by Tony Park
He raised his eyebrows at the olive branch she’d just offered. ‘I still can’t work out how those samples could have come back so high.’
‘We’ll get to the bottom of it,’ she said. The barman brought her drink and she thanked him and took a long sip. ‘I’m sorry about earlier this evening. The truth is that we do need you in this position, overseeing our new projects. You shouldn’t see it as a move sideways, Cameron.’
He didn’t look convinced. ‘Everyone in the industry will look at the story tomorrow and read that Coetzee’s running the investigation. It’ll look as though I’ve been moved out as a sacrificial lamb.’ He stared down into his fresh drink.
‘I didn’t think you were the sort of man who cared about what others thought of you.’
‘I think the only thing that matters to me now is what my daughter thinks of me.’
She sat back in her chair and regarded him. He was a big guy, broad across the chest, with muscled arms, but tonight he looked small, as if part of him was missing. He was a different man to the one she had seen underground, face blackened, with the shotgun in his hand, leading them through the darkness to the escape tunnel. It was as if the mine, and life underground, defined him and, like a fish out of water, he struggled to function above ground. Other men might have revelled in the position he had been put into, travelling throughout southern Africa assessing and monitoring the company’s myriad new projects. But Cameron McMurtrie just wanted to be back in Barberton, running his mine. She had cried in the privacy of her office the day she had to leave the coalmine she had managed, but she knew there was more to her life and career than the mine.
‘Maybe we can reassess things when the Lion Plains project is up and running,’ she said.
‘Maybe I’ll be in Mozambique running fishing boat charters by then.’
‘I don’t respond well to threats, Cameron.’
‘It wasn’t meant as one. All I want now is a bit of stability for Jess. If I can’t be in Barberton with her, then maybe it’s time for me to move us somewhere else, start afresh.’
She sipped her gin and tonic. ‘That’s your right, Cameron, but I need you here now.’ She looked into her glass.
‘What is it? Something else on your mind?’ he asked.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you did underground, with the hand grenade. I can’t stop thinking about it, in fact.’
‘It was nothing.’
‘No, it wasn’t. You were prepared to sacrifice your life to save us.’
She lifted her face and he looked her in the eyes. ‘And you came towards me, not back down the stairs. You grabbed me and tried to roll me off the grenade. If it had been live you could have been killed. Why did you do that?’
She didn’t know the answer to that, although she’d given it quite a bit of thought. Kylie didn’t think she would have risked her own safety to try and save a complete stranger, and it wasn’t just because Cameron was a work colleague. In that brief moment in which she’d made the decision to go to him, instead of back down the stairs to safety, she had been worried for him and his daughter. Even in his self-pitying moments, like now, there was something strangely appealing about Cameron. Perhaps it was because of this, not in spite of it, that he’d grown on her. He had been dealt the dual blows of losing his wife and the job he loved, and Kylie felt partly responsible for his current state of mind. And it was the very fact that he had been prepared to give his life to save theirs that made him much more than the broken man slumped in the armchair opposite her. You didn’t come across many bona fide heroes in life, Kylie thought, but she thought she was looking at one now.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘Howzit,’ said Chris as he walked back into the lounge bar. ‘Windhoek please,’ he added to the barman.
‘Shithouse,’ said Kylie, raising her drink to him. ‘And you?’
He smiled. ‘Well, since my grand scheme to win Tertia over failed, and the drinks are included in the rate the company is paying for us to stay here, I think we owe it to ourselves to waste as much of her liquor as possible.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Cameron said.
‘Me too.’ Kylie lifted her glass again, smiling for the first time in hours. The barman brought Chris his green bottle of beer and they clinked. ‘Same again.’
They were into their fourth round and it was after eleven when Cameron’s cellphone rang. He stood, a little unsteadily, and walked out on to the verandah. Kylie was at the point where she knew beyond a doubt that the sensible thing for her to do would be to finish this drink and go to bed, but in the same instant she called the barman over and ordered the same again for all of them. Chris gave her a wicked grin. He was handsome, she thought, though too young for her.
‘That dress really suits you,’ he said, his blue eyes glittering with the booze and the candlelight.
‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’
He shook his head slowly. ‘No, only the pretty ones.’
She laughed. He seemed to have recovered from his time underground. He was the antithesis of Cameron. Chris appeared to enjoy being away from the mine, above ground and on the road. Also, unlike Cameron, he seemed to have taken Tertia’s rejection of their offer in his stride.
‘Are you married?’ he asked her.
She sat back in her chair, accepted the new drink from the tray carried by the barman and regarded him through narrowed eyes. ‘No.’
He stared at her, ignoring his drink.
His stare unnerved her and excited her at the same time. He was like a young lion, she thought, with his piercing eyes and his mop of fair hair. She knew from studying his personnel file while he was missing that he was six years younger than her and single. Kylie had made it a rule since starting work not to get involved with anyone in the office – or in a mine. She had so far kept her personal and work lives separate – not that she had much of a personal life.
Chris, from the little she knew of him, from his smile and the time they’d spent together since his rescue, struck her as trouble. He was handsome, yet appeared vulnerable as well. He had told her he had been terrified during his time as a hostage underground. She had seen him cowering, waiting for Cameron to pick him up by the scruff of the neck, literally, and rescue him, yet here he was coming on to her like a professional. She imagined he’d had plenty of experience with women.
Cameron walked back into the lounge. ‘You won’t believe who I’ve just been talking to and what he wants me to do.’
*
When they arrived back at the mine the next morning, all a little fuzzy around the edges from hangovers, they went straight into meetings. Predictably, once he had heard the strategy they had developed over too many drinks at Lion Plains, Hein Coetzee tried to overrule Cameron, but Kylie put him in his place, telling him that what Cameron was proposing had her approval.
Cameron nodded his thanks to her as Hein retreated to his old office – the deputy manager’s. For today. Perhaps for the last time, Cameron was back in his chair behind the door that said Mine Manager. There was serious work to do and Kylie had told him, and Coetzee, that they would both be involved in planning for the media conference that was to be held in the mine at two o’clock that afternoon. But first, there was another meeting to attend.
His phone buzzed. ‘Hello, Hannelie.’
‘Mrs Correia is here to see Mr Correia,’ she said softly. ‘You wanted me to let you know when she arrived.’
‘Dankie, Hann,’ he said.
Cameron stood and picked up a document. It was a report on water recycling at the mine, of no importance to the meeting, but it would serve as a prop. He walked out to reception, headed towards Hannelie and made as if to pass her the document, when he saw the African woman sitting in reception in a threadbare but ironed sundress. He looked at her, then at Hannelie and then back at the woman.
‘Morning, how are you?’ he said to the woman.
She looked nervous. She swallowed, then said, in English with a Portugue
se accent, ‘I am fine, thank you. And you?’
‘Fine. It’s Mrs Correia, isn’t it?’
Now she was startled. She rose to her feet nervously as he approached her. ‘Yes, that is me. But I am sorry …’
He held out his hand. ‘No apologies necessary. I’m Cameron McMurtrie, the mine manager. I recognised you from the photo on Luis’s desk. He talks about you so often, and young Jose, that we all feel like we know you both already. He mentioned you were coming from Mozambique to see him and would be stopping by the mine.’
She shook his hand and smiled. ‘I am sorry for the inconvenience of visiting. But I haven’t seen him for so long and I read about the troubles you had here recently. Is he here?’
‘Miriam, there’s a reason I asked Hannelie over there to let me know when you arrived.’
‘There is? Can I see my husband?’
‘Yes, of course, but I know what a modest man Luis is, as well as being my hardest working member of staff. I’m not sure if he told you, but he was injured in the business that went on last week, when another of our men was rescued.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Injured? I haven’t heard from him. I have no telephone.’
Cameron placed a hand gently on her arm. ‘He’s fine, Mrs Correia. But he was involved in the rescue of his colleague, Chris Loubser, and he was wounded by a gunshot when he put himself between Chris and myself and an armed criminal miner. He saved our lives.’
‘Is he here? Is he in hospital?’
‘He was released from hospital last night and told to go to his lodgings, but instead he insisted on coming to work. He is in his office, but I wanted to meet you first, to prepare you, and to let you know how grateful I am – how grateful we all are for Luis’s years of hard work underground, and for saving the lives of his friends and colleagues.’
She looked overwhelmed by the news. ‘I don’t know what to say. But I must see him, please, Mr McMurtrie.’
‘It’s Cameron. And I’ll take you to him personally, right now.’
‘Obrigado. Thank you, Mr Cameron. Please call me Miriam.’
Cameron led her down the corridor to a door that said, L. Domingues Correia – Chief Metallurgist. Hannelie had made it on her computer an hour earlier. Miriam put her hand to her mouth. Cameron knocked on the door.
‘Come in. Morning, Cameron,’ Luis said, looking up from a sheaf of papers, over the top of reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. He wore a crisply ironed blue chambray shirt with the Global Resources logo embroidered above the breast pocket.
‘Morning Luis, I’ve got a visitor here to see you.’
Cameron stepped to one side and Miriam moved past him. Luis stood, and flinched at the pain the action caused and put a hand to his side. Miriam gasped and moved to him, clearly torn between a desire to fling her arms around him and the need to show some decorum in front of her husband’s boss. ‘I’ll leave you two alone for a little while, but I need to see you in the boardroom in fifteen minutes, Luis. It’s very important.’
Miriam cast a glance over her shoulder.
‘Miriam, you can come to the boardroom as well. I have to make an announcement to my senior management team and it concerns Luis.’
‘Yes, senhor. Thank you.’
Cameron nodded. ‘Fifteen minutes,’ he said again as he closed the door on them.
Cameron walked down the corridor, smiling to himself. Kylie emerged from the boardroom. ‘How did the reunion go?’
‘I thought she was going to cry when she saw him. I’ve given them fifteen minutes,’ Cameron said.
Kylie checked her watch. ‘OK. Then we need to get them out of the boardroom half an hour after that, no later. I need to prepare for the media conference. I don’t want to seem like a hard arse, but we do have some real work to do here as well, you know.’
‘You’re anything but a hard arse. I half thought you’d go back on agreeing to help Luis after he called me last night.’
‘I almost did when I woke up. I hope you feel as ill as I do this morning. I know I was pissed but I still don’t know how I let you talk me into going along with this little charade. Coetzee’s got the hump and I wouldn’t be surprised if he dobs us all in to Jan.’
‘Luis saved our lives, Kylie. I visited him in hospital and he told me his story. He’s had a rough time in South Africa and all he ever wanted was a proper job. He’s got more qualifications than most other men I’ve worked with.’
‘I know, so you said last night when you were drunk and working your magic on me. You know we still can’t offer him a real job, though, Cameron. He’s an illegal immigrant and was a party to defrauding us of millions of rand worth of gold.’
He nodded. It was part of the deal they’d struck over two more rounds of drinks at Lion Plains.
Cameron had unknowingly set the whole thing in motion when they had emerged from the mine. Cameron and Chris had carried Luis to a waiting ambulance, before the police had time to speak to him. ‘When you get to the hospital, tell them you work for us,’ Cameron had whispered to the barely conscious Mozambican.
Cameron had called into the Mediclinic at Nelspruit the next day, once he had finished giving a detailed statement to the police. Luis had undergone surgery, but the bullet had passed through the flesh above his left hip, missing his vital organs, and the doctor predicted he would be released within a week.
Luis had been in a panic after the operation, and pleaded with Cameron for a legitimate job with Global Resources, not at Eureka but at any other mine. Cameron had told him that while he was happy to continue the charade with the hospital so that Luis’s medical expenses were covered, he was realistic too: there was no way he could give Luis a real job.
Cameron had thought that was the last of it, until he’d taken Luis’s call at the lodge the night before. Luis had talked quickly and urgently: there had been two alarming developments. First, Wellington Shumba had found out where Luis was and was threatening to kill him, and second, which seemed of even more concern for Luis, his wife was on her way from Mozambique to visit him.
Luis’s cover had been blown when he’d been spotted shuffling down the Mediclinic corridor by one of the four badly injured zama zamas who the police had pulled from the rubble of the collapsed tunnel in Eureka. Although there was a police guard on their ward, the men must have had a way of communicating with Wellington, as a nurse had delivered a telephone message to Luis’s bedside that read: I will see you back at work as soon as you are released. W. Luis had explained the unwritten threat in the note. He knew too much about Wellington and his illegal pipelines in and out of the mine. The Zimbabwean could not afford to have Luis at large, or in police custody. Luis promised that if Cameron offered him a job, somewhere far from Barberton, he would tell him and the police all he could about Wellington’s operations.
Luis’s contact with his wife had been via letters sent to a post box at Barberton, which was cleared by a legitimate miner above ground, who then added Luis’s mail – mostly letters from his wife and son – to the regular shipments of contraband carried underground to the zama zamas. The miner, who had become something of a friend to Luis, visited him in hospital to bring him his latest mail. To Luis’s horror, the last letter from his wife revealed she was travelling by chapa from their home far in the north to the border post at Ressano Garcia, where she expected to leave the Mozambican minibus taxi and transfer to a similar vehicle on the South African side at Komatipoort and make it to Barberton by the next day.
Cameron had heard Luis out, and then promised him that he would discuss his requests with his superior – Kylie – and call him back that night.
‘I’m not giving in to blackmail,’ Kylie had said, over yet another drink. ‘We can’t offer him a job at any of our mines – word would get back to the union too soon about his background. He’s admitted he has had direct contact with your people at Eureka.’
Cameron had liked how she had said your people’. He did still think of himself as manager of
the mine, whatever the politics and whatever she and Jan wanted to call him. ‘You’re right. He can’t expect us to help him, and only tell us what he knows about Wellington if we give him a job. We could turn him over to the police.’
‘We probably should,’ Kylie had said.
‘But he did save our lives by taking a bullet from that sentry,’ Cameron said. Suddenly, through his drunken haze, the answer came to him. ‘The reward!’
‘What reward?’ Kylie asked.
Chris had sunk into one of the lodge’s deep armchairs and his head was lolled back and his eyes closed.
Cameron snapped his fingers. ‘Six months ago I posted a reward of a hundred thousand rand for information that led to the breaking up of the zama zama gang at Eureka. None of my guys came through with any information; they were all obviously too scared of Wellington to give him up, or worried the legitimate miners supplying the zama zamas would get them if they gave information that ended the smuggling.’
‘So?’ Kylie asked. The alcohol was slowing her uptake.
‘So, I didn’t specify that it had to be a Global Resources employee to claim the reward. If Luis gives us the dirt on Wellington, then he’s entitled to the money. It’s not a fortune, but it might be enough for him to get back to Mozambique and set himself up in some sort of business.’
Kylie looked dubious. ‘He’s a criminal, Cameron.’
Cameron had shrugged. ‘So what? Plenty of criminals collect rewards for spilling the beans on each other, and plenty do deals with the police and prosecutors to avoid being convicted. We’d be offering Luis the same thing.’
And Luis had gone for it.
To Cameron’s surprise it had been Kylie who had come up with the idea of staging a meeting for Luis and his wife at the Eureka offices. Cameron had laughed at the prospect and now that it was happening it still put a smile on his face. Kylie had a heart after all. She winked at him as Luis walked, still a little painfully, arm in arm with Miriam to the boardroom.
Chris was there, as were Hannelie, Coetzee, Casper and Roelf, all of whom Cameron had confided in.
‘Thanks everyone for coming, and for those of you who don’t know her from her picture, allow me to introduce Miriam Correia to all of you.’
