CHERUB: Guardian Angel (27 page)

Ryan had learned this lesson in basic training. Whether you’re talking about a neighbourhood drug gang, a terrorist group or even a rogue government, it’s relatively easy to take out the top dog. But without a proper plan to dismantle an organisation you end up with a bunch of unstable splinter groups that are even more dangerous.

‘Taking the Aramov Clan apart should take somewhere between six months and two years,’ Dr D explained.

Ryan was distracted because he could hear Kazakov and the driver rowing inside the hospital building. Apparently Kazakov had an overdraft and his ATM card wasn’t doing the business.

‘I’ve got another card in my luggage,’ Kazakov shouted. ‘Let me go back for it.’

‘I want police!’ the driver was shouting.

Ryan spoke to Dr D, as he pulled a small Velcro pouch out of his jeans. ‘Hang on, I need to save Kazakov from getting arrested.’

Ryan dashed inside the hospital and handed Kazakov a cash card. ‘Six, four, nine, eight,’ he told him.

‘Sorry,’ Ryan told Dr D as he headed back out through the automatic doors into the setting sun. ‘You were saying?’

‘The first step is for you to approach Ethan. You can tell him that you’ve been working with us without mentioning the existence of CHERUB. Then you’ll explain that we now control Irena’s money.’

‘Ethan’s gonna hate my guts,’ Ryan said.

‘Probably,’ Dr D agreed. ‘But you can appeal to his moral side. The Aramov organisation is responsible for some pretty horrific stuff.’

‘I can try,’ Ryan said uncertainly. ‘I understand about winding the clan down gently, but I still don’t get why Ethan’s so important.’

‘Irena thinks Ethan just saved her organisation. Right now, she’ll pick up the phone when Ethan calls and listen to what he says. Irena is too cautious to take calls from complete strangers, and our only alternative would be to make contact by sending Amy and Ted to the Kremlin to ask for a meeting.’

‘And Irena might just have them shot if she loses her rag,’ Ryan said.

‘Precisely,’ Dr D said. ‘So once we have Ethan onside – or at least firmly under our control – we’ll use him to approach Irena and give her an ultimatum.’

‘Poor bloody Ethan,’ Ryan said. ‘Everyone manipulates him. Me included.’

‘I’m not proud of that,’ Dr D said. ‘But everything that we’ve done to Ethan has been for the greater good. When this is over we’ll make sure he’s OK.’

‘So what’s Irena’s incentive to do what we say?’ Ryan asked.

‘Irena spent almost her entire adult life building up the Aramov Clan,’ Dr D explained. ‘If she lets us gently take control and wind clan operations down, her family will be protected and she’ll be allowed to live out her final days in a reasonable level of comfort.’

‘And otherwise?’ Ryan asked.

‘Without money, the Aramov Clan will be paralysed. Airports like Sharjah won’t even let a plane take off if the refuelling bill hasn’t been paid. People loyal to Leonid might try staging a coup, but he doesn’t have the money to make the organisation work either. Irena will get sicker and sicker and her family will be at risk as the clan crumbles into anarchy.’

‘But
we
don’t want anarchy either,’ Ryan pointed out.

‘True,’ Dr D said. ‘Which is why this whole situation has got to be handled delicately.’

‘So when do I approach Ethan?’ Ryan asked. ‘Now?’

‘No,’ Dr D said. ‘Ethan’s going to be exhausted, and I need time to work out the finer points of our strategy. Tell Kazakov to stay at the hospital. Right now your team’s job is to make sure Ethan isn’t moved out of the hospital and to track him if he is. I’ll be back in touch when I know more, OK?’

‘Right,’ Ryan said, as he looked inside and was much relieved to see Kazakov handing the limo driver some local currency. ‘Speak soon then, I guess.’

The Gulf Medical Institute’s building was flash, with glass atriums and automatic doors everywhere you stepped. Every patient had a private room and the broad palm-filled corridors had comfortable nooks for visitors, filled with sofas, vending machines and TVs showing rolling news.

Back in Kyrgyzstan, Amy had used the CIA’s hack into the Dubai healthcare database to track Ethan’s progress. After an X-ray confirmed that his ankle wasn’t broken, he’d had numerous scrapes and cuts treated before being wheeled to his room.

Ethan was put on an intravenous drip because his African stomach ailments had left him badly dehydrated, and after a nurse had strapped his swollen ankle she told him that he was being kept overnight for observation and gave him a strong sedative so that he could sleep off the worst of his pain.

Ruby the accountant stayed with Ethan until just after 9 p.m. Amy looked for a local British or American intelligence agent who could keep an eye on Ethan, but nobody was available so Ryan, Ning and Kazakov sprawled out on sofas in the visitors’ area, with the door of Ethan’s room in plain sight, ten metres down a hallway.

None of the trio had slept properly the previous night, and all three were in a zombie-like state. Kazakov fuelled himself up with bitter vending-machine coffee and told the kids that they could sleep. This wasn’t easy with staff and patients coming by to drop coins in the machines, but Ryan managed to crash with his feet propped on a glass table. Ning wasn’t so lucky and ended up flipping through the neat rows of upmarket magazines, with her eyes blurring whenever she tried to read.

‘I need the loo,’ Ning told Kazakov as she stood. ‘Do you want a drink or anything while I’m up?’

‘I’m good, thanks,’ Kazakov said.

Ning only half needed the toilet. Mainly she was sick of sitting around and wanted to stretch her legs. There was a double-height space with a fountain at the corridor’s far end. The shutters were down on a pair of food kiosks and there was a janitor emptying out the bins, but she found the rushing water soothing and dipped her hand into a chloriney jet and made it splash over her face.

As Ning did this she noticed two men, dressed near-identically in tight jeans and black leather jackets. She kind of recognised one of them, but dismissed it as a symptom of exhaustion until she put a name to the face:

Kuban
.

He was one of Leonid Aramov’s henchmen and he’d led the torture of Ning’s stepmother. She didn’t fancy taking on the two bulky men who’d just strode through the automatic doors leading down a corridor to Ethan’s room, so she whipped out her mobile and dialled Kazakov.

‘Two bad guys coming your way,’ Ning said rapidly. ‘You’ll see them in a few seconds.’

Ryan was in the middle of a dream where he was scoffing a big KFC bucket when Kazakov jerked him awake.

‘Ning says there’s two guys coming,’ Kazakov told him. ‘I’m gonna try heading them off.’

Ryan rubbed his eyes and stood as Kazakov stormed down the corridor towards two men.

‘Can I help you gentlemen?’ Kazakov asked.

Kazakov’s build and Ukrainian accent meant that Kuban and his giant associate instantly assumed that he was a security guard working for Irena.

‘You can help by getting out of our way,’ Kuban said, as his larger companion took a step closer to Kazakov.

‘I can’t allow that,’ Kazakov said, as he cracked his knuckles. ‘Let’s be sensible, eh?’

Kuban’s companion opened up his jacket and pulled out a handgun.

‘This sensible enough for you?’ he asked.

Kazakov instinctively reached towards his belt as he took half a step back. But he’d come straight from the airport, and his trusted hunting knife was buried somewhere inside a wheelie bag.

Ryan couldn’t actually see the gun as he looked on from the lounge area, but it was unlikely that Kazakov would back off for any other reason. He thought about heading across to defend Kazakov, or maybe finding a weapon and trying to ambush the men as they came past, but their goal was to protect Ethan so he hurried across the hallway and backed into Ethan’s room.

Kazakov raised his hands in a surrender gesture, but Kuban and his pal couldn’t risk having Kazakov come after them, so as Kuban held a gun right in Kazakov’s face the massive dude slid a metal knuckleduster over his hand and delivered a vicious punch to the temple.

‘That hurt,’ Kuban laughed, as Kazakov crashed down, unconscious.

‘He’s lucky we didn’t have a silencer for the pistol,’ the big dude added.

Ryan felt queasy as he studied Ethan’s room. The space was dark and Ethan snored gently, with the drip needle in his arm and his bad ankle raised in a sling to reduce the swelling. The en-suite bathroom had a broad sliding door designed for wheelchair access and Ryan nudged it open with his foot as he walked around the bed.

Ethan woke with a start as Ryan grabbed him under the armpits and started dragging him off the bed, then howled in pain as the drip needle got ripped out of his arm.

‘Shut up,’ Ryan said firmly.

Ryan’s bruised ribs were agony as he dragged Ethan off the bed towards the bathroom.

‘Ryan?’ Ethan said, almost off his head because of the sedative. ‘How did you get here?’

‘Long story,’ Ryan replied. ‘Have faith. I need you to work with me.’

As Ryan dragged Ethan into the bathroom and slid the door shut, Kuban burst into the room, followed by the big guy who was dragging the unconscious Kazakov by his ankles.

‘Where is he?’ Kuban asked, before noticing the bathroom.

Ryan flipped the lock across the bathroom door. He dumped an extremely confused Ethan at the back of a walk-in shower and swept the privacy curtain across to hide him.

‘They’re Leonid’s guys,’ Ryan whispered. ‘Don’t make a sound.’

The toilet door had a safety lock which could be turned from the outside with a coin or screwdriver. Kuban hunted for change in his trousers as Ryan flipped the lock and slid the door halfway open.

Ryan spoke in Russian. ‘What do you want?’

Ryan was the same age as Ethan but he didn’t much look like him and he was dressed in jeans and T-shirt, rather than nightwear. What happened next depended on how well Kuban and his accomplice knew Ethan, and Kuban’s expression was confused at best.

‘Why are you here?’ Ryan said firmly. ‘Do you know who I am?’

This bolshiness made Kuban’s mind up and he snarled, ‘I know who
you
are. And I wouldn’t want to stand in your shoes when Uncle Leonid catches up with you.’

The big dude didn’t seem so certain. ‘Is that him?’ he asked.

‘Room six one nine,’ Kuban said, pointing at the number on the door as he gave Ryan sight of his gun. ‘Your bodyguard’s out for the count and you’re coming with us.’

*

Ning had seen Kazakov knocked down and got a more distant view of Ryan crossing into Ethan’s room. She tried thinking of some action she could take herself, or of running to hospital security, but she couldn’t decide and ended up calling Amy.

‘If they’ve got guns you stay back,’ Amy said. ‘Try and get some information on their vehicle.’

‘Right,’ Ning said.

As Ning spun around she was shocked to see Ryan being frogmarched between Kuban and the big dude. She was impressed by Ryan’s identity-switching feat, but he’d exposed himself to a huge amount of danger.

The goons led Ryan through a set of swinging doors marked
staff only
. After giving them a few seconds to get clear, Ning jogged across the hallway and poked her head between the doors. She could hear footsteps clanking down metal stairs, but she was distracted by a shout from behind. It made Leonid’s men stop and look up, but they didn’t see Ning because she’d backed into the corridor.

‘Hello?’ Ethan shouted.

Ning looked behind and saw Ethan crawling out into the hallway, almost fifty metres away.

‘Nurse?’ Ethan shouted.

Ning wanted to go back to Ethan and Kazakov, but Ryan was in the most immediate danger, so she ventured back on to the staircase. As she crept back on to the landing a door slammed at ground level two flights below.

Kuban must have had a getaway driver because Ning heard a vehicle shoot off seconds later. By the time she’d crossed a bay filled with bales of dirty linen and stuck her head out into the night the number plate was a blur and all she could see were rapidly receding tail-lights.

Ning called Amy again as she raced back up the stairs. ‘Dark-coloured people carrier,’ she said. ‘That’s all I’ve got.’

‘I’ll try getting someone out there,’ Amy said.

‘This is a big mess,’ Ning said. ‘Ryan’s kidnapped, Kazakov’s spark out. I’m all on my own.’

‘Stay calm while we think this through,’ Amy said, not sounding terrifically calm herself. ‘There should be an intelligence liaison at the British or American embassies who can send some people to help you out.’

When Ning got back into the hospital corridor she saw nurses disappearing into Ethan’s room. She walked briskly, but didn’t run because she didn’t want to make it obvious that she’d been involved with what had happened.

Ning stopped when she reached the nook with the sofas, which was still piled up with the luggage they’d dragged out of the limo. The knuckleduster-enhanced punch that had knocked Kazakov out had broken his skin and there were dots of blood along the corridor and a sinister trickle running through the door of Ethan’s room.

A second nurse was bolting down the corridor, wheeling a trolley to take Kazakov for emergency treatment.

‘Possible fractured skull,’ a nurse explained. ‘He’s a big bugger, ready?’

The nurses put the trolley to its lowest setting, then dragged Kazakov out into the corridor before rolling him on to it. A couple of other patients had heard the commotion and stood in their doorways watching.

‘We’ve got to deal with this man,’ the nurse said, as she leaned into Ethan’s room. ‘Stay right there. Someone will be here to clean you up and reconnect your drip.’

As the nurses wheeled Kazakov down the long corridor, Ning approached Ethan’s room. She found him lying sideways on the bed, hunting for something.

‘Hey,’ Ning said. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Pretty freaked out,’ Ethan said, sounding stoned. ‘I think I just had a religious experience. I need to call my grandma. Can you help me find my mobile phone?’

‘Religious experience?’ Ning asked.