CHERUB: Shadow Wave

by Robert Muchamore

  Lauren’s heart sped up as she backed into the suite. Kevin had a curious look on his face as he came out of Lauren’s bedroom.

  ‘I tried turning your shower on,’ he explained. ‘But none of the taps work.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ Lauren gasped. ‘They’ve done what the drug squad does: turned off the plumbing so you can’t flush anything. And you can bet they’ll have an interceptor in the sewage pipe to catch anything that does get flushed.’

  Kevin nodded. ‘They got here so fast that they must have been on standby. They already suspected someone on the inside was passing information to the protestors.’

  Lauren took the card out of her pocket and held it up. ‘Do you think this will show up on an X-ray if I swallow it?’

  ‘Definitely,’ Kevin nodded, as he snatched the card from Lauren’s fingertips. ‘Give it here. I’ll take it down to the coffee shop.’

  Lauren shook her head. ‘Your cute face won’t get you past that lot. And now the card’s got your DNA on it. I’m trying to keep you out of trouble and you just incriminated yourself.’

  ‘Who says I’m going out that way?’ Kevin smiled, as he turned and started walking towards the balcony. ‘If anyone asks, just say you think I left with TJ about half an hour ago.’

  Lauren grabbed Kevin as he slid the glass door on to the balcony. ‘You can’t climb down eight floors,’ she said. ‘I’ll hold on to the card. You don’t have to take any of the blame.’

  Kevin surprised Lauren with his strength as he pushed her away and stepped briskly on to the balcony.

  Before Lauren got her balance back, the twelve-year-old had pocketed the memory card and balanced himself on the metal railing, eight storeys above the narrow street. Lauren felt queasy with fright as Kevin pirouetted so that he faced the building and then leapt forward athletically, gripping the masonry half a metre above the sliding glass doors.

  Lauren thought about grabbing Kevin’s ankles as they dangled in front of her, but she wasn’t sure that she was strong enough to catch him if he fell awkwardly. Within seconds he’d grabbed the gutter running along the edge of the building’s gently sloped roof.

  Once he was out of Lauren’s reach, Kevin leaned over the edge of the roof and smiled cheekily. ‘If I fall to my death, tell James and Bruce that they overdid it when they taught me how to get over my fear of heights.’

  ‘You be bloody careful,’ Lauren warned. Part of her was impressed with Kevin’s bravery, but mostly she felt sick with worry. ‘Call me as soon as you’re safe.’

  Kevin rolled over on to his belly, then jumped as a pair of angry wood pigeons shot into the air directly in front of his face. He gave himself a few seconds to recover from the fright before standing up straight.

  The height didn’t concern him, and the roof made a much safer platform than the campus height obstacle on a windy day. The problem was he had no idea where to go next.

  He kept low as he walked along the rooftop, eventually meeting a line of chimney pots where the Leith Hotel met a flat-roofed office building. The chimney stack was a nightmare, surrounded by air conditioning units, cables, satellite dishes and a mobile phone mast.

  After negotiating this lot, it was a relief to peer between giant chimney pots and see a two-and-a-half-metre drop on to the flat roof of an office building. He collapsed sideways on landing in the exact way that CHERUB had shown him and began striding briskly across the roofing felt.

  There was a grey painted fire door, but it only opened from the inside so he crossed to the back of the roof and made a huge metallic boom as he vaulted on to a set of fire stairs. He moved down quickly, keeping low as he passed windows with bored looking office drones inside.

  When he got to the second floor, he found a group of men having a smoke on the landing directly below. Kevin waited as they discussed a boss called Jody who none of them liked and a new girl in accounts with a cracking pair of hooters.

  Two men finished their smokes and went inside, but the others were joined by a woman who came out with a Starbucks cup and lit up a king-sized Marlboro. The longer Kevin waited, the greater the chance that the MI5 security team would be on his tail, so he took a calculated risk and put on a little boy lost act as he walked down in front of the smokers.

  ‘Where’d you come from?’ one asked curiously.

  ‘It’s bring-your-kid-to-work day,’ Kevin explained. ‘I was up on the sixth floor. Came out of the loo, went through the fire door and it shut behind me before I could get back inside.’

  The woman laughed. ‘You poor sausage!’ she grinned, as she dropped her half-smoked cigarette into her coffee. ‘I’ll take you back to the lift.’

  So Kevin got escorted through the shabby offices of a legal publishing company. The kindly smoker pressed the up button to call the lift, so he had to ride up to the sixth floor before riding back to the ground floor and stepping into a sunny May afternoon.

  Kevin’s smart chinos were now filthy, he had bird crap on his hands and a grazed elbow. He walked quickly towards the café, nervously passing the police officers guarding the Leith Hotel across the street.

  James Adams sat at a table inside, drinking a can of Coke.

  ‘Nice one mate,’ James smiled, as Kevin passed over the memory card. ‘I’ve gotta jump in a cab and take this straight up to a production studio in Soho. My reporter friend reckons he can get it in tomorrow’s papers.’

  35. TRAILS

  Tan Abdullah’s plane sat on the tarmac at Heathrow airport. The luxurious jet had backed up from the gate, but a storm was causing air traffic delays and the pilot had announced a forty-minute wait for a takeoff slot.

  Tan would face bribery charges in Malaysia, and after being taped insulting the prime minister it was likely he’d face immediate arrest and imprisonment. His short-term solution to this problem was to file a flight plan to New York. June Ling was an American citizen, so he could stay there indefinitely.

  TJ had a seat at the rear of the jet. He’d changed into pyjamas and fully reclined his seat. There was always some drama going on with his father and stepmother, but while nobody had taken the time to explain exactly what had happened at the Leith Hotel, he knew it was serious.

  He couldn’t concentrate on playing his PSP and sat with his cheek touching the aircraft window, looking into the dark at the flashing lamps on aircraft wingtips and the illuminated glass face of the terminal building on the opposite side of the main runway.

  TJ was momentarily distracted as his father opened the overhead locker directly above him.

  ‘Maybe we can see an NBA game in New York,’ Tan suggested, as he took something from the case and slipped it into his suit.

  ‘That would be really cool,’ TJ smiled. ‘There’s an NBA shop in Times Square. They have every NBA shirt, and tons of other stuff.’

  Tan shut the locker, then moved down towards the plane’s tail and stepped into the toilet cubicle. TJ looked across the aisle and saw that Suzie had pulled her duvet up over her head and seemed to be asleep. He thought about lobbing his trainer at her, but Suzie was bigger than him and the pleasure of waking her up would be outweighed by the fact that she’d jump out of her seat and beat the crap out of him.

  The steward approached with a mug of hot chocolate. ‘I know you usually have it after takeoff,’ she explained, as she passed the mug over to TJ. ‘But seeing as we’re stuck here on the tarmac for a while …’

  TJ flipped out a tray and saw that the steaming mug had whipped cream and little marshmallows with jam inside, just how he liked. He took the mug and let the steam rise up to his face. He felt cosy, with his duvet up around his neck and a fresh blast of rain pelting the outside of his window.

  Then he heard a bang.

  It made TJ jolt and he swore as the cream and milk spewed down the side of the mug, burning his hand. Suzie sat up, looking startled. An alarm sounded in the cockpit, causing the pilot to flick a row of switches above his head.

  The cabin lights and ventilation went off brief
ly, before the emergency battery kicked in. The co-pilot began walking down from the cockpit as the stewardess banged on the door of the toilet.

  ‘Mr Abdullah, is everything OK in there?’

  There was no answer. TJ and Suzie almost clunked heads as they leaned into the aisle and looked down towards the tail. The stewardess screamed as she saw dark liquid running under the toilet door and heading for her shoe.

  ‘It’s blood,’ she shouted.

  The co-pilot pushed between Suzie and TJ’s heads and reached up to grab a T-shaped key built into a slot beside the toilet door. This fitted into a hole beneath the door handle, overriding the lock inside.

  The co-pilot slid the door and backed off. The stewardess looked and screamed as she saw the gun lying in the blood pooled around Tan Abdullah’s flight slippers and the huge spray of blood and a hole torn in the fuselage directly behind him.

  *

  It was pitch dark by the time James drove Bruce through the main gates of CHERUB campus in a black Mini. The boys parked in front of the main building and headed inside to reception.

  ‘I’m starved,’ Bruce said as James hooked the car keys on a rack behind the main reception desk. ‘You wanna go straight to dinner?’

  ‘I’ll just do the paperwork and I’ll come join you,’ James agreed.

  When you returned one of the campus pool cars, you had to fill in a short form, detailing the number of miles the car had driven and giving a declaration that the car wasn’t damaged. Chairwoman Zara Asker crept up behind as James slid the completed form into a tray.

  ‘Evening boys,’ she said, in a tone James found difficult to read. ‘Can we have a quick word in my office?’

  The office was familiar. Any trouble on campus usually ended up with a sit-down in the chairwoman’s office and James had been through this more times than he cared to count. When he’d first joined CHERUB, Mac had been chairman and you could rely on firm but consistent punishments. Zara had a softer manner, but made James more nervous because you could never predict what she was going to do.

  ‘How was your university trip?’ Zara began, as the boys sat down at her desk.

  ‘Good,’ James said, hoping that they’d only been called in because Bruce had left campus without permission.

  ‘Couldn’t find any record of you asking to leave,’ Zara told Bruce, before turning to James. ‘And it’s the wrong time of year for university open days, isn’t it?’

  James and Bruce spoke at the same time.

  ‘It wasn’t an open day, we just went for a look,’ James said.

  ‘I didn’t find out where James was going until the last minute,’ Bruce said. ‘I tried speaking to my handler, but it was early in the morning and nobody was around.’

  Zara smiled, and pulled a folder across the desk. ‘I had a call from CHERUB security. Apparently your friend Kyle got arrested this afternoon,’ she said, as she opened the file and slid out some papers.

  Shit, James thought to himself. He wasn’t worried about himself, but Bruce, Lauren and Kevin had CHERUB careers ahead of them.

  ‘Some very interesting reports,’ Zara continued. ‘There was a fight in a hotel restaurant shortly before Kyle’s arrest. I wondered what you two might make of this statement, given by a waitress?

  ‘A boy no older than sixteen who looked like he needed a haircut started attacking huge dudes the size of nightclub bouncers. I’ve never seen anything like it. This kid whizzed about like a tornado and absolutely slayed the bodyguards. It was like something out of a kung-fu movie. The only mark on him when he ran off was a small cut on his forehead.’

  Bruce looked down, hoping that Zara couldn’t see the scab through his overgrown fringe.

  ‘Did they have any CCTV footage?’ James asked. ‘It sounds amazing, whoever that dude was.’

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ Zara said. She shuffled her papers and found another excerpt. ‘This one comes from a man who worked in the office behind the hotel’s reception area. He looked very young, but I didn’t really think about that at the time. He was stocky and quite good looking. He charged into the office, saying that he was a policeman and demanding all our surveillance tapes as evidence. I explained that the Leith Hotel’s CCTV was stored on hard disks on a server. So he calmly opened the server cupboard, removed all the drives and took them away in a cardboard box. Further down it says that he was wearing Nike trainers, jeans and a baseball cap.’

  ‘Not much of a description,’ James pointed out. ‘Half the young blokes in the country wear jeans and Nikes.’

  Zara smiled. ‘But it somehow reminded me of the report John Jones wrote about your Brigands Motorcycle Club mission. Remember how the Führer would always try to switch off surveillance cameras before anything happened, or failing that remove them after the event? What did you do with the hard drives, James?’

  James smiled uneasily. ‘Hypothetically, if it had been me, I’d have taken the hard drives apart with a screwdriver, then put the magnetic platters in a bucket half filled with petrol and set it on fire. The heat would burn the magnetic coating on the discs, making them unusable.’

  ‘But of course, it wasn’t you, was it?’ Zara asked.

  Bruce was pretty sure that Zara could nail them if she wanted to: shoeprints, fingerprints, DNA, other surveillance cameras in the area. But he was getting a sense that she didn’t want to.

  ‘Do you want it to be us or not?’ Bruce asked.

  ‘God forbid that it was,’ Zara said. ‘Because if it was, I’d have to launch a full investigation against you two, plus Lauren and Kevin, and you’d all face expulsion. I’d also have to declare Kyle a security risk, ban him from campus and have him placed under surveillance. Then there would be a detailed report for me to write, explaining how a retired agent like Kyle was allowed to see a top-secret mission briefing. And I’d have to explain how the organisation I was running ended up in control of a mission where two of my current agents and one former agent were working for the other side and making friends with an investigative journalist.

  ‘Finally I’d have to face the ethics committee, and explain myself to the intelligence minister in London. I’d probably have to resign from my job. The mission controller in charge of the operation would also have to resign from his job, and in case you haven’t noticed that particular mission controller is my husband.’

  Bruce’s mouth dropped open. ‘I never realised it would be that serious.’

  ‘So even if it was us, and of course it wasn’t,’ James said, ‘it would be better for everyone if nobody outside of this room ever found out what really happened?’

  Zara nodded as she shut the folder. ‘Don’t spread the word on campus. Stay away from Kyle for a bit, he’ll possibly be under MI5 surveillance for the next two or three months. Don’t involve yourselves with Guilt Trips, Helena Bayliss and Hugh Verhoeven.’

  ‘Can you help Kyle at all?’ Bruce asked. ‘Get him out of prison or whatever?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Zara said. ‘Anything I do to help Kyle will flag up the fact that he’s an ex-CHERUB agent. He’s a big boy now. I’m sure Guilt Trips and Hugh Verhoeven have enough money to make sure he’s got a good lawyer.’

  ‘And what can they charge him with?’ James asked. ‘He didn’t hurt anyone, or do anything much else that’s illegal.’

  ‘I reckon he’ll get a caution,’ Bruce agreed. ‘MI5 don’t like having their dirty washing aired in open court.’

  ‘So,’ Zara said, sighing loudly as she stood up from her desk. ‘That’s about all I have to say on this. I expect you boys are hungry and I have a family to get home to.’

  James and Bruce looked at one another and exchanged sly smiles as they stood up. Zara strode across the room and took her coat from the hat stand by the door.

  ‘And there’s one other thing I’d like to say,’ Zara said. ‘The world is a messy place. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who the good guys and bad guys are, but I don’t think there’s much doubt that Tan Abdullah is one
of the bad ones. You took some pretty stupid risks. As chairwoman I can’t condone what you did, but as a human being with a conscience I can’t condemn it either.’

  December 2009

  36. TERMINAL

  James came through the arrivals gate at Heathrow terminal five. It was mid morning. He was eighteen years old and wore a red T-shirt with a Nike tick and the logo of the Stanford Cardinals American football team. His skin looked tanned, but he had bags under his eyes after the ten-hour flight from San Francisco.

  ‘I missed you so much,’ Kerry squealed, as she grabbed James and pulled him tight. Her fingers dug into flesh that felt a little thicker than usual. ‘Letting yourself go a bit, Mr Adams.’

  She didn’t say any more because James plunged his tongue into her mouth and shoved his hand up the back of her mini skirt.

  ‘Four months,’ James said, with a tear welling in his eye. ‘It’s been way too long.’

  An elderly woman tutted disapprovingly as the two teenagers slobbered and groped. James needed a shave and the bristles irritated Kerry’s face. She didn’t care about that, but she did care when a lad of about thirteen whistled and shouted nice bum before getting a gentle clump off his mother.

  ‘Everyone’s staring,’ Kerry protested, as she pushed James away.

  ‘Let them,’ James said. ‘They can arrest us for gross indecency for all I care. We could find a toilet or something.’

  Kerry started to laugh. ‘James I’m not shagging you in an airport toilet.’

  ‘I’m desperate,’ James begged. ‘It’s a newish terminal. They’re probably quite clean.’

  ‘Or we could go to our room,’ Kerry said, as she produced a credit-card-type hotel room key.

  James broke into a huge smile. ‘Oh god, I love you so much,’ he gushed.

  ‘It’s pretty crappy,’ Kerry said. ‘Twenty-quid internet special, but it’s got a bed and a shower. Thought we could hang out there for a few hours before we meet up with Lauren in town.’