CHERUB: Guardian Angel (12 page)

The comment made Ethan feel rueful: maybe he wasn’t bad-looking, but he hated his gangly body. He almost let the mention of his mother slip by, but he was leaving soon and with Irena in poor health this might be his only chance to learn what she really thought.

‘Who do you think killed my mum?’ Ethan asked.

‘If I knew for sure they’d already be dead,’ Irena said.

‘Even if it was Uncle Leonid?’

As Ethan said this, Irena shuddered and took a strange kind of double breath. A tense hand crept towards her oxygen mask, but didn’t quite make it.

‘Who put that idea in your head?’ Irena asked harshly.

‘Nobody,’ Ethan said, as the sudden tension made goosebumps ripple across his back. ‘But he’s ambitious. Everyone says you asked my mum to come back here because you didn’t want Leonid running the clan alone.’

Irena wagged a pointing finger.

‘No,’ she said resolutely. ‘Galenka and Leonid were close. They used to play beautifully together. And Leonid has a few rough edges, but not that! A mother knows her own children and it’s just not possible.’

Ethan’s stomach suddenly felt horribly light. Even accounting for the fact that parents always want to see the best in their kids, how could anyone describe a raging psycho like Leonid as having
a few rough edges
?

‘I suppose I’d better get cracking,’ Ethan said. ‘Find somewhere to pack this laptop and stuff.’

‘Don’t forget to call and let me know how you’re doing,’ Irena said.

‘For sure,’ Ethan said.

He moved quickly down the hallway and dropped the laptop and bag of accessories inside the door of his room. He glanced at his watch and realised that he had about eighty minutes until his flight to Dubai and one piece of unfinished business.

Placing the memory key in the laptop in Leonid’s apartment hadn’t been a problem, but Ethan now knew that Leonid spent more time working at the stables than the Kremlin. After checking that he’d put a USB memory stick in his pocket, Ethan took the stairs down to the ground floor, exited the Kremlin through a rear fire door and started a brisk trek along a rugged path.

Ethan hadn’t exactly made friends at the stable, but he’d picked up a few lines of Kyrgyz and won favour with some of the younger stable hands by being generous with cigarettes. He got a couple of nods and hellos as he walked through the yard, but nobody cared enough to ask Ethan what he was up to as he entered the little admin shed and knocked on the door of Leonid’s metal-doored office.

He wasn’t expecting a reply and he didn’t get one. Leonid spent his Friday nights at a casino in Bishkek, and never surfaced before noon on a Saturday. Despite the reinforcement, the door was never locked. Ethan had the USB stick out of his pocket and was down on one knee plugging it into the back of Leonid’s computer within five seconds of entering the room.

There was always a chance that the key might be discovered, but judging by all the filth and dust behind the computer, even the cleaner hadn’t been back there in years.

For the return walk, Ethan unthinkingly took a shortcut that brought him past the open-air weight stack behind the Kremlin. The square had originally been a Soviet Air Force training area. The wire fence now hung down in rusted curls and the basketball courts were covered in huge potholes, but the outdoor weight benches and chin-up bars were still in regular use, not least by Boris and Alex Aramov.

‘Get over here,’ Alex shouted.

Ethan pretended like he hadn’t heard and kept walking.

‘Don’t make me come over there, little cousin,’ Alex warned.

Ethan cursed his luck – knowing he had to turn around and face whatever his two mad cousins planned to dish out.

The scene with benches and massive weights reminded Ethan of a prison movie. Besides Alex and Boris, there was Vlad and half a dozen other seriously pumped teenagers, either bare chested or in muscle vests.

Ethan stopped walking and pointed towards the airfield. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said warily. ‘My plane’s leaving in a minute.’

‘Won’t take off without you, will it?’ Alex shouted, as he pointed at the ground in front of his trainers. ‘Get here, now!’

‘Look at this bandy-legged weakling,’ Boris said, making all the other lads roar with approval as he loomed over Ethan from behind. ‘How can this puny brat share
my
genes?’

‘I doubt he’s even the same species as me,’ Alex said, as he wrapped Ethan in a sweaty headlock and wrenched his neck painfully. ‘How much can you bench press, cousin?’

‘About three kilos,’ one of the hangers-on joked.

Alex dragged Ethan several metres across the concrete towards a chin-up bar.

‘If you can do ten chin-ups I’ll let you go,’ Alex said. ‘Otherwise, I’m gonna beat you hard.’

Ethan rubbed his throat as he looked at the bars. A month’s manual labour at the stables had built stamina, but Ethan was still weedy and the bodybuilders cracked up as he grabbed the bars and tried pulling himself up.

‘Look at his arms shaking!’ Boris jeered, as the other bodybuilders laughed. ‘He’s not even gonna do one.’

Ethan pulled mightily and managed a single chin-up, with the rusted bar grazing his hands. On the way down he lost his grip and dropped off. Alex waded in, knocking Ethan down with a palm in the back, then planting a damp trainer across his chest.

‘You look like you’re gonna piss your pants,’ Alex said, as Boris walked around to stand by Ethan’s head.

Ethan expected blows, but instead Boris hacked up a big phlegm ball and gobbed it in his face.

‘We could beat you now,’ Boris explained, as he slammed a fist into his palm. ‘But it’s more fun if you know you’ve got it coming when you get back. Now get out of my face.’

Ethan was determined not to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing him cry as he limped away with Alex, Boris and the other lads laughing and making humiliating comments like
such a weed
and
I want front row tickets when he gets battered!
Ethan had put some of his best gear on for the trip to Dubai, but now he was covered in gravel and he had Boris’ snot running down his face.

*

Amy Collins sat at the desk in her hotel room. The three kids – Ryan, Ning and Alfie – were perched on the end of her unmade bed.

‘We’ve got preliminary analysis of the data Ethan uploaded from Leonid Aramov’s computer,’ Amy began. ‘There’s nothing spectacular, which is no surprise because the Aramovs haven’t stayed in business this long by being careless with their secrets. But Leonid Aramov did use the computer to type letters and notes, and made a couple of small transactions through an online bank.

‘Everything on the computer is encrypted, but the spy software caught screenshots and saved copies of many documents in unencrypted form. Hopefully analysis will enable us to pick up some encryption keys for the rest.’

‘Keys are always good,’ Alfie said. ‘If he’s like most of us, Leonid uses the same encryption for everything he does.’

‘What type of letters were they?’ Ryan asked.

‘There’s about two hundred scraped off the computer’s hard drive, dating back to when the computer was first installed five years ago,’ Amy said. ‘Information Management are still working through all the data. There’s some info on the Aramov Clan’s secret bank accounts and names of previously unknown Aramov associates who can be investigated further.’

‘Is there anything I can tell Ethan next time I talk to him?’ Ryan asked.

‘Stall him for now,’ Amy said. ‘Say you’ve only glanced at the data because you have a lot of homework. Ethan’s about to start a new school, so he’ll hopefully have other things to focus his mind on over the next few days.’

The mention of Ethan made Ning and Alfie glance towards each other, exchanging nervous smiles.

‘So are today’s plans finalised?’ Alfie asked.

‘Looks like it,’ Amy said. ‘Civilian aircraft have to file flight plans at least three hours before take-off. A Kyrgyz-registered plane flying under the Aramov’s
Clanair
banner put in a flight plan from the Kremlin to the Emirate of Sharjah.’

‘So Ethan’s not flying into Dubai?’ Alfie asked.

Amy shook her head. ‘Dubai has a world-class international airport, with all the costs and security implications that go with it. Sharjah Airport is less than twenty kilometres down the road. It’s mainly a cargo terminal, but it’s also the base for a lot of tiny seat-of-the-pants airlines who fly to less glamorous spots, such as Congo, Afghanistan and Central Asia. The Aramovs are on
very
friendly terms with the authorities at Sharjah and their planes fly in and out regularly with minimal interference.

‘As soon as the Aramov flight plan was filed, I filed one of my own for a small plane from Egypt. I’ve told DESA school that Alfie is arriving on this plane, and they’ll be sending a bus to pick you up. As the planes land within ten minutes of each other, it’s a near certainty that Alfie will get to ride on the school bus with Ethan.’

There was a friendly rivalry between Alfie and Ning over who could make friends with Ethan first and Alfie couldn’t resist poking his tongue out at Ning.

‘I’ll make sure my chess set is poking out of my backpack,’ Alfie said. ‘We’ll be best buds before we ride through the school gate.’

Ryan laughed. ‘Just don’t actually try playing Ethan at chess. You’re still shite and he’ll wipe you out in less than ten moves.’

‘So that’s where we’re at right now,’ Amy said, as she looked at Ning and rubbed her hands together. ‘First mission, eh? I bet you’re dead excited.’

Ning nodded. ‘Kind of, but also worried that I’ll screw it up!’

*

Alex and Boris made so many threats that Ethan hoped they’d have forgotten by the time he got back from Dubai, but he still had a shaky feeling as he took a quick shower and put on fresh clothes.

Andre entered as Ethan was lacing his Nike. He wheeled Ethan’s biggest case towards the lift, while Ethan himself dealt with two smaller bags and his new laptop.

‘You’ll let me know what it’s like, won’t you?’ Andre said eagerly, as the rattly lift took them down to the ground floor. ‘I think I’d like to go to boarding school, but I’d have to ask my dad . . .’

‘It might be tough for you,’ Ethan said. ‘I’m not saying you’re stupid or anything, but your English isn’t fantastic and you’d probably be behind the other kids because US11 isn’t
exactly
an elite school.’

‘My dad wouldn’t have it anyway,’ Andre said sadly. ‘I wish my life wasn’t so boring.’

There was a porter from the airfield waiting in the lobby. He glanced at his watch to indicate that Ethan was late, but even the youngest members of the Aramov family commanded respect around the Kremlin, so he didn’t complain.

The porter loaded the luggage into the back of a tiny truck which had originally been designed for loading bombs. Andre came along for the ride as they clattered away from the Kremlin, shuddering over gravel until reaching a much smoother taxiway at the edge of the airfield.

They had to hang back while a big Ilyushin cargo plane blasted off, then they drove through a haze of jet fumes and along the main runway towards a little Yak 40 jet.

In standard configuration the Yak could seat twenty-two, but after a quick high five and a goodbye to Cousin Andre, Ethan walked up ten steps into a cabin with just seven large armchairs and a bar fitted with crystal decanters.

The plane had been built in Russia in the early 1970s, as VIP transport for the Soviet communist party. The aircraft’s yellowed interior panels and noisy air vents gave its vintage away, but the carpets seemed new and the smart leather chairs had DVD players in the armrests, along with iPod sockets and noise-cancelling headphones.

The cockpit door was open and Ethan leaned in to look at a short grey-haired pilot running through pre-flight checks with his much younger assistant.

‘Just so you know I’m on board,’ Ethan said warmly, as he gave a little wave. ‘What’s our flying time to Sharjah?’

The co-pilot tapped one of the charts on his clipboard. ‘We’re looking at the weather patterns. I’ll let you know when I’ve worked it out.’

‘Are we expecting any other passengers?’ Ethan asked.

‘Looks like he’s arriving now,’ the co-pilot said.

Ethan looked out the front of the cockpit and gulped as he saw Leonid Aramov lifting a small case out the back of his Mercedes.

Alfie sat in the meet and greet area in Sharjah International Airport, with a half-drunk Coke bottle in hand and his baggage sprawled in front of him. He’d been through plenty of airports, but this was the first one where the departure board offered flights to Chebalynsk, Krasnodar, Turbat, Dushanbe and a whole bunch of other places he’d never heard of.

After waiting around for more than two hours the haggard DESA Chemistry teacher who’d been sent to pick Alfie and Ethan up had gone off, hoping to find an airport official who might know why Ethan’s flight hadn’t arrived.

As soon as the teacher was out of sight, Alfie pulled his iPhone and called Amy.

‘Where the hell is he?’ Alfie asked. ‘Ethan should have been here at least two hours ago.’

Amy sounded flustered. ‘We tracked the flight transponder. The aircraft left the Kremlin on time. It stuck to the filed flight plan for forty-five minutes before deviating.’

‘Deviating?’ Alfie asked, sounding frustrated as he glanced back to make sure that the teacher was still out of sight.

‘Changing course,’ Amy explained. ‘It moved briefly into an air corridor used by the Russian military, then the transponder got switched off.’

‘What, it disappeared from radar?’

‘Not radar,’ Amy explained. ‘Civilian aircraft have transponders that transmit an identity signal. It makes it easy for air traffic control and other pilots to know exactly where they are. You can even download apps to track civilian aircraft movements on your mobile. I’ve called my head office in Dallas and they’re trying to work out what has happened.’

‘Could the plane have crashed?’ Alfie asked. ‘Or made an emergency landing?’

‘That’s not impossible,’ Amy said. ‘But we know that the Aramovs have powerful connections inside the Russian Air Force and we suspect that the aircraft deliberately diverted into Russian military airspace. I’ve asked the United States Air Force to try and find out where the plane went using their radar or satellite logs, but the bottom line is, Ethan Aramov won’t be arriving in Sharjah any time soon.’