CHERUB: Black Friday

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘Sounds exactly like a missile using GPS and terrain mapping,’ James said. ‘Leonid probably gave them a sample for a test firing. But why are you looking at anonymous blogs?’

  Lucinda liked reminding James that she knew more than him and tutted contemptuously. ‘Newspapers here print stories about politicians donating money to charity, cute baby competitions and gossip about TV celebrities. Print any real news, or even mention the names of the main gangs, and you’ll get your head hacked off. Everyone reads blogs for the real news, but god help the writers if the gangs work out who’s behind them.’

  ‘Such a nice country you have here,’ James said, smiling.

  ‘I’m American, so go screw yourself,’ Lucinda replied.

  42. CAMPER

  Ted was OK lying on his back or standing up, but sitting for a long time was painful and he was hurting as he came down six steps out of a small jet. They were at Sonoma County Airport, in the heart of California’s wine country.

  After picking up a hire car, they headed for Lombardi’s house. There was nobody home, but fortunately Lombardi liked to portray himself as an upstanding citizen. He didn’t flip cellphones like a crook would and TFU headquarters triangulated his position to a fancy seafood restaurant back in town.

  Joe did a reccie and sighted Lombardi, his wife and his two pre-teen daughters. They were part of a big group, acting loud as they scoffed seafood platters and $200 bottles of wine.

  ‘Your man’s drinking plenty,’ Joe said, as he leaned into their hired mini-van speaking to Ted, Ethan and co-thug Don. ‘Toilets are up the back of the building. I can take him, stick a hood over his head and push him out the fire exit.’

  Ted nodded, as he sat in the front passenger seat scrolling through maps on his iPhone. ‘Try not to knock him out, we need him lucid.’

  It was a good plan, but it didn’t work.

  ‘Lombardi must have a bladder like a racehorse,’ Ted complained, after an hour.

  Inside, Joe reported that the diners were on coffee and dessert. When Lombardi stepped out into the night, he still hadn’t been to the toilet. He looked a little drunk and had a sleepy eight-year-old daughter in his arms. His more sober wife took the wheel of their Audi Q7 and set off for home.

  ‘What now?’ Ethan asked.

  Ted had just popped another pill for his back and Ethan reached around the headrest and tapped his shoulder.

  ‘Ted,’ Ethan said firmly.

  ‘Oh … ’ Ted said, rubbing a palm in his eye and breaking into a big yawn. ‘Guess it’ll have to be the house. After they’ve put the girls to bed.’

  Ethan was worried. Joe and Don were no masterminds and Ted was way off par with the back pills blurring his mind. Joe waited until a couple of minutes after Lombardi left and then drove down unlit country roads to his vineyard.

  They spent an hour parked up near the house, watching bulbs flick on and off as the family settled down for the night. Twenty minutes after the last light, Joe and Ted approached the house. It was a large wooden building that had been maintained in authentic condition. This was helpful, because the traditional sash windows were easily forced, and Ted found himself stepping through a window on to a parquet floor that caught the moonlight.

  Under California law homeowners are entitled to shoot burglars, so Ted and Joe kept guns poised as they moved up a creaking wooden staircase. Joe entered the master bedroom first, nudging Lombardi’s foot and making sure that the gun was the first thing he saw as he sat up in bed.

  ‘Shut up,’ Joe ordered. ‘Don’t wake your girls.’

  ‘Watches and jewellery are at the back of the wardrobe,’ Lombardi said, raising his hands as his wife gasped fearfully. ‘I’m insured up the ass, so I don’t care. Just take it and leave us in peace.’

  Ted flicked the bedroom light three times, to indicate that Ethan should come in. Don would stay back in the car, in case they needed to make a quick getaway.

  ‘I’m not here to steal,’ Ted said, as he heard Ethan running up the stairs. ‘I want you both to sit up. Keep hands on heads where I can see ’em. I’ve got a young man who’s keen to meet you, Mr Lombardi.’

  Lombardi looked stunned when Ethan walked in. The pair had never met, but Lombardi had seen pictures of Ethan when he’d worked with his mother.

  ‘Young man, there’s no need for this,’ Lombardi said, trying to turn on the charm. ‘We can have a meeting in my office. There are a lot of unresolved issues regarding assets you inherited from your mother.’

  Ethan tutted. ‘You think I care about assets? Why did Leonid Aramov kill my mother?’

  Before Lombardi could answer, Joe barked at his wife, ‘Next time that pretty little hand moves off your head, I’ll smack you out.’

  ‘I was your mother’s lawyer,’ Lombardi said softly. ‘Galenka trusted me. That’s why she gave you my details and told you to call me if anything ever happened to her.’

  ‘So you never worked for Leonid as well?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about Lisson Communications?’ Ethan asked.

  Lombardi couldn’t hide his shock that Ethan knew about this.

  ‘When you prepared the accounts for my mom’s estate, you never mentioned Vineyard Eight,’ Ethan continued. ‘Nor Lisson, nor the fact that she owned half of it. And you’ve been paying money to Leonid Aramov in Mexico, as well.’

  ‘This is … It would be more appropriate to fix an appointment and discuss these matters at my office in the New Year.’

  ‘No, now,’ Ethan said. He wasn’t used to this kind of confrontation and felt like he was acting in a school play. ‘My mom died and you tried to rip me off. What was the deal? Did you and Leonid split my mom’s shares?’

  When Lombardi didn’t answer, Joe swung his massive arm and punched him in the throat. He then grabbed Lombardi by his long slicked-back hair, yanked him out of bed and splayed him over a dressing table.

  ‘Truth or death,’ Joe said menacingly.

  ‘Leonid’s down in Mexico trying to sell missiles for twenty-five million,’ Ethan said. ‘So go back to the beginning. Tell me the whole story about Lisson and PGSLM.’

  Lombardi had been winded by the throat punch and fought for breath. He hesitated for a second, but started waving his arms as Joe pulled back a huge fist for a second punch.

  ‘OK, I’ll talk.’

  James tried to stay in range of Andre and Tamara in case something happened. But Lucinda hadn’t identified all the locations Leonid had in his sat-nav’s memory, so when Andre went to bed after a dull day hanging around the apartment they decided to take a ride in the old VW camper and check them out.

  The city was eerie at night. Traffic flowed freely on all the major roads, and until you pulled off them the only signs of a drug war were the army patrols making random stops at intersections. Ciudad Juárez was full of old VW campers and Beetles, but carjackings weren’t restricted to flash vehicles and Lucinda told James to keep his gun in his lap.

  The first few locations they checked out were fast-food restaurants and a gym that they guessed either Boris or Alex had considered joining. The final spot was way out in the industrial zone near the border. A raised highway took them through some of the city’s poorest areas, filled with grim apartment blocks and street signs full of bullet holes.

  The turn-off took them into an industrial park, full of identical one-storey manufacturing units. Some still bore the unlit logos of big corporations, or their outlines etched in the dirt where they’d been taken down. The few that were still operational had chimneys venting strong smells and lines of ex-California school buses that were used to collect workers from distant apartments.

  ‘Here,’ Lucinda said, pointing a well-manicured finger at a large unit.

  It was no different to ten other units they’d passed since driving off the highway. Pale yellow light shot out of skylights in the flat roof and there were a couple of cars in the parking lot. James pulled out a little video camera and held it low as they rolled
past slowly.

  ‘Storage?’ Lucinda asked. ‘For the missiles?’

  For once, James enjoyed superior knowledge and he sounded smug. ‘A PGSLM is designed to rest on your shoulder. You wouldn’t need this. You could probably store seventy-four of them in a double garage.’

  ‘Other weapons?’

  ‘Leonid’s cash-poor,’ James said. ‘I can’t see why he’d have a massive warehouse full of weapons. Even if he did, why store them in a city where there’s a dozen heavily armed drug gangs who’d want to steal them?’

  ‘So what then?’

  ‘Not sure,’ James said. ‘You can see the border from here and one of the invoices on Leonid’s desk was from a drilling equipment company.’

  Lucinda nodded. ‘The DEA has found border tunnels up to two kilometres in length. But Leonid has no use for a tunnel.’

  ‘Unless it’s someone else’s tunnel and Leonid came out here to collect something,’ James suggested.

  A couple more turns took them to the end of the industrial park. The road widened into a big turning circle, beyond which sewage works sat behind a mesh fence.

  ‘Damn,’ Lucinda said, as she turned the camper.

  Four white spots lit up on the roof of a big Mitsubishi pick-up, blinding them both.

  ‘Cops?’ James asked.

  ‘Private security,’ Lucinda said, squinting into the light as a man leaned out of the pick-up, making a signal like he wanted them to pull over.

  ‘Gun it,’ James urged. ‘By the time they turn around … ’

  Lucinda laughed as she stopped the van. ‘This old box is only good for sixty miles an hour. Try not to speak, you look like a Yankee and your accent is terrible.’

  Lucinda was all smiles as the armed security guard stepped up to their van.

  ‘We just came off the highway,’ Lucinda said. ‘It’s late, I got the wrong turn.’

  ‘Why’d you slow down going past unit eleven?’ the guard asked. ‘Who sent you up here?’

  ‘I just pulled off—’

  The guard cut her off as he peered into the van. ‘There’s a big sign Industrial Park. You don’t come down here by mistake. Is that a camera?’

  ‘I can’t believe your bullshit!’ Lucinda shouted.

  The guard waved back to his colleague in the pick-up and grabbed a radio hooked over his shirt pocket.

  ‘You need to step out of the van, both of you.’

  James decided it was time to act. He undid his seatbelt, flung his door open and rolled out to the ground. Before the guard could react, Lucinda elbowed him in the face. While she flung her door open and jumped out to kick him in the head, James took two excellent shots. The first blew out a front tyre on the pick-up. The second was aimed at the passenger side of the front windscreen, shattering the glass and forcing the second guard to dive for cover.

  Lucinda ripped off the gun and radio of the guard at her feet, then jumped back in the van and put it in gear. She started rolling and James hopped into the moving van, letting the forward momentum slam his door.

  As they sped off – although speed was a relative thing in this ancient camper van – the guard inside the Mitsubishi tried to ram them as they came past. The van came close to toppling as the bulky Mitsubishi smashed the rear end. Lucinda’s swerve kept them on four wheels, but also sent them careering into a mesh fence around one of the deserted units.

  For once, the vehicle’s lack of speed counted in its favour and they simply bounced off the fence, enabling Lucinda to steer back on to the road. The guard’s radio had dropped into the footwell and they could hear his colleague frantically yelling for backup.

  The pick-up couldn’t pursue with its front tyre shot out, but any other modern vehicle would have no problem catching them up. James kept his gun poised, expecting something to charge out of the blackness every time they passed a slip road.

  He felt more optimistic as they approached the park entrance and Lucinda had two wheels off the ground as they took a tightly curving slip-road back on to the highway.

  ‘That really spiralled,’ James said. ‘Jesus Christ!’

  Lucinda pointed her thumb back towards the border. ‘In the USA, you get murdered, there’s a big investigation. Over here, thousands of murders, no honest cops. People can kill you and not get caught, so in a situation like that, guards see something suspicious and take you out just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘They’d have killed us?’ James asked.

  Lucinda was still keeping a wary eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘Only after torturing us for a few days, to see who we are and what we know.’

  There was no sign of anyone behind them on the highway, but Lucinda took the next turn-off into a residential neighbourhood just in case.

  ‘I’ll have to lose this van,’ Lucinda said. ‘If those guards are well connected, there’ll be a five-thousand-dollar reward out for anyone who spots us.’

  ‘How soon?’ James asked.

  ‘I’m not driving it home, for sure,’ Lucinda said. ‘We’ll park in the centre of town and get separate taxis home.’

  43. LOMBARDI

  After bursting into Lombardi’s bedroom and slapping him around, Joe shoved the lawyer into a wing-backed armchair.

  ‘There’s a lot we already know,’ Ted warned. ‘The first time I catch you in a lie, I’m gonna go wake up your daughters.’

  Lombardi and his wife exchanged frightened looks before he began speaking.

  ‘In the Nineties, Lisson Communications put in a bid to design and build the PGSLM,’ Lombardi said, still croaky from the throat punch. ‘Defence contracts usually go to bigger fish, but Lisson bribed a general and a senator. When the truth came out, Lisson got fined and the CEO had to resign.

  ‘Even worse, Lisson knew guidance systems, but had no expertise in missiles. The project went over budget. The Defence Department pulled the plug and re-awarded the PGSLM contract to another company.

  ‘Shares in a company are based on what people believe its assets are worth. Lisson would never win another government contract after the bribery scandal, so the stock market valued Lisson’s defence business at zero. But Lisson had been close to perfecting its guided missile, and Galenka Aramov knew the technology was worth millions to a foreign government or a terrorist group.

  ‘But all Galenka’s wealth was tied up in her security business. Her mother wasn’t interested in investing but Leonid had made money for himself and Galenka offered him a partnership.’

  ‘So where did you fit in?’ Ted asked.

  ‘I had to set up the Lisson deal so that nobody realised it was being bought by the Aramovs. At that time, nobody was predicting that billions of mobile phones would have GPS navigation chips built in. That part of the business made Lisson far more money than anyone ever expected it to.’

  ‘So what was the problem between Leonid and my mom?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘Your uncle and mother each owned half of Lisson Communications,’ Lombardi explained. ‘Leonid wanted to load all the info on to hard drives and make a fast twenty million bucks selling it to the Chinese, Indians or whoever offered the most cash, but Galenka saw something grander. Her idea was to complete the PGSLM design and manufacture it herself. She predicted sales of several thousand missiles per year at a quarter million dollars per missile.’

  ‘Billions of dollars,’ Ethan said admiringly. ‘My mom was a crook, but she was a smart crook.’

  Lombardi shook his head. ‘Even with millions in US government research money, Lisson was struggling to manufacture the missile. Conducting a covert programme to build the missile was tough and instead of a fast profit, Leonid got drawn into a project that sucked up millions of dollars.

  ‘By 2003 the US Army had the first functional PGSLM missiles from the company that took over Lisson’s development contract. The design was closely based on Lisson’s original and Galenka paid an expert thief called Jane Oxford to steal a batch of functioning PGSLM missiles. But even with a functioning missile, Galenka sti
ll had a mountain to climb.’

  Ethan looked confused. ‘Surely she could just copy it?’

  Lombardi laughed. ‘I own a toaster, but that doesn’t mean I know how to build a toaster factory. Money got so tight that Galenka was working on the stolen missiles in a workshop in the basement of your California beach house.’

  Ethan had seen his mum spend hours in a locked basement room at his old home, and she’d never hired a cleaner because she didn’t like having strangers snooping around.

  ‘Fast-forward to 2011,’ Lombardi said. ‘Leonid had grown increasingly violent and erratic. When his mother got sick, she became wary of handing exclusive control of the Aramov Clan to Leonid. She reached out to Galenka, who by this time ran a highly profitable computer security business.

  ‘I don’t know all the details, but by the time she died Galenka had perfected the missile guidance technology, and set up a production facility capable of producing missiles as good as the US-built originals.

  ‘For Leonid this was a complete nightmare. Instead of taking the clan over like he’d always imagined, Leonid would become junior partner in a business run by his sister.’

  Ethan nodded, and finished the story for himself. ‘Uncle Leonid’s ego couldn’t take that, so he had my mom killed and blew our house up to stop anyone else finding out about PGSLM.’

  ‘What about the production facility?’ Ted asked.

  ‘What about it?’ Lombardi asked.

  ‘Location?’ Ted asked. ‘Suppliers, logistics, finances?’

  Lombardi shrugged. ‘The less I knew about the illegal stuff the better. But as Leonid Aramov has surfaced in Ciudad Juárez with missiles to sell, that’s where I’d start looking.’

  Ethan felt strange. It was satisfying to finally understand why Leonid had killed his mother, but he’d always pictured her as someone who’d broken away from her family and succeeded as an honest businesswoman. But apparently the only thing separating his mum from the rest of the Aramovs was the scale of her ambitions.