‘Why won’t you buy new machinery for the mine?’ she asked him cautiously, ‘wouldn’t you make more money if you mined more.’

Black looked irritated but Sam’s tone told him that she was not looking for a fight.

‘If I buy new machinery, MARFO will steal it.  That is not good economics.’

‘So that’s why all the machinery is so old?’

‘Yes.  MARFO won’t steal it if it needs lots of maintenance.’

‘Ah.  But what about the civil war?’

‘What about the civil war?’

‘If it starts up again, won’t you have to stop mining?  Wouldn’t it be better to get as many diamonds as possible now while you have the chance?’

‘And how do I do that?’

‘Well, Bob says that he needs lots of spare parts.  You could mine a lot more if the machinery wasn’t broken down.’

‘It’s none of your business,’ said Black abruptly.  ‘Who do you think you are, questioning my management?’

‘Sorry, I’m just trying to learn from you.’

Black frowned but she could see that she had planted an idea even if he was cross with her.

Sam had not anticipated the results of the meetings to be a further drop in her standing in Kardo and was deflated until Black asked her to stop procrastinating and get over to the bar with him.  If she was not popular, at least she was protected for the time being by her status as teacher’s pet.  She decided to enjoy herself.

By midnight, the whole crew was plastered. Sam had managed her intake with great ease, as they were all trying to out-do each other in drinking ridiculous amounts and did not notice that she was drinking tonic by itself without the gin. 

The barman was complicit in this.  He had had a soft spot for Sam ever since the night that they had excluded her from their circle.

Sam thought that Black looked remarkably sober.  They played a couple of close games of pool, which Sam was careful to lose by very slender margins, giving Black the chance to crow about the victory but not to feel sure about it until the last ball had gone in.  She wondered if he knew that she was letting him win.

Black was not stupid by any means, but he loved to bask in the adoration of his team when he had a few drinks.  He beckoned her to the door of the bar.  ‘Come, come.  Bring your drink.’  He started off to the office. 

Sam had the barman put gin in her tonic just in case.  She scampered over to the office and found Black in Fred’s room.

‘What kept you, woman?’

‘Sorry, forgot my ciggies.’

‘Give me one.  Come over here.’

Sam was not sure where here was but he was indicating Fred’s desk.  Jim had forbidden her to approach Fred’s desk.  She was not allowed to touch the computer if Fred was not there.   But Black gestured for her to sit down.

‘Start it up,’ he said. ‘I hate these things.  I want to see the production data for this month.’

Sam did as she was told.  It was not hard to find the records that Black was looking for.  Fred was methodical and there were not too many files on the computer that were not to do with diamond production in one way or another.  Sam opened the file and stood up so Black could sit in front of the screen. 

‘Now that’s what I call beautiful,' he said.

‘Sparkling figures,’ said Sam and immediately regretted it as Black glared at her like an owl woken up during the day.

‘Okay, turn it off.  Go on with you.’  Black dismissed her from his presence and staggered off in the direction of the bar. 

Sam was not sure why Black had showed her the data.  Perhaps it was a demonstration of his growing trust in her.  She considered herself lucky to escape another ordeal by alcohol and poured her drink onto the roots of the mango tree outside the door of the office on her way out.

She went home and lay awake for a while on her bed, reflecting on the way a small incident can change the whole complexion of any situation.

***