CHERUB: Guardian Angel

by Robert Muchamore

  Ethan was disappointed, but tried not to let it show.

  Natalka shared a room with her mum on the first floor, so she took the stairs. The Aramovs all lived up top on the sixth floor and Ethan quickened his pace when he saw that cousin Andre was holding the lift for him.

  ‘Thanks,’ Ethan said, as he stepped into a narrow car with one bulb out of three working and a missing service panel at the back so that you could stick your arm out into the lift shaft.

  ‘That Natalka’s a cow,’ Andre said. ‘And she’ll never go out with you. She only likes older guys.’

  ‘We’re mates,’ Ethan said irritably. ‘And who says I fancy her?’

  The lift doors had half closed, but jammed until Andre gave them an almighty boot. ‘This lift is so crap!’

  ‘Like everything else around here,’ Ethan said.

  The doors almost closed at the second attempt, but a trainer wedged itself in the gap and Boris and Alex muscled their way in, each holding another bottle of beer.

  ‘Look who it is!’ Alex said drunkenly. ‘My geek baby brother and even geekier Yank cousin.’

  Boris laughed. ‘Probably going up to their room to snog each other.’

  ‘Show us how you do it,’ Alex said noisily, as the lift started going up. Then more aggressively as he faced Ethan off, ‘Go on.’

  ‘Show what?’ Ethan asked, trying to hide his fear.

  ‘Kiss your boyfriend,’ Alex explained, as he grabbed Ethan behind the neck and shoved him towards Andre.

  ‘I’m not gay,’ Andre protested, as he squirmed into a corner behind Boris. ‘Get off him.’

  ‘Or what?’ Alex repeated.

  ‘I’ll tell Grandma that you beat up the old kebab seller,’ Andre blurted. ‘Why’d you do that anyway? He was all right.’

  Boris solved the mystery. ‘We bought kebabs off him this morning. Gave him twenty som, but he only gave me change from ten.’

  ‘Called us thieving little liars, didn’t he, Boris?’ Alex added, as he got fed up with the kissing thing and let Ethan go. ‘Bet he’s sorry he said that right now.’

  ‘Gonna be in pain for days from that beating,’ Boris said, taking a cheerful slug of his beer. ‘He’s lucky I didn’t burn him up.’

  By this time the lift had stopped. The door jammed again but Alex strong-armed it the rest of the way.

  ‘Later, geeks!’ Alex said when they were all out in the sixth-floor hallway.

  Before heading off, Boris gave Ethan a shove into the wall. It wasn’t that hard, but Ethan caught his elbow on a radiator and winced with pain.

  ‘Your brothers are mental,’ Ethan said, shaking his head warily. ‘Stone-cold psychos.’

  Andre was concerned because Ethan seemed to be in more pain than a shove against the wall should have merited. ‘Is it where you got run over?’

  Ethan nodded. ‘My arm’s OK most of the time now, but not when some tit-head smashes into you.’

  ‘I can’t believe what they did to the old man,’ Andre said. ‘I wish I could help him.’

  ‘He’ll be in hiding,’ Ethan said.

  ‘I’m gonna see how Grandma is,’ Andre said. ‘You coming?’

  Ethan found his cancer-riddled grandmother depressing, but the only other thing he had to do was go back to his room and sulk, so he tagged along behind Andre.

  The sixth floor had originally been officers’ quarters and was mostly divided up into small rooms with kitchenettes and bathrooms with terrible plumbing.

  The Aramovs had more money than taste and the corridor floor was decked out in leaf-green shag pile carpet, with a mixture of gaudy abstract paintings and photos of Aramov family members shaking hands with politicians, celebs and minor royals. Pride of place went to a picture of Irena Aramov shaking hands with a US general, after she’d landed a lucrative contract for her planes to deliver cargo for the US Army in Iraq.

  The Aramovs also had enemies, so the skylights and windows had huge mortar-proof grilles. There were armour-plated doors that could be closed in the event of an attack, and an emergency escape chute leading to a nuclear bunker in the basement.

  Ethan’s grandma Irena was the boss of the Aramov Clan and had knocked a couple of walls down to give herself a decent living space, with a long balcony that overlooked the airfield. The boys found her propped on a white leather sofa, surrounded by her collection of coloured glass vases and a huge LCD screen showing a Chinese soap opera with the sound turned off.

  Irena’s exact age was a mystery to everyone but herself, but she’d been suffering with lung cancer for more than two years and looked extremely frail. She had a drip in her arm and an oxygen cylinder at her side, but the woman who’d turned the Aramov Clan from a small-time regional smuggling operation into one of the world’s richest criminal empires still had her wits about her. She even refused pain medication because it weakened her grip on reality.

  ‘My boys!’ Irena said, lighting up as soon as she saw her two youngest grandsons. Then she shouted for her long-suffering Chinese nurse. ‘Yang, bring milk and chocolate biscuits. The good ones from Dubai.

  ‘So how are you? How was school?’

  ‘School’s school,’ Andre said, giving a shrug. ‘You look better. It’s good to see you’re out of bed today.’

  Irena smiled as the boys each sunk into a wallowy leather armchair and the nurse set a plate of chocolate biscuits on the table between them.

  ‘I feel like mud,’ Irena said. ‘But it’s good of you to flatter me, Andre. If only your father weren’t so quarrelsome.’

  ‘Were you arguing again?’ Andre asked.

  Irena slapped the leather cushion beside her. ‘Leonid may well become boss of our clan when I’m gone, but I’m not dead yet.’

  Andre smiled and shook his head. ‘I bet you won’t be dead for a long time, either.’

  ‘All this flattery!’ Irena said. ‘You must be after something, Andre.’

  Andre had grown up with his grandmother and bantered effortlessly with her, but Ethan had only met her when he’d arrived in Bishkek four months earlier. He found being around the old girl awkward and concentrated on scoffing chocolate biscuits until he felt he’d stayed long enough to leave without seeming rude.

  ‘I’ve got a few bits of homework to crack on with,’ Ethan lied, as he stood up. ‘Thanks for the biscuits, Grandma.’

  ‘Always good to see you, Ethan,’ Irena said fondly. ‘You’re still not really happy here, are you?’

  Ethan couldn’t bring himself to tell his sick grandmother that he thought her domain was the biggest crap-hole on the face of the earth, so he shrugged, then mumbled, ‘It’s very different to what I’m used to.’

  Irena raised one eyebrow. ‘Certainly not California, is it?’ she said, stifling a laugh because it would have reduced her to a coughing fit. ‘Your mother got out of here as soon as she was old enough, and I don’t think the Kremlin is what she’d have wanted for you. I’ve had some papers put in your room. Take a look through and tell me what you think.’

  5. GLASS

  The three trainees split up. Ning stayed on the beach and built a fire from a mix of dry reeds and driftwood. She used the metal ammunition box in the hope that it would reflect heat, making the fire hotter and giving a better chance of melting the glass around the T-shirts.

  Daniel and Leon went on reconnaissance, each taking one side of the island. They hoped to find something that would help them smash the glass, or maybe even a more accessible T-shirt or three. But they were back within half an hour and neither twin looked ecstatic.

  ‘No good?’ Ning asked.

  Leon shook his head. ‘Had a rummage. Island’s maybe five hundred metres by eight hundred. Mostly stubby trees and undergrowth, couple of small caves that didn’t amount to anything. The only thing I found was a few rusty bolts, and lots of spent ammunition cartridges.’

  Daniel told a similar story. ‘The only thing I found was an old turret with a couple of rusty old cannons inside. Must have been used t
o fend off invaders in the olden days.’

  Ning nodded thoughtfully, before explaining what she’d been doing on the beach.

  ‘The fire is set to burn in the metal box. But if the glass starts melting the flames could burn the T-shirts, so we’ll need to be able to pull it out quickly.’

  The twins nodded to indicate they were following before Ning continued.

  ‘So I’ve tied a rope around the box, and I’ve got some big bits of driftwood. So if the experiment works and the glass starts to melt in the heat, we tug the rope to tip the box over, then we can sweep the glass slab out of the flames with the sticks. I’ve also filled my rubber backpack cover with sea water so we can douse it.’

  ‘But if you stop the glass melting we won’t be able to get to the T-shirts,’ Leon said.

  The twins loved an opportunity to outsmart one another and Daniel jumped in and answered on Ning’s behalf.

  ‘She’s experimenting, dummy,’ Daniel said. ‘If we find out that the glass melts, we can build a frame or something and melt it a bit at a time.’

  Leon bristled. ‘What temperature does glass melt at?’ he asked.

  ‘I think glass melts in a fire,’ Ning said. ‘At least I’ve seen them doing glass blowing on TV. But normal glass shatters when you smash a rock against it as well.’

  ‘Only one way to find out,’ Daniel said warily.

  ‘It had better melt,’ Leon said. ‘Cos there’s bugger all else on this island.’

  Ning had already heaved the glass-encased T-shirts into the steel box. She had a magnesium-block firelighter which she used to spark some kindling and she then used this to ignite a length of driftwood. When she dropped the burning torch into the box the dry reeds erupted in a fog of damp smoke.

  ‘Your kindling’s too wet,’ Daniel said anxiously. ‘It’s gonna fizzle.’

  But Ning fanned the sparks and soon bigger flames began erupting beneath the damp smoke. As the fire took hold, she squinted as she leaned into the stinging smoke, tossing on more reeds and bits of driftwood.

  ‘Is it melting?’ Leon asked, once the fire had really started to roar.

  ‘Can’t see much,’ Ning answered.

  Daniel grabbed one of the big pieces of driftwood and gave the glass a poke. ‘Still feels solid.’

  Over the next quarter-hour, Ning and the twins fed the flames and occasionally jabbed the glass slab.

  ‘Shit!’ Daniel shouted, as he gave the glass its umpteenth nudge. ‘We’re wasting our time.’

  Ning gave the flames a couple more minutes before reaching the same conclusion. With Leon’s help she tugged the now badly singed rope to pull the box on to its side. Daniel created a blast of steam as he drenched the embers in seawater from Ning’s rubber pouch.

  When they’d pushed the slab away and given it time to cool, the three trainees squatted around it, while Leon scraped off a layer of soot with the blade of his hunting knife.

  ‘It’s not even melted a tiny bit at the edges,’ Leon said. ‘It looks like we’re gonna have to find some way to smash it.’

  Ning stared thoughtfully at the sky. The early cloud had burnt off and although there was a strong breeze coming off the sea it was turning into a decent spring day.

  She turned to Leon. ‘Did you go up close to the cliffs?’

  Leon’s mind had already been down this path. He skipped the question and took Ning straight to his conclusion. ‘The cliffs go about fifteen metres high in the tallest spots, but they’re over water so the slab will splash down and get washed away.’

  ‘Did you see any cliffs that overlooked a beach?’

  Leon nodded. ‘But the biggest drop was only eight metres.’

  ‘Well there has to be a solution and we’ve got until midnight to find it,’ Ning said dejectedly.

  Daniel jumped in to correct her as he glanced at his watch. ‘We’re way up north. It’s eleven a.m. now and it’ll be dark by half-three, four o’clock at the latest.’

  Leon nodded solemnly. ‘We won’t be able to do much by torchlight.’

  ‘What about the cannon?’ Ning asked.

  ‘I think it was out of order,’ Leon said. ‘Shortage of explosives.’

  Ning wasn’t in the mood for sarcasm and tutted. ‘But was there a big metal piece? Something heavy that we could carry between the three of us?’

  ‘Probably,’ Leon agreed.

  ‘OK,’ Ning said. ‘The slab’s not gonna break just by dropping it off a low cliff. But what if we put the slab at the bottom of the cliff and drop something really heavy on to it?’

  Daniel nodded. ‘Could work. Especially if you put something under the slab.’

  ‘I don’t get you,’ Ning said.

  ‘Like a hammer and chisel,’ Daniel explained. ‘The thing we drop acts like the hammer. The chisel is a rock or a piece of metal that we lay under the slab.’

  Ning still didn’t get it, but Leon did. ‘Like a car windscreen,’ Leon explained. ‘If you bang into it it doesn’t break, but if you give one spot a sharp punch the whole windscreen shatters.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Ning said, feeling a bit dim. ‘That does make sense.’

  ‘One obvious problem, though,’ Daniel said, as he pointed across the island. ‘The cannon is on that side of the island. The cliffs are waaaaay over there.’

  Ning smiled. ‘About as far apart as you can get. And I bet that’s exactly how the instructors planned it.’

  *

  As noon approached for the three trainees in Scotland, the clock in Ethan’s room at the Kremlin clicked over to 6 p.m.

  The space had once been the quarters of a Soviet Air Force colonel. Its mini kitchen and bathroom had been refurbished shortly before Ethan arrived in Kyrgyzstan, but while it was clean and all the furniture and fittings were new, the tiny barred windows, sagging ceiling and vile odours rising out of all the plugholes were a constant reminder that he was far from California.

  But hope lay inside the board-backed envelope Grandma Irena had sent over. Ethan had been through the contents twice and excitedly started for a third time when he got to the end. The first item was a letter addressed to Irena from a Mr Douglas Miles, who described himself as an education consultant.

  Accompanying the letter were brochures for English language boarding schools, three in Dubai and one in Bahrain. The glossy pages were full of smiling, uniformed kids, sitting at computers, or standing in front of Bunsen burners dressed in lab coats and safety goggles.

  The brochures presented an idealised version of school life, along with lots of puff about startling academic achievement and admission to Ivy League universities while encouraging strong morals and building the skill-set required by the leaders of tomorrow.

  Ethan wasn’t naive enough to believe the hype: the burly kid running with the rugby ball was exactly the type who’d slam a geek like him into the changing room wall, all of the headmasters looked like smarmy dicks and those cute girls playing soccer wouldn’t be part of his social circle.

  But although starting boarding school might be stressful, Ethan didn’t see how it could be any worse than living next to a runway and going to a school where classmates rocked up with horse manure on their boots.

  He was reading about an ethos of charity and lifelong friendship in one of the brochures when someone knocked on the door. He feared Andre wanting to play stupid Wii games or practise his English, but Natalka’s voice came through the door.

  ‘Hey,’ Ethan said, grinning harder than he should have. ‘I thought you were busy.’

  Natalka shrugged as she came in, accompanied by the whiff of cigarettes. ‘Got kinda bored, so I thought why not find some skinny kid and blow his mind with two hours of wild sex?’

  ‘You’re too late,’ Ethan laughed as he opened up a cabinet on the wall and pulled out the stack of pirate DVDs he’d bought at Dordoi Bazaar two days earlier. ‘I just had a couple of gorgeous blondes over and I’m all tapped out.’

  ‘Got any cigarettes?’ Natalka asked, as she
picked one of the school brochures off Ethan’s bed.

  ‘You can get ciggies from the vending machine in the lobby,’ Ethan said.

  ‘You can get ciggies from the vending machine in the lobby, if you have money to pay for them,’ Natalka answered, as she opened up a fold-out brochure. ‘These kids all look disturbingly well behaved. They must put tranquillisers in their water supply.’

  ‘It’s just a brochure,’ Ethan said defensively.

  ‘So what made Irena change her mind?’

  Ethan shrugged. ‘Maybe she just got sick of me whining. All I know is, I’m gonna get myself out of this bunghole as fast as I can.’

  *

  The trainees’ boots twisted in gravel as their bodies strained. The cast-iron cannon barrel made a grating sound as it moved from a position against a crumbling brick wall. It must have been in the spot for years, because the roots of weeds and moss had grown around it.

  ‘Step backwards,’ Ning gasped, all the tendons in her arms on show as she held up the fat end of the barrel, with Daniel in the middle and Leon at the muzzle.

  While the three trainees were pleased to have pulled the cannon free, the same couldn’t be said for a large house spider who’d been living inside it. It crept out of the muzzle and one long black leg tickled the back of Leon’s hand.

  ‘AAARGH Jesus!’

  As Leon sprang backwards, the weight of the cannon became too much for Daniel and Ning. The cast-iron tube tilted, then hit the gravel path with a clang, grazing fingers and narrowly missing toes.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ning screamed, glowering at Leon.

  ‘Why’d you let go?’ Daniel added furiously.

  ‘It was massive,’ Leon said, as he pointed at the ground. ‘Bloody tarantula or something. I thought it was gonna bite me.’

  Daniel and Ning both inspected the spider, which had decided that the best survival policy was to crawl into a tuft of grass and stay still.

  ‘It’s a house spider,’ Ning said.

  ‘You’re such a dick face!’ Daniel said, as he launched his boot at his twin’s arse. ‘That almost broke my toes.’