Read Chapter 8: — RECRUITMENT WEEK

The consortium needed two hundred additional workers and several regional engineers.

Because Daniel could work in Arabic as well as English, HR borrowed him for recruitment.

He spent five days in the capital reviewing applications, interviewing candidates and helping build a practical training programme.

Maggie called every evening.

She also, without Daniel’s permission, conducted what she considered a subtler campaign.

One night she video-called from a neighbour’s house. A young woman happened to be sitting in the background.

“Who’s that?” Daniel asked.

“Nobody. Rachel’s niece.”

The next day a new contact named EMILY SHAW added him with the message: Your mum said we’d met on video.

Daniel replied: Hello Mrs Shaw, hope the spare key situation is sorted.

There was no answer for five minutes.

Then: I’m Emily. Rachel is my aunt.

Daniel stared at the screen.

Toby, looking over his shoulder, made a strangled sound.

“You called a woman your mother is trying to set you up with Mrs Shaw?”

“I thought she was my neighbour.”

“You are beyond help.”

Emily eventually took the misunderstanding with grace, but Daniel told Maggie firmly that surprise international matchmaking was not acceptable.

“You could at least talk to her,” Maggie said.

“I am interviewing rail technicians twelve hours a day.”

“People have married during wars.”

“Mum.”

“Fine.”

At the recruitment centre Daniel met Rashid Karim, a skilled plant operator who knocked a cup of water over Daniel’s laptop during his interview, then knocked over a second drink while trying to save the first.

Rashid looked ready to resign from a job he had not yet been offered.

Daniel sighed, turned the laptop upside down and said, “Answer the next question before you destroy the desk.”

Rashid passed.

The laptop did not.

When Daniel returned to the desert with the new recruits, the site had changed visibly. Wind protection stretched across the formation. Compaction work advanced in parallel. The schedule was beginning to recover.

For the first time, the project looked less like a crisis and more like a railway.