Digging Deeper: An Adventure Novel (Sam Harris Series Book 1) (5 page)

‘Are we in a hurry?’ asked Sam, hoping to alert Jim to the fact that he was driving way too fast.

‘We all drive this fast because some of us believe that if we drive fast enough over a landmine, it will blow up behind us.  In reality, more expatriates die in car crashes than by landmines, which defeats the purpose somewhat.’  He grinned at her.

‘Are there many landmines on the roads?’

‘Not during the day.  The rebels lay them in the night and the security services take them away at dawn. There are some roads on the concession that haven’t been used for ages and are more suspect.  You need to ask for these roads to be reviewed by security before using them. The security patrols check constantly in case a new landmine has been laid, but sometimes they miss one.’

‘Why do they put landmines on the roads?’

‘To kill us, of course. They're trying to force us to leave.’

Sam tensed every time the car went over a bump.  She was not sure she would get used to it. What happened when security missed one?  Am I mad?  What the fuck am I doing in this place?

They visited all of the working sites along the length of the river covered by the mining concession.  The countryside was predominantly red soil and dried out vegetation.  The rainy season was due to begin, so the slopes would soon turn verdant and the roads to quagmires.  The land was pockmarked with old mining works and strewn with abandoned mining machinery.  Even the machinery being used on the mine was so old that she had only seen some of it in historic mining texts. Half of it was broken down or working at half pace.  The draglines were the most ancient.  They had a crane-like structure, which tossed a big scoop out onto the gravel and then dragged it back again filling the bucket with sand and gravel.  The machines on site were left over from the 1950's.  She could not believe they were still being used.  There were some modern hydraulic excavators, too, but in a pitiful state.  The creaking and groaning and wheezing made them seem like geriatric dinosaurs.  They needed to be put down like old, worn-out animals.

Sam decided to risk ridicule by asking Jim to explain how diamond mining worked.  ‘I’m sure Black has told you that I don’t have any diamond experience, although I have worked on alluvial gold terraces quite a lot.  I presume that the production process is pretty similar.  Can you give me a quick summary, please?’

‘Sure.  You’re right up to a point.  Alluvial diamond mining is a simple process once a deposit containing diamonds has been located.  The diamonds originate from kimberlite pipes, tubes of material, which come up from deep in the earth’s crust during explosive volcanic activity.  These pipes erode at the surface over millions of years, and the diamonds are liberated from the kimberlite rock and washed into the river valleys.  I’m sure you know that much.’

‘Yes, I did kimberlite geology at university.’

‘Well, once an area is targeted for mining, it’s drained of water.  Then the hydraulic excavators and draglines clean off the barren top sands and gravel and dig out the basal or bottom gravel, which contained the diamonds.  This gravel is transported to the processing plants along the river where it is concentrated.  The diamonds and some of the heavier materials in the gravels are separated from the lighter materials for transporting to the diamond recovery plant where the material is concentrated some more.  The diamonds are hand-picked from the final concentrate in the same place.’

‘Where’s the concentration plant?’

‘It’s just outside Kardo.  Did you know that Black decides where to mine by listening to his balls?  If his balls start to itch as he walks over a terrace, then there are diamonds under his feet and we must mine there.  What do you think of that?’ he asked her with a wry grin.

‘I’m afraid that I’m not familiar with genital technology,’ she said.

They both laughed.

They got back to the office about mid-afternoon.  The air conditioning was not working, and the heat made Sam feel queasy.  She tried to look at some scientific papers about diamonds, but they were very turgid and she was flagging.

Jim was working on his numbers.  She went into in his office with a cup of tea.  ‘Jorge is pretty important around here, isn’t he?  Is he senior management?’ asked Sam.

‘No, he’s just an engineer.  He's a special case at Kardo.  His long service and friendship with Black have earned him privileges way above his position in the hierarchy of the mine.  He's a road builder who was tempted over to the dark side by Black when he was on a contract building roads for the government in Tunde Norte.  Jorge is coming up to retirement and his wife is desperate for him to come home.  Black is trying everything he knows to make him stay.'

'How long have you been manager of Kardo?’

‘I started as a geologist but I caught Black’s eye.  He promoted me after six months.  I’m now acting as interim general manager because Murphy was fired by Black.  So what do you think of our lord and master?’

Sam wasn’t sure if she could trust Jim yet so she tried to be diplomatic and said, ‘I don't know yet.’

He laughed.  ‘So have you had the ‘you must follow my orders to the letter’ lecture yet?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘Did you see that sore on his arm?’

‘Yes, I noticed it.  What happened?’

‘It’s self-inflicted.  It was a mosquito bite but he never let it heal and he chews on it when he's agitated.’

Sam made a face. If the comment was calculated to make her shudder, it had the desired effect.  ‘That’s disgusting.’

It was dark outside by six o’ clock in the evening.  She had forgotten how close Kardo was to the equator.  She looked around the house where she was staying.  She found an old washing machine in the back and decided to do some laundry while there was water and electricity available at the same time.  She opened the water valves to the washing machine, which were shut for some reason. The electric circuits in the house left something to be desired.  The air conditioning had to be switched off before plugging in the kettle to avoid blowing the fuses.

The next morning, she commented on the state of the wiring in her house to her colleagues in the office.

‘If you can’t cope in that house, we can give you a tent down by the river,’ said Bob, the engineering manager.  Barbed comments had been common since she had arrived on site. The management team could not disguise their hostility at her presence.

Sam assumed that her unexpected arrival had not given her a head start in the popularity stakes.  Perhaps one of the team was expecting to be given Pat Murphy’s house and resented her getting it.

After the morning production meeting, she went to see Jorge’s latest river diversion.

‘The river has changed course over the years’, said Jorge, ‘and some of the best diamond deposits are now found underwater in the present river channel.  I divert the river into a new channel so that these deposits can be mined.  It is a very technical operation and the dykes are prone to collapse if not built correctly.’

‘Why is that?’ asked Sam.

‘Because the water pressure builds up at depth and can liquefy the bottom of the dyke.’

‘So it goes at the bottom first?’

‘Yes.  It’s a tricky thing building a dyke the right size but not wasting effort on making them too strong.’

Jim interjected, ‘Jorge is very enthusiastic about the quality of his diversions and needs to be reined in before he also builds a marina and a large pleasure pier to go with the dykes.’. 

At lunchtime, Sam went to the canteen and filled her plate with some boarding school food: overcooked meat, watery vegetables and soggy chips.  As the only woman in the room, she attracted attention.  People seemed to sit together according to their rank and department.  Not belonging to any department, she could not decide where to sit and she was sure she was not welcome at the management table.

Then she saw a pair of piercing blue eyes staring at her from a very handsome face.  It was Dirk.  Never one to resist a challenge, she picked up her tray and sat right beside him.  He was sitting with the metallurgists and the staff from the diamond recovery facility.  He looked her straight in the eye and winked as she sat beside him.  She almost fell over the bench as she caught his look and the message written there.

‘Hi, Sam, nice of you to join us.  Everyone, this is Sam, she is the New Projects Manager, who will be based in Mondongo.'

All the metallurgists at the table waved or said hi to her.  She blushed.  She was not used to the attention.  She also was not in the habit of having liaisons with fellow workers on a mine site.  She told herself to behave and finished her lunch.

That afternoon, Jim called her into his office.

‘I’d like you to do a diamond run to Mondongo for me,’ he said.

‘A what?  I’m sorry I have no idea what it is.’

‘It’s pretty simple.  You take the diamonds to Mondongo with the government officials, who collect them here and deliver them to the central bank.  You don’t have to do anything, just tag along as witness to the transaction.’

‘But I’ve only just got here.’

‘It only takes a day.  You’ll come straight back on the next flight to Kardo.’

‘So when do I have to do it?’

‘Not yet.  I just wanted to give you a heads-up.  I’ll let you know in a week or so.  It depends on how much production we have.  It’s not safe to keep too many diamonds on site.  First we have to get you into the diamond sorting house so that you can see the procedures involved in there.’

On the way home from the office, she noticed a large monkey sitting on an outhouse in the backyard of the house across the street from her.  He was sitting on his bottom with his hands on his open knees looking down from his perch on the wall like a Buddha.  She presumed that he was tied up, although she could not see any chain or cord.  He looked oddly human sitting serenely on his perch.  She was jealous of his calm.

Despite her willingness to get involved with production, the attitude of the other senior staff made it clear that she was not wanted on site.  Only Jorge and Jim talked to her at all.  She was finding it hard to sleep as the power plant could not cope when the air conditioning was switched on in all the residences and often conked out at night.

When she got home she found that her dirty clothes, which had disappeared the day before, were folded in a neat, clean pile on her bed.

Sam listened to the news on the BBC World Service on her radio as often as was practical.  The news about Tamazia was not good.  MARFO had suspended co-operation with international observers monitoring the Tamazian peace process.  This heightened the escalating tensions between MARFO and the government, which had tangible effects on the operations at Kardo.

The logistics manager told her, ‘I can’t ask the control tower at the airstrip when the cargo flights are due because they’re not allowed to tell me over the radio.’.

‘That must be inconvenient’

‘You have no idea.  But this is a protective measure against MARFO.  They listen to our radios.  If they don’t know when the flights are coming in, it is harder to organise an attack.’

Sam was not too happy about flying again to do the diamond export but Jim given her no choice.

As part of her training at Kardo, Sam had to spend time with Fred Allen, the geologist, who explained to her how the diamond data were put into the computer.  Fred was a big, fat lad with piggy eyes and a Walter Mitty complex.

‘You know of course that I have the only computer on site?’ Fred said to Sam.  ‘I'm the sole person Black trusts with the data on diamond production.  He’s paranoid about anyone finding out what the production is.  He doesn’t trust computers at all and has avoid getting internet for the site so far, even though it is available on satellite.’ 

Fred was not willing to befriend Sam and incur the disapproval of the other expatriate staff, but she flattered him enough to get to look at the famous graphs and figures.

‘You see this table?’ he said.  ‘Diamonds are divided up by shape, colour, clarity and size.  The production from Kardo is of very good quality in all of these facets.  Fancy coloured diamonds also turn up from time to time, which increases their value even more.’ 

A week later Jim finally got Sam the piece of paper which allowed her to enter the diamond sorting plant and see the real thing.

‘I’m not happy that it took so long to get you the permit,’ said Jim.  ‘I need you to go to Mondongo with the diamonds as soon as possible.  You’re senior management and it should have been a formality.    The men in the internal security department are a law unto themselves and don’t associate with the other people on the mine to maintain their impartiality.    I suspect that someone in security, maybe Brian Lynch, who you meet in the office, is being obstructive. He's a professional security man and a real stickler for protocol.  He was in the British army for many years and spent a lot of time in Northern Ireland.’

‘How did he finish up here?’ asked Sam.

‘He went into security when his commission ran out but found doing the security for shopping malls a little tame compared to what he was used to.  His attention to detail and experience in conflict means that he's a natural for working abroad in mining security and he quickly rose to management level.  He runs a tight ship at Kardo, which is vital when dealing with a product that’s so easy to conceal.  He's responsible for the security in the diamond recovery room and the periodic lie detector tests conducted at random on all of the staff.  You should be careful of Brian Lynch.  That man is always plotting something.  He’s a very vindictive character. He likes to play people off against each other by spreading false rumours and other methods.’

‘I’ll remember that.  Can I ask you a question?’

‘Sure, as long as it’s not about macramé.’

‘I’m having a tough time with the other members of the management team.  They treat me like shit for no reason.  I don’t even know most of them.  Have I done something wrong?’

‘God, no.  They’re a bunch of old wankers who think they own the place and they don’t like you because you’re not one of them.  Even worse, you’re a woman and they think you're Black’s spy.’

‘Black’s spy?  Why would they think that?’

’Because Murphy told Brian Lynch that you must be a spy when he heard that you were living in his old house here.’

‘When did he do that?’

‘Just before you arrived.  He called to organise the shipping of his stuff from Kardo to the UK.  Brian told him you were coming here and were going to stay in his former house.  He now thinks you were involved in some sort of plot to get him fired, even though you hadn’t been hired before Black threw him out.  He told Brian that you pretended to him in the interview that you were going to work in Mondongo.’

‘Wow. That explains a lot.  I was told by Mr Shah that I was going to work in Mondongo.  I had no idea that I was coming to Kardo when I spoke to Murphy.  And what do you think?’

‘Me?  I think he was fired for being a useless drunken wanker.  Have patience.  The boys will soon get used to you.  It’s quite a slow business teaching new tricks to old dogs.’

The next day they went to visit the diamond recovery plant.   On arrival, Sam and Jim first had to sign in at the guard’s office and leave a copy of her permit there.  Then they passed through a fortified revolving door and down a long passageway back out into the stifling heat of the recovery compound, which was surrounded by a high razor-wire fence.  Large Alsatian dogs patrolled the fence with their minders.  

They went through another gate with a security hut where they had to sign in again and were then accompanied to the plant.  There was a slight disagreement about Sam entering the premises as the security guard had not seen her pass, which had been left at the entrance hut.  This was soon sorted out, and then they entered the recovery plant followed by eight people: four security guards and four observers.  They were locked in.

‘Is that all?’ asked Sam. ‘I was expecting some security measures.’

Jim laughed.  The building was like a large oven, with a tin roof and no air conditioning.  Squadrons of mosquitoes sailed around in the hot air.  There were no toilets that she could see.  She wished that she had been warned about the lack of facilities as she had drunk three cups of tea in the office, and her bladder was uncomfortably full. 

She was given a tour of the premises by Brian Lynch, followed by all the guards and observers.  Brian was large by nature but he carried too much extra weight.  He panted if he went up more than four or five stairs.  The exertion showed in his face.

Sam felt really uncomfortable with all those eyes boring into her.  She did not like people watching her.  She resented being scrutinised, even though she knew it was the same for everyone.

  They reached the door to the picking room along a narrow walkway with chain-link sides.  The door was secured with four large padlocks.  The four guards each had the key to one of the locks.  They unlocked their own padlock and then let the next key holder squeeze past to open his.  It was a challenge to squeeze through such a confined space with such large guts and it produced a considerable amount of extra huffing and puffing.  Sam tried not to giggle. 

The actual diamond separation was done in a picking cabinet, which consisted of a long table covered in a transparent box formed of Perspex panels stuck together with silicon seams with holes along its length.  Long, leather gloves extended into the cabinet from these holes.  The gloves had seen better days and were dark with sweat.  Sam was not sure she fancied putting her hands into them.

Local diamond pickers were seated alongside the cabinet.  They put one of their hands into the gloves and the other up on the Perspex and picked the diamonds out of the concentrate using tweezers.

‘That looks difficult,’ said Sam.

‘It’s a very tricky operation,’ said Jim.  ‘Picking diamonds up with tweezers is an art.  They bounce all over the place if they’re dropped.’

‘How is the final concentrate obtained?’ asked Sam. ‘The bins I saw in the plants at the river are pretty big but there doesn’t seem to be much concentrate in the cabinet.’

‘The concentrated material in the bins is transported from the plants at the river to the other side of this plant, where it’s further concentrated and then divided into size fractions.  The larger the grain size of the concentrate, the bigger the diamonds found in that fraction.  These fractions are then sent through a Sortex machine on a conveyor belt.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what that is.’

‘It’s a relatively new technology that separates the diamonds from the other material in the concentrate by irradiating it with ultraviolet light as it passes through the machine on a small conveyor belt.  Any diamonds present in the concentrate fluoresce when hit by the ultraviolet light, and this fluorescence triggers an automatic jet of air, which blows the diamond off the conveyor with a small amount of concentrate.  This material is then pushed automatically through a pipe and dropped into the picking cabinet through holes in the top of it.’

When the picking was finished, the pickers were sent home to Kardo village and the sorters took over.  They started by sieving the diamonds into size fractions. At the far end of the bench, more gloves were employed for use in weighing and sorting the diamonds into envelopes.  Once the diamonds were sorted into sizes, they were removed from the recovery table and placed in a huge safe at the back of the room.  The safe room had two doors leading to an inner room with another safe in it.  There were strong boxes in the inner safe, which acted as temporary storage for the diamonds until they had to be moved.

The diamonds were still in their natural rough state. 

‘I've never seen unpolished diamonds in bulk before,’ said Sam. ‘They don’t look like much do they?  It looks like the glass from a car crash.’

‘Their appearance is deceptive,’ said Jim.  ‘These diamonds are gem quality with a large size and minimal flaws, meaning that they sell for very high prices at auction.  That’s why Gemsite can afford to pay big expatriate salaries and cargo costs.’ 

Sam could see that the diamonds were large and some of them had perfect shapes.  No wonder people were fighting over the right to mine these lands.

They left through security and went out to the front room again, where Jim inserted his hand though a rubber sleeve into a sealed iron box and pulled out a black ball which he gave to the guard.  He nodded at her to do the same.

She hung back, unwilling to put her hand into the box.

‘Put your hand into the rubber sleeve and pull out a ball,’ said Jim.

‘Why do I have to do this?’ asked Sam.

‘This box of balls acts as a filter for randomised security checks. You have to pull a ball out of the box and show it to the security guard.  If you pulled out a black ball, you can go.  If the ball is white, you have to empty your pockets and so on for the guards to check.    A South African guy, who got the white ball the first time he went out through security, was made to strip and bend over as a joke.  He was on his own and didn’t know any better.’

She was glad that she was not alone and was happy to get a black ball and leave with her dignity intact.

The next day, they returned to the diamond recovery plant to supervise a second weighing of the diamonds which were to be soaked in hydrofluoric acid (HF) for cleaning.  The diamonds were first boiled in ceramic saucepans to give them an initial clean and then they were decanted into plastic bottles.  HF was poured into the bottles on top of a table in a small, unventilated room full of observers and security men. 

Sam found it bizarre to see HF handled with such abandon.  It was a corrosive acid, and if spilled on skin, caused a horrible death by eating through the flesh.  It could not be washed off with water.  Only special creams prevented it from burning right through flesh and she could only see one small tube.  There was a fume extractor in the room but it wasn’t being used.  Since she did not need to handle the acid, she kept her worries to herself.

The constant threat from landmines had lowered people’s sensitivity to fear and HF was not considered very dangerous in comparison with the chances of being blown up.  She suspected that people would sneer at her if she voiced an opinion, so she swallowed her objections.  The idea of Brian Lynch getting a nasty burn was not such a bad option.

Black had told Sam in their meeting in Johannesburg that she could run the mining operations when Jim went away on leave for a month.  She knew that she had to be ready to take over the operation by then.  Jim had been generous with his technical information and she absorbed every detail.  If she worked hard enough, the barriers that had been erected to her entry to the management team should begin to crumble.

The heat and dust was now just background and she was even beginning to feel at home in Kardo.  She hoped Mondongo was as welcoming when she returned there.  She fancied a long flirty lunch with Pedro.

Sam was woken up before dawn the next morning by a loud bang somewhere in the house.  Her heart thundered.  She grabbed her emergency rucksack from beside the bed.   If it was an attack, she was supposed to wait for Frik, the security guard, and to run off into the bush and hide with him for a couple of days to avoid being raped or murdered by MARFO forces.  She felt sure that she would get eaten by a crocodile before she was rescued, but, nevertheless, she prepared an emergency rucksack just in case.

She calmed down a bit and listened carefully but could not hear anything except for a strange banging coming from inside the house.  She sat on the bed, forcing herself to be logical.  The sound was coming from the kitchen or maybe the laundry room.  Why would someone be thrashing about in the laundry room?  There was nothing to steal there.  Despite her terror, she forced herself to go and look.  She switched the light on in the kitchen and shoved the laundry room door open.  The main pipe from the outside water tank to the laundry had burst free from its bindings and was swinging around in a circle bashing the washing machine and walls and filling the utility room with water.  She ran around looking for the key to open the padlock to the back door.  Wrenching it open, she let all the water rush out into the dust.

The pipe was still spraying gallons of water all over the electric circuits of the hot water tank, washing machine and pump.  She hoped that they would short, which they did at the slightest excuse. But when she wanted something to happen, it invariably did not.  She tried to re-attach the pipe and was saturated with cold water.  Then she spotted the switch for the water pump.  Praying not to get an electric shock, she pushed the switch.  Nothing.  Again.  Nothing.  She grabbed a big piece of wood and poked the switch box hard.  No result.