Nobody spoke. Then one of the boys who had been on the platform with Matt put his hand in the air. He was thin, dark-haired with a sullen face, aged about eighteen.
“Yes?”
“When can I get some water?” he asked. “I’m thirsty.”
The bearded man walked over to him and stopped in front of him. Everyone knew that something bad was going to happen – and they were right. He held out a hand and one of the other soldiers tossed him a plastic bottle of water.
“You want water?” he said. “You can have water.”
He weighed the bottle in his hand for a moment then suddenly swung it with all his strength, crashing it into the side of the boy’s head. Water exploded all over him as the plastic broke. The boy crumpled. It must have been like being hit by a club.
“Learn from this,” the man said, addressing all of them. “You do not ask for water. You do not ask for food. You do not ask for rest. You take it when you are given it and you are grateful. Now let’s get to work.”
Nobody else had any questions. Several guards moved forward, carrying knives, and although some of the slaves writhed or whimpered, it soon became clear that their task was only to cut the bonds and set their hands free. Someone helped the boy to his feet and the whole group was about to make its way down when suddenly something moved through the sky above them, causing them to stop and look up. It was the Legacy 600. It had made no sound on the other side of the forest but suddenly it was roaring right above them as it cleared the treetops.
Lohan watched as it arced over the pit and veered away into the distance, then he turned back to Matt and his eyes were filled with anger.
“Was that your ticket out of here?” he snarled. “Well, it looks as if it’s taken off without us. So what do we do now?”
Somebody pushed them forward. By the time they reached the edge of the pit, the plane had already gone.
THIRTY-THREE
Matt and Lohan spent the next week working in the gold mine of Serra Morte and by the end of that time they knew that if they didn’t escape soon they would die. Their strength was being sucked out of them … by the long hours, the gruelling labour, the lack of food and the constant presence of disease. And this was how it was for the thousands of people around them. It was as if they had been fed into some kind of hellish machine. Individually, they no longer mattered. They were being processed. Eventually they would die, just as others had died in front of them. And there were hundreds more arriving every day to fill the spaces that they would leave when they themselves had gone.
The mornings began with a klaxon, sounding out across the empty pit, echoing in the darkness before the sun began to rise. It might have been five o’clock. It might have been six. Nobody had watches or clocks so what difference did it make? The slaves slept in a town that had been constructed about half a kilometre from the pit, a dark and festering sprawl of huts made from wood, plastic, corrugated iron and canvas, or a mixture of all four. Lanes ran between the huts, giving the impression of a community, but in fact the town was lifeless, with nowhere to go, nothing to do. There was no electricity, no running water, no sanitation. Hundreds of people were forced to share the same latrine, a foul trench dug in the jungle where they would queue in line, waiting to relieve themselves. There was no privacy. The stench was stomach churning and the air was thick with black, buzzing flies.
Each building contained twenty or thirty people lying side by side on camp beds, so close that their shoulders touched. Old sheets and blankets hung uselessly over doorways in a vain attempt to keep the mosquitoes out, but all they did was keep the warm, sweat-filled air locked in. Evening meals were distributed in metal buckets and shared out, the men and women crowding round and filling their own tin cups. The food was always the same: a stew of beans with a few scraps of meat from an animal it was probably better not to identify. After they had eaten, they slept, knocked out by the fifteen hours’ non-stop work that were just behind them but which they knew waited for them again the next day. Mosquitoes droned endlessly throughout the night. There was no respite.
Every morning began with a body count. There was a work detail – they were known as “os coveiros”, the gravediggers, and it was their job to drag out the dead and carry them on wagons to a clearing in the jungle. In fact, there were no graves. The bodies would be dumped here, and once a week, when the pile had grown high enough, they would be doused in petrol and set alight. No night ever passed without someone dying. Sometimes it would be from malaria or exhaustion. More often, it was the snakes. Matt would sometimes hear the scream as someone was bitten. It would be followed by raised voices and panic as the other men and women in the same hut tried to find the creature by candlelight before they were bitten themselves.
The work was always the same.
Every morning, in the pale glow of the dawn, the workers picked up a wooden bucket and a wooden spade and climbed down the ladders, all the way to the bottom. Even this could be dangerous. The ladders were slimy with dirt and sweat, and it was all too easy to slip. On their very first day, Matt and Lohan saw a man fall to his death. Perhaps he broke his neck. Perhaps he suffocated in the mud. Either way he didn’t get up again and the other workers simply curved around him, trying to pretend he wasn’t there. Matt and Lohan did the same. They had quickly learnt not to draw attention to themselves, not to do anything that would separate them from the crowd. They had only one plan. They had to live long enough to be there when the Legacy 600 returned.
They dug, they filled their buckets, they climbed. It was dark at the bottom of the pit. The sky seemed miles away and the guards, standing on the edge or patrolling with their Alsatian dogs, were tiny. It was as much as Matt and Lohan could do to stay close to each other. Talking was forbidden, not that they would have had the strength to exchange anything except swear words. Climbing up was much harder because of the extra weight. The edge of the rope cut into their shoulders, the heavy buckets rubbed the skin off their backs. By the end of the day they were in a daze, pulling themselves up, rung after rung, with the next person’s feet in front of them, someone’s hands scrabbling at their ankles. One ladder then another and another. Matt didn’t dare look up to see how far he had to go. If he knew, he might give up.
They dumped the mud that they had collected at the top and there were more workers ready to wash it, to sieve through it, searching for the flakes of gold that were the reason the mine existed. Torrents of muddy brown water flooded back down the hill. There seemed to be very little gold.
They were given water three times a day – when they woke up, at noon and before they slept – but it was never enough. The water was warm and thick with chemicals that were supposed to prevent them from getting sick but both Matt and Lohan suffered from nausea and stomach cramps, and all around them people were collapsing and lying in spasms on the ground.
Before the week was over, the two of them were almost unrecognizable. The sun had burned them, even though it never seemed to shine. Matt’s neck and shoulders were raw and red. His shirt had been stolen from him while he was asleep and he was naked to the waist, although he was so filthy it was impossible to tell where his flesh ended and his trousers began. Lohan kept himself contained in a bubble of hatred, which he directed against the guards, against the cafuzo who had sold him and even against Matt.
The strange thing was that there were only a couple of hundred soldiers in the entire area, even though they were responsible for thousands of slaves. At first, Lohan had thought that he might be able to persuade people to join him in a general uprising. Surely it would be possible to break free if they all acted together. But he had soon realized it wasn’t going to happen. A great many of the slaves had chosen to be here. They had sold themselves into slavery and at that moment it was as if something inside them had died. As for the rest, they knew they were going to be worked to death. But they no longer cared.
Just once, at night, Lohan and Matt talked about escaping. They were lying next to eac
h other, whispering as quietly as they could in English. If anyone overheard them, they would almost certainly inform the guards in return for a little extra food.
“I can get us guns,” Lohan said. “All I need is for one of the guards to come close enough…”
“And what then?” Matt sounded defeated.
“We can make a break for the helicopter. Or if that doesn’t work, we could head off on foot, through the jungle.”
“We’d never make it, Lohan. We’re miles from anywhere. And they’ve got dogs. They’d come after us.”
“Then what do you suggest, Matt? Do you want to die here?”
“We wait for the right moment.”
“There are no right moments. There is only death.”
And then Matt became ill.
It was what Lohan had been dreading more than anything, even though part of him still blamed Matt for bringing them here. It was on the eighth morning when the two of them woke up that Lohan saw that the worst had happened. Matt had a fever. His whole body was bathed in sweat and his eyes were glazed. Desperately, Lohan turned him over, forcing a little water between his lips. The other prisoners in the hut stole out as quickly as they could, not wanting to catch whatever the American boy had. It might be malaria. The mosquitoes had been more than usually aggressive. It might be dysentery. It might be something worse.
“Get up, Matt. I can help you…” Lohan tried to pull Matt to his feet but he soon saw that it was useless. Matt’s whole body seemed to be broken, his arms and his legs lacking any strength. His breath was rasping in his throat. Outside, he heard one of the guards calling out a warning. Latecomers were beaten. Sometimes, as an example to the others, they were tied up and left without water or food, roasting in the heat. Lohan had no choice. “I will come back later,” he said. “Try to rest. Try to get well…”
Lohan knew that the hut would be inspected as soon as he had gone. They would find Matt and they would make a decision. There was no medicine at Serra Morte and no doctors to administer it. If the soldiers thought there was any chance that Matt would get better, they would leave him lying there. If they decided he was finished, they would drag him out and throw him onto the pile of bodies waiting to be burned … they wouldn’t even check he was dead before they lit the match.
It was the longest day Lohan had known since he had been brought to this terrible place. All he could do was concentrate on his work, trying to force Matt out of his mind. Already he was making his plans. If Matt died, he would escape on his own. It didn’t matter if he was killed in the attempt. He was dying anyway. He couldn’t take any more.
He was the first back into the hut that evening. Matt was still there, looking not much better than he had been when Lohan had left.
“Pedro…?” he asked, as Lohan leant over him, pressing another water bottle to his lips.
“He’s not here,” Lohan said, wishing that he was. Matt had told him that the Peruvian boy had the power to heal. It was exactly what was needed right now. “I’m Lohan. How are you feeling?”
“Weak.”
“Well, at least you got a day off work.” Lohan tried to make a joke of it, to conceal how worried he had been. “Do you want to eat? Can I get you anything?”
“The plane…”
“It’s not here, Matt. It left more than a week ago and it hasn’t come back.” Lohan tried to keep the anger out of his voice. The other slaves were trooping into the room, collapsing on their beds. Some of them were already asleep. “I don’t know what you saw in that dream of yours,” he went on. “But it was a mistake coming here.”
“The plane…”
“Didn’t you hear me?”
Lohan was gripping Matt by his shoulders, almost as if he wanted to shake some sense into him. But then he heard it. Matt wasn’t talking about the plane they had seen when they had arrived. There was another plane, approaching even as they spoke. Lohan looked up. There was a low humming in the air. It was still some distance away but it was getting closer all the time. The hum became a roar. The other prisoners looked up. It was right overhead. Lohan wanted to run out of the hut but he knew there was no point. He wouldn’t see anything in the darkness and there was a risk he might get shot. But he listened as the plane landed and knew that it had touched down on the runway that he had seen eight days before.
He turned back to Matt. Despite everything, the boy seemed to be a little more peaceful, as if he had somehow managed to prove a point. Lohan smoothed the bundle of rags that he had been using as a pillow beneath his head. “It’s OK,” he whispered. “We’re going to get out of here. We’ll try tonight.”
“No.” Matt was also whispering but his voice was strong. “Not tonight. Tomorrow morning. Need to be strong…”
“It’ll be easier when it’s dark.”
But Matt’s eyes had closed and Lohan saw that he had fallen asleep. For a long time he crouched there, looking at the unconscious figure. He seemed to be struggling, trying to come to some sort of decision. Finally he nodded, as if he had won a battle with himself.
He stretched out on the bed next to Matt and a few minutes later he too was asleep.
THIRTY-FOUR
Lohan woke up early. His body might have been exhausted but his mind was in turmoil and he opened his eyes long before the sun began to rise, the hut shrouded in darkness. He lay there for a long time, listening to the sounds around him. A few people were snoring, some whimpering in the grip of bad dreams. The mosquitoes were whining as usual. Outside, a dog barked a couple of times then yelped as it was kicked. The best thing was that as far as he could see, Matt was sleeping soundly. Perhaps it would help him. He might even find someone in that dreamworld of his to look after him. Somehow, Lohan knew that the next day was going to be their last at Serra Morte – no matter how it actually turned out.
It was strange but he still had no idea who actually owned or organized the gold mine. Who, in fact, was getting the gold? It could have been the Brazilian government – but then Brazil didn’t really have a government any more. Maybe it was the military or the drug lords. And what did they do with the gold when they got it? Presumably it was refined, melted down and traded in the international banks. Lying there as the light began to creep in, Lohan tried to imagine the men in suits weighing the bars in their hands, not thinking of the pain and misery that had produced it. He himself had bought bracelets and necklaces in the many gold markets in Hong Kong. He and his father had often traded in gold bars … it was more secure and less easy to trace than paper money. Had some of the gold produced here ever passed through his hands? If so, he was being punished for it now.
Outside, the klaxon sounded and there were the same, tired movements in the hut, the occupants rolling off their camp beds and readying themselves for the day’s work. Matt opened his eyes. Lohan examined him anxiously.
“Lohan…”
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m better. I’m OK.” Matt lifted himself onto one elbow. “I’m coming with you today.”
He was far from OK. Lohan could see that the fever hadn’t left him and he was so weak that he was swaying on his feet. But somehow the two of them made it outside, drank their water and ate their bean stew, crouching in the damp morning air.
“Matt…” Lohan began.
“I know,” Matt replied. “We have to make our move today.”
“When?”
“I’ll tell you.”
Lohan nodded, amazed that he was taking orders from a fifteen-year-old boy – and one who was barely able to stand.
The guards shouted their orders and team 1179 Verde moved off. By now, Lohan recognized most of the faces of the prisoners who had been brought with him from the town of Jangada – but he knew none of their names and nothing of their histories. That was the way it worked at Serra Morte. Nobody trusted anybody and there was no point in making friends when you were all certain to die. Lohan snatched up a spade and a wooden pail for himself. He did the same for Matt, noticing
with a sense of gloom that Matt was barely able to carry the weight.
Together they trudged the half a kilometre back to the pit, neither of them speaking, then stood there as the first workers began to climb down. Lohan glanced at Matt. They couldn’t go down the ladders. If there was going to be any chance of escape, it had to start here, while they were still at ground level.
“Move!” One of the guards had seen them hesitating. He was like all the others, anonymous in his khaki uniform with a machine gun cradled in his arms and a dog following him on a leash.
Matt turned to Lohan. “Take him out,” he said. For a moment Lohan thought he’d misheard. What was Matt saying? “Take him out…” He repeated the words.
“He has a dog,” Lohan muttered.
“I’ll take care of the dog.”
The rest of their team had already entered the pit, making their way down the ladders. Lohan looked around. There were no other guards nearby. Next to him, Matt closed his eyes and at that exact moment the dog whimpered and sat down. It had simply forgotten that it was meant to be ferocious. The guard looked down, puzzled, and that was enough for Lohan. He took two steps forward and struck out, the side of his hand driving into the man’s throat. All the anger of the last eight days was in the blow and the guard wasn’t just knocked out. He was killed instantly. Lohan didn’t care. He and Matt had committed themselves. The punishment for an attack on any guard was death. There could be no going back.
Some of the other workers had seen the exchange and were already backing away in terror, not wanting to share the blame. Matt and Lohan were standing on the very edge of the mine. The guard lay on the ground. The dog was sitting there, ignoring them. Matt took a deep breath and seemed to focus on something in the mid-distance. Lohan knew that Matt, like all five Gatekeepers, had powers that went beyond anything that was human and waited to see them in evidence now. Nothing happened. For a brief moment he thought that Matt was too weak, that his illness had neutralized him … in which case they were both dead. But then there was a tiny movement. One of the ladders inside the pit had come free and fallen away from the wall. It was followed by a second and then a third. As Lohan stared, the ladders began to tear themselves apart, the thick wood snapping, the pieces tumbling down. Nobody had been hurt. Matt had only chosen empty ladders. But the way down was rapidly becoming unreachable and all work searching for the gold flakes would come to a rapid halt.
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