Opening Credits

Opening credits

So, that not everyone has to have read Book 1 in order to be able to follow Book 2, I include here the somewhat shortened story of the Medical Director, who reports from her point of view on the course of the first months in the Valley of the Cougars.

My life in a high valley in the Andes

Dr Ramona Liebknecht

My work as a medical consultant and head of a research group in Peru began at the beginning of June 2016. From my previous assignment as project manager DNA changes on living humans somewhere in Eastern Europe, I flew via Paris to Lima, from where I was taken by helicopter to my future place of work in the Andes, where exactly, I didn’t really care. My boss had made the offer to me as the head of a completely new research project palatable, showed me pictures of my state-of-the-art equipped workrooms, my already fully furnished apartment and the beautiful valley shining in all green colours. In addition, I was assured an extraordinary salary with success bonuses and a completely free hand in my research, my hearts, what more could you ask for?

At first, I was a little uneasy when the helicopter raced at full speed towards the rocks piled up as if to a wall, but it rose with every meter of approach and after a short time I saw the first snow-covered mountain peaks in the distance. A fantastic sight, after all, we were not so far from the equator, the peaks had to be at a tremendous height.

Our helicopter flew over mountains with bare slopes, others were covered to the top with swaying tree tops, I could see far into rugged valleys, the water of the rivers flashed promisingly, nature seemed almost untouched, only dusty tracks or paths worked into the slopes spoke of civilization. Then we saw in the distance a considerable city, certainly many thousands of inhabitants, in the middle of the mountains. My companion informed me in his gibberish English, gold would be mined here, the number of inhabitants would have exploded, a small mountain village had become a big city of more than 300,000 inhabitants growing in all possible directions.

In a loop we flew over other valleys and rugged mountains. In front of us was a picturesque valley, totally green, enclosed in steeply rising rocks. A stream rushed in a deep-washed canyon towards the ocean, a bridge allowed access to the valley. An elongated building, my companion called it the hotel, was located on a narrow street leading to a huge building. Around the building were park-like facilities, a larger pond, and a fountain. As promised, two tennis courts were available. Construction work was still underway everywhere, but most of it seemed ready and immediately usable. Welding and testing was carried out at the gate, the helipad was just levelled. We landed near the gate. My companion waved at a man with a jeep. After all, my four suitcases, a pilot’s suitcase with my personal notebook and the most important documents were to be transported to the house.

The man who was supposed to bring my luggage into the house assessed me from top to bottom, greeted me kindly, but I saw no reason to be nice to the unshaven relief worker. At that moment I realized how much I could be the target of their pent-up desire among the construction workers, because so far, I had not seen a woman in the valley.

The building was gigantic; the huge foyer alone was estimated to be perhaps two hundred square meters in size. Elegant seating furniture in the foyer invited you to linger. A man greeted me kindly, introduced himself as the responsible architect and led me to my apartment. In addition to a larger living room and bedroom, there was a well-equipped bathroom. Next door, the architect showed me my study with its own laboratory, a treatment room with a modern, electrically adjustable hospital bed and a room for intensive care. All devices were new, functionally installed, well-coordinated colours and everything was spotless. I was very satisfied with my future working conditions.

A nice Indio woman greeted me and asked, more with gestures than in English, if I wanted something to eat or drink. She served me a large pot of coffee, sandwiches, and some sweet pastry on the patio. I nodded to her gratefully. The cook wasn’t much older than me, but she was probably twenty kilograms heavier.

Shortly thereafter, the site manager Michael Frommhold introduced himself to me. He was visibly stressed, smiled wryly when I asked him to sit, but took a moment before the architect called him with urgent questions. In the short conversation I found out that the big investor ‘Rus’ would come tomorrow, with his full name Aleksej Boguruskij. He would be a restless type, would have new demands on the construction process every day, but would pay well.

After lunch I went for a walk. The huge garden, secured by a mighty fence, was gorgeous, even if it wasn’t finished yet. The pool was tiled; two paths were closed and were being concreted by local workers. The tennis court was very good, covered with red sand; only the net holder was still missing. I was already looking forward to my first lessons. In a large pond swam koi, very elegant, multicoloured fish that kept gasping for air or food.

The fountain was still under construction, a huge mermaid was probably supposed to be placed on the pedestal in the middle. The other part of the garden was not designed yet; lots of plant baskets were ready. It seemed almost impossible to have everything ready by the end of next month, as the site manager explained, but gardeners might still be busy somewhere else.

Together with the construction manager and the architect I ate dinner, but they didn’t eat well, showed no culture of living together and ran back to their work after a few minutes. There was hammering and screwing upstairs in the house, it was already 7 in the evening. I watched the progress of the work with curiosity. Twenty four rooms, a kind of simple hotel room, were equipped with the same furniture and sanitary facilities. Two other rooms were better equipped, the sign on the door was ‘supervisor’, so I would translate that as ‘gaffer’.

Painting work was being carried out in another six rooms in the middle of the upper floor; another nine rooms were still under construction. Who should sleep in the many rooms? While all the rooms were windowless, there were wonderful, light-flooded wide corridors, perhaps better halls, unfortunately completely unfurnished and unadorned. I still had no idea what all this was intended for.

When I asked, the architect only said that he didn’t understand it either. After Rus had commissioned him to completely redesign the house and temporarily set up a suitable apartment for him on the ground floor instead of the planned villa, there would only be panic here and there would be changes every time the client visited. The villa was originally supposed to be built after the palazzo and finished the next year, but somehow there was no time for that. It seemed as if the billionaire was under a lot of time pressure to move here to the valley as quickly as possible. Maybe he would be on the run and would have to hide.

After the almost 30-hour trip from Minsk to here, I was totally tired, but the construction noise was pounding into my room. That’s why I enjoyed a soothing bath in my bathroom, which was furnished above the standard, and fell asleep later when there was finally calm in the house.

Due to the time difference, I was up early and did my morning jog when the construction work started again everywhere. So, I ran to the so-called hotel, better maybe a guesthouse. A Dutchman approached me laughing, at least he addressed me in Dutch, but he wasn’t my type and he seemed pretty macho to me.

“Would you like to sweeten my last days here?” he now asked in English. That was a stupid come-on, but apparently, he was about to leave, well. I didn’t look at him.

From a large cave supported by steel girders, workers drove many crates and boxes to the main house. A plethora of containers stood in the huge warehouse, but a uniformed man denied me entry. I walked past the closed and buried mine entrance in the direction of fields that I had seen from above. Unsightly wooden shacks stood around a ramshackle ‘saloon’. The nice cook greeted us friendly and marched towards the main building with two baskets full of fresh groceries. Ancient people worked on the fields and vegetable beds as well as on the animal enclosures, all estimated to be well over 70 years old. Apparently, they produced the food for all the valley dwellers, so I wanted to be friendly.

A woman, somewhat plump and much younger than the peasant women, introduced herself as Carmen. She was the person in charge of the village and showed me some animals, but my interest was moderate. I walked up the valley for a while but I only found two stinking fishponds. On the way back, an approaching helicopter roared, the boss seemed to be coming. I resumed jogging but was in the main house long after the boss.

A beaming man with a strong Russian accent hurried briskly towards me. “Welcome to our valley. I’m Gennadi, the boss’s assistant.” He would have liked to play tennis with me in the coming weeks and months, but his eyes stroking my body with pleasure spoke of other games. So, my friendliness was limited.

The boss almost ran past me. “Nice. They are there. At 1 p.m. meeting in my room.” He was already running in the direction of the container warehouse. Why was he so excited, so restless?

After lunch, which consisted of tasty chicken and rice, we gathered in Rus’s extraordinarily pompously furnished study. It was a bit of a massacre for the site manager, he was shouted at, repeatedly had to give concrete dates when certain work would finally be completed, was criticized for many things, regardless of whether he gave reasons or not. A terrible boss, he shouldn’t treat me like that, I’d leave.

Rus didn’t say a friendly word to me, grumbled a few sentences in Russian to Gennadi, then ran away with the architect. A certain Vlady, a bodyguard of the Rus, handed me a folder with documents. Gennadi should prepare me for my tasks. Gennadi briefly outlined his boss’s plans for me. After the Rus had moved into the valley, he would expect a first group of young ladies from all over the world, who would be prepared by me to be of service to all men and guests. With the second group of girls, the boss later wants to ‘produce’ offspring; he urgently wants at least three sons. That would be my job too; to make sure Rus had only boys as offspring. Ultimately, it was this task that attracted me to accept the job.

Any form of counter-speech bounced off as if from a layer of Teflon. We would be employees of one of the richest men in the world; we would be well paid, so he, like me, would simply have to do every job. Finish!

In the afternoon, Rus flew away with his two companions by helicopter. Somehow, I was served, treated almost like a slave labourer, supposed to break laws, ignore my oath as a doctor. You don’t do that to me. Next time I’ll sort it out with the boss, I made up my mind.

The conversation a week later went differently than I had planned. No sooner had I said two sentences of my prepared argument than the big boss cursed in Russian, whistled at his assistant Gennadi and disappeared. He only said, “The boss is of the opinion that if you are not up to the task, you can leave, but he will not refund the ticket.” I looked at the suddenly so unfriendly man in disbelief, but before I could say anything, he just said, “Look at your contract. You are hired as an employee, not a doctor. You have to do whatever you are told to do. Otherwise, departure plus penalty. That’s it, end of discussion.”

He left me like a silly child and disappeared. What kind of soup had I gotten myself into? How did I get out of the dilemma? I couldn’t find a solution. In the evening I heard the helicopter take off without having achieved anything.

I had three days to ponder, then the boss was back. “Are you all right, madam? Please, wait and see. If I live here permanently from the beginning of August, we will understand each other and your worries will vanish into thin air.”

Shortly before the end of July, Rus summoned me to his study. He toasted Gennadi and me to the best cooperation with Krimskoye sparkling wine. “It will be. Tomorrow you will receive my instructions for the next few days in writing. They have to be done. I don’t tolerate any discussion about this. Our first guests arrive on August 1st. It is young ladies who are being trained as models here, but they also provide certain services for other guests. You, Ms Liebknecht, take over the command from today. Only the Belgian is there to do the rest of the work. I’ll make it clear to him that you’re the boss here.”

For emergencies, Vlady instructed me in the use of a pistol. My test shots showed him that these were not my first shots with a pistol. He smiled and slid his hand from my shoulder to my bra clasp, which I firmly forbade.

When I asked, I found out that the site manager and the architect had been taken to the airport by helicopter yesterday. They would only have received part of their wages. “Nothing is quite finished. Real idiots. Next year for my new house I will take other professionals.”

Chapter 1 »