‘We don’t launch rockets,’ she explained. ‘Our missions are the undercover variety. CHERUB agents are trained spies aged between ten and seventeen.’
Dante glanced at Zara’s face to see if she was being serious. Apparently she was.
‘Why?’ Lauren asked. ‘What’s the point of using kids as spies?’
‘Turn right again,’ Zara said. As she continued, the buggy passed around the side of the main building. After a dense copse of trees they broke out into a clear December day. There were tennis courts alongside and a view over most of CHERUB campus, including rugby and football pitches, a dozen or so buildings ranging from storage sheds to a medieval chapel. In the far distance was a lake, beyond which lay dense woodland.
‘We use kids as spies because nobody suspects them,’ Zara explained. ‘The example Mac always uses is of a grown man knocking on an old lady’s door in the middle of the night. Most people would be suspicious. If he asked to come inside, the lady would say no. If the man claimed to be sick she’d probably call an ambulance but still wouldn’t let him in.
‘Now imagine the old dear answers the door and it’s a young boy, crying. My dad’s car crashed. I think he’s dying. Please help me. The old lady opens the door. The man jumps out of hiding, bops her on the head, goes inside and robs the place. Terrorists and criminals have been using tricks like this for years. CHERUB turns the tables and uses the same techniques to catch them.’
Dante smiled. ‘So kids are actually better at being criminals or spies than grown-ups.’
‘In many respects, yes,’ Zara said. ‘Because people don’t suspect them.’
She pointed over her right shoulder. ‘That’s our swimming and diving pool complex. Do either of you like swimming?’
Lauren and Dante both nodded.
‘I never get to go swimming though,’ Lauren said. ‘My mum got embarrassed because she was overweight and my brother James is a total wuss. He turns green and says he’s gonna puke if you even go near a swimming pool.’
Zara nodded. ‘James had to learn to swim before he could start basic training. I wasn’t involved myself, but I understand he only passed the swimming test in the nick of time.’
Lauren was aghast. ‘James can swim? That’s practically a miracle.’
Dante cut the speed as the buggy splashed through a couple of inches of water alongside a football pitch. Exhausted looking teenagers were running through the mud, doing shuttle runs while carrying fifteen-kilogram weight discs high above their heads. All the while a female instructor screamed abuse at them.
‘We have strict discipline here,’ Zara explained, as they watched the training. ‘That lot smuggled eighty cans of beer on to campus, held a wild party and then tested positive for marijuana the following Monday. We have a zero tolerance policy for all illegal drugs.’
‘So what’s the deal?’ Lauren asked. ‘Are we being asked to join CHERUB or what?’
‘That’s it exactly,’ Zara said. ‘The circumstances that brought you here are slightly different, but Jennifer Mitchum has given both of you a preliminary assessment and we think you both stand a good chance of qualifying as CHERUB agents.’
‘Why’s that?’ Dante asked.
‘Agents have to be exceptional in all areas,’ Zara explained. ‘Physically strong, emotionally mature and of well-above average intelligence. You both have potential, but I’m sure you’ll also have shortcomings. If you choose to join CHERUB …’
Lauren interrupted. ‘So it’s our choice?’
‘Absolutely,’ Zara said. ‘I know you were brought here without your knowledge, but that’s only because our location is a secret. If you’re not interested in becoming a spy and living on campus, all you have to do is tell us and we’ll drop you home.’
‘But isn’t this place a massive secret?’ Dante asked. ‘I mean, once you’ve told us we could blab to anyone.’
‘Who would believe you though?’ Zara pointed out. ‘You don’t know where we are. You won’t be able to prove anything. In fact, you probably ought to be careful because if you start telling people about being recruited by a secret spying organisation, people are likely to think you’ve gone mental.
‘Anyway, going back to what I was saying before. We believe that you both have the potential to become CHERUB agents. However, before you reach that stage we have to iron out all your flaws. We’ll work on your fitness levels, we’ll start you off with intensive language and combat courses. You’ll be astonished at what our training can help you to achieve, but I’m not going to pretend that it’s for everyone. Becoming a CHERUB agent is probably the toughest thing you’ll ever do – Dante, next left into the trees and keep the speed down. The road up to the basic training compound is bumpy, and I don’t fancy going into an early labour.’
‘Have you got any other kids?’ Dante asked, as he steered the buggy on to a narrow path between the trees.
Zara shook her head. ‘Joshua will be my first and after this pregnancy my last.’
Lauren smiled. ‘So you’ve named him already?’
‘Yes,’ Zara said. ‘My husband Ewart and I both liked the name. He’s been Joshua since the day we found out he was a boy.’
‘So you said my brother’s in basic training,’ Lauren said. ‘How does that work?’
‘Careful, Dante!’ Zara said urgently, as the buggy clattered into branches at the side of the path. ‘Ten mph, no faster.’
Dante enjoyed driving the buggy. It reminded him of what Ross’ daughter Tina had said after he’d woken in the night: about how his life would go on and how he’d be able to do special things that would have made his parents happy.
Zara continued her explanation. ‘Anyone over ten years old who’s reached the required fitness level will go into basic training. It’s a one-hundred-day course and the idea is that your mind and body are pushed to the limits every minute of every day. Once you pass you’ve earned your grey CHERUB T-shirt and you’ll be qualified to go on undercover missions.
‘If we stop here we should be able to see the trainees doing their morning combat session through the fence.’
Dante stopped the electric cart. After he’d helped Zara out of the buggy, she led the trio over muddy ground. They ended up behind some bushes, with the mesh fence around the training compound in front of them.
‘Keep your voices down,’ Zara whispered, as she glanced at her watch.
Thirty metres away stood a massive fellow with a bristly moustache and a white CHERUB T-shirt stretched over vast muscles. In front of him stood six trainees. They wore light blue shirts with numbers on the back, but you could barely read them because they were so muddy. The kids had bare feet and the giant instructor had them all in a line, endlessly repeating a complicated combo of four Karate moves.
‘That’s Norman Large,’ Zara explained. ‘He’s not exactly the most loved member of campus staff amongst you kids, but he does a bloody good job of turning out highly trained agents.’
It took Lauren several seconds to recognise her twelveyear-old brother. Not only was James filthy, but his blond hair had been shaved down to a number one and he had a dirty bandage over a wound on his cheek. He’d lost a lot of puppy fat since the last time Lauren saw him and she was impressed by the way he strung together the rapid sequence of Karate moves.
‘Partners, sparring,’ Large shouted.
‘Which one’s your brother?’ Dante whispered as the trainees split into three pairs.
‘In the middle,’ Lauren said. ‘Squaring up to the little Asian girl.’
‘That’s hardly fair,’ Dante noticed. ‘He’s miles bigger.’
‘That’s Kerry,’ Zara explained. ‘And I wouldn’t worry on her behalf.’
Zara didn’t need to explain her remark because Instructor Large blew his whistle for the sparring to begin. Lauren watched aghast as Kerry ducked below her brother’s clumsy kick, then drove her body upwards, lifting James off the ground, throwing him over her back and dumping him in the mud. Kerry t
hen jammed her heel between James’ shoulders and ruthlessly wrenched his arm into a painful lock.
Lauren clutched her hand over her mouth in awe as James moaned in pain and thumped on the mud in submission.
‘That Kerry girl is awesome!’ Dante said. ‘She could be a pro wrestler with skills like that.’
Zara smiled at Dante. ‘I heard that you liked wrestling and who knows? With the skills you learn here, maybe you could be a pro wrestler some day.’
As the six trainees started a second round of sparring, Dante stepped back from the fence and broke into a relieved smile. For the first time since the night his parents died, he felt like he had some kind of future without them.
12. RED
After their tour of campus, Zara took Dante and Lauren into the dining-room for a very late breakfast. The space was big enough to seat three hundred around its maple-topped tables. There were serving areas and trays for mealtimes, but agents and staff came and went at odd hours so fresh cooked food could be ordered at any time, day or night.
Hands were cold after the ride in the open cart, so Lauren and Zara warmed themselves with soup and freshly baked bread, while Dante went for a hot turkey and bacon baguette which he opened up and drenched with three sachets of ketchup.
Dante was keen to join CHERUB, Lauren less so.
‘Training and fighting in mud,’ she said warily as she broke off a piece of warm bread. ‘I’m not a skirts-and-glitter type, but that training looked mental.’
‘It’s tough,’ Dante nodded. ‘But when your brother finishes basic training he’s gonna be rock hard. Like, he can just walk into a room and beat the crap out of anyone he wants to.’
‘James is training to defend himself, Dante,’ Zara smiled. ‘And Lauren, we’re not suggesting that you make an absolute commitment to becoming an agent today. I’d suggest that you agree to move here on a trial basis and see how you settle in. You’ll start off with regular lessons, along with beginners’ fitness training and combat programmes. You’re not the first girl who’s seen what goes on here and baulked, but once you’ve settled in and made friends I expect you’ll be much more relaxed about it. And if you decide not to stay, we’ll find you a foster home and you can still be near your brother.’
‘If I join, what happens about Holly?’ Dante asked.
‘Holly can grow up on campus,’ Zara explained. ‘We have an excellent nursery unit and you’ll be able to see her every day. At four we’ll start her off with some combat and language training. At ten, she’ll be able to make her own decision about entering basic training and becoming an agent.’
‘What if one of us doesn’t pass basic training?’ Lauren asked. ‘Or if my brother doesn’t pass?’
Zara shifted awkwardly in her chair. ‘Sometimes it takes two or three attempts, but it’s rare for someone to fail basic training completely. We can’t plan for every possible outcome, but we have had situations where one sibling has become a CHERUB agent while another lives with a foster family near to campus.
‘What I must stress is that no CHERUB agent is ever forced to do anything against their will. You can quit a training exercise, quit a mission or even leave campus and decide to lead a normal life if that’s what you choose.’
Lauren was reassured by this. Dante was delighted that he’d be able to live alongside Holly again, and although it would be nine years into the future he liked the idea that one day she’d have the opportunity to become a highly trained spy too.
‘So you both want to take the next step and go for the ability tests and medical?’ Zara asked.
‘I guess,’ Lauren said.
Dante’s mouth was crammed with food, but he nodded eagerly.
*
After giving the new recruits half an hour for their food to settle Zara took them to the campus medical centre where they stripped down to their underwear. A grey-haired German doctor named Kessler gave them a full body x-ray, a dental x-ray and then took blood samples.
Doctor Kessler assured them that the muscle biopsy wouldn’t hurt that much and called them both whiners as a spring-loaded tube punched through their skin and sucked out a tiny lump of their thigh muscles.
‘The tissue will be examined under a microscope,’ Kessler explained. ‘Your training will be tailored to your body composition. We’ll know what your bodies are capable of. So we won’t push you too hard, but also we’ll know if you’re slacking off.’
Kessler led them into a space equipped with a pair of treadmills and a variety of high-tech gadgets designed to test vision, reflexes and co-ordination.
Dante and Lauren began an unofficial competition. They were evenly matched: Dante the stronger, while Lauren better at technical tasks such as being asked to balance on one leg while holding a glass brimming with water and to shoot as many mini footballs as possible through a basketball hoop in one minute.
The final test was the most gruelling: thirty minutes on a treadmill while strapped to a heart monitor and with oxygen masks over their faces. The machine was programmed to alter speed and climb depending upon their level of exhaustion. Kessler told them to push through the pain barrier and only to press the emergency stop button if they thought they were going to pass out.
Lauren felt huge relief when the treadmill motor ground to a halt. She clutched her sides, fighting a stitch, with sweat pouring down her face and dark patches on her orange shirt. Dante looked far worse and staggered towards the wall before retching turkey and bacon into a bucket hastily provided by a nurse.
They got twenty minutes to recover while a dentist prodded and scraped. Lauren’s teeth were perfect but Dante would have to come back for a filling and the possible extraction of a crooked rear tooth.
After the dentist they were led out to a waiting room, where Zara had been resting her swollen ankles on a coffee table the whole time.
‘Two more or less perfect specimens,’ Dr Kessler said when he emerged twenty minutes later. ‘Dante might benefit from contact lenses for reading. Lauren is slightly overweight and her fitness level is poor, but we have ten months to work on that before her basic training starts.’
Zara found an empty classroom in the main building for the academic test. The ninety-minute paper covered maths, general knowledge, spelling, IQ puzzles and a final section that asked you to write a short essay on what you thought would be your main strengths and weaknesses as a CHERUB agent. The questions were tough, and the fact that they were both stressed and exhausted after the physical tests didn’t make things easier.
Zara left Dante and Lauren in the dining-room while she marked the papers. It was just after three and the red-shirt cherubs, who were all aged ten or under, had finished lessons for the day. Some had after-school activities, but about thirty were hanging around in the dining-room eating buttered toast and chocolate bars.
Dante felt out of place because all the red-shirt kids seemed to know each other. They were chatting and teasing one another, and leaning over each other’s shoulders, borrowing rubbers and copying from homework sheets. None of them could speak to Dante or Lauren because they wore orange T-shirts, and the idea of settling into another new home and trying to make friends with another new bunch of kids filled Dante with dread.
‘How do you think you did on the test?’ Lauren asked quietly, as she stared down at the table.
‘Not bad,’ Dante shrugged. ‘That stupid essay … I hate it when you have to say what’s good and bad about yourself.’
‘I know,’ Lauren nodded, but before she finished speaking a mound of balled-up toast crusts whizzed in front of her eyes. They hit the table spinning and ricocheted upwards, breaking up and pelting Dante.
A group of six- to eight-year-olds a few tables across started laughing, and Dante and Lauren could tell who was responsible from his body language. It was Jake Parker, the kid they’d seen waiting outside the chairman’s office earlier in the day.
Dante shot out of his seat and roared, ‘Hey, midget, you want me to come over there an
d stick your head through the wall?’
Jake swaggered between the tables towards Dante. ‘You might be bigger than me,’ Jake grinned. ‘But I’m a black belt in Judo and Karate, so I’d suggest you watch your mouth.’
One of Jake’s friends came up behind and tugged him back towards the table. ‘Jake, you’re talking to orange. You’ll get punishment laps!’
Jake realised that his friend was right and started backing up.
‘Pussy,’ Dante taunted, and he gave Jake the finger.
This was more than Jake could handle. He reared forward, swung at the hips and launched an explosive kick. Tables and chairs ground against the floor as Dante dodged out of the way, but Jake kept coming, dropping into a fighting stance with his hand ready to launch an explosive Karate chop. Dante was a full head taller, but Jake’s moves were lightning fast and Dante suspected he’d bitten off more than he could chew.
But before Jake made contact an older girl with dark hair grabbed him around the waist. She hitched him up by the elasticised waistband of his tracksuit bottoms and threw him across a table top.
Dante sensed the opportunity and threw a punch as Jake straddled the table. But he only hit air because Lauren was dragging him the other way.
‘No trouble,’ Lauren said anxiously as she hauled Dante back to their table. ‘Come on. Sit down.’
As a wall of red T-shirts formed between Dante and Jake, one of the chefs yelled from behind the counter: ‘You lot, pack it in!’
Jake yelped as the girl who’d thrown him over the table called him a moron and deadened his arm with a brutal punch.
As suddenly as the fracas started, everyone hurried back to their seats because Zara had entered the dining-room. Something had happened, but all she saw were twenty young faces with what, me? expressions.
Jake groaned as the older girl threw him back towards where he’d been sitting.
‘Bethany,’ Zara said firmly. ‘What have I told you about fighting with your brother?’
‘It’s nothing,’ the girl said. ‘We were just messing around, weren’t we?’