CHERUB: Guardian Angel (26 page)

‘Both of you take your boots off,’ Irena ordered. ‘You’ve been known to keep knives down there.’

Leonid pulled off his boots, but Alex was only wearing trainers. Once they were both unshod the bodyguards patted them down.

‘What kind of boy tries to kill his own mother?’ Irena asked bitterly. ‘Let’s go to my room.’

The bodyguards stayed close behind as Leonid took the short walk down the hallway to Irena’s living-room. Andre was there, and tried making himself invisible by backing up to a mirror over a fake fireplace.

‘Sit,’ Irena said.

Leonid smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter that you’re alive, Mum. Your money’s long gone and your goons had better think hard if they want to see next month’s wages.’

Irena smiled back. ‘You transferred my money, but you’re not as clever as you like to think you are. Everything you typed on your computer was logged. Every web page you visited. Every security number and password. Over the past couple of hours we’ve changed all your passwords and begun transferring the money back to my accounts.’

Leonid’s face drooped. ‘You’re paranoid. I didn’t try to kill you.’

‘Do you know how pathetic that sounds?’ Irena asked. ‘If you were anyone other than my son you’d be dead in a ditch already.’

Leonid pushed his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and looked like a sulky kid. ‘I want control,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve worked for the clan since I was thirteen years old.’

‘Pity you didn’t use all that time to grow up,’ Irena said. ‘You were a selfish child who became a selfish adult.’

Leonid hesitated for a few seconds before dramatically playing his final hand. ‘If you want to see your grandson alive, you’ll back off.’

Irena raised one eyebrow. ‘Which grandson would that be?’

‘Ethan.’

‘He seemed perfectly fine when I spoke to him ten minutes ago,’ Irena said. ‘And fortunately he inherited his mother’s brain. He’s long suspected that you killed his mother. Ethan put the spyware on your computers to try and prove it.’

Leonid didn’t know what to say to his mother, so he turned on Andre. ‘What’s your part in this?’ he shouted. ‘Did you betray your own father?’

Andre looked frightened, but spoke defiantly. ‘You killed your sister, you kidnapped Ethan and tried to kill Grandma. How am
I
the disloyal one?’

‘Don’t take it out on a ten-year-old,’ Irena said firmly. ‘You have one hour to pack your things. You can take a plane to wherever you want to go, but if you set foot in Kyrgyzstan or interfere with clan affairs I’ll come down hard. You’ll receive a monthly allowance that will enable you to live comfortably. Alex and Boris are loyal to you and must leave with you. Andre and your ex-wife can make up their own minds.’

‘I’m staying here,’ Andre said instantly.

‘This isn’t over,’ Leonid hissed. ‘Everyone inside the clan knows you’re past it.’

‘Maybe I am past it,’ Irena said. ‘But that doesn’t mean they want to work for you.’

‘Bitch!’ Leonid spat.

Irena’s eyes were misting over as she reached for the plastic mask attached to an oxygen cylinder under her chair.

‘My own son,’ she said softly. ‘You appal me.’

Leonid roared with laughter. ‘Our planes are responsible for half the heroin on the streets of Europe. You deliver cluster bombs to psychopaths. Girls get kidnapped and sold as sex slaves. You taught me everything I know, Mother.’

‘You don’t speak to me like that,
boy
,’ Irena shouted. ‘Bring him here.’

Leonid was no weakling, but the bodyguards were twice his size.

‘Kneel,’ Irena ordered, as Leonid was held in front of her. Then she looked back at Andre. ‘Get your grandfather’s dagger from the mantelpiece.’

Andre trembled as he took the knife from the shelf. His grandfather had been a boy soldier in the Red Army and he’d stolen the dagger from a dead German officer. It smelled oily and the button on the leather sheath popped as Irena pulled the knife out and pushed its tip against Leonid’s throat.

Leonid tried moving away, but the huge guards had him clamped.

‘If I live much longer I expect I’ll regret letting you go,’ Irena told Leonid. ‘But in my heart you’re
still
the boy who sat on this floor playing Lego with Josef and Galenka.’

Leonid smiled. Andre gasped with relief, because while he didn’t think much of his dad he didn’t want to watch his throat get cut either. But Leonid’s smug grin needled his mother, so she tugged his ear, then slashed down with the knife, cutting it clean off his head.

The move was swift for someone so frail and the guard was so shocked by the spurting blood that he let Leonid go.

Leonid screamed, as blood gushed down the side of his neck. He made a lunge at Irena’s wheelchair, but the bodyguards grabbed him under the arms and slammed him into the wall.

‘One hour to pack,’ Irena shouted. ‘Stick a bandage around his thick head and don’t let him out of your sight until his plane’s off the ground.’

Irena made a little sob, as all the blood and stress sent Andre into a dry heave.

‘Somebody take this away,’ Irena said, as she dropped her son’s ear at her feet. ‘And get a cleaner up here to scrub the blood out of this rug. I’m very fond of it. It really ties the room together.’

*

The limousine was on the access roads around Sharjah Airport when Ryan’s phone rang.
International
flashed on the display.

‘Hey, man,’ Ethan said.

‘It’s him,’ Ryan mouthed, as he made a shush gesture.

Ning and Kazakov both nodded, and leaned forward trying to listen in.

‘Ethan, buddy! How’s it hanging?’

Ethan sounded really happy. ‘I just shoved it to my uncle Leonid, big time.’

‘Seriously?’ Ryan said. ‘What happened?’

‘He tried to rip my gran off. But I had the spyware on his computer. I got up in all his banking and e-mail. Locked him out of a bunch of accounts. Transferred a bunch of money back to my grandma.’

‘Sweet,’ Ryan said. ‘Leonid must be furious.’

‘Last I heard he was heading back to the Kremlin and my grandma was gonna nail his arse.’

‘So where are you now?’

‘This lady Ruby who works for my gran is driving me to a hospital in Dubai. I jumped off a building in Kanye and messed up my ankle pretty good.’

‘You’re heading to Dubai,’ Ryan said, more for the benefit of his fellow passengers than anything else.

Meantime, Ning had typed something in the notes app on her phone and held it in front of Ryan’s face:

ASK HIM ABOUT THE PASSWORDS!

‘I finally feel like something good is about to happen in my life!’ Ethan said. ‘I can’t get Mom back, but at least I won’t have this Leonid thing weighing me down.’

Ryan couldn’t ask Ethan for his passwords directly, but he had an idea.

‘Just make sure you don’t forget all those passwords you changed,’ he said jokingly.

Ethan laughed. ‘No fear. I sent them all to a safe place. And I hope I didn’t piss you off earlier, but you called when everything was manic.’

‘Not at all.’

‘I’ve gotta go, I’m pulling into the hospital,’ Ethan said. ‘I’ll call tomorrow or something and we can have a proper chat.’

‘For sure,’ Ryan said. ‘Keep in touch.’

‘Always, mate.’

As Ryan ended the call, Kazakov pressed the intercom button to speak to the driver. ‘Turn it around. We’re heading back to Dubai. I’ll let you know where in a moment.’

Ryan spoke to Ning. ‘Ethan said he sent all the passwords to a safe place. You can be sure that doesn’t mean he printed them off and put them in the post.’

‘What online accounts does he use?’ Ning asked.

‘Skype, Hotmail and Facebook mostly,’ Ryan said. ‘We’ve got his login details for all of them. Sir, can I borrow your laptop again?’

‘Knock yourself out,’ Kazakov said, before leaning forward and digging his laptop from the mound of baggage in the middle of the car.

The computer was in sleep mode, and as Ryan opened the lid and connected it to a local 3G network, Ning used the browser on her phone to try finding a list of hospitals where Ethan might have ended up. As the traffic looked bad in both directions and Ethan had arrived already, she figured that the hospital had to be near the border between the Emirates of Sharjah and Dubai.

‘I reckon it’s one of two hospitals,’ Ning said. ‘Both less than five kilometres from here.’

As soon as Ryan connected the laptop to the Internet he logged into his CHERUB agent portal, in which he stored data relating to his missions. It took a few seconds to locate the file named
Ethan
, which contained all Ethan’s known login and online account details.

Once he had Ethan’s passwords, Ryan logged into Ethan’s Hotmail. The inbox contained tons of spam, the outbox had nothing recent, but there was an unsent message in the draft box. Ryan clicked it and saw a list of bank names, passwords and security numbers.

‘I’ve bloody well got it,’ he shouted jubilantly.

Ning leaned over to see and gave Ryan a grin. Ryan called Amy, but Ted answered.

‘She’s in the toilet,’ Ted explained. ‘Can I help?’

‘I’ve got the lot,’ Ryan said. ‘I just spoke to Ethan. He was on the way to a hospital and he said he’d sent the passwords somewhere safe. So I logged into his Hotmail and they’re all there in an unsent draft.’

‘Nice to get a bit of luck for once,’ Ted said. ‘E-mail the list through to Dallas. They’ll pass it on to the experts at the CIA, who can change all the passwords and lock Ethan out.’

‘Copying and pasting as I speak,’ Ryan said.

‘This all sounds great,’ Ted said. ‘But we can’t be certain this is
all
the information we need to access the accounts. So your job is to track Ethan down.’

‘Ethan thinks I’m in California,’ Ryan said. ‘My cover’s shot if he sees me here.’

‘Stay in the background then,’ Ted replied. Then jokingly, ‘Or see if the hospital shop does balaclavas.’

Amy called Ryan back as they approached a mirrored-glass hospital building, surrounded by a huge half-empty parking lot.

‘I’ve got good news and good news,’ Amy said cheerfully. ‘Which do you want to hear first?’

‘Guess it’ll be the good news then,’ Ryan said.

‘Dubai has a centralised patient management system that the CIA can access at will. Ten minutes ago, a record got created for a new patient called Ethan Aramov. He’s at Gulf Medical Institute.’

‘Perfect,’ Ryan said. ‘We’re heading into their parking lot.’

‘He’s in accident and emergency, bay sixteen. Preliminary assessment is that his condition is non-critical and he’s due to be seen by a Dr Patel within fifteen minutes.’

Ryan relayed the news to the others in the limo before Amy continued.

‘Second piece of good news: we got into Industrial Trust Bank using the passwords you hacked from Ethan. He couldn’t transfer money out in chunks greater than two and a half million roubles, but that only applies to interbank transfers. So our boffins found a US-based advertising agency that does its Russian banking through Industrial Trust and transferred the entire nine hundred million roubles to them.’

‘So the Aramovs are gonna be flat broke,’ Ryan said.

‘We’ve got them by the balls,’ Amy agreed. ‘Dan’s inside the Kremlin, and says he’ll be in touch as soon as he hears anything.’

‘Nice update, Amy,’ Ryan said. ‘Everything’s going our way at last.’

The car had pulled up at the hospital’s visitor entrance. As Ning started dragging the bags out, Kazakov pulled his wallet from the back of his trousers and offered the driver a credit card.

‘Cash only,’ the driver said.

Kazakov waved some euros.

‘AED,’ the driver said furiously.

‘I haven’t been to a cash machine yet, there must be one inside the hospital,’ Kazakov explained. He looked stressed as he turned to Ryan and Ning. ‘Have you kids got any Arab Emirates dollars on you?’

‘I gave the last of our money to Alfie before we left,’ Ning answered.

The driver was ranting as he climbed out of his car. ‘I not like your custom,’ he shouted, as he frantically wagged a pointing finger. ‘First you say Sharjah. Then hospital. Then you have no money.’

After the dim limo interior, Ryan got blinded by low sun as he helped Ning pull out their luggage. They were on a kerb close to a taxi rank and a set of automatic doors. When a hospital security guard in fluorescent vest heard the driver shouting he came striding over.

‘Is there a cash machine inside?’ Kazakov asked.

‘No money!’ the driver shouted.

It was hard to work out exactly why the driver was so angry and he kept yelling as the hospital security guard pointed out a cash machine inside the visitor’s lobby, less than fifteen metres away. With all the noise and his mobile ringer more or less screwed Ryan almost missed the next call on his BlackBerry.

‘Hello,’ Ryan said.

‘Long time no speak,’ Dr D said.

Ryan gulped.

Dr D was the petite, screechy-voiced head of TFU, which made her Amy and Ted’s boss. The last time Ryan had spoken to her, it had been a furious row over whether she should have allowed Ethan to be dragged off to Kyrgyzstan.

The row had ended with Ryan giving Dr D an almighty shove, which got him kicked off the mission and earned him five hundred hours working in the recycling centre when he got back to CHERUB campus.

Dr D’s decision had almost got Ethan killed, but it now looked like a triumph, with Ethan safe and TFU on the verge of bringing down a criminal empire.

‘How’s it going?’ Ryan asked uncomfortably.

‘Let’s start with a clean sheet,’ Dr D said. ‘The past has passed. We all do things we regret.’

‘We’re having a good day,’ Ryan said. ‘I guess.’

‘We are,’ Dr D said cheerfully. ‘And much of our success is down to you. I’m en route from Dallas Fort Worth to Dubai, but it’s going to be morning before I arrive. I understand you’ve tracked down Ethan?’

‘Yeah,’ Ryan said. ‘Though I guess we don’t really need him now I’ve got all the passwords.’

‘Oh yes we do, baby!’ Dr D said. ‘We have the Aramovs where we want them, but how we play the next stage is critical. Get it wrong and the big snake turns into a nest of little ones.’