CHERUB: Guardian Angel (7 page)

‘So you were chatting on MSN with Ethan last night?’ Amy asked.

Ryan nodded. ‘I’ve uploaded a hijack program and some other hacking tools to an FTP site.’

‘Will Ethan have the guts to install it?’

Ryan shrugged. ‘Fifty-fifty, I’d guess. He asked about you. Or more specifically, I told him I’d hacked my sister’s computer and he asked if I’d found any naked pictures of you.’

‘Dirty boy,’ Amy laughed. ‘It’ll be a pity if he does get sent to school in Dubai. There’s a much better chance that he’ll feed us accurate information while he’s inside the Kremlin.’

Ryan nodded thoughtfully. ‘Can you stop him getting admitted to a school in Dubai?’

‘There are ways of manipulating things so that a kid gets put in a certain class, or doesn’t get into one particular school, but even if we could get Ethan locked out of
every
English language boarding school in the Middle East it would seem highly suspicious.’

‘I don’t mind really,’ Ryan said. ‘After all Ethan’s been through in the last year the poor bastard deserves a break.’

‘And how about you?’ Amy asked. ‘Still feeling frustrated?’

‘A bit,’ Ryan confessed. ‘I know being Ethan’s
virtual friend
means I’m technically on a mission, but I’d really like to get stuck into something meatier.’

Amy nodded. ‘Kicking some arse off campus.’

‘Exactly,’ Ryan said. ‘Although they’ve sent me on a couple of one-day things which have been fun. I shouldn’t really tell you but this is hilarious. Last month me and Alfie got sent to this estate in Liverpool—’

‘No,’ Amy said firmly, raising her hands. ‘I don’t want to hear it, no matter how funny it is. There are good security reasons why agents shouldn’t talk about their missions.’

Ryan looked hurt.

‘You’re lucky I work for TFU. A CHERUB staff member would be dishing out punishment laps for breaching security.’

‘All right, sorry I spoke,’ Ryan said, then cheekily, ‘So have you got any naked pictures I can send Ethan to prove that the hacking program works?’

Before Amy could answer, the pair jumped out of their skins as a high-pitched shout of ‘Banzai!’ came from the branches above Ryan’s head.

The shouter leapt from a tree fork and clamped himself to Ryan’s back. Ryan staggered forwards, but his assailant was too little to knock him completely off balance.

‘Bloody hell, Theo!’ Ryan yelled, clutching his chest as his seven-year-old brother let go and hit the path with a gravelly crunch.

Theo had dressed up for the ambush, wearing a blue martial arts suit over his red CHERUB shirt and with the towelling belt from a bathrobe knotted around his head.

‘That was so cool!’ Theo giggled, as he pointed at Ryan. ‘I bet you’ve got skidmarks!’

Theo was a cute kid, with the same dark hair and olive complexion as Ryan, but Ryan had always been slim, whereas Theo was stockier.

Theo lunged playfully, going head first into Ryan’s belly.

‘Stop acting up,’ Ryan said. He always tried to sound parental, but Theo never took any notice.

A more effective technique was to lift Theo up, tickle him briefly under the ribcage and dump him on the verge of the path with a boot heel pinning him gently to the grass.

‘You big bully!’ Theo protested, only half serious. ‘You wait till I’m grown up.’

‘If I let you up, will you be sensible?’ Ryan asked.

‘Kiss my butt!’ Theo said.

Ryan wriggled two fingers, indicating that he was going to tickle Theo again.

‘OK, I’ll be good,’ Theo shrieked, as he curled up.

‘This is Amy,’ Ryan said, as he offered Theo a hand.

Theo spoke in an absurd robotic voice. ‘Hello Amy. It is very, very, nice to meet you.’

‘I see the family resemblance,’ Amy said.

‘I don’t look like
him
,’ Theo said, shaking his head. ‘I’m beautiful. He looks worse than he smells.’

‘Theo’s showing off because he thinks you’re cute,’ Ryan explained, as he put an arm around Theo’s neck and mock-strangled him.

‘Shut your face!’ Theo said. ‘You love Amy, not me!’

‘Why aren’t you in lessons, anyway?’ Ryan asked.

‘Going to meet Leon and Daniel coming out of training. Same as you, dumbo.’

Ryan laughed. ‘You can’t stand the twins.’

Theo smiled. ‘Gets me out of maths. And the twins are OK, except when they gang up on me.’

Amy laughed as they walked on, with Theo acting like a madman, launching himself into bushes and pretending to strangle himself with the towelling belt.

‘Your brother’s
adorable
,’ Amy said quietly.

Ryan raised an eyebrow. ‘In small doses. But see if you still feel that way after he’s been jumping on your bed for three hours.’

Theo sprinted the last hundred metres to the gates of the training compound, but the exertion was wasted because the instructors were keeping CHERUB’s three newest grey shirts back while they gave the training area a final scrub and tidied all their kit away ready for the next batch of trainees.

‘Fart heads!’ Theo shouted, when Leon and Daniel finally emerged from the training dorm and started walking towards the gate with Ning a few steps behind. The trio had all showered and dressed in neatly ironed combat trousers, with brand new boots to go with hard-earned grey T-shirts.

The trainees had been allowed to keep one ripped, stained and unwashed blue training shirt as a memento of their hundred days and Leon immediately draped his over Theo’s head. Theo thought this was funny and pretended he was blind as he hugged his two older brothers.

Ryan didn’t often feel proud of his brothers, but a tear welled up as the quartet hugged. He thought about how his dead mum would have liked to see them all mucking about together in the sunshine.

‘Can’t believe only three trainees made it and you dweebs are two of ’em,’ Ryan said.

Daniel eyed Theo as they broke apart. ‘Two and a bit years, Theo. You’d better be scared!’

‘I’m not scared of basic training,’ Theo replied.

A couple of metres away, Amy was hugging Ning and congratulating her, but Ning looked disappointed.

‘It got so that half the kids on campus were skiving off every time basic training finished,’ Ryan explained. ‘So now only relatives are allowed out of lessons. You’ll see Grace and Chloe and everyone at lunchtime.’

‘Cool,’ Ning said.

‘And now we get to do the fun bit,’ Ryan said, as he pulled three keys from his trouser pocket and gave them a jangle. ‘Time to check out your new bedrooms.’

*

‘Ethan, are you in there, mate?’

Usually Ethan liked nothing more than hearing Natalka’s voice on the other side of his door, but he hadn’t put any clothes over his burning arse after taking a shower and he didn’t have time to hide the fact he’d been crying.

‘I’m sick,’ Ethan answered weakly. ‘Probably contagious, so it’s better if you stay away.’

‘I saw Boris drag you off,’ Natalka said, as she put her head around the door. ‘What did Leonid do to you?’

Ethan sniffed. ‘Leave me alone.’

The lights were off, but there was enough twilight creeping through the barred windows for Natalka to glimpse pubes as Ethan hurriedly yanked his duvet over his midriff.

‘Why does it smell of horse shit in here?’ Natalka asked.

‘Go away,’ Ethan sniffed. ‘There’s nothing you can do.’

But Natalka ignored the plea and sat beside Ethan on the bed.

‘Did Leonid beat you?’ Natalka asked.

‘Massive rubber cosh on my arse,’ Ethan said. ‘I’ve got mega bruises, and I spent all day working at the stables. They’re giving me all the dirtiest jobs and I can’t go back to school until the end of the month.’

‘Sounds rough,’ Natalka said. ‘Why’s he pissed off with you?’

‘They found out I’ve been using the Internet.’

‘What, when we go to the web café in the bazaar?’

‘No, here. On Irena’s computer. I’m not supposed to go online in case the Americans are tracking me or something. And I might not be allowed to go off to school in Dubai now either.’

‘Shit!’ Natalka said. ‘Did you try speaking to Irena?’

‘Leonid got to her first. She’s really mad at me. I had to go to her room and she yelled at me. Said I was lucky to only get three whacks with the cosh and that it was time I acted like a man instead of a spoilt brat.’

‘Is there anything I can do?’ Natalka asked. ‘Bruise cream or something?’

‘I hate it so much here,’ Ethan said. ‘I might as well be dead.’

‘Now you
do
sound like a spoilt brat,’ Natalka said, her voice becoming firmer.

Ethan sobbed loudly. ‘Just go away.’

‘Make me,’ Natalka said.

Ethan scowled. ‘What? Now
you’re
gonna torment me like everyone else?’

Natalka grunted. ‘Jesus, Ethan! Your mum’s dead, your grandma’s dying and Leonid’s a bastard. You’ve every right to be pissed off, but you’ve got to fight it. I’ve got no sympathy if you curl up and sniffle.’

Ethan snorted. ‘If I step out of line again, Leonid and his boys will squish me like a bug.’

Natalka stood up. ‘I came up here to see if you were OK and maybe help you out. But I can’t help someone who’s given up, so I might as well go down to the bar. With any luck Vlad will try getting me drunk.’

Ethan managed a slight smile. ‘How can you even be near that guy? He’s such a dum-dum.’

‘He’s my big blond bimbo,’ Natalka explained.

Ethan looked slightly more cheerful as he reached into a bedside drawer unit and pulled out six one-thousand-som notes.

‘Well how about you bunk school and go to the bazaar with your bimbo?’ Ethan asked. ‘I’ll need you to buy me a USB stick. That should be plenty to buy a sixteen- or thirty-two-gigabyte one. Get the biggest capacity in the smallest-sized key you can find. Then I need you to go in one of the web cafés and download a file for me.’

Natalka looked uncertain. ‘Why do you need a memory stick? You haven’t even got a computer.’

‘The less you know the better,’ Ethan said. ‘But you said you wanted to help me out, and you can keep the change. Use it to smoke yourself to death, or buy condoms to shag bimbo boy. Get the super-safe ones, you wouldn’t want any nasty accidents with that ape.’

Natalka was happy that Ethan had bucked up, but she didn’t regard this as a licence to be cheeky.

‘You’re going the right way about getting a smack in the chops,’ she warned. ‘But I’ll see what I can do.’

Every new grey shirt gets a week off to recover from basic training. Ning’s first two days passed in a blur of meals, bubble baths and long naps, but as the week went on and her energy returned she found herself getting bored.

Everyone apart from Leon and Daniel was either in training or lessons all day and she’d spent more than enough hours with the ten-year-old twins during training. But things livened up with a sixth-floor corridor party on Friday night and on Saturday she joined a coachload of cherubs who got up early for a day trip to London.

‘I don’t care what you get up to, as long as it’s legal,’ CHERUB’s chief handler Meryl Spencer yelled sternly, as the thirty-two-seat coach stood in a bus lane at the side of London’s St Pancras Station. ‘But you always stay in groups of two or more and you’re back here to get on the coach at six o’clock sharp. Unless you have a good excuse, you’ll lose one pound of pocket money for every minute you’re late. Is that
crystal
clear?’

‘Yes, miss,’ the kids droned, apart from a couple who made chicken noises and one who went
moo
.

Meryl was a former Olympic sprinter but she still struggled to get out of the way quickly enough as the driver opened the coach’s hydraulic main door and the kids charged into the street.

A bunch of little kids were being taken to the London Eye, others were going to Leicester Square for a movie or to the Oxford Street shops, but Ning had accumulated three months’ pocket money while she’d been in training and as her tastes veered towards the punkish her two mates Chloe and Grace reckoned she’d enjoy lightening her wallet in Camden Lock Market.

Chloe was a slender blonde twelve-year-old who most of the younger agents on campus regarded as a bit of a bombshell. Grace was a full head shorter, with freckles and long frizzy hair. The pair had been best mates since coming to CHERUB as red shirts and had taken Ning under their wing as soon as she’d arrived on campus.

When the trio got on the underground heading north to Camden, they were surprised to see Ryan and his two best mates, mischievous Max and burly half-French Alfie, charge into the carriage behind them as the doors closed.

‘All right, slags!’ Max said cheerfully, beating Grace to the last free seat and flipping her off as the train moved away.

‘Where are you turds going?’ Grace asked.

‘Camden Market, same as,’ Max explained.

Ning liked Ryan and had no problem with his two best mates, but Grace and Chloe groaned.

‘You’re not hanging around with us,’ Chloe said.

‘We’re looking at clothes for Ning,’ Grace added, hoping to put them off.

‘I’ve never been to Camden before,’ Alfie explained, with his heavy French accent. ‘I’m told it’s the place to buy leather jackets. You know any good shops?’

‘A few,’ Chloe said reluctantly. ‘I suppose I can show you.’

‘But only if you take us in Starbucks and buy us both frappuccinos,’ Grace said.

Camden was only two stops and as Starbucks was deep inside the market the three boys and three girls wandered along, stopping in shops and diverting into narrow alleyways lined with stalls.

Although Grace and Chloe had assumed the boys would get on their nerves, they all had a decent time. Ryan and Max bought T-shirts. Alfie tried on six leather jackets but couldn’t decide what he wanted, while Ning bought some black canvas plimsolls, smellies in Body Shop and a bunch of rock music and film posters to enliven the bare walls in her new room.

By the time they reached the canal-side Starbucks in the centre of the market it was past noon. The streets were so busy that bodies were spilling off the kerb into the road. The queue for Starbucks was out the door and into the street, so they diverted into another alleyway lined with ethnic food stalls.