Divine Madness

by Robert Muchamore

  MI5 had connections inside Hong Kong’s telecommunications industry and they’d managed to set up a trace on Clyde Xu’s mobile phone signal, without having to tell the Chinese authorities about the CHERUB operation.

  ‘According to this he’s right on top of you, John,’ Chloe said. ‘Mobile tracking isn’t pinpoint, but he should be less than fifty metres away.’

  ‘Which way is he moving?’

  ‘Nowhere fast. Maybe he’s gone into a shop or something.’

  ‘Thanks, Chloe,’ John said. ‘Call me back if he starts moving.’

  John snapped the phone shut and looked across at Kerry. ‘Any sign?’

  ‘I’m too short,’ Kerry said. ‘I can’t see a thing.’

  ‘Chloe said he’s stopped moving.’

  ‘We passed a Starbucks twenty metres back,’ Kerry said. ‘We could check that out.’

  ‘Right,’ John said.

  As the pair turned away from the display of cheap watches to head for Starbucks, Kerry spotted a green jacket, hands buried in pockets. It flashed past less than a metre in front of them. Luckily, Clyde Xu had things on his mind and his eyes were glued to the back of the person walking ahead of him.

  John and Kerry exchanged shocked expressions, before stepping into the crowd and resuming the chase.

  ‘How did we manage to get in front of him?’ Kerry asked.

  ‘Must have dropped into a shop to buy something,’ John said, as he craned his neck, desperate not to lose his fix on Xu for a second time.

  Kerry looked at her watch. It was three minutes to eight, which either meant Clyde was running late, or that the meeting was going to take place somewhere nearby. They closed right up on their target as they waited to cross a road. As soon as the green walk sign lit up, Clyde jogged forward behind the first line of stopped cars, then bounded across the pavement and into a noodle bar with a grubby white sign and a plate glass frontage steamed up with condensation.

  They wanted to give Clyde a few moments to settle into the restaurant. John and Kerry crossed the road at a sedate pace, then made themselves look busy at a newsstand. Kerry bought a Hong Kong Times and some sweets, while John called Kyle on his mobile phone.

  ‘Kyle, where are you?’

  ‘Me and Bruce saw you crossing the road,’ Kyle answered. ‘Don’t sweat it.’

  ‘OK,’ John said. ‘Stay close to the restaurant, but don’t let Clyde see you and don’t make any moves before I give you the all clear, you understand?’

  ‘You’re the boss,’ Kyle answered.

  John snapped his phone shut and looked at Kerry as she slid a tube of mints into her jeans. ‘Ready?’

  Kerry handed John the newspaper and nodded. ‘As I’ll ever be.’

  ‘OK, go and win yourself an Oscar. I’ll follow you inside in three minutes.’

  Because of the condensation, Kerry wasn’t sure what she’d find as she pushed open the glass door. The kitchen was at the front of the restaurant, with a muggy soy-sauce smell rising from steaming tubs of noodle and rice dishes.

  A sweaty face popped up from behind the counter. ‘Hi, do you want a table, or take-away?’

  ‘Table,’ Kerry said tightly. ‘I think my friend is already here.’

  The man waved his hand towards the rows of plastic tables at the back of the restaurant. Kerry felt queasy as she passed a short line of customers waiting for take-out. The restaurant was seventy per cent full and the decibel level was pretty high. She spotted Clyde at a table and was relieved to see that the person he was meeting hadn’t arrived. He looked tetchy, jiggling his ankle up and down and fanning himself with a laminated menu.

  ‘Hi,’ Kerry said, as she sat opposite.

  Clyde’s chin dropped so fast it practically hit the tabletop. ‘What …? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I followed you,’ Kerry confessed.

  ‘Par-don me?’

  Kerry started to babble. ‘Clyde, I know this probably sounds dumb, but I really wanted to talk to you. I’ve been meaning to for ages, but I kept chickening out. You see, I can’t stop thinking about you. All the time. I just need to know if you like me. You know, not like a friend. Like a girlfriend.’

  ‘Well, um … Kerry, I’m flattered.’

  ‘Oh … This feels so dumb now,’ Kerry said, screwing up her face like she was about to cry. As she did, she reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled the sticky backing away from a small listening device.

  ‘Are you even allowed out this late on your own?’

  ‘Not really,’ Kerry sniffed. ‘I should have realised you didn’t like me.’

  ‘Kerry, there’s nothing wrong with you. I bet we’d get on really well if we were the same age. But I’m sixteen and you’re thirteen. Be sensible, that’s never gonna work, is it?’

  ‘I’m nearly fourteen,’ Kerry said, as she stuck the bug to the underside of the table.

  Now the initial shock of Kerry’s presence had worn off, Clyde put some thought into how embarrassing it was going to be if the person he was meeting found a girl sobbing at his table.

  ‘And I’m nearly seventeen,’ Clyde said, snatching Kerry’s wrist and squeezing it hard.

  ‘You’re meeting another girl here, aren’t you?’

  ‘Now you listen, Kerry,’ Clyde snapped, pointing a finger. ‘I’m here for a meeting. We can talk about this some other time. But right now, you have to get out of my face.’

  Kerry had no reason to stick around now she’d planted the bug. She snatched her arm away from Clyde and sobbed dramatically as she stood up. A group of women with lots of shopping bags sitting a couple of tables away craned their necks around, slightly concerned.

  ‘I’m sorry, Clyde.’

  Clyde raised a hand in front of his face, as if to say he couldn’t listen to any more. ‘Just get out of here.’

  As Kerry strode out of the restaurant, pretending to be in tears, she swept past John heading in the opposite direction.

  John passed between the rows of tables and settled in a few rows behind Clyde Xu. He pulled open his newspaper, placed a wireless headset over his ear that looked exactly like the kind that get supplied with upmarket mobile phones and switched on the receiver unit. He heard the sound of Clyde anxiously jiggling his menu.

  *

  It was nearly quarter past eight when a heavily built Australian man carrying a large sports bag slid into the plastic bench facing Clyde Xu. He reached across the table, shook hands with Clyde and spoke in English.

  ‘How’s it going, pal? Sorry I kept you.’

  Clyde had a nervous touch in his voice, like a first date or a job interview. ‘No worries.’

  ‘OK mate, nothing goes in writing, so prick up your ears,’ the Australian said, too quietly for anyone in the noisy restaurant to overhear, but easily picked up by the tiny microphone half a metre away from his mouth.

  ‘The bag is for you. There’s a security pass and cleaner’s uniform inside. The pass is for an office block called the Pacific Business Centre, in Kowloon. The real cleaners work from eleven at night until two in the morning. You sneak in just after they arrive at eleven tomorrow night. Tell the security on the front desk that it’s your first night on the job and you got lost. Act nervous.’

  Clyde smiled. ‘I probably will be nervous.’

  The Aussie smiled back. ‘Only natural, son. When you arrive at the office, you stay the hell away from the other cleaners and hide out until they leave.’

  ‘Where do I hide?’

  ‘Toilets. Not the ones in the offices themselves, but the ones outside by the elevators. They’re maintained by a different contractor that only works during office hours.

  ‘At two a.m., you use the security pass in the bag and enter the offices of Viennese Oil on the sixth floor. It’s a small Italian oil exploration company. At the back of the office you’ll find the chairman’s suite behind a set of double doors. In the washroom off to the side will be a Samsonite overnight bag. It’ll be packed with clothes and t
oiletries. Open the bag and place the explosive at the bottom. Insert both fuses, in case one goes wrong. You activate them by snapping off the heads and twisting the two wires together.

  ‘When you’ve finished, you go back to the toilets and strip off your cleaner’s overall. Then you leave the building via the stairs. You’ll set off an alarm when you open the fire door. The security guard is no spring chicken, but he might call the cops so I wouldn’t hang around, OK?’

  Clyde nodded. ‘What happens then?’

  ‘You’re a teenager, so my guess is that you go home and play with yourself before falling asleep.’

  ‘No, I mean what happens with the explosive. Why are we putting it into an overnight bag instead of under his desk or something?’

  The Australian shook his head slowly. ‘Come on, you know how this works. We don’t tell you what you don’t need to know.’

  Clyde felt stupid. ‘Of course, sorry.’

  5. FOLLOW

  John was troubled as he sat behind his newspaper in the noodle bar, listening to Clyde Xu’s meeting with the Australian. He was operating nine and a half thousand kilometres from home, without the knowledge of the Hong Kong authorities, and he was a couple of bodies shy of what he really needed to run his operation.

  In the UK, a CHERUB mission controller can call in extra cherubs, adult intelligence officers or police at short notice, even bringing in a team by helicopter if necessary. Out here, there was nothing except a couple of deskbound MI5 officers at the British embassy, who John wouldn’t have trusted to carry his luggage, let alone conceal the existence of an ultra-secret organisation like CHERUB.

  John’s team had spent six weeks building up to the moment when they could successfully identify Clyde Xu with a more senior member of Help Earth, but that would all be for nothing if the Australian walked into the crowd and disappeared before being identified. Someone would have to follow him.

  It couldn’t be John himself; he’d be recognised after sitting opposite the Australian in the restaurant. Chloe was back at the apartment coordinating the phone tracking and there was a chance the Australian had been watching the restaurant for some time and had seen Kerry.

  That left Kyle and Bruce as the only ones who could do the job. John had told them both to wear protective body armour under their clothing, but he still wasn’t comfortable about sending two boys after a man who might be carrying a gun. There was also a chance they’d bump into Clyde and get recognised as he left the restaurant.

  John studied the physically imposing Australian, looking for any obvious sign that he was armed. But he’d been in the intelligence game more than twenty years and wasn’t fooling himself: unless your target is stupid enough to let a weapon bulge through their clothes, there’s no way to tell if a man is carrying a gun.

  At least the potential problem of Kyle and Bruce bumping into Clyde solved itself. The Australian threw a HK$100 note on the table as he stood up to leave and told Clyde to stay back and pay the waitress.

  John grabbed his mobile, dialled up Kyle and kept his voice low. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘We’re lurking by a cash machine fifty metres down the road.’

  John’s brain tried to turn a dozen contradictory factors into a decision.

  Kyle spoke tautly. ‘Come on, John. We’ve been waiting six weeks. Me and Bruce can handle this.’

  John took a deep breath. Help Earth had killed more than two hundred people since they first surfaced. This was an exceptional opportunity to crack the organisation open and the boys were keen to go.

  ‘All right,’ John said, running an anxious hand around the back of his neck. ‘You’re going for it, but no stupid risks, OK? Your mark is tall, two hundred centimetres. Big shoulders, squashed up nose like a rugby player. Blond hair, side parting. Smart suit, rectangular glasses with an orange tint.’

  ‘Just eyeballing him now,’ Kyle said. ‘He’s stepping out. How far are we taking this?’

  John had no basis for making a decision on how dangerous the Australian was. ‘Kyle, it’s down to your training and common sense. There’s nothing I can say.’

  ‘Do we just follow, or do you want us to take him down?’

  ‘Yeah,’ John said. ‘If you think you can do it, take him down.’

  He snapped the phone shut and hoped he’d made the right call.

  *

  Kyle grinned at Bruce as he pocketed his phone. ‘John’s got the jitters, but we’re on.’

  ‘Mission controllers always get the jitters,’ Bruce shrugged. ‘I think it’s in their job description.’

  ‘And we’ve got ourselves a nice easy mark.’

  The Australian’s blond head stood out in the crowd, and because he didn’t know Kyle or Bruce they could follow more closely than John and Kerry had been able to follow Clyde. Still, the boys couldn’t get cocky: two teenaged Europeans stood out, wandering the streets of Hong Kong after dark.

  After walking a kilometre, the bobbing blond head ducked into an underground MTR station, down a flight of steps and into a gloomily lit ticket hall. The Aussie had a pass and entered through the electronic turnstile. The boys didn’t.

  ‘Shiiit,’ Kyle said, as he headed up to the ticket machine with a hand burrowing down his pocket looking for change.

  An elderly man stood in front of them, trying to feed in a twenty-dollar note. It was agony watching the note whirr in and out, with a red LED flickering above the slot. Finally, the note got sucked in and a paper ticket and a flurry of coins clanked into the dispensing drawer.

  ‘Come on, Granddad,’ Kyle murmured impatiently, as the old codger scooped up his change.

  Bruce pushed in and began feeding his coins. As soon as the first ticket popped out, Kyle grabbed it. He raced through the turnstile and began sprinting down an empty fixed staircase that ran between two crowded escalators. Bruce was fifteen seconds behind him, but there was no sign of the Australian when they met up at the bottom.

  ‘Which way?’ Bruce gasped, as the crowds bustling around them divided off towards platforms for trains heading east and west.

  ‘We’ve gotta split,’ Kyle said anxiously. ‘You try eastbound.’

  The boys headed through the crowd on to separate platforms. The metro was packed out, and Kyle got jammed into a slow-moving crowd on a short flight of steps leading down to the westbound platform. The crush made it impossible to see anything beyond the head of the person in front and no amount of pushing was going to help.

  Bruce had an easier time making it on to the other platform, but a distant rumbling and rush of air meant a train was arriving at any second. If the Aussie was on the platform, he had to identify him fast.

  Bruce scanned the platform, but couldn’t see the distinctive blond head. To get a better look, he pushed through to a drinks vending machine at the back of the platform, wedged his trainer in the drawer where plastic bottles dropped out and used it as a step to raise himself above the crowd.

  It only took a second to spot the blond head, fifty metres down the platform. Meanwhile, the wind coming through the tunnel was blowing back Bruce’s hair and the two lamps on the front of the incoming train lit up the tunnel.

  There wasn’t time to fetch Kyle. Bruce stumbled forwards as he stepped down, clattering into the back of a rough looking dude with punkish hair and slashed up jeans. He turned on Bruce with an angry face.

  ‘Watch it, you piece of shit.’

  Bruce ignored the remark as the train doors slid open. He ploughed into the crowds of people getting off, but only managed to move fifteen metres along the platform, before having to cut into a carriage as a recorded voice told him to mind the doors.

  The air-conditioned space was cooler than the stifling interior of the station, and Bruce felt a hint of relief as he grabbed a pole and the train began to move. It was standing room only, but the carriages weren’t packed out, so he began moving towards the front of the train, politely asking people to make way.

  ‘Sorry, I’ve lost my auntie
… ’Scuse me … Coming through.’

  The design of the Hong Kong metro gave Bruce a huge break. Instead of separate carriages, the train was made up of an unbroken tube, with a bendy section every thirty-five metres to enable it to turn corners. The train was slowing up for the next stop by the time Bruce made it to the front section, which was less crowded than the centre.

  The Australian had found an empty seat, and as people stood up to get off, Bruce grabbed one for himself, squeezing between two fat ladies twenty metres away from his target. It was close enough to eyeball the Australian, but not so close that the Australian would pay any attention to him.

  Bruce took out his phone, hoping to contact Kyle, but there was no signal in the tunnel, so he grabbed a discarded newspaper off the shelf behind. The text wasn’t English and while six weeks in a Hong Kong school had brought his conversational Cantonese close to the level of a native speaker, he still found the weird little squiggles the language was written in hard work. After a couple of lines, he gave up and stared at a car ad.

  *

  The Australian stood as the train slowed down for its fifth stop. Bruce had been watching him out of the corner of his eye and nothing seemed to suggest that he was suspicious.

  When the train stopped, Bruce and the Australian exited through separate doors. Awkwardly, Bruce was nearer to the exit, so he rested his trainer on a bench and fiddled with the shoelace until the Australian was in front of him. Before giving chase, he pulled on a Nike baseball cap to alter his appearance slightly.

  At this end of the line the train ran just a few metres below street level. After passing through the turnstile, the station exit was a short flight of steps up from the platform. They were on a four-lane road, lined with office blocks and hotels. The sky was now completely black and the evening breeze had some bite. Apart from a few bars and restaurants, the shops all had their metal shutters pulled down for the night.

  If he’d had the chance, Bruce would have contacted Chloe back at the apartment to say what was going on, but within fifty metres of the station the Australian pushed his way through a revolving door and into the lobby of a smart hotel.