CHERUB: Guardian Angel (21 page)

‘I’m not on their side,’ Andre said firmly. ‘So what’s this number?’

As Andre wrote down Amina’s mobile number, Irena shouted for Josef in the background. Ethan wasn’t sure this was the right move, but he couldn’t control everything and while Irena might have had a blind spot when it came to Leonid, she hadn’t built the Aramov Clan without being a smart operator.

Ethan felt safer with Irena on his side, but this was only a baby step and there was no certainty he’d be able to get out of Kanye or reverse the progress of Leonid’s coup. As Ethan ended the call and pocketed the Samsung, he saw that Amina had sat up a little, while screwing up her face because of a bad taste in her mouth.

Ethan ran a glass of water. ‘Here,’ he said.

Amina looked curious as she took the glass, then she looked pissed off. ‘Why are you wearing my university shirt?’

Ethan got out of answering, because at the same moment Amina touched her swollen eye and winced with pain.

‘Why are you still here?’ Amina said. ‘I guess you’re a gentleman, at least.’

‘What do you mean?’ Ethan asked.

Amina smiled at Ethan’s naivety. ‘You didn’t try screwing me while I was unconscious.’

‘More water?’ Ethan asked, as Amina drained her glass.

Amina nodded as she massaged her aching temples. ‘There are pills in the cupboard above the microwave. Get me those as well.’

Ethan refilled the glass and opened the cupboard, but as he reached for an old ice cream tub filled with sachets and pill pots he heard feet on the stairs. It was too fast to be the old guy who lived across the balcony and when he took a step back and peered out of the window there was a near-new Toyota pick-up right outside.

‘Shit,’ Ethan said.

Someone shouted from the landing outside. ‘Amina, open up.’

But before she’d even turned around, the door took an enormous boot and swung into the room. Ethan recognised Michael from the ranch, closely followed by a couple of heavies. He turned back to the window and wondered if he could make the jump to the ground floor without breaking his legs.

Once Ryan fell asleep, Ning, Amy, Ted and Kazakov gathered around a bar unit in the kitchen and tried figuring out what to do next.

‘Sun’ll be up before long,’ Kazakov said, breaking into a yawn as he peeked between mildewed curtains with bunnies on them.

‘Pulling the USB sticks and bugging Leonid’s office was our best shot at finding Ethan,’ Ted said. ‘Amy, do you think there’s any way Dan could get it for us?’

‘I can ask him,’ Amy said, as she caught Kazakov’s yawn. ‘But we have to make a decision. Do we pressure Dan into taking a big risk now, or view him as a longer-term asset?’

‘He works for Leonid and he pumps iron with Boris and Alex,’ Ted said, nodding thoughtfully. ‘As keen as I am to find what’s on those memory sticks, if we ask Dan to do something risky right now, we might freak him out and lose him for good.’

Ning sighed. ‘So what
can
we do about Ethan?’

Kazakov spoke. ‘Security at the Kremlin isn’t magnificent. Give me forty-eight hours and four Special Forces guys and I’ll get your memory sticks.’

Ted shook his head. ‘You might get your team in, but the Aramovs either own or scare the shit out of everyone with any kind of authority in these parts.’

‘We could use a chopper to fly our men in,’ Kazakov suggested.

‘Not practical,’ Ted said. ‘Kyrgyzstan is land-locked. We’d have to ask about six foreign governments for permission to fly over their land to get there. Even if you could do that without someone tipping off the Aramovs, there’d be a massive diplomatic shit storm afterwards. The Aramovs are connected right up to Politburo level in China and they’re very chummy with the Russian security service and air force.’

Kazakov realised he was wrong and put up his hands. ‘I guess if we could wade in and tackle the Aramovs head on, we would have shot their planes down long ago.’

‘Exactly,’ Ted said. ‘And let’s not forget, if we do this correctly Dan will become a valuable intelligence asset inside the Aramov Clan. He may not be a family member like Ethan, but I’d bet that he has more day-to-day involvement with Leonid Aramov’s dealings than Ethan does.’

‘So, where do we all go?’ Ning asked.

Ted thought for a couple of seconds. ‘Amy can stay here in Bishkek to work as Dan’s controller. I’ll stick with her until our procedures and equipment are running smooth. Kazakov, you can go back to campus with Ning and our little wounded soldier in the living-room.’

‘Makes sense,’ Kazakov said.

Ted looked at his watch. ‘The Aramovs have eyeballs everywhere, so after the incident last night, it’s best if Ryan and Kazakov skip town ASAP. Rather than risk a scheduled flight, I’ll charter a jet to take you as far as Dubai and you can pick up a regular flight back to the UK from there.’

‘Me too?’ Ning asked.

Ted nodded. ‘Dan wasn’t the only one of Leonid’s goons you met when you were here with your stepmother. Amy and I can handle Dan now that you’ve found him and made the introduction.’

‘How long for a jet?’ Kazakov asked.

‘CIA transportation should have planes on standby in Afghanistan,’ Ted said. ‘I’d guess four to five hours, so pack your bags now then you might as well grab some sleep.’

‘Dan could be a huge help to us, Ning,’ Amy added. ‘If he turns into a valuable intelligence asset it’ll be a big feather in your cap.’

‘Might even be a navy shirt in it,’ Kazakov teased.

Ning smiled at the compliment and liked the thought of getting promoted so soon after basic training.

‘Try not to get Dan killed though,’ she told Amy. ‘He went against his own people to save my life, so I’m fond of the guy.’

*

The ground looked hard and Ethan had never made a jump from half this height before. The weird thing was that he wasn’t scared of getting beaten, or of dying. What he couldn’t stand was the thought of mind-bending days back in the cage with nothing to occupy his mind.

Michael reached through the open window and got fingertips to the Johannesburg University sweatshirt, but Ethan threw himself out and fell for what felt like an hour. His legs collapsed when he hit the ground. Intense pain drove up into his thighs and when he tried moving his right leg it made an involuntary twitch.

He was right by the Toyota’s back wheels. There was a guy sitting in the driving seat, and the biggest of Kessie’s goons was coming back down the stairs that led to Amina’s apartment. He was so vast that he had to turn sideways and held up the fitter men trapped behind him.

Ethan crawled a couple of metres before he started feeling something in his leg. He used a stack of empty crates by a shopfront to pull himself up and started to jog with his right leg almost lame. A pistol got fired into the air as a warning, but Kessie wanted him alive so Ethan kept going.

The Toyota pick-up had started its engine and a couple of goons had now pushed past the fat arse and made it on to the street. These guys yelled as the driver put the Toyota in reverse and aimed it towards Ethan.

Ethan heard the pick-up coming and realised that either the driver didn’t know what he was doing, or that Kessie wasn’t actually bothered if he came back alive. His right leg hurt like hell, but the shock of a charging car overrode the pain and he broke into a proper run.

With the Toyota less than ten metres away, Ethan turned out of the road and cut down an alleyway between two buildings. One building seemed to be an auto workshop, because the alleyway was piled up with rusty wheel hubs and empty oil cans.

The guy driving the Toyota swung the steering wheel and tried to follow, but the alleyway was barely a car’s width and there were sparks and a massive crunch as the pick-up reversed into the corner of a building, cracking a breeze-block wall.

Ethan couldn’t tell if three or four guys had been running after him, but they were all shouting and giving the pick-up driver abuse. Little kids were screaming and lights were coming on in windows above the shops.

Two of Kessie’s goons scrambled over the wedged pick-up to keep up the chase. As the second one jumped down off the pick-up’s crumpled tail there was a shotgun blast. The lead runner, who’d got within a few metres of Ethan, screamed with pain and fell down. Ethan heard shotgun pellets ricocheting off the alley walls but nothing hit home.

Ethan dared a backward glance and saw an enormously fat woman in a nightshirt. She stood on the roof of the damaged shop, aiming a shotgun down at Kessie’s men and threatening to blast anyone who moved before the cops arrived.

While the shopkeeper kept the men around the crash site in place, the second guy who’d made it over the pick-up straddled his stricken friend and kept up the chase. Having one guy after you is better than four or five, but it was still a grown man versus a thirteen-year-old with a screwed-up leg, and the guy was closing fast.

The alleyway ended at a wooden fence, but local kids had made a hole at the bottom and Ethan was slim enough to crash through. Now he was in a broader alleyway that ran parallel to the shopping street, with a health clinic right in front of him.

While his larger opponent pulled himself over the fence, Ethan eyed a mound of junk. A pair of stray dogs barked behind as Ethan grabbed a stick of laminated timber, which looked like it had been part of a wardrobe or kitchen cabinet. One end formed a long point where it had been snapped.

As Kessie’s goon dropped down off the fence and caught his balance, Ethan charged in and speared him in the gut. The goon had a cartoonish expression of shock when he looked down disbelievingly at twenty centimetres of wood embedded in his stomach.

Someone a couple of buildings across yelled for the barking dogs to shut up as the goon crumpled into the dirt and started coughing blood. Once the initial shock passed, Ethan peeked through the hole in the fence, making sure nobody else was coming.

Apart from his clothes, the only thing Ethan had on him was Amina’s phone. Money or a weapon would be useful, but the goon was still thrashing about so Ethan grabbed a chunk of rubble off the junk heap and took a shuddering breath before swinging it at the guy’s head.

The first swing made a hollow thud and sent the goon sprawling on to his back. Ethan had never been a violent person, but after all the shit he’d been through he found a degree of satisfaction in hurting one of his former captors.

Ethan’s hands trembled and he was sure he’d killed his enemy as he searched the pockets of his shorts. There were some coins and some fifty-and one-hundred-pula notes, plus a cheapo Nokia phone, and a twenty-centimetre utility knife in a sheath tied to a belt loop.

One of the dogs had come within a couple of metres and as Ethan hobbled away it closed in and began licking the warm blood.

Tons of weird stuff had happened to Ethan since his mum had died, but wandering dark streets in a Botswanan town, holding a knife in bloody hands, took the prize. He knew he was in Kanye, but not where in Kanye, and his priority was to get as much distance between himself and the last place where Kessie’s boys had seen him.

Ethan crossed a busy road and limped uphill into a well-maintained housing development. It could have been California, with three-car garages and palms down the middle of the road. There was even private security and he dived behind a wall as the little Suzuki patrol vehicle rolled past.

Amina’s Samsung rang as the patrol car’s rear lights faded. Ethan adjusted his position so that he was sitting on the edge of a brick driveway and was pleased to see
international
flashing on the screen.

Irena spoke, but she didn’t sound like the bedridden cancer patient Ethan had known at the Kremlin. This was the iron lady who’d changed the Aramov Clan from an organisation that smuggled Western cigarettes on muleback, to a billion-dollar empire that owned more than sixty aircraft.

‘How’s it going?’ she asked.

‘I had to leave the apartment in a hurry,’ Ethan explained. ‘I’m on the street. It’s a nice area, but I’ll need a hiding place before it gets light.’

‘Listen good,’ Irena said. ‘My bush pilot friend is on your case. There’s a lot of diamonds smuggled out of your area, so he knows it well. Two kilometres up the main road north out of Kanye there’s a derelict boarding school. Apparently it moved to a new facility eight years ago. Try getting there before daylight and hiding out in the school buildings. The old playing fields are used as a landing strip by smugglers. My contact has got to fly from South Africa, but he should be able to land there within four hours.’

‘Sounds good,’ Ethan said. ‘I’m not sure exactly where I am right now, but this phone has maps if I can get a data connection. What’s going on where you are?’

‘Andre got the USB keys. I’ve also put in a call to my main bank in Russia. Eighty-two million euros was electronically transferred out of various accounts over the past week.’

‘Damn,’ Ethan said. ‘All of the data on Leonid’s computers is encrypted, but the spy software captures screenshots while they’re in use, in their unencrypted state. If Leonid used either of his computers to access online banking facilities, or to type up notes of his passwords, we should be able to get the money back.’

‘I’ve also rounded up some muscle that I can trust,’ Irena said. ‘They’re searching Leonid’s office and apartment for any paperwork relating to what he’s been up to. I’ve got security teams stationed on the sixth-floor lifts and their orders are to grab Leonid and bring him to me the instant he arrives.’

‘Is he still at the hospital?’ Ethan asked.

‘He was when I called half an hour back to ask after Boris,’ Irena said.

‘How is he?’

‘His jaw is shattered. He’ll probably have to go abroad for treatment.’

‘But Leonid doesn’t know I’m free?’ Ethan asked.

‘Not as far as I know,’ Irena said. ‘If he gets wind of it he might go into hiding rather than show up here to face me.’

‘The less he knows, the more chance we have of getting your money out of his control,’ Ethan said. ‘I doubt Kessie will be in any hurry to let Leonid know I’ve escaped.’