Ethan managed a slight smile. ‘How can you even be near that guy? He’s such a dum-dum.’
‘He’s my big blond bimbo,’ Natalka explained.
Ethan looked slightly more cheerful as he reached into a bedside drawer unit and pulled out six one-thousand-som notes.
‘Well how about you bunk school and go to the bazaar with your bimbo?’ Ethan asked. ‘I’ll need you to buy me a USB stick. That should be plenty to buy a sixteen- or thirty-two-gigabyte one. Get the biggest capacity in the smallest-sized key you can find. Then I need you to go in one of the web cafés and download a file for me.’
Natalka looked uncertain. ‘Why do you need a memory stick? You haven’t even got a computer.’
‘The less you know the better,’ Ethan said. ‘But you said you wanted to help me out, and you can keep the change. Use it to smoke yourself to death, or buy condoms to shag bimbo boy. Get the super-safe ones, you wouldn’t want any nasty accidents with that ape.’
Natalka was happy that Ethan had bucked up, but she didn’t regard this as a licence to be cheeky.
‘You’re going the right way about getting a smack in the chops,’ she warned. ‘But I’ll see what I can do.’
9. LOCK
Every new grey shirt gets a week off to recover from basic training. Ning’s first two days passed in a blur of meals, bubble baths and long naps, but as the week went on and her energy returned she found herself getting bored.
Everyone apart from Leon and Daniel was either in training or lessons all day and she’d spent more than enough hours with the ten-year-old twins during training. But things livened up with a sixth-floor corridor party on Friday night and on Saturday she joined a coachload of cherubs who got up early for a day trip to London.
‘I don’t care what you get up to, as long as it’s legal,’ CHERUB’s chief handler Meryl Spencer yelled sternly, as the thirty-two-seat coach stood in a bus lane at the side of London’s St Pancras Station. ‘But you always stay in groups of two or more and you’re back here to get on the coach at six o’clock sharp. Unless you have a good excuse, you’ll lose one pound of pocket money for every minute you’re late. Is that crystal clear?’
‘Yes, miss,’ the kids droned, apart from a couple who made chicken noises and one who went moo.
Meryl was a former Olympic sprinter but she still struggled to get out of the way quickly enough as the driver opened the coach’s hydraulic main door and the kids charged into the street.
A bunch of little kids were being taken to the London Eye, others were going to Leicester Square for a movie or to the Oxford Street shops, but Ning had accumulated three months’ pocket money while she’d been in training and as her tastes veered towards the punkish her two mates Chloe and Grace reckoned she’d enjoy lightening her wallet in Camden Lock Market.
Chloe was a slender blonde twelve-year-old who most of the younger agents on campus regarded as a bit of a bombshell. Grace was a full head shorter, with freckles and long frizzy hair. The pair had been best mates since coming to CHERUB as red shirts and had taken Ning under their wing as soon as she’d arrived on campus.
When the trio got on the underground heading north to Camden, they were surprised to see Ryan and his two best mates, mischievous Max and burly half-French Alfie, charge into the carriage behind them as the doors closed.
‘All right, slags!’ Max said cheerfully, beating Grace to the last free seat and flipping her off as the train moved away.
‘Where are you turds going?’ Grace asked.
‘Camden Market, same as,’ Max explained.
Ning liked Ryan and had no problem with his two best mates, but Grace and Chloe groaned.
‘You’re not hanging around with us,’ Chloe said.
‘We’re looking at clothes for Ning,’ Grace added, hoping to put them off.
‘I’ve never been to Camden before,’ Alfie explained, with his heavy French accent. ‘I’m told it’s the place to buy leather jackets. You know any good shops?’
‘A few,’ Chloe said reluctantly. ‘I suppose I can show you.’
‘But only if you take us in Starbucks and buy us both frappuccinos,’ Grace said.
Camden was only two stops and as Starbucks was deep inside the market the three boys and three girls wandered along, stopping in shops and diverting into narrow alleyways lined with stalls.
Although Grace and Chloe had assumed the boys would get on their nerves, they all had a decent time. Ryan and Max bought T-shirts. Alfie tried on six leather jackets but couldn’t decide what he wanted, while Ning bought some black canvas plimsolls, smellies in Body Shop and a bunch of rock music and film posters to enliven the bare walls in her new room.
By the time they reached the canal-side Starbucks in the centre of the market it was past noon. The streets were so busy that bodies were spilling off the kerb into the road. The queue for Starbucks was out the door and into the street, so they diverted into another alleyway lined with ethnic food stalls.
Ning was impressed by a stall selling Chinese food – the kind that you get in China rather than the perverted version normally available in Chinese takeaways. She’d been away from China for more than six months and found herself excitedly babbling to the stall’s husband and wife owners in Mandarin, before encouraging anxious friends to try the alien mixture of noodles, seafood and deep-fried buns.
Max was a picky eater and went for hot dog and chips from an adjoining van, but Ryan, Alfie, Chloe and Grace all took Ning’s advice on what was good and good-naturedly sampled bits of each other’s lunch while shuffling through the crowd trying to find a place to sit.
‘You must eat prawns,’ Chloe said, as she waved a battered prawn speared on a chopstick in Max’s face.
‘Away, away!’ Max protested. ‘All foreign muck makes me puke.’
Chloe snorted. ‘That’s rich, slagging off our food while eating a hot dog made from cow’s eyeballs and sheep gonads.’
Ning joined the joke and waggled a piece of fish. ‘Try the eel, Max. It’s delicious.’
As they laughed, Ryan noticed a bunch of people sitting with their legs hanging over the edge of the canal that gave the market its name.
‘Let’s sit over there,’ he said. ‘I can’t do chopsticks standing up.’
It was still only March so the canal-side concrete chilled their bums, but it was dry and the steaming foil trays made the cold tolerable. Max and Alfie both had cans of Coke and ripped off huge belches.
Once Ryan was seated with legs hanging over the canal side and his foil dish tucked between his knees, he pulled a BlackBerry from his hoodie and entered a four-digit pin. This pin took him into a hidden duplicate of the phone’s operating system that was set up exclusively for his Ryan Brasker persona.
‘You’re always staring at that phone,’ Chloe noted. ‘Is some hot babe not returning her calls?’
‘Sensible if she isn’t,’ Grace added.
Ryan and Grace had paired off six months earlier. It had ended with a massive row that involved flying macaroni cheese, and relations had been awkward ever since.
‘You’d better be quiet,’ Alfie said, his voice packed with mock seriousness. ‘That’s Ryan’s mission.’
Max laughed as Ryan logged into his Ryan Brasker Facebook page and checked to see if there was any sign of activity from Ethan. He’d heard nothing in four days and was beginning to worry.
‘It’s his virtual mission,’ Alfie explained. ‘While real men like me go out in the real world and bust some heads, Ryan’s got his special BlackBerry and his virtual mission.’
Ryan was irritated because Alfie and Max were always teasing him about this. Fortunately Chloe shot Alfie down as Ryan logged in to see if Ethan had tried to contact him on MSN.
‘So you’re a real man?’ Chloe scoffed. ‘Because to be frank, Alfie, I’ve seen your equipment in the showers after training and I didn’t realise that real men had wobbly bellies and penises the size of Jelly Beans.’
Max was now laug
hing so hard that he almost dropped his chips into the canal.
‘Who cares what you think,’ Alfie said, his tone making it clear that he cared a great deal. ‘All I know is, I’m a year younger than everyone here except Ning, but I’ve been on three decent missions already and I will be promoted to navy shirt before any of you.’
‘I’ll bet you one Jelly Bean,’ Grace said, as she gulped down a can of Dr Pepper. ‘And if you don’t have a Jelly Bean when I get my navy shirt before you, you can substitute your penis.’
Max laughed. ‘So, Grace, you’re saying you want Alfie’s penis?’
‘Already spoken for,’ Alfie said. ‘Doris would kill me if I cheated on her.’
Ryan was ignoring the banter, but Ning had noticed his concerned expression and asked if everything was OK.
‘Not really,’ Ryan said, as he put the phone back in his pocket. ‘But don’t worry about it. We’re here to have fun today.’
As Ryan said this, Grace did a huge belch right in Max’s ear. Alfie topped her with a belch of his own, as Chloe made an EWW sound.
‘You’re animals,’ Ryan said. ‘So immature.’
Then he erupted into a burp so loud that an elderly passer-by shook her head and muttered, ‘Disgusting,’ under her breath.
‘Disgusting,’ Grace said, mocking the old woman’s voice as she gave Ryan a gentle poke.
The laughter came to an abrupt halt as a group of four big skinheads – two in Man Utd shirts – came down the steps towards the canal. They’d all strolled out of a pub holding on to their pints and as they reached the canal side one drained his beer and lobbed his glass into the canal.
The splash wasn’t big, but it got the leg of Chloe’s jeans and the face of a toddler walking the canal-side path with his dad.
‘Careful,’ Chloe tutted.
The skinhead ignored Chloe, but the father of the little boy had turned instinctively and angrily towards the men who’d threatened his child. He backed off when he saw four dudes who were all bigger than him, but not before the one who’d thrown his glass in the canal reared up.
‘What are you looking at?’ the skinhead roared, slurring his words drunkenly. ‘You want me to smash your head in?’
The little boy grabbed his dad’s leg and looked like he was about to cry, while the dad kept a nervous silence.
‘You deaf and stupid?’ the skinhead asked, before turning back to his three mates. ‘Look at this skinny brat shitting himself.’
There were loads of people around, but they all walked by acting like nothing was wrong while a few others sitting by the canal were standing up and moving away.
‘Bet he’s an Arsenal fan,’ the youngest of the four skinheads quipped. ‘No bottle.’
Grace was the shortest of the six kids, but she stood up quickly and poked the skinhead who’d thrown the glass in the back.
‘Grace, stay out of it,’ Chloe whispered anxiously.
‘You’re well impressive, aren’t you?’ Grace said loudly. ‘Picking on someone half your size, with three mates backing you up.’
The skinhead turned towards Grace and gave a dismissive sweep of his hand. ‘Piss off and mind your own.’
As Grace heard this, the five other cherubs formed a semicircle behind her.
‘Arsenal are the greatest team in the world, you bald-headed shit,’ Alfie spat, piling his accent on thick. ‘Of course, this is because they are managed by a Frenchman.’
Now the skinhead looked pissed off. He turned and shouted, ‘You brats wanna swim in the canal?’
The father used the distraction to snatch his toddler and back away, but the other three skinheads penned him in and one shoved him precariously close to the canal’s edge.
‘I’m warning you,’ Grace said, eyeballing the huge man standing in front of her.
As the skinhead laughed, Ryan looked around hoping to see one of the cops he’d spotted in the crowded market earlier on. One of the other skinheads spat beer over the man as the little boy started to bawl.
The man and boy were now centimetres from the canal’s edge and Grace decided she had to act before they ended up in the filthy water. The problem was, while CHERUB training had made her into a black belt in Karate with expertise in the deadlier elements of several other fighting techniques, there’s a limit to what you can achieve at close range against an opponent three times your weight.
But Grace did have a mini sachet of sweet chilli sauce in her coat pocket and as the skinhead stooped to make another snide remark she ripped it open and squirted the contents at his face.
An eyeful of hot chilli made the skinhead stumble back. Grace followed up with a hard shove and the instant Ning saw that the skinhead was off balance she waded in with an almighty sideways shove that sent him crashing into the canal.
The speed with which this happened made the other three skinheads lose concentration just long enough for Ryan, Max and Alfie to circle behind them. Alfie was biggest and attacked first, picking up the toddler’s folded pushchair and ramming it hard into the middle bloke’s guts. Max went for the guy closest to the canal, dishing out a pivoting head kick that crumpled him backwards into a metal bollard and knocked him cold.
The passing crowds now stopped ignoring things and seemed to think they were witnessing a piece of bizarre street theatre. As the dude on the far end tried getting his arm around Alfie’s neck, Ryan smashed him in the temple with his palm, then bashed his jaw with his knee as he went down.
The father and toddler stumbled through the tangle of cherubs as one of the skinheads threw his glass. It sailed past Grace before shattering on the footpath.
Chloe was the only cherub who’d not got involved in the action. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she shouted, as Max and Alfie delivered final blows to one skinhead and Ning stomped the fingertips of the guy trying to pull himself out of the water.
As Chloe turned back to grab everyone’s backpacks and shopping bags she saw three cops running down some canal-side steps towards them.
‘Oh now they turn up,’ Ryan sneered.
Ryan felt that they’d done the right thing morally, but he wasn’t sure that the cops would see it that way and doubted that senior staff on CHERUB campus would be happy when they found out that five agents had been arrested for scrapping with a bunch of skinheads in a crowded street market.
‘Don’t forget my new shoes,’ Ning shouted to Chloe, as the lead cop jumped the last four stairs and the six CHERUB agents began sprinting away.
10. ACHES
‘How’s your arse?’ Natalka asked.
It was the same scene as a few nights earlier: Natalka coming around the door of Ethan’s room as he lay on his bed feeling sorry for himself.
‘Arse isn’t bad, but everywhere else hurts now,’ Ethan moaned. ‘Five hours shovelling rotted-down horse shit into potato sacks. Then I had to load ’em all up on to a truck to be sold at the bazaar. My whole body aches and if I dare to stop work the stable workers go crazy because Leonid told ’em he’ll dock their pay if he sees me slacking.’
‘Will this cheer you up?’ Natalka asked, as she pulled a USB memory stick out of her pocket. ‘I got to Dordoi Bazaar this afternoon.’
It was still in its packaging, but the blister pack had been ripped open.
‘Thirty-two GB, nice and small, and black so it’ll be hard to spot,’ Ethan said, straining his aching back as he sat up.
But when he reached out to grab it, Natalka swept the key out of reach.
‘When you said you were using Irena’s computer I thought you meant to play games, maybe a little porno or a chat with your Facebook chums. But I did a Google on the file I downloaded from the FTP site. It’s a suite of tools designed to hijack a computer.’
Ethan tried to sound unruffled. ‘I told you already, the less you know the better.’
Natalka stepped closer and put on a slightly menacing expression. ‘I kinda thought about that, but you know what? That’s not gonna wash when you get caught, and you conf
ess that I was involved.’
‘I’d never grass you up,’ Ethan said.
‘Not willingly, but how about when one of Leonid’s heavies gets the pliers out and starts yanking out fingernails?’
Ethan had never told Natalka that he suspected Leonid had murdered his mother.
‘It’s better that you don’t know,’ he repeated, as he struggled to think of a stronger argument.
Natalka pushed the memory stick back into her jeans. ‘If that’s all you’ve got, you can’t have this,’ she said firmly.
‘Natalka,’ Ethan said, sighing with desperation. ‘You took my money. We had a deal.’
‘Let me know when you change your mind,’ Natalka said, as she turned towards the door. ‘I’m not giving you this until I know that you’re not going to use it to try something that might get me into shit.’
Ethan buried his head in his hands. ‘Fine,’ he said angrily.
Ethan found Natalka quite mercenary – turning up when she wanted cigarettes or money and then giving him the cold shoulder whenever she had something better going on. He liked her a lot, but wasn’t certain that he could trust her.
‘It’s going into Leonid’s computer,’ he said reluctantly. ‘The program hijacks the computer. Logs every keystroke, takes regular screenshots and saves every file that’s opened in unencrypted form.’
‘Who uploaded the program to the FTP site?’
‘My mate Ryan from back in California. I’ve only had limited access to the net, so he’s been helping me out by doing searches. Trying to learn about hacking and stuff.’
‘You trust this Ryan kid?’
Ethan nodded. ‘He’s some kid at my school from before my mum died. He saved my life when I got hit by a car. And I make sure we use picture messaging or Skype sometimes, so I know it’s really him, not some goon from the CIA who ripped off his MSN account.’
‘You should still be careful,’ Natalka said. ‘Especially if he’s in America.’
Ethan shrugged. ‘It’s not like I’ve got queues of friends lining up to help me out, Natalka. Maybe I’m only ninety-nine per cent sure that Ryan is trustworthy, but I’m a hundred per cent sure that Leonid wants to take the clan over unopposed. I think he killed my mom and tried to kill me back in California.’
Cherub: Guardian Angel: Book 14 Page 6