The Power of Five Oblivion (30 page)

But the
Medusa
had broken free, racing through the jet-black water with the fire reflected in the surface all around them. The wind had become very hot. It was burning them. Pedro felt warm water lapping at his face, splashing over the side. The boat was pitching and tossing. He was spread-eagled on the deck, unable to move.

Somebody screamed something in Italian.

Pedro looked up and saw a wave travelling towards them. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. The wave was the size of a ten-storey building. It was massive, hideous, unstoppable. They were steering right for it. There was no way around it. Pedro reached out. He found a rope and wound it round and round his right arm. He closed his eyes.

The
Medusa
was still making for the wave. Angelo was gripping the wheel, his face locked in an expression of total horror. And then the wave was right in front of them and they were climbing, climbing, trying to make it over the top. But thousands of gallons of water were crashing down on them, blotting everything out. Pedro felt himself being battered down. It was as if the weight of the world had fallen on him. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t breathe. He was scooped up and swept away.

After that … nothing.

MATT

TWENTY-THREE

“How much you want for him?”

Matthew Freeman stood with his head bowed and his hands tied in front of him, waiting to be sold. He had a cracked lip and there was a thin trail of blood trickling under his chin. A moment before, he had said something without being spoken to – and this was his punishment. He wasn’t alone on the platform. There were four other children, three boys and a girl, with him. They were all younger. The girl couldn’t have been more than seven or eight and she was wearing a black dress covered in sequins, as if this were some sort of high school beauty parade. One of the boys had been beaten and starved. He was standing there, swaying on his feet with an empty expression in his eyes, and Matt wondered if he would even make it to the end of the sale before he collapsed.

Matt was the centre of attention. Most of the buyers had been drawn to him at once – a well-built fifteen-year-old boy with broad shoulders, close-cropped hair and intense blue eyes. His clothes and the colour of his skin marked him out as a foreigner, and Americans in particular were highly prized at slave markets. He guessed that nobody would be able to tell where he really came from. These people only spoke English with an accent that made every word sound ugly. Their native language was Portuguese. Nor did they really care. For the last fifteen minutes he had been prodded and poked. His shirt had been ripped open to show off the muscles on his shoulders and chest. His eyes, ears and throat had all been examined, and one of the buyers had even checked if he had head lice. He was healthy. That was all that mattered. It meant he was worth more.

Of course Matt was a world apart from the other poor kids who were being sold alongside him. He had only arrived in Brazil five weeks ago, while they had grown up here, sold as soon as their parents had run out of food and then sold again two or three times, always at a lower price. He shuddered to think what they might have been used for. Manual labour, domestic service … or worse. It was probably better not to know.

And now it was his turn.

Matt wasn’t allowed to look up. If he so much as lifted his head, he would feel the crack of a cane across his shoulders. But he couldn’t resist raising his eyes to see who might be about to buy him. The speaker – the man who had asked the price – was short, fat, dark-skinned with a black moustache and little ratty eyes. A
cafuzo
. Half African, half Brazilian. He was dressed in jeans and a striped shirt that stretched across his belly, and one glance told Matt that he wasn’t in the market for himself. He was an agent. That was bad news. If the man had been a farmer or a log-worker or even a bandit, that would have given Matt a clue as to where he might end up. But as the man was representing someone else, it could be anywhere.

“The price is two hundred dollars.”

“The boy not worth half that.”

“When was the last time you saw a boy in this condition?”

“Where you find him?”

“That’s my business. You buy him, maybe he’ll tell you. But you’re not having him for less than two hundred.”

“A hundred and twenty.”

The slave market was taking place in a village that looked more like a prison or a military compound. A white church stood at one end, with an ornate roof and a bell tower surmounted by a cross. Otherwise, all the buildings were identical: long, white-washed and low with red-tiled roofs, laid out as neatly as houses on a Monopoly board. They were arranged around a wide square of grass cut so short that it was as if the ground had been sprayed green, and it was here that the platform had been built. There were about a dozen buyers. The villagers were keeping their distance. Matt had glimpsed a man dressed in what looked like dirty white pyjamas, carrying two buckets on a rod over his shoulders and another pushing a wheelbarrow. But they didn’t want to know. The village was surrounded by jungle. Not the lush and mysterious rainforest that Matt had once seen on TV programmes but a flat, dark green shrub land that seemed to stretch on for ever.

“A hundred and fifty. That my last offer.”

“A hundred and eighty.”

“One seven five.”

The two men shook hands.

Matt watched as a roll of American dollars was unwrapped and a number of notes peeled off. He knew that US currency was used almost everywhere, while the local money – the
real –
was almost worthless. To one side of him, the malnourished boy let out a moan and fainted. His owner swore and lashed out at him and the buyers laughed. The boy’s price would have just been halved and it would have been barely in double figures to begin with.

For his part, Matt had a new owner. There was a rope around his neck and – just as if he were a dog – he saw it being passed from the seller to the buyer. Then he was jerked forward, off the platform and down onto the grass. Just for a moment he found himself right next to the man who had sold him.

Lohan, the Triad member who had protected Scarlett when she was in Hong Kong, the son of the criminal boss who called himself the Master of the Mountain, the man who had somehow got tangled up with Matt when they had escaped from the Tai Shan Temple, stood in front of him.

Lohan shrugged. “I’m sorry, Matt,” he said. “But I’ve got to survive.”

Matt swore at him.

The
cafuzo
jerked on the rope so that Matt’s head snapped round and he was led away. Behind him, Lohan counted his money and the sale went on.

There was a truck with a driver waiting at the edge of the village. Matt’s new owner used one end of the rope to lash him across the shoulders and he climbed into the back. There was another boy of about his own age already sitting there, chained to the floor with a shackle around his ankle. The boy was Brazilian, with curly hair and a pockmarked face, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that advertised Skol beer. Matt wondered vaguely if it still existed. He squatted down as his ankle was also fastened to the floor. Nobody had spoken to him but that was quite normal. He was property – nothing more. He wanted to ask for water. The afternoon was hot, the air heavy and still, and he could feel the sweat trickling under his clothes. He would have given anything for a bath or a shower but there was no point in asking. If he was going to be made to work in a kitchen or wait at tables, they would dress him and make him presentable. If he had been bought for outside labour, they would keep him as he was. He would find out soon enough.

“What’s your name?” he whispered to the other boy.

The boy spat but otherwise gave no answer.

The man climbed into the front of the truck and about a minute later they set off, rattling through the village, hooting frantically at anyone who got in the way. They drove for about an hour over rough, pitted roads that threw Matt around in the back and soon took all the skin off his ankle. He had no view. The man had drawn a tarpaulin across the back, and the front – with the driver’s and passenger seat – was boarded off. When they turned corners, Matt and the Brazilian boy were thrown against each other or sent sprawling across the rough floor of the cabin. Matt’s hands were still tied and there was nothing he could do but endure the long journey in silence. The worst of it was that he had no idea where he was going or what might be waiting for him when he got there. The other boy was silent and surly and didn’t seem to care.

At last they slowed down and drew to a halt. Matt heard shouting. Then they rumbled forward a few more metres and stopped again. The engine was turned off. Several moments passed before the back of the tarpaulin was thrown open and green sunlight, the last rays of the day reflected by the surrounding forest, flooded in.

The first thing Matt saw was men with machine guns – not in military uniform but jeans and black shirts, some of them bearded, some with baseball caps. He was in a sort of encampment, which at first reminded him of a monastery as he was in a courtyard between two covered passageways, like cloisters, built of bricks with rooms beyond. A wooden stockade surrounded the place, and although they were in the middle of the jungle, there had to be electricity here as he saw arc lamps, CCTV cameras and a radio mast. The driver came round and unfastened his shackle, and as he climbed down from the truck Matt saw a large wooden house that had shutters and a veranda and – of all things – a children’s play area with a slide and swings. Somebody rich lived here and they were well protected. Matt had already seen more than a dozen armed guards.

The
cafuzo
, the man who had bought him, appeared with a knife and roughly cut through the cords that had tied his hands. Matt rubbed his wrists together, teasing the circulation back. He noticed some of the men looking at him and he didn’t like what he saw in their eyes. They knew something he didn’t, and whatever it was, he wasn’t going to enjoy it. He glanced to one side. One part of the compound had been given over to their work being done here. There were steel cylinders and plastic buckets piled high. Beyond, behind glass doors, men in white T-shirts leant over long tables, surrounded by laboratory equipment: glass cylinders, bunsen burners, different tubs of chemicals.

Drugs.

Matt knew at once where he was. The wooden house was the home of one of the many drug lords who were now, as they had always been, the wealthiest and most powerful men in Brazil – and this was where his supply line began. Whoever lived here had his own private army and his own scientists producing pure cocaine, which would spread all over South America and north to the United States. The only question was – how were he and the other boy supposed to fit into all this? Matt had a nasty feeling that they hadn’t been brought here to help keep the compound clean.

The two of them stood by the truck, stretching their legs, avoiding the eyes of the men who were staring at them, weighing them up. The evening was already closing in. It was uncomfortably hot and airless. Matt heard the whine of a mosquito close to his ear and resisted the temptation to try and slap it. He was determined not to show that he was afraid, but there was no escaping the thoughts that whispered constantly in his mind.
You are alone. You are thousands of miles away from home. Nobody knows you are here. These people can kill you quickly or slowly and nobody will ever find out. Nobody will care. One hundred and seventy-five dollars – that is all you are worth
.

A man appeared from one of the laboratories – a doctor. At least, he was dressed like one, wearing a grubby white coat with a stethoscope around his neck. He was bald, with glasses and a shaving rash. He went over to the Brazilian boy first and examined his eyes, lifting the brows with his thumb, then pulling back his lips to look at his teeth. At first the boy resisted and the doctor slapped him on the side of the head and muttered something in Portuguese. After that he stood still as the doctor listened to his heart and lungs using the stethoscope. At least Matt was prepared when it was his turn. He tried not to show any expression, even though the doctor’s breath stank of rum.

Both examinations had taken no more than a couple of minutes. At the end of them, the doctor stepped back, rubbing his hand against his chin. He was obviously trying to make up his mind. Then, abruptly, his hand shot forward, pointing at the curly-haired boy, and he turned and walked back the way he had come. At the same time, Matt’s travelling companion went mad. He must have known something that Matt didn’t because he ran forward, screaming, and would have made it all the way to the perimeter fence if two guards hadn’t caught up with him and clubbed him down. Even then he writhed and kicked out, shouting and sobbing all the while. Two more guards caught hold of his feet. Then they dragged him across the central yard, his head trailing in the dust, and disappeared into one of the laboratories.

“Rapidamente – porco!”

With his eyes on the other boy, Matt didn’t see the guard shouting at him and a moment later he felt his legs fold underneath him as he was struck down from behind. He collapsed into the dust

“Le vantai!”

Matt got to his feet as quickly as he could, knowing he would be hurt more if he hesitated. The guard – a small, bearded man who looked like a teacher with glasses and thinning hair – gestured in the direction of a building on the other side of the compound. As he went, Matt caught sight of a square, brick shed with an engine running inside. This was surely the main generator. He looked at it carefully, imprinting an image of it on his mind. He would need it later.

The guard took him to a room that might have once been a store cupboard but that was going to be used as a cell. There was a mattress on the floor but nothing else. However, as Matt was led in, the guard handed him a plastic bottle – a litre of water – filtered from the look of it. That told him two things. They wanted him alive and hydrated, in reasonable health. It wasn’t good news. Matt already had a good idea what they were needed for … he and the Brazilian boy. The appearance of the doctor and, now, the drinking water confirmed it.