Kidnap (The Billionaire Series) (20 page)

At the end of a rather long and tiring day, Tom and Lela
collapsed on Lela’s bed. Neither said anything for a while, they had just
finished another
five course
dinner and were both
mentally and physically exhausted.

Tom spoke first. They had not had a minute alone all day.

“So what do you think?”

“Amazing…you?”

“Amazing.”

“What about the people in our class?” asked
Lela.

“Very cool, they all seem really nice…you?”

“Yeah, everybody is great and really friendly.”

They continued to discuss the other students, their teachers and
their timetable. An hour later, at 9.00 p.m., Tom realised the time.

“Isn’t your father due to dial in for your lesson?”

“No he gave me the night off as it was my first day at school.
But we should give them a quick call and let them know what happened.”

“Good idea. It’s 6.00 p.m. back home but if we wait an hour we’re
more likely to catch my dad.”

“OK. Let’s stick the TV on while we wait.”

Tom was amazed at how cool the TV system was. It could tap into
any service around the world. The menu allowed them to select a continent and
sub menus allowed them to drill down to individual TV stations across the
world. Tom selected the latest episode of The Apprentice. He loved the American
version and unfortunately, his father had declined to be ‘the Boss’ in the UK
version, along with a number of the best British businessman. The BBC had ended
up running the show with a third-rate entrepreneur and a bunch of no-hope
contenders. It was dreadful and
cringeful
compared to
the very slick American version.
 

An hour later, they phoned home and spoke to Rachel and Saki and
just as they were about to hang up, Donald arrived home. They repeated
everything they had already said and eventually hung up. Everyone was extremely
happy with developments. Tom had some work to do on proposals and thought it
best to knock them on the head before he started having homework to contend
with. He said goodnight to Lela and headed back to his room.

Their first day at school had gone as smoothly as they could
possibly have hoped for.

Chapter
33

Reaper heard the
ping which
announced
that a new message had arrived. He moved across to the PC and looked at his
inbox. It was from Ling, she had been filing a report every night for the last
week and each one read exactly the same, nothing to report. He was beginning to
think the Ling card was not a
master stroke
afterall
. Another message arrived and he opened it straight
away. It was just an update from Leo, he had visited a couple of the camps,
everything
was going well.

Reaper returned to the note from Ling and clicked on it and
immediately revised his thoughts. Ling may have been the best master stoke he
had ever pulled. She may just save him and the world a lot of hassle. He called
Pieter, one of his lieutenants, and told him to get Mozambique.

***

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday had passed like a blur, the pace
of their classes was intense,
no
sooner had they
discussed a topic before they moved on to the next. The only way to learn the
subject was in their
own time. How Lela was able to do her
training with Saki as well as all the
classwork,
amazed Tom. He was knackered, it seemed he was permanently tired and was not
the only one. Every one of their friends was the same, classwork, homework,
dinner,
homework
, bed. They all hoped it was just the
first week and they would get into a rhythm.

Etiquette was their last class on Friday and class 1H was looking
forward to what they expected to be a bit of a laugh and light relief at the
end of what had been a very hard week. Tristan had been the only one to have
looked up the detail of the lesson and told them all at lunch that it was a
Miss something or other, he couldn’t remember exactly her name but it was
Scandinavian and he was very excited.

Their Accounts teacher had been called away at 3.15 and had
decided to let them go early rather than wait for him to come back. They had
therefore arrived early for their last class and Tristan was still going on
about the young Scandinavian teacher.

“She’s going to be really hot,
afterall
most Scandinavian women are you know,” he said as they took their seats in the
very strange classroom. It had a huge dining table at the front instead of a blackboard.

“Exactly how many Scandinavians do you base that assumption on?”
asked Tom.

Tristan thought for a second.

“100% of the Scandinavian women I know are hot!” he said
triumphantly.

Zach had seen him look across the room.

“That would be one, Madeleine,” he said.

Nobody argued however, every one of the boys in the class fancied
Princess Madeleine from Sweden, bar one, Ahmad, who only had eyes for Lela.

The girls had begun to look around interested at the conversation
and how it would develop. The boys went quiet, blushed and hoped the teacher
would arrive soon.

The door opened and a tray full of bananas entered the room. All
that could be seen were the teacher’s
legs,
her body
and face were obscured by a huge quantity of bananas.

“Nice legs,” whispered Tristan.

The bananas were laid down on the large table and the face
revealed. Lela, Tom and Chen froze.

“Oh God,” whispered Tristan sitting back into his seat. “That
face would give you nightmares and look at the moustache!”

Tom kicked him.

“Anderson wouldn’t be the Scandinavian name would it?”

“Yeah, why, do you see her?” he asked not realising she had
arrived.

“Yes,” Tom
winced,
bat ears would have
heard every word. Etiquette had just become the worst class of the week and
they would start every week for the rest of the year spending the whole week
dreading it.

“You boy, Tristan isn’t it?” Ms Anderson barked, pointing at
Tristan.

“Yes Miss,” answered Tristan cheerily.

“It’s not Miss, it’s
Ms.
Come here!”
she commanded.

Tom couldn’t look, Tristan walked down to the front of the class
blissfully unaware of the superhuman hearing capabilities of Mr Sakamoto’s
private secretary and part time Etiquette teacher. It was like watching a lamb
to the slaughter.

“Did you wish to share your conversation with the rest of the
class?” she asked acidly as Tristan reached the front.

Tristan suddenly realised he was in trouble and stood silent.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I am Ms Anderson and I will be teaching
you proper Etiquette. Mr Kennedy, would you be so kind as to join us up here?”

Tom stood up and walked slowly to the front and joined Tristan.

“Gentlemen, although I use that term loosely
,,
would you like to repeat your conversation to the class?”

Both shook their heads vigorously.

“So what have we learned today, gentlemen?”

“It’s impolite to whisper,” offered Tom.

“Excellent, did anyone else in the room not know that?” she asked
the class.

No hands went up.

“It seems everybody else knew that. Gentlemen, perhaps you both
require some remedial help to catch up with the rest of your colleagues,” she
said smiling at them both.

Both shook their heads.

“Now, now, there’s no need to be bashful gentlemen, nobody thinks
less of you. However it would be unfair to burden the rest of the class with
your inadequacies to date. Lunch every Sunday will begin your remedial work and
we’ll see how quickly you can catch up,” she smiled and placed her thumb and
forefinger together and opened and closed them, just like how you would use a
pair of tweezers thought Tom.

“But…” both Tristan and Tom began to respond but were met by a
hand and stare that suggested it may get worse with any further talk.

They walked back to their seats with Sunday lunch to look forward
to.

“Now ladies and gentlemen, we will begin our lessons with how to
eat a banana…”

Half the class began to laugh but the look from Ms Anderson cut
the laughter instantly.

“Could you all please join me at the table?”

The next hour was spent learning how to eat a banana with a knife
and fork, receiving a copy of
Debrett’s
and the
biggest homework task to date. They had to memorise the correct form of address
for hundreds of titles. Etiquette was now officially the worst class on the
timetable and Tom and Tristan were going to have it twice a week.

“So what are we going to do tonight?” asked Lela as they walked
back to their block.

Tom and Tristan were still on a downer, Sunday with hairy lip,
neither could think of anything worse. They had tried but so far, nothing came
close, even Ahmad’s suggestion of cleaning the army base toilets with a
toothbrush had received a positive nod from both.

“Whatever,” responded Tom shrugging his
shoulders.

“How about ten pin bowling?” suggested
Mingmei
.

“Excellent idea,” replied the girls.

Tom, Tristan and Ahmad groaned.

“What’s wrong with bowling?” asked Chen.

“You’ll see,” replied Tom. “Wait a minute, there’s Zach,
he’s
American. I’ll bet he’s a good bowler.” Tom ran across
and invited Zach for a game, he was hoping he’d even things up a little. They
might even beat the girls for a change.

Four hours later, a humiliated boys team made their way to bed,
Tom and Tristan had rounded off a terrible day with a crushing defeat. Zach and
Chen were both hopeless. Zach it transpired had never bowled before in his life
and neither had Chen. At least Oleg had bowled before and managed to maintain
an almost acceptable score line.

However Lela had pulled an ace in the hole, she had made up her
team numbers with Elena and Madeleine from their class and one of Madeleine’s
friends, Erika. It appeared Tristan’s theory was correct, all Scandinavian
women were gorgeous whether they were blonde or brunette. Tristan had been
useless, Tom not much better, only Ahmad had bowled anything like normal,
unaffected by the Scandinavian beauties.

It was the most crushing defeat Tom had ever suffered at Lela’s
hands.

“See you in the morning loser,” shouted Lela as she went to her
room. She was
loving
it, Tom always had been a bad
loser and she loved winding him up about it.

Tom didn’t respond
,
he just slammed his
door loudly. It had been a very bad day.

***

Reaper answered the phone the second it rang.

“You’re late,” he barked.

Ling was not impressed.

“We were bowling,” she answered glibly. She was
tired,
she had just spent a week doing homework and was not
in the mood.

Reaper stifled a laugh, he hadn’t thought about the classwork
Ling would have to do. She had to protect her cover.

“Did you win?” he smirked.

“That’s not important,” she snapped. “Are we a go for my
mission?” she asked impatiently.

“Yes, my men will be in place and if you pull this off, you’re
looking at a bonus $1 million!”

“Thank you, I’ll keep you updated,” she said coolly, trying to
hide her excitement.

They ended the call, although using very secure and encrypted
transmissions,
Reaper did not want to risk it. The island
may have a few surprises his client wasn’t aware of but he doubted it.

***

One of the twins watched the student sneak outside their targets’
block and make a quick call. He couldn’t make out who it was but thought it was
strange. He’d speak to his
brother,
maybe he’d know
what was going on.

Chapter
34

Tristan and Tom still hadn’t cheered up. The thought of Sunday
lunch with Ms Anderson just stuck in their minds. It didn’t help that the girls
were still revelling about the previous evening’s overwhelming victory, over
breakfast.

It was 9.50 a.m. when they left the restaurant and walked across
to the sports stadium. Tom had clicked on the Sports button on the timetable to
see what was in store for them
,,
hoping it would be
something nice and easy to break them in gently.. However all that popped up on
the screen, was ‘Sports, Sport Stadium 10.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m.’, no further
detail.

As they walked into the stadium, it appeared they were not the
only class who had been given the same instructions. The stadium was full, Miss
Sullivan was there and ushered them to
the
 
seating
block labelled H.

“What’s going on?” whispered Lela to their Class Principal.

“Just take a seat, we’re about to start,” she replied avoiding
the question.

At exactly 10.00 a.m., Mr Sakamoto walked into
the middle of the stadium and looked around him at the stands full of students.

“Welcome,” he announced through the
tannoy
system. “I hope you’ve all had a good first week,” he shouted enthusiastically.

From the response around him, Tom realised that it wasn’t just
his class who had found it hard going as Mr Sakamoto’s question was met with a
chorus of moans and groans.

“Well, we never said it would be easy,” he responded to his
lacklustre audience. “So that’s why when we came to the sports’ curriculum, we
thought we might spice things up a little.”