Digging Deeper: An Adventure Novel (Sam Harris Series Book 1) (6 page)

She knew she could not leave the water running all night, so she threw on some clothes.  After negotiating the padlock, she ran out into the road.  There was no way she could contact someone in the camp.  Despite being senior management, Sam had not yet been allocated a radio because they were in short supply and she always drove around with one of the senior team who all had radios.  The internal phone service did not work and looked like it had not worked for years.  She realised then that she had no idea where anyone lived.  They disappeared from the office at the end of the day or went to the bar beside the canteen.  Apart from Jim and Jorge, who was nice to everyone, no one had shown the slightest interest in working with her or talking to her. 

She ran to the prefabricated house where the Filipino technicians lived at the back of the canteen, ringing the doorbells of several houses on the way that went unanswered.  She found two nonchalant Tamazian security guards having a cigarette on the steps of the prefab.

‘Excuse me, there is a water leak in my house.  Can you help me, please?’ she asked.  They failed to grasp the urgency of the situation and carried on smoking and chatting and ignored her.  She went right up to within inches of one of them and tried again.

‘I need you to go inside the prefab to wake up a plumber and an electrician, who can come to the house and fix the damage.’

‘Okay, wait here.’

Five minutes later Sam walked back to her house with the electrician and the plumber.

‘Did you open the water pipe to the washing machine?’ asked the plumber.

‘Yes, I did, I was trying to use it.’

‘It hasn’t worked for years.  It’s got a blockage, that’s why the water was cut off.’

The electrician sniggered.

‘Don’t worry, lady, we will fix it now.  Not your fault anyway.’

They were good humoured considering that she had woken them up in the middle of the night.  They fixed the problem quickly and left still smiling.

She was shattered by the time they left.  To her amazement, she managed to sleep but woke up knackered and still grumpy.

The next morning no one seemed surprised in the site office. ‘Oh, that’s always happening,’ said Bob, who was in charge of fixing this sort of thing, as well as maintaining the heavy machinery, and resented it bitterly.  ‘The ancient wiring and plumbing in the compound are a constant problem.’

Sam wondered why he could not figure out a way of preventing it from happening if he had so much practice but she did not comment.  That night, she slept like a baby but turned the water off at the mains just in case.

The next day on her way out of the canteen after lunch, two small boys approached her and begged her for food.  They were thin almost to the point of emaciation and covered in red dust.  The older boy held on to the younger boy to stop him from touching Sam.

‘Hello, I haven’t got any food today,’ she said in Portuguese.

They looked startled as they realised they could understand her.  

Fred, who had followed her out of the canteen, stepped towards them and they cowered by the wall of the canteen. Fred turned to Sam.  ‘Those little bastards are always trying it on.  We’re not allowed to give them food, so don’t go getting all bleeding heart about it.’

‘Message received,’ said Sam. ‘Next time,' she said in Portuguese to the small boys and winked.

They ran off giggling, glancing back at her with their huge brown eyes.

Sam went to the administration office to inquire about her air-freighted luggage.

‘Your luggage?’ said the clerk.  ‘I believe it arrived in Mondongo airport a few days ago,’ ‘Has anyone been to collect it yet?’ asked Sam.

‘No, I don’t think so.  Are you waiting for anything in particular?’

Sam bit back a complaint. ‘Not really but the laundry here is ruining all of the shirts that I had intended for office wear in Mondongo.  I’m pretty sure that no one in the laundry at Kardo has ever seen silk before and they throw my shirts in a normal wash.  They now look as if they were meant for fieldwork after all, as they’re faded and streaked.  I would be really grateful if you could organise the collection of my field gear, before my office clothes are ruined forever.  I know this is a trivial request but I would be so grateful.’

‘Well, I am busy but let me see what I can do.’

‘Thank you,’ said Sam giving him her best smile.

As if by magic, she received news that evening that her luggage had been collected from customs in Mondongo airport.  Dirk was the bearer of the glad tidings.  He arrived at her house with a couple of tapes, that had arrived on the flight from Mondongo.  He had obviously offered to bring them so that he could see her.  He was standing on the steps outside shifting from foot to foot.

‘Hi Sam, someone sent you these tapes from Mondongo.’

‘Really?’

‘There’s a note I think. Yes, here it is’

Sam read the spidery writing.  It was from Pedro.

‘Thank you.  Do you want to come in?’

‘Sure, it would be nice to hear some new music.’

He made her nervous.  She tried not to get involved with anyone at work in the field, as it caused problems.  Being senior made it worse.  Since she spent most of her working life in exploration camps, this cramped her style a lot.

She distracted herself by putting on the tapes.  Pedro had sent her two tapes of ghastly middle-of-the-road tunes normally reserved for lifts.  After a short while pretending to enjoy the music, she caught Dirk’s eye.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘the tapes are a nice gesture but not something I would ever listen to, being a rock and roll sort of chick.’

‘They are a bit crap really.’

‘Ghastly.’

They both laughed.

‘Shall I put on something else?’

‘That would be great.  Have you got any Led Zeppelin?’

***

That evening a huge rainstorm hit the compound, heralding the start of the rainy season.  At first, Sam was alarmed by the thunder in the distance.  She had not been expecting rain and thought that it might be a MARFO attack.  However, as the storm rumbled nearer and nearer, she knew what was happening.  The lightning was continuous.  The rain came in waves, which reminded her of being in a car wash.  It hurled against the roof in the most violent manner.  Louder and louder.  The water poured off the roofs in torrents.  She hoped that her damned jinxed house would not collapse.  She expected the power to go any minute.  It was phenomenal.  It reminded her of working in the high altitude rain forests in Sierramar, in South America.  She never thought she would ever see more rain.  The storm lasted only an hour or so.

She fell asleep but was woken at about two a.m. by a grumpy, drunken Jim ringing her doorbell.

‘Hi, Jim, what’s up’?

‘No water or electricity in my house.  Can I come in’?

She was too sleepy to wonder why he was at her house instead of one of his colleagues’. 

He wandered around looking uncertain for a while, as if he wanted to say something but was not sure how to start.  He smelled of beer.  Sam directed him to the spare room, went back to bed and shut her door. 

Jim left early in the morning.   It occurred to her that the vicious gossip machine in camp could have got the wrong idea when his car was outside her house.  But what was he doing at her house anyway?  He should have been used to having no light or water.   He did not need any light or water to go to sleep, so why her house?  He was very drunk.  She gave him the benefit of the doubt. 

Living in these remote sites for long periods away from their families was tough for most men.  She had seen even the most faithful succumb to the temptations offered by nubile young local women throwing themselves at expatriate wallets in other companies where she had worked. The fact that these women were not fussy about who they slept with had its own problems.  They did not have access to condoms and they were riddled with every type of venereal disease including HIV in some cases, which put off some of the more sensible men.

This meant that any non-local woman was bound to get lots of attention, whether they wanted it or not.  Sam, the spy, was an exception.  Apart from her, there was only one senior expatriate female in camp.  Jean worked in the canteen as the assistant administration manager and was going out with Bob.  There were also half a dozen girls from the Philippines who did the laundry and ministered to senior management.  Murphy had told Sam in London that Black’s girlfriend Marybelle had graduated from their ranks.  They got transferred from camp to camp as their ‘boyfriends’ got bored and made a swap.

Jim Hennessey became irritable before his leave, scowling and muttering. He ignored Sam completely and made her feel very isolated.  She wondered if it was something to do with his drunken visit to her house.  She had not been welcoming but then he had not been forthcoming either.  She would find an opportunity to ask him.

The other members of the management team still shunned her, so she was surprised when she was invited to join them for a drink in the bar one night.  She did not like beer or enjoy drinking in the bar, but she did understand that drinking was an important part of life for these men and in order to fit in, she had to drink, too.  She felt content walking over to the bar.  She hoped that maybe the ice was melting after her frosty reception.  She arrived to find the whole crew had got there before her. They were standing and chatting in a big group. 

‘Get yourself a beer,’ someone suggested.

She went to the bar and signed a voucher.  She turned around smiling and approached the group.  Almost imperceptibly, they moved together forming a tight circle.  She stopped about two metres away, her smile frozen on her face.  She stepped forward, and they shuffled closer together.  Nobody looked at her.  She stood there with the cold beer in her hand, condensation dripping onto the floor, trying not to get upset.

A couple of metallurgists, who were not in the group, looked up from their table and looked back down again.  She went back to the bar and sat down on a stool with her back to the group.  She was stunned by their nastiness.  She gulped back a sob.  The barman looked like he might be about to say something, but she gave him a shake of the head.  She forced herself to drink the freezing liquid and put her glass down on the bar. 

‘Thanks,' she said. ‘Enjoy your evening.’  She walked out as slowly as she could bear. 

She felt the rush of gloating laughter follow her out of the bar and she heard jeering as she stumbled down the steps.  By the time she turned onto the road, tears were streaming down her face.  She felt herself drowning in the misery of the rejection implied by this ambush.  She ran home and struggled with the padlock on the outer door, swearing and crying and kicking it.  She got through the two doors into her house and sat down in the dark, swallowing hard to muffle her sobs.  She stayed like that for a long time.

***

Back in the bar, the men were all congratulating each other on the success of their plan. 

‘That’ll teach the stupid bitch,’ said Brian. ‘Who the fuck does she think she is anyway?  Did she really imagine we wanted to have a drink with her?’

‘Black did it on purpose,’ said Bob.  He shouldn’t have sent a fucking woman in here to spy on us.’.

‘Fucking bitch,’ said one of the engineers.

‘We’ll break her soon; no one can take that for long,’ said Brian, who knew a thing or two from his army days about breaking new recruits.  ‘Let’s liven things up a bit.  Why don’t we take bets on her?’

‘On her leaving?'

‘No, she’ll be leaving soon, that’s too easy.  Let's bet on who will have her first.  She'll be looking for comfort after tonight.  Someone should cosy up to her and pretend to like her.  You can bet on someone else or on yourself.’

‘Brilliant.  I’m in.’

‘Me, too, but I’m betting on Dirk. I’m occupied,’ said Bob who was sure that Jean would not be happy if he was seen flirting with Sam.  Also he had a grudging respect for her but he would not have admitted that to any of these men.  He did not like to stand out from the crowd.

‘Me, too.’

‘Hmmm.  Dirk is a good bet,’ said Brian.  ‘Maybe we should all bet on Dirk and how long it will take him.  I’ve seen her look at him.  That’s not a work-related glance, lads,’ He prided himself on knowing all about women and their needs.

‘Fucking right.’

‘Okay, I’ll run the book.  You tell Dirk that he’s nominated.’

‘What if he won’t play ball?’

‘He’s new.  He’ll play ball if he wants to be one of the lads.’

‘Brilliant.  That'll be a bit of fun.  Whose round is it anyway?’

‘Get them in Bob, it’s your turn.’

They went back to the serious business of getting drunk.

Several days later, a discovery in the riverbed of one of the new diversions engineered by Jorge raised moral in Kardo.

'We found a great big pothole, Sam,’ said a jubilant Jorge.

Jim slapped him on the back.

‘You found it, Jorge.’

‘Is that the same as finding one in an alluvial gold deposit?’ asked Sam

'Exactly the same.  These potholes can act as diamond traps because diamonds have a high specific gravity like gold.  This means that they tend to sink to the bottom of the river gravel and into any crevice or pothole that exists on the riverbed.  The best news is that finding a pothole often means a production bonanza and one hundred percent bonuses all around.’

Sam was not thrilled about the bastards in the management team getting one hundred percent bonuses but she tried to be pleased for Jorge.

‘The number of diamonds being processed means that it's time to move some of them to Mondongo,’ said Jim.   ‘Sam, I need you to go tomorrow as you aren't vital to production.’

  She was still unsure what she was required to do as diamond courier.  The procedure was known as an export.  As with other procedures in Gemsite, it was all word of mouth.  Everyone assumed she knew what to do and Jim had already told her she just had to be there as a witness so she did not ask him again.  She really needed to get away for a day or two after her humiliation in the bar, and this was ideal.

‘Be in the recovery plant at five,’ said Jim.

Sam got up before dawn and went to the recovery plant half-asleep and very hungry.  The canteen did not open until five-thirty, and no mercy was shown to earlier risers.  Sam and the security officers had to wait outside the plant for over an hour for the SDM delegation to arrive from the airport.  SDM was the government diamond agency which supervised all transport and deposits of diamonds in Mondongo.

Sam was crabby and jumpy.  She kept quiet, as she did not need anyone to know how nervous she was or that she was prone to verbal diarrhoea.

When the men from SDM arrived, they all went through the usual routine in the dark passageways and entered into the gloom of the sorting rooms.  The diamonds were still being soaked in hydrogen fluoride for cleaning.  They needed to be taken out of the acid, washed and sorted into size fractions for weighing and counting.   It was a tedious process.  They had to be weighed twice, first by the Gemsite management and then by SDM.

After the checking process was completed, the diamonds were loaded into a portable safe and then placed in the boot of a new Toyota jeep, which had been driven to the door of the recovery plant.  Jim came up to Sam and shook her hand.

‘Okay, Sam, have fun and see you tonight.  All you have to do is follow the safe to the bank and sign it over.  Don’t look around right now but the guy on the left is Eduardo.  He was a garimpeiro not so long ago.  I expect he will ask you to lunch.  You may go but whatever you do, don’t give him any information about production.’

As she had not been allowed anywhere near the production figures, Sam did not think there was a big danger of her telling Eduardo anything useful but she nodded and looked around so that she would recognise him.

Jim continued, ‘The government is desperate to know our real production figures and Black is just as determined that they won’t learn them.  So be careful.’

Sam got into the car with the SDM representatives.  It was a tight squeeze. The big black men were squashed up against the windows like livers in a jar.  They were driven through Kardo behind a truck of heavily armed police, who sat at the back of their pickup thundering along the bumpy road with their machine guns pointing at the vehicle they were supposed to be protecting.  Sam hoped that their safety catches were on.  It must have occurred to more than one of the police how easy it would have been to kill everyone and run off with the safe.  She hoped the escorts were changed regularly so they never got friendly enough to plot together.

They roared through the town, blasting their horn and being thrown about in the jeep by the big potholes.  Dogs, pigs and chickens scattered before them.  People shook their fists at the convoy.  It all called attention to the fact that there was a couple of million dollars-worth of diamonds in the jeep.

It was also quite pointless, as the diamond pickers in the sort house were local men.  They knew when an export to Mondongo was planned, so MARFO must have known, too.  She found it chilling that they would be happy to shoot down the Gemsite plane and kill everyone inside it to get the cargo.

The men from SDM had arrived on a special flight from Mondongo, and the plane sat on the runway with its engines running, waiting to take them all back to the capital with the diamonds.  It was a nice change from Sam’s last experience with TransTamazia.  The car drove up to the back of the aircraft and they were ushered straight up the back steps with the safe.

They would leave immediately for Mondongo.  The men from SDM were solicitous of Sam’s well-being.  First, they ushered her to her seat and strapped her in.  Then, after the plane took off, they gave her a tin of a fizzy pineapple drink.  She was about to drink it when she was given a small soft package wrapped in tissue paper.  Unwrapping revealed a small whole fish, lying there cold and grilled with his mouth open in protest.  Sam did not want the fish, but her good manners meant that she could not refuse it.  She ate it, picking the off the flesh and avoiding the copious bones and the intestines.  It was delicious and she wished it had been bigger.

After an hour and a half of ear-splitting engine noise, the plane landed at Mondongo. The passengers were all whisked off the aircraft into a large four-wheel-drive vehicle.   The diamond safe was loaded into a small security van in front of them.  There was a pickup truck full of heavily-armed soldiers in front of it and another behind them.  All four vehicles had removable sirens on their roofs.  These were switched on, and the convoy took off at high speed on a wave of sound heading through the chaotic streets of Mondongo for the National Bank of Tamazia.

They mounted pavements, barged traffic off the road, shot guns in the air and in Sam’s opinion, called attention to the fact that they had two million dollars-worth of diamonds in the convoy. Why not sell tickets? The convoy got separated a couple of times from the front truck of soldiers by cars crossing in front of them.  Sam knew that any of these separations could have been set-ups but she tried to ignore the traffic and focus on getting to the bank by holding on to the seat in front of her.

‘Are you scared?’ asked Eduardo, the man flagged up by Jim.

‘Scared?  Of course not,’ said Sam. ‘How could I be afraid with five tough bodyguards looking after me?  I couldn’t be safer.’

They all beamed at her complement. 

‘The men of Tamazia will protect you.  We are the best.’

She beamed back.  There was no point being a girl in a man’s world if you did not know how to pull it off.

They drove up to the back door of the bank.  The safe was taken inside and disappeared from view.

‘Come with me, Sam,’ said Eduardo, ‘we have to get you an identity card so that you can enter the diamond area.’  He set off to the front of the bank.

‘But what about the diamonds?’ said Sam.  ‘Aren’t I supposed to watch the handover?’

‘Don’t you trust us?’

She blushed and followed him around the outside of the bank.  They went to the   front reception desk of the bank, a process that only took ten minutes but seemed to last an eternity.  They headed though the bank to the diamond area.  By the time she got past bank security and out through the back of the bank to the hand-over point again, the safe had gone to the vault already. 

Sam had to sign a form certifying the delivery of the diamonds.  She was nonplussed.  She had not even seen the handover. She could just imagine the resulting scandal if the diamonds went missing.

‘Bloody stupid woman.  That’s the last time we hire one to work with Gemsite.’

After the elaborate and tedious security measures in Kardo, where each diamond was weighed four times and six men watched her every breath, the procedure was a little blasé.  Sam signed anyway.  There was nothing she could do at that juncture.

No one was at all fazed by the absence of the diamonds.  In fact, everyone was in a hurry to get away. Sam realised that they had arrived at the Central Bank in the nick of time, just before they closed for lunch.

Eduardo, as predicted by Jim, invited Sam to lunch.  ‘It would be my honour if you joined us for lunch.  I know just the place.’ 

She knew that he intended to grill her for information on Gemsite operations. But she enjoyed playing cat and mouse, and she was starving.

‘Of course Eduardo, that would be my pleasure,’ she said.

Eduardo led Sam to a nice car with leather seats, which she suspected belonged to someone a lot more senior.  They drove off along streets that shimmered in the sun.

Then they left the searing heat of midday Mondongo out in the street and entered the restaurant through double doors into cool darkness. When her eyes adapted to the light, Sam thought that the restaurant looked full, and she doubted that they would be able to get a table.

However, Eduardo had a word in the maître d’s ear and they were immediately ushered to a private booth in the corner, made of dark mahogany and lined with faded purple velvet.  Eduardo looked nervous.  He fiddled with the cutlery and made no attempt to order.  Sam was surprised. She was sure that he must be as hungry as she was.  

Suddenly, there was a commotion at the front door.  Everyone in the restaurant looked toward the entrance.  The sunlight streamed in, lighting up the dust particles in the air.  A small, neat figure stepped into the light and was ushered towards their booth by at least four members of staff.  People were standing up and greeting him with something approaching reverence. 

The man was shorter than Sam, stocky but not portly, with a pencil moustache on his lip.  He had short, cropped curly hair and a spring in his step.  He exuded a strange raw power.

Eduardo almost pulled the linen cloth off the table in his haste to stand up and receive him.

‘General, what a pleasure.  You look fantastic,’ he gushed.

‘Yes, yes, yes. Thank you, Eduardo. Are you going to introduce me to the lady?’

‘Of course, my General.  This is Sam Harris.  She is working at Kardo with Gemsite.’

‘Yes.’ He turned to face her. ‘I have heard a lot about you.  My name is Antonio Sanchez Magalhaes, although I am better known in Tamazia as General Fuego.’

Sam was taken aback.  The famous General Fuego.  He was a legend in Tamazia.  She was not sure how he came to be having lunch with her, a lowly geologist and a foreigner to boot.  She felt embarrassed by her dusty trousers and baggy shirt.  She had not looked in the mirror before dawn when she got up to go to the diamond sort house, so she had no idea what she looked like except that it must be pretty bad.

She composed herself and stuck out her hand. ‘It is a pleasure, General.  I have heard all about you, too.’

The General tilted his head and looked her right in the eye.  ‘Your Portuguese is terrible.’

‘Is it that bad?’

‘Pretty bad.  Do you speak Spanish?’

‘Yes, better than Portuguese anyway.’

‘Then let us speak Spanish,’ he said, changing in mid-sentence.  ‘I learned it in Cuba with my first wife Carmen.’

Everyone was staring at them.  The General turned to look at his audience.  Immediately, everyone’s gaze dropped back to their plates.  Eduardo gestured to Sam to sit.

The General slid into the booth so that he sat in front of her.    ‘Thank you Eduardo,' he said.   Eduardo melted away, leaving Sam and the General in their velvet booth.

Sam was nervous.  She felt she had been tricked into this.  Why would such an important man want to lunch with her?  It must be for the same reason as Eduardo.  She picked up a menu.

‘Are you hungry?’ asked the General.

‘Yes, famished.  I’m always hungry,’ she said, realising that she was always hungry in Kardo.  She often could not eat much in the canteen, as the food was so revolting.  Her trousers needed a belt as a result.

The General looked pleased. 

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Lunch is on me.  Let’s eat.’

Despite her original misgivings, Sam had a lovely lunch with the General.  He insisted on ordering lobsters and helped to break into the more recalcitrant shells for her when he realized that she was an amateur.  He ordered lemonade to drink, so she did the same. He was amusing and self-deprecating and did not appear to have any other motive than to meet the gringa he had heard so much about, although from whom she could not tell.

‘Where did you meet your first wife Carmen?  Were you in Cuba during the revolution?’ asked Sam.

‘Yes, I was an advisor to Che Guevara and the Castro brothers.  I met my wife under a table during a battle.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really.  There I was trembling like a baby and this ferocious warrior dived under the table and saved me.  I love strong women.’  He winked. 

‘She was the daughter of one of the leaders of the revolution.  We had a very passionate relationship but it could not last.  It burnt out after the peace.’