by PJ Skinner
‘Okay, sorry, you're right. Thanks and good luck, Sam. You’ll make it. I’ve seen you in action.’
Thiago banged on the outside door of the toilet. Sam came out so he would not go in and find Jean. He grabbed her rucksack and looked inside. He took some sweets and handed it back to her dismissively.
Emerging from the canteen, she saw that the prisoners and captors had been organised into a convoy. The fighters all carried booty looted from the camp. They had loaded bags of rice, grains and other food stuffs into crude wheeled carts. These were pulled by a man between two shafts and pushed by other fighters walking alongside.
Sam tried to approach the Kardo captives but was prodded with a gun toward the women at the back of the convoy. They were the camp followers, wives, girlfriends and cooks, and were accompanied by a smattering of excited children.
As they walked out of camp, Sam saw bodies on the side of the road. Some of them looked as if they were wearing Grey’s uniforms. Sam had never seen someone dead up close before. She screwed up her eyes to see more clearly and let out a gasp. Dirk! That lifeless form was Dirk. She tried to go to him but the women grabbed her arms and pulled her away. What if he was injured? They could not leave him there.
But they did.
‘He is dead,’ said one of the women, as if that explained everything.
Sam knew it was useless to make a scene. If they had shot Dirk, they would shoot her, too, if she slowed them down.
It was still dark when they set out walking along the road that went through the village. All the doors remained shut as they passed through, although Sam was sure the inhabitants knew what had happened. No one wanted to be recruited.
She did not know if she was fit enough to last on a long walk as Ewen had done. If she fell behind, she would be disposed of. She decided that whatever happened, she would keep going, one foot in front of the other. Dirk’s death had been a shock and made all this seem very real. Until she had seen his body, she had still been hoping that she was having a nightmare.
Somehow she had to get through this but she did not yet know how. Something touched her hand and made her jump. She looked down and saw one of the small boys from the canteen. Then she realised that it was a small grainy hand reaching up and insinuating itself into hers. His brother appeared at her other side, and although he did not take her hand, he walked very close, bumping into her thigh. She almost burst into tears with relief.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Are you coming with me?’
The older brother said, ‘Yes, our mother is a cook for the valiant fighters of MARFO. I am Edison, and my brother is called Pibé.’
‘Like Valderama?’ asked Sam.
‘Yes. My father liked football, but he is dead now.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’
‘He was a hero in the MARFO.’
‘I’m sure he was very brave just like you.’
The little boy gave her a radiant smile that would have melted a glacier. They all walked on into the darkness of the Tamazian bush.
***
On the first night, they walked in the moonlight for about four hours. The gravel road crunched under foot. Despite the moonlight, Sam stumbled into several puddles. The cicadas sang their hearts out and big fruit bats swooped close to the convoy, catching the mosquitos attracted by the hot sweaty bodies.
Her colleagues were all ahead of her, but no one looked back to see if she was alright. Their backs accused her. Sam remembered again what Jorge had said about the pickers knowing of every export and she refused to take the blame. Where was Jorge? She realised that she had not seen him amongst the hostages taken by the rebels, but then she remembered. Jorge was in Portugal with his wife. She smiled in relief. She kept walking at an even pace, hoping they would soon stop for a rest.
After a couple of hours, they got to a river with several stepped banks of alluvial gravel with rounded quartz pebbles that glinted in the moonlight: the kind of geology that shouted ‘diamonds’ in this part of Tamazia. Definitely the sort of place that made Black’s balls itch. Rough agates littered the ground, their beautiful banding obvious in the moonlight. She resisted the temptation to collect them, even though there were no security guards now to prevent her from picking up stones. She did not know how far she would have to walk, and the agates would only get thrown away again if it was very far.
The women set up fires and mixed up the funge for cooking. Funge was the staple diet of the local population in Tamazia. It was made from the cassava root, which was sliced thin and left to dry in the sun. These dry chips were pounded into flour and then mixed into a paste, which was cooked in a pot over the fire. As Sam could testify, it had the consistency of wallpaper paste and tasted awful. It had a way of sticking in her throat that made her fear she might choke. Not that she had a chance to taste it that evening. The hostages were not offered food.
Sam sucked a sweet, saving her cans of tuna for the time being. She was grateful that Thiago had not bothered to take them from her. He had bigger booty in mind, bearing all the food they had stolen from the storehouse.
She drank some bottled water and sat on the edge of the cooking area. There was movement behind her. She looked around to see Pibé standing there, holding out a banana. Beckoning him over, she made him sit beside her on the bank of sand. She peeled the banana and broke it in half, giving one half back to the little boy.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘You’re welcome.’
Pibé looked exhausted. He leaned against her with heavy eyelids drooping. Sam patted her lap and he swivelled around as if it were the most natural thing in the world to put his head in it. She scratched his dirty head. His dusty curls sprung back under her fingers. Pibé sighed, a big, tired sigh. He shrunk as the air left him and become even smaller and more vulnerable.
She was also very tired, so swung her legs up on the bank, lowered her torso onto the ground, moved the little boy up to her chest and put her arm around him. She put her rucksack under her head and tried to fit her body to the contours of the terrace. The round pebbles slid over one another, creating a hollow for her hips. The noise of the crickets was deafening but also comforting. It struck her that she now fulfilled her wish to have a man to sleep with, although this was not quite the scenario she had in mind. She fell asleep soothed by his soft breathing.
She was awakened by someone shaking her sleeve. It was a very thin woman wearing a worn out t-shirt with the logo ‘She’s got to have it.’ The fires were dying and all the cooking utensils had been cleared away.
‘Are you Pibé’s mother?’ asked Sam.
‘Yes, my name is Tereza. What is yours?’
‘My name is Sam.’
Sam shifted so that she was sitting up. Tereza sat beside her on the bank.
‘Thank you for looking after Pibé. He is still very small for such a big walk but don’t tell him I said so. I cannot leave them at home but I must cook for MARFO when they need me. It is my duty.’
‘Edison told me that your husband fought with MARFO.’
‘Yes, that was when the western powers were on our side. The government troops shot him in an ambush.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t really understand the war at all.’
‘Don’t worry, Sam, we women don’t ever understand why men must fight and die.’
‘They don’t even care who they are fighting.'
‘Was that your friend who was killed? The one who was with you when you were fishing?’
‘Yes, I’m pretty sure it was.’
‘I’m sorry, too. We were very grateful for the fish.’
Sam shrugged. As if by mutual agreement, the two women lay down with the little boy sandwiched in between them and were soon joined by Edison who curled up to his mother’s back. Sam pulled her towel over the group as best she could. Soon, they were all asleep.
The next morning, they were all up at dawn. Sam filled her water bottle in the stream and added an iodine tablet. The neutralising
tablets were still in the drawer beside her bed, so she would have to put up with the taste. She was not sure that iodine killed all the germs in the water but drinking nothing was not an option. If she wanted to keep up with the marchers, she must keep hydrated. She took a malaria tablet and sucked on a sweet while she waited for the column to move off.
Sam glanced at the male captives from Kardo. The British all looked exhausted. Brian looked rough with his far from immaculate shirt hanging over his huge belly, and one of the epaulets hanging down from the shoulder.
There were several Filipino mechanics that she vaguely recognised. She felt guilty that she did not know most of their names. The rebels used them as mules to carry the booty from Kardo. The mechanics were tough little men and even now, they chatted and laughed as if nothing had happened.
One of them wandered over and offered Sam a cigarette. She accepted without thinking. The Filipinos had salvaged their stashes of duty-free cigarettes from their rooms during the raid. They would use them as currency on the walk to buy food and water from the MARFO fighters, who did not notice that they could take the cigarettes from the Filipinos if they wanted to.
The smoke in her lungs felt like a vice, as her body struggled with the unexpected assault of an unfiltered, full-strength Filipino brand cigarette. Sam coughed repeatedly, bent over double with effort.
The mechanic laughed at her. She recognised him as Marco, who had rescued her on the night of the washing machine leak. She grinned back. Fred and Brian glared at her, but she was not bothered. She felt she had the upper hand now that physical fitness came into the equation. She was fit and she was proud of her toughness. Fred and Brian carried another man in excess weight between them. That was bound to affect them sooner or later.
Bob sat apart from the main group on one of the terraces, gathering and inspecting pebbles and then skimming them across the river if they were flat enough. His lanky frame concentrated on getting the most skims he could out of the flat quartz pebbles. He looked unconcerned. He had his crew with him and that was reason enough for Bob to feel serene. The Filipinos admired and liked Bob. His laconic humour went right over their heads but they appreciated his expertise and light-handed management.
Sam had to admit that Bob had grown on her since the bar incident. She wondered if news of the attack had reached Mondongo yet. What would Black do? What did MARFO want anyway? She could find out. Being a Portuguese speaker would be a big advantage in this situation.
This time she did no try to keep up with her male colleagues. Instead she joined the women at the back of the column. She walked with her head down to keep the sun off her face. She wore a long-sleeved shirt and khaki trousers, loose enough to allow the air to circulate, so she did not get too hot.
Pibé and Edison soon located her. Pibé walked alongside Sam talking in a continuous stream about how good he was at football, what a great fighter his father was, how his mother was the best cook in the village and how his brother was the best fisherman.
Sam did not understand half of this strange mix of local patois and Portuguese. But she made the right noises in the right places, which was enough to encourage the little boy to keep talking. His brother interjected every now and then to correct any gross errors but he appeared used to these streams of consciousness and did not try to stop the flow.
The column wended its way cross-country. At midday they stopped beside a deserted village. The heat was overpowering. Sam had rationed her water with care, but she only had a tiny bit left at the bottom of her bottle. She knew that she must keep drinking if she wanted to keep walking. She took a chance and handed the bottle to Edison.
‘Edison, please can you find me some water?’ He disappeared behind the mud huts. While he was gone, the captives were herded inside a hut. Sam was dismayed to find that she had to go in, too. She had been avoiding contact with the others since the attack and she did not fancy being trapped in a small space with a belligerent Brian Lynch.
She sat on her rucksack with her back to the wall amongst the Filipinos, her head down, trying not to draw attention to herself. The hut was very dark with the door closed. It was like an oven. Rivulets of sweat ran down her back, soaking her shirt. She felt the hostile glances from the Kardo captives.
‘What’s that dirty little snitch doing in here with us?’ asked Brian.
‘She’s the reason we're here don’t forget,’ said Fred.
‘Why don’t you fuck off, Sam? We don’t want you in here.’
Sam bristled. ‘Do you really think I want to be in here with you lot? After all the friendship and help you have offered me in the last three months? Fuck off yourselves, you wankers.’
‘Now lads,’ said Bob. ‘We should stick together here. Let bygones be bygones.’
‘Not fucking likely. She deserves everything she gets. Filthy feminist lesbian.’
There was a short silence and then, despite herself, Sam guffawed. Even Bob laughed. Brian was incensed and lunged forward at her, tripping over a rucksack and almost falling into the huddle of Filipino mechanics. They looked startled and huddled closer together, glancing around with incomprehension. Brian stumbled backwards, quivering with resentment.
Fred’s face showed that he could not imagine why Sam and Bob were laughing. He put his hand on Brian’s shoulder to indicate his solidarity with the security man. Sam caught Bob’s eye. He winked at her, observed by the mechanics, who closed ranks around her. Those spare parts were earning their beer now. Relaxing against the cool mud wall, she shut her eyes and fell asleep, surrounded by her new allies.
All too soon, the door re-opened. The captives were ushered out blinking into the bright afternoon sunlight. From the position of the sun, Sam estimated that it was about five o' clock. She did not need any prompting and joined the women and children at the back of the column.
She was relieved to see Edison carrying her water bottle. He offered it to her, smiling. Sam gave him a sweet, which he bit in two to give half to Pibé. She would keep the sweets as currency. She was very hungry. Her stomach growled, and she knew she must eat some tuna in order to keep going. There were six tins of tuna in her rucksack, so maybe she could walk for twelve days. After that, she did not know what she would do. There was always the chance of finding something to eat, but she did not think it likely. The MARFO fighters would have priority over any foodstuffs found en route. They set off cross-country following a well-worn footpath with the setting sun on their left, heading for MARFO headquarters to the north.
That evening, Tereza came to see Sam and the boys, who sat under a tree, playing a throwing game with pebbles. She had managed to obtain a tin cooking pot half full of funge. Sam had never imagined she would be so glad to see that beige, tasteless paste.
Tereza made it clear that Sam would share the food and was about to divide it between them when Sam stopped her. She fished around in her rucksack and pulled out a tin of tuna. She indicated to Tereza that she wanted to mix it into the funge and was rewarded with a vigorous nodding of the head. Using her penknife to open the tin, she was careful not to let any of the oil spill on the ground. She tipped the tuna and oil into the pot and Tereza mixed it into the funge. Tereza made greasy balls with the mixture and handed it out to the hungry group.
‘Mmm. Very good,’ said Edison. ‘I like this meat a lot.’ Pibé had a trail of fish oil down his chin, His eyes shone. The tuna made the funge almost edible for Sam, who was amused by the boys’ exclamations of ecstasy. It hit the spot in that the hunger pangs vanished for an hour or two. Sam snatched a few hours’ sleep before they returned to the road.
XII
Jim Hennessy arrived at the Gemsite office in Mondongo. He was back early from leave. He soon located Black, who had commandeered the boardroom and was sitting in the Chairman’s seat, the table in front of him littered with dirty tea cups and full ashtrays. The smell of the ashtrays was overpowering. Jim, who did not smoke, tried to open the windows. They were stuck fast.
‘Jesus, Ad
rian, it stinks in here. Can’t we go somewhere else? Why don’t we go to the café around the corner and have a nice custard tart?’
‘They don’t have tea or anything I recognise as tea.’
‘We can bring a teabag with us. Let’s go. I need a decent coffee to wake me up.’
Despite his reputation as a despot, Black was good at taking instructions from people brave enough to issue them. Shuffling along with his head down, as if he were being taken against his will, Black followed Jim out of the office to the café.
Jim ordered a selection of tarts, some coffee and hot water. He sat outside with Black, who was making short work of his latest cigarette. They sat in the sun without saying anything until their order arrived. Black launched into the tarts without preamble. Jim smiled. He knew his boss was a beast when it came to sweet things.
Once the tea and coffee were served, Jim asked Black to tell him what had happened at Kardo. Black leaned forward and lowered his voice. Jim also leaned forward, to hear him.
‘It was a train-wreck,’ said Black. ‘The expats in charge of security had come to Mondongo to negotiate a pay rise. The poor fuckers that were left behind got massacred. I hear they ran around like headless chickens.’
‘Did we lose anyone?’
‘Two mechanics and a diamond sorter called Dirk.’
‘Dirk? Poor bastard. He didn’t deserve that. I hear they took captives.’
‘Yes. Thirteen in total. Bob and his mechanics, Fred, Brian and Sam. They’ve walked them out of camp and may be heading to MARFO country up north near the Zambian border. I expect they will ask for a ransom of some sort.’
‘Poor Sam. How’s she going to survive?’
Black smiled and looked smug. ‘Don’t kid yourself. That woman is tougher than all of the others put together. She'll make it. Remember Filiberto who turned up two years later? They don’t have any reason to maltreat them.’
‘Did they get the diamonds’?
‘No, one of the key holders was in Mondongo at the security negotiations. Don’t worry, you’ll still get your bonus.’