Thunderbolt Wilbur Smith (surface ebook reader .TXT) 📖

nothing less. ‘You are not in danger,’ he went on. ‘Not if you do what they say. You are valuable, like the boat. More so, in fact. They will want to trade you in, not waste you. You don’t even need to do anything! You have value just by being you. Unlike …’

‘Unlike what?’ said Amelia.

I was ahead of her for once. It wasn’t a ‘what’ Mo was getting at, but a ‘who’. I think he’d stopped short of saying it because he knew it would sound a bit self-pitying. Obviously the ‘who’ was him. And yes, I was right. Though he was trying to head off the poor-little-me stuff by sounding cheerful now, it didn’t work. With a smile he said, ‘Unlike me.’

He was pathetic. I hated him for it. But Amelia just wanted to know the specifics. Ignoring – or not even noticing, perhaps – that he’d regretted making the comparison and tried not to follow through with it, she asked, ‘What’s so worthless about you?’

‘I didn’t say I was worthless.’

‘Non-valuable then.’

‘I said I wasn’t worth a lot to them just by being me.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t have anybody who’d pay a lot of money to get me back. They’re betting you do.’

There and then I made a decision. Whatever happened, I’d do my best to make sure these guys didn’t get a reward by demanding a ransom for our release. I didn’t know how I’d do it, but I’d find a way. I’d spite them. Given what had happened to Mum in the DRC, with Langdon paying himself a fake ransom not to free Mum and Dad, I’d been put off the idea of paying kidnappers for good. It hadn’t worked then and it wouldn’t work now because I wasn’t about to let it.

‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that,’ I said.

Mo didn’t bother replying to me. He could probably sense Amelia wasn’t done with him yet.

‘How did you make yourself non-worthless then?’ she asked.

‘I had to work at it.’

‘How?’

‘By becoming useful.’

‘Any idiot can tie a knot in a rope or wrap someone’s hands in gaffer tape,’ I said.

Mo nodded and said, ‘I meant learning English, but you’d be surprised; some people find knots tricky.’

Xander’s always quick to sniff out bullshit, even if he hides his incredulity behind good humour. Smiling now, he said, ‘You learned English to help a pirate gang. That’s likely. What did they do, enrol you in a language school, pay for lessons?’

Mo smiled back at him. ‘No. But they let me go online every now and then, and also watch foreign movies. Fast and Furious. Jason Bourne. That sort of thing.’

‘You expect us to believe you learned to speak fluent English by watching a few action films?’ Xander laughed. ‘That’s totally likely.’

Mo just shrugged.

Amelia, hunched uncomfortably because of her bound hands, was looking at Mo strangely. I’d seen the look before, but only once or twice. There was this time a kid two years younger than her beat her in a massive chess competition in London. I’d gone along to support her. Halfway through the match she realised she’d been outplayed, and when that realisation dawned on her she looked both stunned and strangely pleased, her annoyance blindsided by admiration. Now, out of nowhere, she asked, ‘What colour is anhydrous copper sulphate?’

‘White.’

‘What colour does it go when you hydrate it?’

‘Blue.’

‘And what’s the chemical formula for hydrated copper sulphate?’

‘CuSO4.5H2O.’

Without missing a beat Amelia went on, ‘Who was Hitler’s minister for propaganda?’

‘Joseph Goebbels.’

‘What month did he die?’

‘He died the day after Hitler, on May 1st 1945.’

‘What’s the relationship between the pressure and temperature of a gas in a rigid container?’

‘Constant,’ Mo said quietly.

‘Assuming what?’

‘Assuming that temperature is measured in Kelvin,’ Mo added without looking up.

Amelia drew breath to fire another question at Mo, and I reckon she’d have stumped him eventually if she’d kept going, but she let the breath out without trying.

Xander, who’d been listening quietly, said, ‘Do you speak any more languages, other than Somali and English?’

Mo nodded. ‘A few.’

Xander puffed out his cheeks. ‘And you learned all this how again?’

‘I just sort of picked it up.’

‘Oh come on,’ said Xander. I felt the same way. I’d been learning French for six years, could barely ask the way to the shops, and definitely wouldn’t understand the answer. But I was watching Amelia, and everything about her face said she believed this boy, Mo. She’d know, I suppose. If it was possible, my hatred of him ratcheted up another notch. Xander hadn’t clocked Amelia’s reaction. He said, ‘You really expect us to believe that?’

Mo shrugged again.

‘Where’d you learn it all really?’

‘Here and there, like I said.’

‘The chemical formula for whatever just hopped into your head, did it?’

He rolled his scrawny shoulders and looked away uncomfortably. ‘What does it matter? I know stuff. Most of it’s useless. But some of it helps me, and if you let me I can use it to help you.’

I realised I’d been clenching my fists together, pumping them full of blood within their gaffer-tape manacles. They hurt. All the same, if they’d been taped together in front of me, then even despite my taped ankles I’d have risked toppling flat on my face to lurch in the boy’s direction, use them like a club, and see whether I could whack him out of the boat with them. I wasn’t falling for this ‘let me help you’ stuff, not at all. But my hands were behind my back and anyway, Mo had scuttled off to the speedboat’s prow, called there by the captain, who’d descended to the rear platform of the battered cruiser to have a word with him. What he was ordering the boy to do now, God alone knew.

15.

‘What’s the plan?’ Xander asked once Mo was out of earshot.

I didn’t have one, but I couldn’t tell him that. ‘I’ll think of something. For now we sit tight and –’

‘We don’t have much choice about that,’ muttered Amelia.

‘– and observe things,’ I went on. ‘Let’s see