Read Online Digging Deeper: An Adventure Novel (Sam Harris Series Book 1) by PJ Skinner - Free Book Online

do that?’
    ‘Just before you arrived.  He called to organise the shipping of his stuff from Kardo to the UK.  Brian told him you were coming here and were going to stay in his former house.  He now thinks you were involved in some sort of plot to get him fired, even though you hadn’t been hired before Black threw him out.  He told Brian that you pretended to him in the interview that you were going to work in Mondongo.’
    ‘Wow. That explains a lot.  I was told by Mr Shah that I was going to work in Mondongo.  I had no idea that I was coming to Kardo when I spoke to Murphy.  And what do you think?’
    ‘Me?  I think he was fired for being a useless drunken wanker.  Have patience.  The boys will soon get used to you.  It’s quite a slow business teaching new tricks to old dogs.’
    The next day they went to visit the diamond recovery plant.   On arrival, Sam and Jim first had to sign in at the guard’s office and leave a copy of her permit there.  Then they passed through a fortified revolving door and down a long passageway back out into the stifling heat of the recovery compound, which was surrounded by a high razor-wire fence.  Large Alsatian dogs patrolled the fence with their minders.  
    They went through another gate with a security hut where they had to sign in again and were then accompanied to the plant.  There was a slight disagreement about Sam entering the premises as the security guard had not seen her pass, which had been left at the entrance hut.  This was soon sorted out, and then they entered the recovery plant followed by eight people: four security guards and four observers.  They were locked in.
    ‘Is that all?’ asked Sam. ‘I was expecting some security measures.’
    Jim laughed.  The building was like a large oven, with a tin roof and no air conditioning.  Squadrons of mosquitoes sailed around in the hot air.  There were no toilets that she could see.  She wished that she had been warned about the lack of facilities as she had drunk three cups of tea in the office, and her bladder was uncomfortably full. 
    She was given a tour of the premises by Brian Lynch, followed by all the guards and observers.  Brian was large by nature but he carried too much extra weight.  He panted if he went up more than four or five stairs.  The exertion showed in his face.
    Sam felt really uncomfortable with all those eyes boring into her.  She did not like people watching her.  She resented being scrutinised, even though she knew it was the same for everyone.
      They reached the door to the picking room along a narrow walkway with chain-link sides.  The door was secured with four large padlocks.  The four guards each had the key to one of the locks.  They unlocked their own padlock and then let the next key holder squeeze past to open his.  It was a challenge to squeeze through such a confined space with such large guts and it produced a considerable amount of extra huffing and puffing.  Sam tried not to giggle. 
    The actual diamond separation was done in a picking cabinet, which consisted of a long table covered in a transparent box formed of Perspex panels stuck together with silicon seams with holes along its length.  Long, leather gloves extended into the cabinet from these holes.  The gloves had seen better days and were dark with sweat.  Sam was not sure she fancied putting her hands into them.
    Local diamond pickers were seated alongside the cabinet.  They put one of their hands into the gloves and the other up on the Perspex and picked the diamonds out of the concentrate using tweezers.
    ‘That looks difficult,’ said Sam.
    ‘It’s a very tricky operation,’ said Jim.  ‘Picking diamonds up with tweezers is an art.  They bounce all over the place if they’re dropped.’
    ‘How is the final concentrate obtained?’ asked Sam. ‘The bins I saw in the plants at the river are pretty big but there doesn’t seem to be much concentrate in the