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

by PJ Skinner

  '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.’

  ‘So you came back here after Tamazian independence?’

  ‘Yes, President Jose Dos Manos asked me to help him set up the government. I ended up marrying his sister, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t know. So why is MARFO still fighting? I thought there was a ceasefire.’

  ‘MARFO leaders felt cheated after the election. They did not realise that the people who lived in the cities wanted democracy and not communism. They couldn’t believe that only a few people in the countryside had voted for them after they won independence from Portugal. I have negotiated with them many times myself. I feel kinship but I can’t give them power.’

  ‘That's very sad,’ said Sam.

  ‘And you? How are you doing at Mondongo? I imagine it’s pretty tough down there.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll admit I’m struggling a bit.’

  ‘I am quite well acquainted with your boss, Mr Black. Have you met him yet? I know that he is out of the country this week.'

  Sam smiled and tried not to catch his eye.

  ‘Yes, Mr Black and I met in Johannesburg. I couldn’t say that I know him yet, though.’

  ‘How is production? I hear things are going well?’

  ‘Oh, I really have no idea,’ said Sam. ‘I haven't been there long enough to find out yet.’ She told herself to tread very carefully. He looked thoughtful but did not enquire further.

  Long after most of the other clientele had left, the General was arranging salt cellars and breadsticks across the table to demonstrate the battles he had fought with his men in the fight for Tamazian independence. Every now and then, he would shout ‘Boom’ to the consternation of the waiting staff.

  Sam was enchanted by his exuberance and charm. She wondered if all generals were like this. Probably not.

  Finally, the General looked at his watch. ‘Oops,’ he said. ‘Can’t keep the President waiting.’ As they stepped outside, Sam saw that Eduardo was waiting to take her to the offices of Gemsite. She turned to thank the General but he was hurrying to his car with a bodyguard on either side.

  ‘Thank you!’ she called.

  He turned and beamed at her. ‘See you soon,' he said and then, ‘very soon, I hope.’ And he was gone in a flurry of doors and dust.

  ***

  General Fuego was driven to the presidential palace where he was ushered straight through to the president’s private apartments.

  The President was waiting for him.

  ‘Cunhado, Bom dia.’

  ‘Bom dia, Senhor Presidente.’

  ‘How are you and your family?’

  ‘Very well, thank you, and yours?’

  ‘Very well, also. How was the meeting with the gringa? Can we use her?’

  The President’s abrupt manner indicated to General Fuego that the usual niceties would not be observed. He was a man on a mission.

  ‘Yes, Mr President, I think we can. She responded very well to my irresistible charm.’ He looked the President in the eye and smiled mischievously.

  ‘Don’t lose focus here, Fuego. We need information on the real production numbers at Gemsite. I don’t trust Black. I am sure he is cheating us out of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax revenue. I want you to liaise with the Minister of Mines and keep him informed of an
ything that you learn. We have to find out how much those filhos da puta are really taking out of the ground up there. I need taxes.’

  General Fuego was fond of his brother-in-law but could not imagine what the President needed with more money, given that a rumoured billion dollars of petroleum income went missing every year and he was pretty sure that the President had first dibs.

  However, the General was not unhappy with his new assignment and had indeed been quite taken with the spikey young woman. It would be no hardship to have to spend more time with her and her nice, round bottom.

  ***

  Meanwhile, Eduardo had dropped Sam at the Gemsite office, where she found Bill Collier. ‘Hi Bill, I wondered if you could help me with something?’

  ‘Hi Sam. I didn’t expect to see you so soon. What brings you to Mondongo?’

  ‘I’m doing a diamond run for Jim.’

  ‘Ah, the dreaded diamond run. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I need some money, just a small amount, buy some postcards.’

  She hesitated. Even as she said it, she knew it sounded naïve.

  ‘Postcards huh? You’ll be lucky. As a member of Kardo staff you’re not allowed any money but seeing as you were hired to work in Mondongo, and the staff in Mondongo are allowed advances on their salaries, I’m sure we can stretch the rules a bit. How much do you want?’

  So that’s how Pedro funds his exploits.

  ‘Thirty dollars please. And can I borrow the driver for an hour to go and look for the postcards?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll sort it out. Wait here.’

  Ten minutes later he reappeared with a receipt for her to sign and thirty dollars in cash.

  ‘I’ll tell the driver to change the money for you. You don’t want to get cheated. And let me know if you find any postcards. It never occurred to me to look to be honest. We can send them for you, if you give them to my secretary.’

  Sam went outside to the car. They drove into the centre of town. Mondongo was a chaotic place to look for anything. The driver changed some of her money at one corner and they entered into a sea of street hawkers who besieged pedestrians and drivers alike. The street traders soon surrounded the car, selling shirts, car spares, carrycots, cigarettes, stereos, cassettes, sunglasses and cartons of juice.