Where was Giovanni? Pedro staggered around in a circle and found him, his suitcase gone, his arms hanging limp by his side. For a second the two of them were close together and Giovanni shouted something, but Pedro couldn’t understand him. It didn’t matter. There was only one place they could go.
The harbour.
Vesuvius was already spitting poisonous gases, ash and pumice into the air. A column of smoke had risen up, fifteen kilometres high, the top of it branching out so that it resembled a massive palm tree. Pedro glanced at it and remembered it at once. It was the same tree that he had seen in the dreamworld, the same size and colour. A river of lava, burning at nine hundred degrees Celsius, was edging forward, flowing slowly but inexorably towards the city. Everything it touched disintegrated. Trees vanished as if they were matchsticks, flaming up as they were caught in the conflagration. The earthquake could be felt eight hundred kilometres away. The sky was on fire. And this was just the beginning. Worse was to come.
Pedro and Giovanni were right in the middle of it. Together they set off, staggering, running, fighting their way through the screaming crowds, trying to reach the sea.
The Boeing 747 had already taxied to the end of the runway when the eruption began. Scott was sitting with his seatbelt fastened, his face pressed against the window.
“You should look out, Jonas,” he said. “It’s quite a view.”
“We should have left an hour ago,” Jonas rasped.
“I’m glad we didn’t. This is something I wouldn’t want to miss.”
The interior of the plane had been converted into a single room that ran almost half its length and it was absurdly luxurious. There were leather sofas, a dining-room table, an open-plan kitchen, a gym, a cinema screen, a bar and even an entertainment area with computer consoles and miniature football. Two doors led to full-sized bedrooms and there were also en suite bathrooms with sunken baths, showers and saunas. Scott had read about Russian billionaires who had planes like this, complete with gold taps and caviar in the fridge, but he had never dreamt he would fly in one. He had been excited from the moment he had climbed on board.
Jonas Mortlake was not in such a good mood. He was sitting in an armchair, his face pale, thinking how much pleasure it would give him to murder Scott. Of course, the chairman wouldn’t allow it. These children had to be kept alive. But circumstances had changed. The world was ending anyway and, as the chairman had told him in New York, there was little chance that he would survive. Maybe, just maybe, he would disobey orders and take matters into his own hands.
Those hands were currently resting on the table in front of him. Jonas hadn’t had time to get his little finger bandaged before they left for the airport, so he had wrapped it in a silk scarf. He had swallowed two paracetamol and was sipping a large whisky to deaden the pain. Scott hadn’t referred to the incident again. It was as if he had forgotten it. But Jonas would never forget. One way or another, he would have his revenge.
There was another explosion outside and the whole plane shook, the metal joints straining against each other. All the windows were burning red. Scott, sitting opposite him next to a window, let out an exultant whoop, but Jonas scowled. Couldn’t the boy see the danger they were in? They had to fly through this mess. If particles of soot or molten glass got sucked into the turbines, the plane would fall out of the sky. Why, why, why hadn’t they left earlier? Jonas had been completely in control when he had left for Naples but now he felt he had lost everything.
The pilot had finished his on-board checks and dimmed the cabin lights. Not that there was any need to. It was just habit. Nor did he have to wait for permission to fly. This was the only plane leaving Naples Airport. After today, Naples Airport would no longer exist. Jonas heard the engines being revved and a moment later they were shooting down the runway, the whole fuselage trembling, the wheels bumping over the potholes. There was a moment when he wondered if they would get off the ground. The smoke and the flames seemed to be everywhere, closing in on them from all sides. Was it his imagination or had the temperature risen inside the cabin? They were being cooked alive! His breath caught in his throat and he reached out with his good hand and held onto the edge of his seat. Without knowing it, he had closed his eyes. He was squeezing the whisky glass so hard he was sure it would crack.
But then they were up. He felt the wheels retract and leant back in his chair as they slanted up into the sky. There were two more huge explosions. The plane was almost torn apart, thrown madly from side to side, the walls creaking. Some of the compartments had been thrown open. Books and DVDs tumbled to the ground.
“Did you see that?” Scott howled.
Jonas opened his eyes. Everything was black and red. Clouds of ash folded in on them like giant fists. The whole sky was blazing. Jonas moaned softly. He wanted to scream.
But they didn’t crash. Ninety seconds later they had risen above the swirling smoke, the clouds spinning in circles … the hideous eye of the storm. The worst of the eruption was already behind them. Looking ahead, he could see patches of sky that were almost clear. Jonas stared out of the window and imagined the city he had just left behind. He wondered how many people would die tonight. Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Somehow it didn’t matter when you got to numbers like that. You stopped thinking about them as human beings. With enough zeroes on the end, they just became ants.
The pilot turned the plane in a gentle arc. The cabin lights came back on again. The Boeing 747 began its journey south.
Black smoke, like oil, was oozing out of the crater, spreading outwards, swallowing up the light. Ash was pouring down, as thick as snow. It was as if the air was being sucked away, but what little remained stank of sulphur. And still the flames were spreading. The city was on fire. The sun had disappeared and the whole world had turned red.
Somehow Pedro and Giovanni had made it to the harbour, pushing their way through the crowds of people who had lost any semblance of sanity, screaming and running in every direction, fighting with each other, staggering blindly from street corner to street corner. Some had given up, falling to their knees on the pavements, praying for salvation while others stampeded over them. Children, separated from their parents, ran around in hopeless circles. Babies had been left, abandoned in prams.
Whole sections of the city had disappeared in flames and darkness. Vesuvius was shooting at it, like some monstrous fairground game, firing huge fireballs that plummeted down, one after another. The Castel Nuovo itself had been hit. One of the towers was wrecked and the rest of the building was on fire, flames spitting out of the windows. Further to the north, the Duomo, the main cathedral of Naples, which had stood over the city since the thirteenth century, had almost gone. More than a thousand people, believing even now that God would protect them from the volcano, had taken refuge inside moments before it had been hit by one of the blazing missiles. They were pouring out again, surrounded by smoke and broken stone.
The harbour was a nightmare of fire and smoke, of choking gases and water that was already being whipped into a frenzy. Most of the boats that could sail had already left, and had so many people crowded onto the decks that they could barely stay afloat. There were people fighting on the quays, flailing and screaming at each other, or standing there with hands outstretched, begging for a passage out. But the boat owners were forcing them back. They were on the decks, lashing out with boathooks and oars while the other crew members struggled with ropes and sails, trying to get out into open water before it was too late. As Pedro skidded to a halt, gasping for breath in the poisonous atmosphere, he felt another huge shockwave travel under his feet and had to cling to Giovanni for support. The two boys watched in disbelief as the entire quay, a giant slab of cement, suddenly tilted as if trying to set sail itself. If they had been any closer, they would have been killed. As it was, dozens of people were thrown into the foaming sea. They had no chance. There were ships all around them, rising up and crashing down. Many of them were crushed. The rest must have dr
owned.
Giovanni looked around him, his hair being whipped by the wind, his eyes filled with panic. “Angelo…” He shouted out a sentence but most of it was lost in the din.
Pedro wondered if they should have come here. At least half the city seemed to have had the same idea. A lot of the boats had already gone. For an insane moment he was reminded of a funfair he had once seen in Lima. He had only been about nine or ten years old and he had been fascinated by the dodgem cars, so many of them packed into such a tight space. The harbour looked the same … only without the lights and music. It was a hellish scene of destruction as the huge vessels smashed into each other, the water black and frenzied below.
“There!” Giovanni pointed and shouted out.
Miraculously, his uncle’s boat was still there, waiting for them. Perhaps it had been overlooked by the rest of the crowd because it was so small and looked so fragile; a seven-metre fishing boat with two sails and a single cabin. It was called Medusa, the name painted in gold letters on blue. There were three men on board. Two of them were desperately clinging to the ropes that kept them moored to the quay. The third, a dark, bearded man, soaked to the skin, was searching for them.
“Angelo!” Giovanni called.
The man didn’t hear but saw them a moment later as they ran forward, following the edge of the quay. Suddenly there were fewer people around them. Pedro leapt over a jagged crack in the concrete. It hadn’t been there seconds before. The entire harbour was breaking up, the pieces tumbling into the sea. The air was thicker than ever. Every breath was an effort. His throat and lungs felt scalded.
The boat was heaving around as if it were a living animal and Pedro wondered how it could possibly sail out of here. The wind was too strong, coming at them in short, vicious punches. The sails were writhing, trying to tear themselves free of the masts. But as he clambered aboard, allowing Angelo to haul him off the quay with Giovanni right behind him, he heard a metallic cough and a rattle and knew that incredibly, the Medusa still had a working engine and that somehow the men had saved enough fuel for this journey.
They were instantly away, a void opening up between them and the harbour’s edge. Pedro lost his footing and sprawled on the deck. As he looked back, he saw a man and two women leap towards them, hoping to reach the last sailing boat to leave. But they were already too far away. All three of them fell into the black, churning water. Pedro didn’t see any of them come back up.
There was a roar like the end of the world, like the universe splitting in two. A twisting column of flame blasted out of the top of Vesuvius, rising straight up into the sky. As the Medusa fought its way out of the harbour, blazing balls of lava rained down, hitting the water all around them, and suddenly they were surrounded by a dense forest of steam. Pedro saw a bigger sailing ship about twenty metres away. It was impossible to say how many people were on board. Every inch of the deck was crowded. But as he watched, it was hit by one of the lava balls, exploding instantly into flames and sinking even as it burned. Two other boats had been trying to get out of the way and crashed into each other, their masts and sails becoming hopelessly entangled. More people, tiny figures, fell into the water. It was all madness. Everything was being destroyed.
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 thei
r 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.