Tom and Lela had also excused themselves from the table, explaining they needed to get ready for their friends’ arrival However, instead of going their separate ways, they both went straight to Tom’s room.
“OK,” Tom said closing his door. “What do you think about this new school?” he asked.
“I don’t know, I mean, we don’t even know where it is and I can see why your mum is angry. By the sounds of it, your dad had accepted,” replied Lela as she sat on her favourite bean bag.
“I know, he forgets he’s not the boss sometimes, at least when it comes to home.”
“So what about you?” asked Lela.
“I thought it sounded really cool but I want to see if we can find where it is.”
“How??”
“My dad mentioned a couple of clues, remember he said it was on one of two islands cloaked in secrecy and it must have been built within the last five years because that’s when that bankruptcy happened, yeah?”
“Yes but…” Lela stopped, she knew Tom better than anybody. She was an ‘A’ student but Tom was in a different league entirely. His father’s genius genes had definitely rubbed off on him although, thankfully, with a good helping of his mother’s common sense.
Tom was much taller than his ‘big’ sister despite being a year younger. Lela had inherited her mother’s petite frame, while Tom seemed destined to at least equal his father’s almost six foot. For the last thirteen years, they had been inseparable. When Lela had started school a year before Tom, all hell had broken loose. Lela had screamed all day at school, while Tom had done the same at home. There were two options, either Tom started school early or Lela started school a year later. A family meeting resolved the situation, holding Lela back was unfair, the only option therefore was for young Tom to start school early. The dynamic duo were back together and peace renewed.
It had not taken long for Tom to fall under his ‘big’ sister’s protection. Being the youngest and the smallest in his class, Tom was easy prey for the class bully. However, Lela, even aged five, was a force to be reckoned with. Following Lela’s retribution for picking on her ‘little brother’, the bully had been rushed to hospital. The message was well and truly made, nobody messed with Lela’s brother, nobody.
Ever since, the two had never been apart, what one did the other followed, usually closely watched by the ever present Saki.
Lela watched Tom flick from one of his three monitors to another, scanning through page after page of information on the internet. Lela only wished Tom’s physical dexterity matched his mental ability. He had pestered her for years to give him some basic training which, although strictly forbidden for non Penarajans, she had agreed to. Lela fundamentally disagreed with the ancient rule of forbidding non islanders from mastering their art. As far as she was concerned, if she was a fully fledged Kennedy (which she was), by default, Tom was a fully fledged islander. He spent as much time as she did with her family, aunts and cousins and the two families really had become one, despite their very different genes. People even joked that if it was not for Lela’s Asian looks, the two would look the same. They both had olive skin, brown eyes and dark hair and were obviously destined to profit from their parents’ good looks.
His training, however, was an unmitigated disaster. Lessons were a nightmare, It wasn’t that Tom couldn’t do the moves, it was just that he couldn’t do them quickly. By the time he had blocked a punch, it could have hit him five times. Lela had therefore focussed on defensive measures, if nothing else, she thought it may give her a little extra time to come and kick whosever arse was messing with her brother.
Tom carried on flicking from screen to screen as he searched for the elusive new school which he and Lela may be sent to. His email pinged. He flicked across to his inbox, his whatjet. com website was proving a phenomenal success. Two new enquiries were awaiting his response.
It had all started over a year earlier when his father had brought home a proposal for his company’s new jet. Tom had always been fanatical about flying and knew everything there was to know about aircraft. He took a keen interest in the proposal and spotted a number of flaws made by his father’s procurement team. His father was baffled by most of the technical detail and was glad to hand it over to Tom. He had thought nothing more of it until Tom produced a detailed reasoning the following morning as to why each of the options was flawed and why an entirely different plane was more appropriate.
Donald, armed with the new proposal, presented it to his procurement team who could not disagree with the new choice of aircraft. Donald did not have the heart to tell his Procurement Director that he had been beaten by an eleven year old. However, from that day forward, he always pit the might of his Procurement Division against Tom and Tom had never been beaten. Whenever a new aircraft request came in, the Alba team would drop everything as they tried, in vain, to better ‘Donald’s’ proposal.
It hadn’t taken Tom long to see the commercial viability of his services and so he launched WhatJet. com, the home of a truly independent advice service for those wanting to buy the best fit-for-purpose aircraft they could. When people were spending tens of millions of dollars on something, they tended to want to make sure that they were buying the right thing at the right price. Tom had also built an enviable list of ‘actual’ cost rather than ’list’ price and in general, saved his customers around 5 % on the purchase price. His fee was 0.5 % of the purchase price which was minimal compared to the savings made, so nobody had ever complained. In his first year of business, Tom had made over $2 million profit and his company was valued at double that amount.
Only Lela knew about Tom’s little ‘sideline’. His father was famous for having started Alba at the age of 14 and keeping it a secret until his 16 ^ th birthday when he announced to his bewildered parents that he was leaving school and going to run his multi-million pound business. Tom was planning to trump that, although he perhaps would forget the leaving school part, not many people left school at 16 any more.
Tom flicked back to his search. He would deal with the new enquiries the next day, after his friends had left. Thirty minutes later, he hit the print button and the page shot out of the printer.
“Done it, got it,” announced Tom grabbing the sheet of paper.
“Got what?” asked Lela, pausing MTV.
“The school’s location, of course!”
Lela looked at her watch, they had only been there 45 minutes.
“What, you’ve just found the secret school on the internet in less than an hour?”
“Yep and I’ll tell you something, if you thought my mum was pissed off earlier, just wait ‘til she hears this,” said Tom as he led the way to the study. He thought it was only fair to warn his father first.
Tom knocked and they both entered. His father was on one phone and had another call sitting off the hook on the desk. He didn’t normally work from home but had decided he wanted to spend as much time as he could with Tom on his birthday.
Donald ended his call and retrieved the other handset from his desk.
“I’m so sorry about that Sam, we’re just finalising the IBC bid, it’s all rather hectic. Now where were we?”
Donald looked down at his list and began to run through the list of questions Rachel had given him.
Tom and Lela waited patiently as Donald talked. They assumed their favourite seats on the huge sofa in front of the fireplace. They both jumped when Donald suddenly raised his voice.
“What do you mean you can’t tell me!” he shouted. “Don’t be ridiculous! How can you expect me to say yes without knowing that?!”
Tom walked over to the desk and looked at the sheet of paper in front of Donald, his pen was doodling next to the world ‘Location’. As Donald argued, the pen began to bounce up and down. Tom put his hand over his father’s to stop his tapping and placed his sheet of paper in front of him and directed his father attention to it.
“Hold on Sam, Tom’s just giving me something.”
He looked at the sheet of paper and then at Tom, quizzically. Tom nodded.
“Sam, I’ll just put you on speaker, Tom and Lela are both here.”
“OK,” replied Sam, his Southern American drawl booming across the study.
“Tom just handed me a sheet of paper which has the name of two islands on it — one’s called Bassas da India and the other Ile Europa. Their geographic locations are 21 30 S 39 50 E and 22 20 S 40 22 E respectively.”
The former president said nothing.
“Sam, are you still there?” asked Donald.
“Yes. Tom, where did you get that information?” he asked, shocked.
“My dad mentioned your conversation earlier and talked about two secret islands and told us the story about the bankruptcy. I just worked back from that.”
Both Lela and Donald did not follow his logic and looked at him blankly and Sam Mitcham appeared to be in the same boat.
“I’m sorry son, can you just explain that again so this old brain here can understand just how you discovered, in a matter of hours, what we believe to be one of the best kept secrets.”
“Actually it took him 45 minutes,” blurted Lela. “I timed him,” she added nervously, realising she was not helping matters.
“What!? How in the hell did you do that?” asked Sam.
“Quite simple really,” began Tom explaining his process. “The five years gave me a timeline to work with, I deduced it probably took at least a year for any decision to be made so I reduced that to four years. I then focussed on areas which had marine and air exclusion zones enforced within that time scale. Only a few areas had both, narrowing my search down dramatically. I then looked at those areas and found only one with two uninhabited islands which fitted the profile, secluded and remote. You don’t get much more remote than those two in the middle of the Mozambique Channel. You can pretty much find anything on the internet but you do have to know what you’re looking for.”
“Very impressive Tom and very concerning.” Sam paused as he considered the implications of Tom’s discovery. Finally he added, “Donald if you don’t mind, I’ll call you back tomorrow. Do you want to talk to Rachel and Saki in the meantime?” he asked.
“Will do, speak to you later,” replied Donald.
“OK, cheers,” said Sam as he ended the call.
Donald wasted no time in calling a family conference. Rachel, Saki and the grandparents joined them in the study.
“Well?” asked Rachel after everyone was settled.
“It sounds amazing,” replied Donald. “Really amazing, he’ll get back to us as soon as he can…”
Donald was interrupted by the sound of a helicopter coming into land. Tom and Lela’s friends had arrived.
“I suppose you two should go and greet your friends,” said Donald to Tom and Lela. “We won’t hear back from Sam until tomorrow, OK?”
“Yep,” they replied as they got up to leave.
“Just one thing, can I at least know where the school is?” asked Rachel.
Tom and Lela shot a look at each other, before rushing out of the room as fast as they could. Fortunately, Donald paused before answering, allowing the door to protect their ears from Rachel’s scream.
“It’s where???!!!!”