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.
He stretched out on the mattress as the door slammed shut. He heard the rattle of a chain being drawn on the other side. There was no window in the room and no light. Matt had to force himself to breathe slowly, not to panic in the intense dark. He had to remind himself that, in a way, he had chosen to be here. And he didn’t intend to stay long. He lay back with his eyes closed.
Five weeks had passed since he and Lohan had found themselves in
the Brazilian city of Belém. The door from Hong Kong had led them to a huge church – the Basílica de Nossa Senhora de Nazaré – although it had long been abandoned to the floods, the filthy Amazon water that had swallowed up much of the city, spreading through the streets and under doorways, lapping through the once magnificent nave. The church itself was fairly modern but there had always been a holy building in the same place. An image of the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared there three hundred years before. Nobody had ever taken much notice of the little door, with its five-pointed star, that was concealed behind the altar.
Belém was almost completely abandoned, the few thousand people who remained either killing each other or letting disease and starvation do it for them. Matt and Lohan had quickly realized that they had been away for many years and had come back to a world that was very different from the one they had left. Worse still, the door in the church no longer worked. They were stuck here.
Matt was shocked to find himself separated from Richard. It had seemed to him that they had been together for so long and had faced so much danger together that they would never be apart. At the same time, he blamed himself for what had happened and the thought of it was still bitter in his mind. He hadn’t been thinking straight in those last moments at the Tai Shan Temple. If he had shouted out a single word, a destination, they would have all arrived there together. It could have been London, Cuzco, Lake Tahoe – anywhere. Instead, he had allowed them to pile in mindlessly and as a result they had ended up in different corners of the world.
And yet of all the travelling companions he could have chosen, he had considered Lohan the best equipped. Lohan had spent his entire life working inside one of Asia’s most dangerous criminal organizations. He spoke five languages, including Portuguese. When the two of them had been attacked by a street gang on the outskirts of Belém, just a few days after they had arrived, Lohan had responded with a speed and ruthlessness that had astonished Matt, leaving one man dead and two more in need of intensive care. Lohan had also refused to allow Matt to blame himself for what had happened after the escape from the temple.
“You had to get us out of there,” he said. “And you did. There was no time to sit down and look at a map, so why waste your energy going over it? It would have made no difference anyway. If we had all gone to one place, the Old Ones might have been waiting and we would have all been captured. Maybe it’s better this way. At least no one knows where we are.”
They had gone south together with only two aims: they had to avoid the Old Ones, and they had to survive. They had no money and were forced to steal food – again, Lohan was completely cold-blooded and efficient, and Matt soon saw that he would kill anyone who got in his way. Not that he was going to argue about it. There was no point, not with a man like this. As they had travelled, they had learnt that there was an airport still operating in Salvador and that it might be possible to buy a flight to another South American city or even to the United States. But Salvador was more than two thousand kilometres away. And a flight would cost thousands of dollars they didn’t have.
The slave markets were the only fast way to make money in Brazil. When people became desperate, they sold their children. If they were really desperate, they sold themselves. After five weeks on the road, when they had run out of food and knew that they could go no further, Lohan had sold Matt. It was as simple as that. There had been no other way.
Matt drank the water. It was warm and tasted of chlorine, meaning that it had probably been purified just as he had expected. He wondered about the other boy and wished he could help him but knew there was nothing he could do until later in the night. Eventually he dozed off, not so much sleeping as floating on the very surface of sleep. He wanted to go back to the dreamworld – but not tonight. He had enough to do already and it had been so long since he had seen Pedro, Scarlett, Jamie or Scott that he wasn’t sure what he would say to them if they met. When he opened his eyes again, he guessed that three or four hours must have passed. It was enough. It was time to make his move.
There was a chain on the other side of the door. Matt hadn’t seen it but he had heard the rattle as it was drawn through the bolts, somewhere above the handle. Still lying on the mattress, he visualised the bolts, the screws connecting them to the wood. He had the picture in his mind. He held it there, then sent out an instruction. How else could he describe it? A thought wave? A guided missile? He simply ordered the metal to break and a moment later he heard it do just that, cracking open as if someone had used a bolt cutter.
His power had increased ever since he had arrived in South America. As the days passed, he found that he could use his mind as effortlessly as he had once used his fists. He could move objects – even if they were several times heavier than himself. If he had wanted to, he could have stalled the vehicle that had brought him here, by simply telling the engine to tear itself apart. Maybe that would have been the easier way, but he had been interested to see where it would take him. And he was going to need the truck later on.
The door of the room swung open. Matt saw harsh electric light, leaking into the passageway from the arc lamps outside. He needed darkness. He thought about the generator building, imagined the mechanism inside, the turning cylinders, the wires. Once again, he pushed. The lights died instantly. The darkness was followed, seconds later, by the sound of shouting.
Matt stood up and finished his water. He felt good. He was in control.
It was time to go.
TWENTY-FOUR
There was no moon, no stars. The compound was utterly black. As Matt left the storage room where he had been kept, he heard voices – men shouting at each other in Portuguese – and saw the beams of torches leaping through the darkness. He took his time. Everyone would be concentrating on the generator and the loss of power. They wouldn’t have any time for him and provided he made his way carefully, he would be able to slip out before anyone realized he had gone.
The stockade was open. There was no need for locked gates when you were in the jungle, far from anywhere. And the drug lord had enough protection to hold back an army. Matt could have walked out, there and then – but as much as it exasperated him, he couldn’t do it. There had been the other boy in the truck with him. Matt hadn’t even learnt his name but somehow he still felt responsible for him. Right now, Matt could have been in his place. It was just his bad luck that the doctor had chosen him first, as casually as if he had flipped a coin. He had to know what they were doing to the boy and, if possible, prevent it. If it wasn’t already too late, they could escape together.
He had to cross the compound, to the arches on the other side. This was where he had seen the laboratories and it was to somewhere here that they had taken the boy. Matt didn’t dare walk straight across. There were too many men coming from too many directions, converging on the generator. Instead, he continued around the very edge, keeping close to the covered passageways, then hurried across the front of the house, passing the swings and the slide. He heard someone from inside calling out, a man’s voice, deep and gruff. Was it the drug lord, waking from his sleep, wondering what was going on? A guard ran past, only a few metres away, but didn’t see him. In the distance Matt heard a dog barking and that made him stop and turn round anxiously. Dogs wouldn’t be tricked by the darkness. They would find him by smell. If the drug lord kept guard dogs anywhere near the house, he might be in trouble after all.
He still hadn’t been seen so he quickened his pace, following the arches opposite where he had been. About half a dozen torches had converged on the generator building, the beams criss-crossing in the darkness, and he caught glimpses of men with unshaven faces and crumpled clothes, peering in to see what had happened. Matt knew that they would be confronted by cogs and pistons that had inexplicably bent themselves out of shape, cables that had been torn in half – and unless they had a back-up system, the only light they were going to see out here would come from the rising sun.
But as he continued on his way, he s
aw that one room was illuminated. There was a soft yellow glow coming from behind the glass windows … either candles or an oil lamp. Matt crept forward, his feet making no sound on the tiled walkway. He reached the window and looked in.
From the day that he had been arrested by the police and sent to be fostered in North Yorkshire, Matt had seen many horrors. The last minutes that he had spent at Raven’s Gate, his first encounter with the King of the Old Ones, had been enough for a lifetime. But he knew that he would never forget what he saw on the other side of the window. He was almost sick. It was hard to believe that any human being could be so monstrous, so cruel.
The drug lord had been buying boys to act as drug mules, to carry drugs inside them from country to country, crossing borders without being suspected or stopped. Matt knew that drug mules had flown into London and other major cities years before his adventures had begun. But the drug lord had taken things one step further. The Brazilian boy was lying on an operating table with a doctor and two male nurses leaning over him, their gloved hands bright with blood. His operation had been interrupted by the sudden loss of light.
He had been cut open and his body used to provide a hiding place for many packets of white powder. The plastic bags were packed into the cavities beneath his ribs and around his stomach. Anything that wasn’t vital had been removed to make room for more. Right now the boy was a glistening mess of blood and plastic, but Matt knew that he would be sewn up again and that he would live. He would make the journey to wherever the drugs were being sent and then he would be operated on again and the bags removed. How many times would he manage it before he died?
And he had been next. If the doctor had decided otherwise, it would be him lying there, unconscious and anaesthetized. Matt had to force back the fury he was feeling. If he released it, he would kill them all … the doctor, the assistants and the boy too. Perhaps he would be better off dead. But that wasn’t for Matt to decide. All he knew was that there was nothing he could do. He would have to leave him behind.