‘I’m not making up with that penis,’ Callum said. ‘I’d sooner run a thousand punishment laps.’
‘You don’t have to make up,’ Maureen said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can duel to the death with rusty hooks as soon as my little mission’s over.’
The twins shot daggers at one another as they reluctantly settled back into their chairs.
‘So what’s this mission then?’ Connor asked.
12.10 p.m.
Steve Nolan lived in a warehouse apartment in London’s trendy Primrose Hill. Skylights, big sofas and Andy Warhol on the walls. Born in Melbourne, he’d set up a jewellery manufacturing business after dropping out of art school. He was a well-known face on the London fashion scene and his wedding rings had graced film stars and pop idols.
It was almost noon, but Steve had been out clubbing the night before and was just out of bed, coming down his spiral stairs in a striped Paul Smith dressing gown. The plan was to slide a pod into the coffee machine and drink strong black coffee while he checked e-mails on his laptop.
‘Nice dog,’ McEwen shouted.
Steve shot into the air with fright as he saw the burly man in workman’s boots and paint-spattered trackie bottoms sitting on his leather couch stroking a minuscule poodle.
‘Who the bloody hell are you?’ Steve demanded with a slight Aussie accent, as he lunged for a cordless handset. ‘Get out or I’ll call the police.’
‘Touch that phone and I’ll cook Sooki in your microwave,’ McEwen said matter of factly.
As McEwen stood up the tiny dog rolled into a gap between two sofa cushions and got her back legs trapped. Despite his threat, McEwen cupped his hand under Sooki’s belly and lifted her up. She yelped twice before clattering across the slate floor towards her master.
‘I don’t keep any jewellery here,’ Steve said nervously, as McEwen approached. ‘And I know Karate.’
McEwen stopped walking as Steve ducked into a fighting stance and made a high-pitched yelp before throwing a punch. McEwen raised one eyebrow as he intercepted the fist and began crushing Steve’s knuckles inside his massive hand.
‘Oww, oww! Oh my god, that really hurts!’
‘If I let you go will you cut the Karate nonsense?’
‘Bloody hell,’ Steve whined. ‘Christ, you brute!’
McEwen pushed Steve towards a chromed bar stool. ‘Sit on there. I’m not here to rob or rape you. Just calm down and shut your face.’
‘This is my home, how dare you!’ Steve said, rubbing his injured knuckles as he propped himself on the stool.
‘Which part of shut your face didn’t you understand? And do your robe up, I can see more of you than I really want to.’
Steve looked furious as he pulled the robe across his lap and tied the belt.
‘My name is Jake McEwen. I work for British intelligence. I called your office, but the girl there said you were at home. But you didn’t answer the door, so I popped the French window and waited while you sang in the shower.’
‘You look more like a bricklayer than James Bond,’ Steve said.
‘Dress like a builder and you get away with all kinds of suspicious noises,’ McEwen explained.
‘Do you have some kind of identification?’
McEwen smiled as he flashed a plastic card with his photo on. ‘Ever seen one of these before?’
‘You could have made that in a copy shop.’
‘Could have,’ McEwen said. ‘So for now, either believe or don’t believe the spy bit. The important thing to understand is that if you don’t listen very carefully to what I’m about to tell you, the next thing I squeeze won’t be your knuckles, OK?’
Steve hastily crossed his legs. ‘So what does British Intelligence want with a jeweller?’ he asked.
‘There’s a couple of South American diplomats going around London hawking dodgy diamonds – the kind that are illegally mined and sold in violation of a United Nations trade embargo. We need to get into their offices and plant some bugs, but our suspect is working out of the most secure part of the embassy.’
‘And what am I supposed to do about that, your spyness?’
‘You can get close to these people: you’re well known as a man who buys large uncut diamonds and it’s been in the newspapers that your company is having financial problems.’
Steve shook his head resolutely. ‘I have a personal reputation to protect. If I was seen to be involved with shady characters … And frankly, I’d have been more inclined to help if you’d approached me in a civilised manner.’
McEwen pulled a letter out of his pocket and showed it to Steve long enough for him to see that it came from Inland Revenue – Tax Fraud Department.
‘We need you on board quickly because we only just received the information and we’ve got to act fast. If you agree to cooperate, my people will be prepared to make this little tax problem of yours go away.’
Steve shook his head. ‘I don’t have a tax problem.’
McEwen smiled as he read an extract from the letter:
‘The informant Miss T told the revenue that Mr Steve Nolan of Nolan’s Jewellers has been siphoning money from sales in the United States into a private account. Pieces of jewellery worth in excess of £2.4 million were allegedly donated to film and television personalities in the United States for promotional purposes. Miss T stated that the items were actually sold by a Cayman Island-based company owned by Steve Nolan and his sister Emily, and provided us with account numbers and transaction dates.’
McEwen passed the letter across to Steve.
‘That’s serious seven-figure tax evasion,’ McEwen explained. ‘Now I ain’t no lawyer, but I hear you’ve already been a naughty boy and had a slap on the wrist from the taxman. If they prosecute you again, it’ll be slammer time. And I don’t think your refined and delicate self would really fit too well inside Wormwood Scrubs.’
Steve’s worried eyes turned angry as he worked out who the informant was. ‘I can’t believe that bitch dobbed me in,’ he hissed. ‘I paid her bloody wages while she had two ugly-arsed sprogs.’
‘So the deal’s simple, Mr Nolan,’ McEwen said, not responding to Steve’s emotional state. ‘If you help us deal with this little piece of business, we’ll make sure that any investigation vanishes in a puff of fairy dust.’
McEwen paused to glance at his watch. ‘We’ve got until this evening. Call your lawyer, we’ll draw up legal papers giving you immunity from prosecution for tax evasion, provided you help us out. Do we have a deal, Mr Nolan?’
Nolan looked down at his lap and made a long sigh before answering. ‘I suppose we do.’
‘Great,’ McEwen said, smiling. ‘And you’d better call someone to fix your French doors too. I kind of wrenched ’em off their tracks when I broke in.’
9.24 p.m.
The Lymeric Hotel was a shabby two-star near London’s Russell Square. The corridors thronged with French and Japanese school kids having the time of their lives.
Callum and Connor were definitely not having the time of their lives. They sat together at the end of a double bed, stripped down to grey school socks and matching blue undershorts. They had a large modelling light shining in their faces and the bedspread and carpet around Callum’s feet were covered in clumps of freshly chopped hair.
‘What do you think?’ Lucy asked.
Lucy was an MI5 technical officer. Her speciality was concealment and disguise. She could open up a Reebok and hide a microphone in the heel, give you a new jaw line, or stick on a mole that was actually a high definition camera.
Even identical twins aren’t exactly the same and Lucy’s job was to iron out the differences between Callum and Connor. CHERUB didn’t have its own cosmetic specialist, so she’d worked with the twins on several occasions. Usually they had a bit of a laugh, but this time it was strictly business.
‘That’s the hair done,’ Lucy told Maureen, who sat at a desk nearby. ‘What do you think?’
‘They’re like two pe
as in a pod,’ Maureen replied. ‘Surly, miserable, teenaged peas.’
‘With zits,’ Lucy laughed, as the twins remained determinedly silent. ‘They were so much easier to match up before they started getting hormones.’
Lucy took out a powerful LED torch and moved it methodically over Callum’s skin. He had a couple of bright red zits on his neck that would hopefully be covered up by the collar of his shirt. Connor had a more visible zit on his right nostril, and Lucy got to work with her make-up bag, toning down Connor’s zit with concealing cream and painting a red patch on to Callum so that the boys looked identical.
‘Stand up straight,’ Lucy ordered. ‘Shoulders touching.’
When the twins stood level Lucy carefully eyed the top of their heads. ‘You’re catching up, Callum,’ she said. ‘But you’re still about ten millimetres shorter than your brother. I’ll give you a lift to put inside your shoes.’
‘Nobody will notice,’ Callum moaned.
‘It’s only a tiny difference, but twenty tiny differences are enough to make someone suspicious, as you well know.’
‘Do you ever get them mixed up?’ Maureen asked.
Lucy laughed. ‘I’ve spent enough time staring at these two under bright lights and magnifying glasses to know every blemish. But the easiest way to tell them apart is Connor’s nose. It tilts slightly to the right if you look carefully.’
Maureen stood up and looked as Lucy pointed out the difference. ‘So it does,’ she said.
‘That’s where our mum lost it and smashed my face against a tabletop,’ Connor explained.
The twins rarely spoke about their early years, but they’d been taken into care aged seven and their mother had spent eighteen months in prison for abusing them. This awkward truth hung in the air until Lucy broke it by giving Connor a gentle prod in the buttock with the pointed end of a plastic comb.
‘You’re done,’ she announced.
‘That was sexual harassment,’ Connor moaned. ‘I’m suing!’
‘Sexual harassment, you wish,’ Lucy said, as she poked him again. ‘Don’t wash off your make-up, sleep on your backs. If anything calamitous happens, you can call my mobile number. But I live in Sevenoaks and I’ve been on duty all day, so please try not to.’
Callum and Connor both thought Lucy was sexy and laughed, until they caught themselves smiling at each other and went back to being miserable. The two boys turned towards matching sets of school uniform lying across the bed, along with matching shoes and two backpacks with cricket bats sticking out of them.
As Lucy packed her make-up bag into a wheeled case, Callum started getting dressed. When he was done, Maureen took a photograph of how he looked, while Connor made sure that his tie was knotted at the same length as his brother’s.
‘Did you put the lifts in your shoes?’ Connor asked.
He didn’t sound nasty, but it was designed to needle his brother about being a few millimetres shorter.
‘Of course I did,’ Callum said acidly. ‘I’m not a moron.’
‘I wouldn’t go as far as that,’ Connor said.
Maureen sensed another row brewing and stood up. ‘You know boys, I heard that they’re looking for a couple of lads to scrape the sludge out of two hundred metres of guttering around the mission control building. Would you like me to volunteer you?’
The twins got the message and shut up.
Thursday, 4.17 a.m.
The embassy was in a grand terrace close to Regent’s Park. A black people-carrier stopped two doors away and Callum and McEwen stepped out into a drizzly summer morning. The pair had green boiler suits with the name of a heating engineering company zipped over their clothes and McEwen carried a large metal toolbox and a long policeman’s torch. They walked up six steps and a security guard opened the door before they could buzz the intercom.
‘Are you familiar with the protocol?’ the guard asked, as he led them up thickly carpeted stairs, with chandeliers hanging overhead.
‘Just about,’ McEwen said. ‘But remind me anyway.’
The guard wore the uniform of a regular security company, but was actually an MI5 operative. ‘We’ve had a technical crew working up here for the last two nights making your access point. Of course, it goes without saying that there might be a major diplomatic incident if you were caught.’
‘We’ll do our best not to be,’ McEwen said, smiling cheekily. ‘I promise.’
‘I got picked for tonight’s assignment because I worked with a CHERUB agent many years ago,’ the guard said. ‘Lovely girl named Amy Collins. She was only eleven, but my god did she know her stuff. I often wonder what became of her.’
‘Better not to ask,’ McEwen said gruffly. ‘You know how it is.’
‘She’s not at CHERUB any more,’ Callum said. ‘She’s in her twenties now.’
McEwen flicked Callum’s ear and told him to shut his mouth. The guard looked at Callum guiltily but didn’t say anything more until they reached the third floor and crossed a meeting room fitted with a long oak table.
‘The shaft is only about two metres long and leads to a ventilation grille inside the embassy,’ the guard explained. ‘I’ve been up there and cleaned out every speck of dirt so that you don’t spoil your clothes. The office workers will start arriving here in a couple of hours, but I’ll lock this room and nobody will come inside.’
The guard reached up and pulled a large picture off the wall, revealing a crude plasterboard hatch directly behind it. Callum looked inside, and could see the embassy’s polished wooden floor through the grille about half a metre above his head.
‘You can make tea or coffee, there’s biscuits,’ the guard continued. ‘If you need to urinate there’s a flask, and I think that’s everything. I’ll give you a call when I see Steve Nolan arriving at the embassy.’
‘All sounds good to me,’ McEwen said. ‘We stopped to pick up newspapers and some breakfast on the way in, so we’ll just squat here until show time.’
7.22 a.m.
Connor liked a good blast in the shower when he woke up in the morning, but he couldn’t go near water because of the make-up job and he felt grotty as he met with Steve Nolan in the hotel lobby.
‘So you’re my new nephew,’ Steve said airily. ‘How lovely to meet you.’
Maureen didn’t like Steve’s tone and spoke sharply. ‘Concentrate on what you’ve been taught, Mr Nolan. Remember, you only earn your get-out-of-jail-free card if this all comes off perfectly. Have you got any questions?’
‘Is there anywhere around here where I could get a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel?’ Steve asked. ‘I’m not used to being up this early and I don’t want to start feeling queasy.’
Maureen was slightly irritated by the request, but Steve was going undercover with no training and she had to do everything she could to keep him calm. They rerouted their driver so that they passed a branch of Bagel Factory and Steve satisfied his craving as they took the fifteen-minute drive to Regent’s Park.
The embassy was regarded as a likely terrorist target. Concrete bollards protected it from car bombs and a miserable police officer stood by the main door, looking damp. The lobby had a mahogany reception desk and walls decorated with Aztec shields.
The rugged-looking suspect introduced himself as Ramiro and was surprised to see Connor.
‘Last-minute thing,’ Steve explained. ‘My brother’s away on business and this little fella has a habit of not making it to school if you don’t watch him walk through the gate.’
Ramiro laughed. ‘The same in my country,’ he said. ‘My daughter at school is very good. My son’s not so much. It’s not a manly thing to study hard. Now, if you don’t mind.’
They’d crossed a small marble hallway, but the main part of the embassy building was behind an airport-style security checkpoint. An embassy guard stood up as Connor and Steve placed their backpacks on the conveyor belt. When he was satisfied with their bags, he spoke in bad English, ordering them to remove their belts and shoe
s and turn out their pockets before passing through a metal detector.
‘I’m sorry about this,’ Ramiro said. ‘But there are drug wars and terrorists in my country. We must do this to everyone.’
‘Not a problem,’ Steve said politely, as he pushed his feet back inside his shoes.
The guard was less friendly. He swivelled the LCD display from the X-ray machine towards Steve and tapped accusingly on the outline of a dark purple contraption.
‘What is this?’
‘Weighing scales and an optical magnifier.’
‘What for?’
Ramiro broke into a broad smile. ‘Sergeant, Mr Nolan is my guest.’
The guard turned sharply towards Ramiro. ‘You do your job and I do mine. You either get clearance from the ambassador, or your friends pass through security the same as everyone else.’
‘It’s not a problem at all,’ Steve said, as he unzipped his pack. ‘Look all you like.’
The guard seemed to consider this for a few seconds before giving a wave. ‘Take it through.’
Connor saw an exchange of nasty looks between Ramiro and the guard as he stuffed everything back into his pockets. He reckoned the guard knew Ramiro was up to something dodgy. But was he an honest man who’d seen one too many sets of gemstone scales on his X-ray machine, or was he just looking for a cut of Ramiro’s profits?
Not that it mattered right now. According to another diamond merchant to whom Ramiro had tried selling his haul of illegal diamonds, he met clients in a third-floor office. If he was taking them to a different part of the embassy their whole plan was completely down the toilet.
Connor tensed up as they entered a tiny lift, with barely room for the three of them. He felt some relief when Ramiro pressed the button for the third floor, but he was now seconds away from the trickiest part of the operation.
As the elderly lift clattered upwards, Connor reached into the pocket of his school blazer and wrapped his hand around a cricket ball. He made sure he was last out of the lift and as Ramiro and Steve turned left and started walking, he dropped the leather ball, making sure that it ran backwards down the corridor.
CHERUB: Brigands M.C. Page 31