James didn’t fancy it one bit, but he’d come this far. He made the first two jumps easily enough, but the third was on to a plank that was slightly offset and he felt his boot skid alarmingly as he landed. With more luck than skill, James managed to stay on by grabbing hold of an overhanging branch and countered his sliding boot by leaning in the opposite direction. James had been through so much on missions that it wasn’t the most frightening moment of his life, but it ran the leading contenders pretty close.
‘Careful, old timer,’ Kevin shouted cockily, from his position on a square platform at the end of the jumps.
James steamed along the next plank and made a simple jump on to the platform. He adopted a bullying tone. ‘What do you think you’re doing, you nutter? It’s like a skating rink up here.’
‘I want my grey T-shirt,’ Kevin yelled. ‘I want to get through basic training and become an agent more than anything else in the world.’
James crouched down and felt under the platform. He was relieved to find an escape rope, identical to the one he’d climbed up. He was still shaken from his skid and couldn’t manage to keep up his training instructor persona.
‘We can come back tomorrow, Kev. It’s great that your confidence has built up so quickly, but—’
‘I’m going heel to toe,’ Kevin said, referring to the final section of the course.
When James first went over the height obstacle three years earlier, it had ended with a sheer drop on to a large gym mat. But the tree that supported the final platform had rotted and Mr Large had used the repair work as an opportunity to design a much scarier final section.
It now involved walking down a steeply sloping plank that was narrower than a CHERUB combat boot, before whizzing down a rope slide to the ground. Just to make life even more difficult, a large pond had been dug and you had to jump off the swing while you were still several metres off the ground. Jump too soon and you’d break your legs, jump too late and you got a soaking. And to make sure that the soaking didn’t appeal on a hot day, the pond had been stocked with glutinous brown algae that smelled like rotting meat.
‘You can’t go down the ramp in this weather,’ James said, grabbing Kevin by his sleeve. ‘It’s lethal.’
But Kevin twisted and broke free. Like everyone who’d been at CHERUB for a few years, Kevin had spent hundreds of hours in the dojo learning combat skills. James towered over the ten-year-old and was probably double his weight, but he still didn’t fancy tussling with him on an icy wooden platform thirty metres above the ground.
‘Sod you then,’ James snarled. ‘Ignore me. Show me how brave you are. Just don’t blame me if you get tangled in a net and end up like Bruce.’
‘I’m not brave,’ Kevin shouted, somehow managing to sound sad and defiant at the same time. ‘I’ve never been so scared in my life. But I want to be a cherub. If I can get over here when it’s all iced up, any other time is gonna be a piece of cake.’
‘I wash my hands,’ James said, as he theatrically rubbed them together. ‘There’s not much I can do short of punching you out and lowering you down on a rope.’
‘You can wish me luck,’ Kevin said as he stepped off the platform and placed a boot on to the steeply sloping beam.
James could hardly bear to look as Kevin balanced precariously on the slippery plank. James had been over it dozens of times, but when it was dry you could take a short run up and make it down in eight nervous steps. With ice on the plank your boot would skid off sideways.
After three steps, Kevin’s front boot slipped. After controlling a wobble, he looked back towards the top and realised that he’d bitten off more than he could chew. James frantically reached under the platform to unbuckle the rescue rope. It was meant for getting to the ground, but he reckoned he could throw the end out for Kevin to grab hold of.
As the rope dropped through the branches, James looked up and saw that Kevin had turned around and now had one knee resting on the plank. Next, the youngster rested his hands on the wood and let his feet slip over the sides so that he sat astride it.
James couldn’t help but smile. If you came up with a group, the instructor would scream abuse and make you run punishment laps if you shuffled along a plank instead of walking, but it wasn’t actually breaking any rules. The only rule was that Kevin had to get across the obstacle without any assistance.
With his chest resting against the beam and his arms wrapped around it, Kevin tried to control his descent. But the angle was steep and the rough wood shredded his sleeves. When he thumped into the base of the final platform, he screamed – then swung his leg around, before stepping off and looking over his shoulder. James was on the previous platform ten metres away, but he could see the giant splinter of wood sticking out of Kevin’s bum.
‘Don’t pull it out,’ James yelled. ‘Leave it there, in case you’ve ruptured a vein or an artery.’
Kevin limped to the front of the platform and grabbed a metre of damp nylon rope out of a plastic dustbin. He slung one end over the main rope that led down to the ground and gripped the rubber handles on each end.
‘Wait until you clear the last tree,’ James shouted. ‘Then count two seconds and let go, or you’ll crash into the pond.’
‘Gotcha,’ Kevin nodded.
James had no intention of following Kevin over the icy beam. He grabbed the escape rope and was lowering himself over the side as Kevin launched himself off the platform.
‘SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT,’ Kevin screamed, picking up speed as the branches skimmed against his legs.
James was less than half-way down when everything went silent. Desperate to know if Kevin was OK, he clambered through fifty metres of undergrowth, before breaking out on to the flat expanse of grass where the rope slide ended.
‘Kevin!’ James called anxiously. ‘Are you OK?’
Lots of kids mistimed letting go of the rope the first couple of times they tried it. Although injuries were usually restricted to sprained ankles and cut knees, Kevin’s silence was giving James visions of shattered limbs and concussions.
‘Over here,’ Kevin shouted.
James sprinted towards the pool. Kevin had let go a little bit late and ended up with his legs in the stinking water, but he was already on his feet and limping breathlessly towards James.
‘I bloody did it,’ Kevin grinned. ‘Basic training here I come!’
James knew Kevin still had a mountain to climb: during basic training he’d be expected to complete the obstacle in less than three minutes with a fifteen-kilogram pack on his back. But this was a moment for celebration, not harsh reality.
‘Well done, mate,’ James grinned back. ‘Not bad. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it was pretty damned impressive for someone who wouldn’t jump off a metre-high barrel two nights ago.’
‘I want to be a cherub,’ Kevin said. ‘When Bruce shoved me off the platform last night, I was so scared. I actually wet my pants on the way down.’
James grimaced. ‘Nice.’
‘But when I bounced off the net I looked up at the obstacle and it was like, is that all you’ve got?’
‘When the weather’s better, I’ll take you over a couple more times, so you get used to it,’ James offered.
‘I’m sorry I went up when it was icy,’ Kevin said. ‘But after last night I just had to do it.’
‘I should report you,’ James said.
Kevin looked up pleadingly, knowing that the instructors could punish him hard if they knew he’d disobeyed James’ orders.
‘I won’t this time,’ James relented. ‘But you saw what happened to Bruce. I’m glad you’re not scared any more, but it’s dangerous up there.’
‘Thanks,’ Kevin said, as he stared up at the obstacle. ‘I hated you and Bruce that first night, but I reckon I owe you one now.’
‘Just doing my job,’ James said happily, as he considered all the History coursework he’d just got out of. ‘I guess I’d better piggyback you over to the med unit
so they can take that splinter out of your arse.’
25. PIKE
Lauren was pleased that she was getting good information out of Anna, but she woke up in a mood because she was facing a third boring day sitting around in Aldrington Care Centre.
To make matters worse, one of the house parents came to Lauren’s room after breakfast and told her that they’d found her a place at a school in Burgess Hill, starting the following morning. On top of the stupid green uniform and the fact that settling into a new school was always a nightmare, came the news that she’d have to leave at half six in the morning and walk to a bus stop two kilometres away before taking a thirty-five-minute bus ride.
‘You sound like you got out of bed on the wrong side this morning,’ John said cheerfully, when he rang Lauren on her mobile.
‘Seriously, don’t wind me up,’ Lauren moaned. ‘I might really lose my temper.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Thick grey tights, a hand-me-down pullover with a dirty great rip in the elbow and an hour a day on a bus full of strange school kids.’
‘Blah,’ John said dismissively. ‘You should count yourself lucky. When I first joined MI5, they had me staking out a gents’ toilet on Hampstead Heath.’
‘Nice,’ Lauren said, cracking into a smile.
‘You’ve not suffered until you’ve spent a week crawling around in an asbestos-lined roof cavity and coming home to your wife smelling like a public toilet. It’s no wonder I’m divorced …’
‘Oh,’ Lauren added, ‘and to make my life even more perfect, this idiot boy – the dude who was at the dining-table when you dropped me off – found out that I’m a vegetarian and hid a piece of bacon in my cornflakes.’
John laughed.
‘It’s not funny,’ Lauren said firmly. ‘I’ve got a piece of dead animal inside me. It makes me queasy just thinking about it.’
‘Got lots of bits of dead animal inside me,’ John said. ‘The landlady here does a cracking cooked breakfast.’
‘Anyway, I take it you heard the calls last night?’
‘Yep, and the messages you left with my assistant on campus. You must have called while I was in the shower.’
‘So what are we going to do with the information?’ Lauren pressed.
‘MI5 runs an anti-trafficking task force. We can pass the information on about Mr Broushka and the children’s home in Nizhniy Novgorod, but I’m not hopeful.’
‘Why not? I bet you could track him down easily enough.’
‘Probably,’ John said. ‘But it’s a question of resources. It would probably take a team of two or three officers to track him down and then we’d have to find evidence compelling enough to get the Russian police to prosecute him.’
Lauren tutted. ‘So why are we even bothering?’
‘We’ve got to hope that Anna knows a few more details that will enable us to get our teeth into the British end of the organisation. Keep pumping her gently for names, places, descriptions of the men and any snippets of conversation she might have overheard while she was in the truck or on the boat.’
‘The guy on the phone sounded creepy,’ Lauren said. ‘Maybe he’ll ring again. He certainly sounded keen to get his hands on Anna.’
‘I’m not surprised. They must have spent a lot of money smuggling Anna across Europe and into Britain and they probably had a buyer lined up ready to pay good money for her.’
‘How much is a twelve-year-old girl worth?’ Lauren asked.
‘It depends upon the buyer: twenty, thirty or maybe even fifty thousand pounds.’
‘It makes me shudder just thinking about it,’ Lauren said. ‘But why would they pay so much? Couldn’t you just pick any girl off the street?’
‘You could,’ John said. ‘Trouble is, the girl would probably have family and friends. It gets in the paper, on the TV and the police mount a full-scale manhunt. If you take a girl like Anna from a children’s home in Russia and smuggle her in, she just vanishes. Nobody’s looking for her because nobody even knows she’s here.’
*
James put his head inside the training instructor’s hut. He’d knocked, but hadn’t got an answer.
‘Mr Pike?’
Pike emerged from a tiled area at the back of the hut, with wet hair and dressed only in a pair of alarmingly skimpy underpants.
‘Thanks for coming by during your lunchtime,’ Pike said.
‘No bother,’ James said. ‘I was coming up this way to see Bruce. The nurse asked me to bring his portable DVD player and some clean clothes.’
‘How’s he doing?’
‘About what you’d expect, I guess,’ James shrugged. ‘It’s a bad break. When I left him last night they’d given him a load of sedatives and he was dead to the world.’
‘Too bad. We’ve had a couple of bumps and sprains where kids have bounced off a net and hit a tree, but that’s the first broken bone we’ve had in my time here.’
‘I guess it’s just a freak thing, getting your foot caught in the net like that.’
‘Anyway,’ Pike said, as he pulled on a clean pair of combat trousers. ‘I asked you up here to say thanks. I wasn’t totally convinced that Kevin would respond to bullying tactics, but it seems to have worked out.’
‘He’s even a bit the other way, sir. I’m worried that he might go too far and start thinking he’s indestructible.’
‘I’ve got him for a hundred days of basic training, starting in just over three weeks,’ Pike smiled. ‘I reckon we’ll have his head straight by the end of that.
‘The other reason I wanted you to come up was to ask if you’d be interested in helping us out a bit more. There are always kids to be trained. We can always do with a hand on weekend exercises and of course, if you’re helping us out on a regular basis, we’ll make sure that your own training and academic requirements are lightened.’
James nodded. ‘Meryl said I had a choice between helping out with training and doing heaps more academic stuff. The only thing is, if they lift my suspension I’ll probably be out on missions most of the time.’
Mr Pike was now dressed, except for his boots. He walked over to a coffee percolator. ‘Drink?’
‘Nah, I’m fine.’
‘So how’s Ewart getting on with the investigation?’ Pike asked.
James shrugged. ‘I went over there, but Ewart won’t tell me what’s going on. He says there’s a big row going on with MI5. It looks like it could drag on for months and I could be the one who gets stitched up.’
‘That wouldn’t surprise me,’ Pike said. ‘Once upon a time, me and Ewart were best mates.’
‘Really?’ James said. ‘I’ve never seen you speak to each other.’
‘That’s ’cos I hate his snidey guts. I completed my basic training a few months before Ewart. We had rooms next to each other; I had your girlfriend’s room actually.’
James smiled. ‘Kerry’s room. I never knew that.’
‘We even went on our first couple of missions together. But the third time out, Ewart stitched me up big time. We were both still grey-shirts, thirteen years old. Some of our mates had got their navy shirt and we were both getting desperate. Anyhow, like you I hated writing essays and reports. The only things that interested me were skirt, rugby and punch-ups. So when our mission came to its end, Ewart generously volunteered to type up my report as well as his own. We’d both done a decent enough job, but I see him two days later and he’s wearing a navy shirt.
‘When I read the reports, it was like everything Ewart had done was perfect and everything I’d done was half-arsed. I did my nut, but I couldn’t complain unless I was prepared to admit that I hadn’t written my own mission report.’
James shook his head. ‘Some best friend.’
‘I dragged Ewart out of his room and kicked him from one end of the sixth-floor corridor to the other, but the damage to my career was done. Ewart was part of the elite, going off on all the best missions. It took me another eighteen months to get my nav
y shirt, but I was never regarded as anything other than an average agent.’
‘Do you get on with him now?’
‘Barely,’ Pike shrugged. ‘Zara’s a nice lady and she invited me when her kids were christened. I put my good suit on and acted civil, but Ewart still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. He’s a snidey little so and so and if I was in your position, I’d be worried. I’d bet you my left nut that what comes out of that investigation isn’t what’s best for you or for CHERUB, but whatever’s good for Ewart bloody Asker.’
James wasn’t sure what to think. Maybe Ewart had set Mr Pike up, but the incident must have taken place more than fifteen years ago and they’d both been kids. It hardly seemed like grounds for believing that Ewart would do the same to him. And what did Ewart even have to gain by stitching him up?
‘You know what?’ Pike grinned, as he pulled a blue plastic card out of his wallet and handed it to James. ‘That’s for the mission preparation building, full access.’
‘What am I supposed to do with it?’
‘The mission controllers don’t usually work late,’ Pike explained. ‘Go into Ewart’s office and have a good snoop around.’
James tentatively grabbed the card. ‘I dunno, sir.’
‘You only get one shot at a CHERUB career,’ Pike said. ‘Ewart ruined mine; don’t let him do it to you.’
‘Thanks,’ James said, as he tucked the card in his pocket.
‘Just be careful,’ Mr Pike said. ‘I could lose my job for giving you that. If they catch you, I’ll have to say that I lost it.’
26. ESCAPE
The Aldrington Care Centre’s newest resident was a four-year-old lad named Carl. He’d arrived the night before, sporting ragged clothes, a swollen right eye and a layer of filth. After a thorough scrubbing, a night’s sleep and a morning being interviewed by police, Carl was allowed to explore his temporary home and found Lauren killing time on the Playstation in the living-room.