by PJ Skinner
Tereza pushed Sam through the fence before she had a chance to say goodbye to Pibé and Edison. She was left with the feeling of Pibé’s grainy hand in hers and the taste of sugar on her tongue.
Sam stumbled out across the terrain separating the village from the road, trying to run, trying to be brave. She could not see her feet and tripped and fell into a ditch that marked the side of the road. She was winded but uninjured. She climbed out of the ditch and ran down the road to the south from whence they had arrived all those weeks ago. ‘Run,’ she told herself, ‘run, run, run.’
Terror got her legs moving. Somehow, she trotted down the road. She knew she had only a couple of hours until daybreak. She must keep going. She fell over several times, but each time, she heard Fred howling and the baying of the tribunal.
She got up again and again. She would not give up. She reached an old stone building without a roof. Swerving off the road, she crumpled to the ground. She was not conscious of falling into another ditch. She simply folded into it when her legs gave way. Lying there in the dirty shallow water, her head cushioned by the mud, she fell sound asleep.
***
Sam was woken by the sound of a helicopter nearby but she was too far gone to recognise the sound. She covered her ears. She was surprised to find herself in what appeared to be a stream. Her feet hurt like hell and she was wet through. She froze at the sound of voices coming towards her and lay very still, hoping to be camouflaged in the ditch.
They would shoot her now. Would it hurt? She was terrified and wept into her hand. She shut her eyes. If she did not see the gun, it would be okay. Just like vaccinations. She tried to make herself smaller, held her breath and waited for the darkness. The voices got nearer.
‘Where did you see it, Eduardo? Are you sure it was a body?’
‘Yes, my General. It looked like a body. I saw it when we were landing. It was over here.’
Footsteps crunched on the road and stopped right where she was. She was confused. Was she already dead or dreaming? She did not breathe.
‘Sam? Oh, my God, Eduardo, it is Sam! Come quickly. Help me. Sam, Sam, are you okay? Is she dead? Is she? I can’t bear it. Tell me. Have I killed her?’
Sam felt herself being picked up by strong arms. When nothing horrible happened next, she dared to open her eyes. She thought she recognised her saviour. Was this a dream, too? Or had she died and gone to heaven?
‘Eduardo?’ she asked in a tiny frightened voice. ‘Is it really you? Am I safe? Am I really safe?’
‘Yes, Sam, you are safe. We are here, and you are safe, and no one’s going to hurt you anymore.’ Eduardo placed her on a wooden bench at the back of the ruined house. He moved aside. To Sam’s amazement, the General’s kind, round face peered into hers.
He was crying. ‘How are you, my Sam?’
Sam gathered all the strength she had left, smiled and said, ‘Yes, it’s me. And I really need a lobster right now.’
She sank back along the seat. Eduardo covered her with a blanket and helped the General sit down on a nearby tree stump. General Fuego was overcome with sobs of relief. But he managed to pull himself together by the time General Freddy approached them and said they must get back into the helicopter and leave right away.
They woke Sam and gave her lukewarm coffee with lots of sugar that was better than the nectar of the gods. They carried her over to the helicopter and had to lift her on, as she was too weak to climb up and her feet were in ribbons.
The General almost cried again when he saw how thin and weak she was. He had to get her back to Mondongo. ‘Freddy, get us out of here. Those bastards would shoot me if they found me in their terrain.’
Freddy laughed. Fuego knew that they were all in for a rocket in Mondongo when the president learnt that his Chief of Staff had stolen a helicopter. Fuego had a way with his brother-in-law that would ensure minimal punishment. He liked an adventure from time to time. They took off, avoiding flying over the rebel village where the hungover jury had not yet woken up.
***
Down in the rebel camp, Tereza de Sousa was long gone. She took her sons and left when dawn broke, taking with her the mobile phone and the money that Eduardo had given her. She had a sister in Zambia, to the north along the main road. They caught a local bus and sat in the back talking about Sam.
Pibé asked his mother if they would ever see Sam again.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Sam has gone to live with Princess Di.’
XVII
Sam woke up in the only private hospital in Mondongo, in one of the very few and very expensive private rooms. She was aware of a throbbing pain in her feet, a drip in her arm and someone sitting beside her holding her hand. She smiled and slipped away again.
She took almost a week to find the energy to sit up in bed and survey the room. There were tropical banana flowers in a vase. She wore a clingy nylon nightie that wrapped itself tighter and tighter around her the more she moved, giving off sparks in the dark recesses of her bed. Soon get rid of that.
To her amazement, she saw Jim sitting across the room talking to the General. He had a bag on his knee that looked like hers.
He noticed that she was awake. ‘‘Sam, how are you? We were all so worried about you.’
He had the grace to look embarrassed. Sam knew that not everyone was worried. He came over to the bed and put the bag on the end, careful to avoid her feet.
‘The general tells me that you will be fine now. I brought you some clothes from Villa Alice. I’m afraid you won’t see the other clothes again. The women from Kardo looted them all before we could rescue them. Anyway, I can see that none of them will fit you anymore. You are so thin. You look like one of those stick insect models.’
‘Thanks a bunch, Jim. I think I look pretty good actually.’ Sam had no idea what she looked like but could see her stick thin legs sticking out of the nylon nightie.
‘I came to tell you that the company can’t take you back after what happened. It would be too dangerous for you in Kardo. The rebels would hunt you down. Anyway, I don’t expect you want to go back after all you’ve been through?’
He paused, looking at her with real concern.
‘Jesus, Sam, you look like you had a holiday in Auschwitz. I am so sorry about Brian and Fred. The General told me that they didn’t make it. I didn’t know that Black wasn’t going to pay the ransom. I swear it. He's an evil bastard.’
Sam tried to deflect his apology. [Remove line break]
‘I’ve wanted to be this thin all my life. Be careful what you wish for, that’s what I say.’
‘I got you your bonuses,’ Jim blurted out and then looked horrified at what he had said. ‘It not that you care about the money, but I didn’t want you to miss out. You’ll receive all your pay to date, including the time while you were kidnapped, but I couldn’t get you any holiday pay as you won’t be coming back.’
Jim looked at the floor. Sam let him off the hook.
‘That’s great, really. I appreciate you coming. I know you didn’t have to. Give my regards to Jorge, please. I’m going to miss him.’
‘Bye, Sam. You’re a real trooper. Black said you could look after yourself. I guess he was right.'
‘Where is Black anyway? Does he know that I'm alive?’
‘He knows but he is not happy. He would have preferred Brian.’ He winked to show that he was joking but Sam knew better.
She shrugged. ‘Don’t worry. It’s almost six months’ pay. That’s a lot. I don’t want to hang out around here anymore. I know I wouldn’t win any popularity contests at Gemsite.'
Jim could not bear to stay any longer. He left after kissing her cheek.
The General had been waiting patiently while this happened, pretending to read his newspaper. When Jim left, he sat on the bed and looked at Sam with something approaching reverence. He took her hand and raised it to his lips.
‘Sam, thank you for living. I would never have forgiven myself if you had been killed. I am so sorry I
got you into trouble. I thought I was doing my job, but I was a fool. Eduardo confessed that because of him, Pedro told Black that we were having an affair. You know what a maniac he is. He actually thought you were feeding me information. I was supposed to be milking you for diamond data for the president, but you never told me anything. Black thought he had been betrayed. He is very slow to trust but very quick to abandon if he thinks that trust is broken. You got caught in the middle. I am sorry. Do you forgive me?’
Sam looked long and hard into his round brown face with its age spots and tiny, almost pointless, moustache. She raised a hand and stroked his cheek.
‘Hmmm,’ she said. ‘It will cost you dearly. I will require at least three lobsters this time.’
The General giggled. ‘My daughters are dying to see you again. Will you come out to the island for lunch when you leave hospital? We will make you a lovely leaving party.’
***
It was a lovely party. Many lobsters were eaten and many whiskeys were drunk. Sam and the General smoked on the balcony and talked about life until dawn. They spent the next day getting over their hangovers and swimming in the sea with the General’s family and Eduardo, who never let her out of his sight.
She had to stop him from following her into the toilet. ‘Eduardo, I’ll be all right in here on my own.’ She smiled and he looked sheepish.
In the afternoon, the General drove her to the airport, ‘to make sure you leave.’ As usual, he drove too fast. Sam worried that after all that she had been through, she would die in a car crash on the way to the airport.
Being accompanied by the brother-in-law of the President had its perks. She got VIP treatment all the way to the plane door. The general went with her everywhere and made sure no one delayed her or tired her. Sam wondered if an English general could have done this.
As they parted, the General gave her a small black box and told her not to open it until the plane took off. She shoved it into the pocket of her new rucksack, bought through the window of the general’s car. He hugged her for a full couple of minutes and got quite tearful again. Sam cried, too, but it could have been the relief of leaving.
After a last look back at her very own general, she boarded the flight. Gemsite had paid for her to travel business class. She turned left and found her seat, which was easy to recognise due to the massive bunch of flowers on it. She had them taken away to a cupboard, mourning their certain demise before landing. She sat down and strapped herself in. As they took off, she grasped the arm rests and willed the flight to take off safely. When they banked over Mondongo, she saw Pedro’s rocket glinting in the late afternoon sunlight and all the plump citizens like seals on the beach. She lowered her seat for a sleep.
Epilogue
If Sam’s mother was shocked to see how thin and wasted her daughter looked when she came out of customs with her bags, she was sensible enough to hide it well. She did allow herself the luxury of a long hug with the daughter who had returned in one piece, albeit a very skinny version of her former self.
Sam did not fight her, knowing the effort her mother was putting in to not making a fuss. She enjoyed the rare luxury of a maternal hug.
‘Did you have a good flight, darling?’
‘I don’t know. I was asleep.’ Sam smiled to show it was a joke.
She found her mother’s handbag in the foot well of the car and rooted around for some wine gums, which she knew would be hiding amongst all the change the Bank of England was missing. ‘Want one?’
‘No, and don’t do that without asking. A woman’s handbag is her castle.’
For a while, it was good to be home where nothing had changed. She had not found a flat yet. Nobody talked about her ordeal or commented on her weight. Sometimes Sam wanted to talk about it, but her parents studiously avoided the subject. Sam thought she knew them well enough to avoid it, too.
They hated any kind of attention-seeking behaviour. Sam suspected that getting kidnapped came under this heading.
In reality, her parents did not want to talk about her traumatic experience in case it upset her. So, in their own very British way, the subject never came up and life went back to normal.
Sam did not tell them the truth for years and by then, it was almost like someone else had lived through it. She was good enough to gloss over the scenes of the trial, which she felt were too gruesome to recount.
Meanwhile, her mother had assumed that Sam had finished with that phase of her life and would now settle down and get a proper job.
Sam had almost agreed with her but she had a nagging feeling that would not go away.
‘We’re going to a wedding this Saturday,’ said her mother. 'You’d better buy something nice to wear.’
‘Mummy, you know how I hate weddings. I would rather eat my own sick than have to sit on another odds and sods table entertaining the black-sheep uncles and cat-hair singles. Can’t you say that I am too traumatised to leave the house?’
‘Don’t be silly, darling. I’ve told you a million times not to exaggerate. You love telling stories.’
Sam gave her a thunderous look. Her mother repented. ‘Okay, but just this once. I don’t want people thinking that you're peculiar.’
Sam was sure that particular ship had sailed long ago but felt vindicated.
That Saturday, she lay on her bed thinking about the General. Suddenly, she remembered the little black box. Where on earth was it? She had forgotten to open it. With great effort, she moved all of her bags around the loft, which was as hot as a sauna, and found her travelling rucksack. She searched all the pockets and out fell the box. It got stuck under one of the rafters and it was very sweaty and dusty.
Sam went down the rickety stairs into the light passageway. She sat on her bed, opened the box and cried out in amazement. It was a large black diamond. Totally worthless and totally wonderful.
Sam knew that instant that she could not stay at home, no matter how peculiar people thought she was. She had heard there was work in Latin America and she had always enjoyed using her Spanish. Surely the thought of a nice Latin man with beautiful manners would pacify her mother. And compared to Africa, Latin America was as safe as houses.
She would go and see the recruitment agent on Monday.
About the Author
Thank you for reading my book. If you enjoyed it, please take a moment to leave me a review at your favourite retailer. I would really appreciate your feedback and comments.
Thank you
PJ Skinner.
***
The author is a geologist who has spent thirty years roaming the planet and collecting tall tales and real life experiences. She has worked in various countries in South America and Africa in remote, strange and often dangerous places. She has loved every minute of it. She is now writing fact-based adventure books from the relative safety of London but still travels all over the world collecting data for her books.
The Sam Harris series captures the adventure and danger of living in these remote locations. The books are loosely based on many real life experiences and composite characters.
The author is working on two new books, one of which, Rebel Green, has been written with the help of a childhood spent in Ireland.
Other Books in the Sam Harris Series
The Frog Cypher – the second book in the Sam Harris Series is also available in paperback.
Connect with PJ Skinner
You can subscribe using the form on the website at www.pjskinner.com if you wish to receive emails about new releases and special offers.
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