Digging Deeper: An Adventure Novel (Sam Harris Series Book 1) by PJ Skinner Page A

Alice to sort through her things and select the stuff she needed for Kardo.   Before he left for the office, he gave her a tour of the building site behind the house that would be her bedroom when it was finished.  She was getting an ensuite bathroom, so at least she did not have to wait for all of them to shower in the morning before she got a look in. Sam was dismayed that the annex had no windows except for a tiny one about three metres up.  It looked like a prison cell.  In its favour, it gave her some privacy.
    The bathroom in the main house at Villa Alice had a plain glass window without curtains which looked out over the sitting room.  This meant that for now, she had to sit down in the shower to wash herself or else provide more interesting entertainment than the morning news. It looked as if they had simply tacked the sitting room onto the back of the original house when they needed to expand it and had not bothered to brick up the outside window of the bathroom. 
    The lack of privacy was embarrassing but Sam had been refused many jobs over her career due to ‘the lack of women’s facilities,’ so she was not about to start fussing now.  She stuck a black plastic bag across the glass and solved the issue like a Tamazian. 
    Sam watched the news and sorted through her belongings.  Most of them would stay in Mondongo.  Her music CDs were the items she really wanted to take to Kardo this time, along with her books and supplies of tea and chocolate.  She resealed the boxes and put them in the pantry that she found at the back of the kitchen.   Then she radioed Pedro as arranged and asked him to get someone to pick her up and take her back to the transit trailers for her flight to Kardo.
    Pedro came personally, which surprised her, and drove her to the airport. Sam was sure he had better things to do.  On the way, he said he would miss her on his leave.  So smooth she almost believed it.  How could he miss her after one lunch and a cup of coffee?
    ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll get over it,’ she said.
    Pedro was not put out.
    ‘Did you know that all the gossip about you is heating up the airwaves?’ he asked.
    ‘It can’t possibly compete with the stuff I’ve heard about you and your reputation,’ she replied.  ‘Perhaps you should stay away from me if you don’t want to make it worse.’
    Sam left a note in Pedro’s bedroom at the Villa Alice thanking him for lunch and the tapes, and wishing him a pleasant time on his leave.  Bill Collier had told her to watch out for Pedro.  She had considered the advice carefully.  She would make her own mind up about him.  And then there was the General.  He was a complete surprise.  Sam thought that she might have made a conquest.  She decided not to tell Jim or the paranoid Black about her lunch.  It was probably a one-off, after all.
    The flight was uneventful.  The hair-raising routine for landing the plane failed to arouse many emotions this time. 
    Sam found Jim at the airport waiting to drive her to the compound.
    ‘So, how’d the trip go then?’ he asked, ‘Any garimpeiro trouble?’
    Sam mumbled something but he was not listening to her answer.  He drove her back to her house and it was obvious that he had had a really bad day.  She invited him in for a beer.
    ‘Jesus Sam, you have no idea how hard it is to work for Black.  He is such a bastard.  I don’t know how I put up with it.  I work my hands to the bone here but all I get is grief.  What does the man want?’
    ‘I can’t answer that question.  I haven’t worked with him yet.’
    ‘With him.  Ha!  For him, you mean.  He wouldn’t know how to work with someone.  He's a tyrant.  Fuck him.’
    ‘Well, he does seem to appreciate you.  He has promoted you, after all.’
    ‘Only to annoy Pat Murphy.  He never does anything for the right reasons.’
      He ranted on for an hour or so in an unfocused sort of way.  Sam was not sure what was expected of her, so she