CHERUB: People's Republic (24 page)

30. TEXAS

Ryan woke up in the T-shirt, shorts and Converse trainers he’d worn the evening before. His eyes were gluey, his nose clogged and the bed was full of sand. He sat on the edge of the mattress blowing his nose and feeling achy and miserable.

Ryan didn’t remember anything about the room. He’d crawled under the sheets without even bothering to switch on the light. There were two double beds, and judging by the ball of blankets and the roller case with
Don’t mess with Texas
sticker, Ted had spent the night in the other one.

After grabbing toiletries from his bag, Ryan brushed his teeth and took a shower. Ted had already used the only bath towel, leaving him with a skimpy hand cloth. He felt tired, but was curious about the progress of the mission and decided to get dressed.

Ryan assumed it was about half-eight, but when he clipped his watch on he saw it was nearer ten. The sun was bright as he stepped outside, heading for the family room two doors down. Two black-suited FBI dudes guarded the ends of the balcony, and a scrum of press reporters and TV news vans had been penned into the farthest corner of the parking lot.

‘How you feeling?’ Amy asked brightly, as she let Ryan in. She looked like she’d been out for a run, dressed in Lycra shorts and a sports bra, and dripping sweat.

‘Shitty,’ Ryan said.

There was no sign of Ted or Ethan. Dr D sat at her laptop, almost as if she hadn’t moved since he’d left the room the night before.

‘You hungry?’ Amy asked. ‘We’re thinking of going across the street in a minute. The FBI guy said they do a good steak and eggs.’

‘I could eat something,’ Ryan said, as he leaned into the side room with the two bunks. ‘Where’s Ethan? You want me to try getting more out of him?’

‘We’re tracking him,’ Dr D said, tapping her laptop screen.

‘Pardon me?’ Ryan said.

‘After you went to your room, we got intel from headquarters in Dallas,’ Amy explained. ‘The duty IM used the Echelon monitoring network to scan cellphone traffic in the Paolo Alto area, trying to detect anyone using the keywords
Kitsell
or
Aramov
.

‘She picked out a few calls. We haven’t identified the Lombardi who Ethan spoke to, but we found his associates. They knew Ethan was staying at this motel with a neighbour’s family. Their plan was to send people posing as child protection officers to come and collect Ethan from us.’

‘Did we get them?’ Ryan asked.

‘Not exactly,’ Amy said.

‘We fitted a tiny tracking implant into Ethan’s buttock,’ Dr D explained. ‘A man and woman claiming to be child protection officers got here just before midnight. They showed impeccable fake credentials to the FBI teams outside and we let them leave with Ethan while he was still sedated.’

Ryan wasn’t impressed. ‘Tell me you’re kidding?’

‘Ryan, this is
fantastic
news,’ Dr D said, as she stood up with a huge smile on her face. ‘This tracking device opens a potential doorway to the deepest roots of Aramov Clan operations in the United States and worldwide.’

‘Bravo for you,’ Ryan said. ‘But what about Ethan? He’s been run over, his mum and his best mate have been murdered, and now he’s gonna wake up in a strange place with people he’s never met. He’s gonna be terrified.’

‘I know it’s not ideal,’ Dr D said. ‘But we had to make a rational calculation. TFU’s job is to bring down sophisticated criminal networks. We can track Ethan’s movements and mount surveillance operations on everyone he comes into contact with. It’s likely we’ll unearth Lombardi and other key players.’

‘I was only scratching the surface with Ethan last night,’ Ryan said angrily. ‘We were really connecting. I think he had a lot more to tell regarding what his mum was up to. We could have helped him
and
got the information we needed.’

‘Ryan, you need to calm down,’ Amy said firmly.

But Ryan ignored her. ‘I
never
would have signed up for this if I’d know we were going to use a kid as a pawn, without any consideration of how it would affect him.’

Amy put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder. ‘It was a finely balanced decision,’ she said calmly. ‘It’s not that we don’t see what you’re saying, but you must understand the other side of the argument. You know what the Aramov Clan does. How many people die from one Aramov Clan shipment of guns, or fake pharmaceuticals?’

Dr D took a step closer to Ryan. ‘You’re filling our space with negative energy,’ she said. ‘You should take some deep breaths. Positive vibrations will help you feel better, and strengthen your immune system against your cold.’

‘Positive vibrations!’ Ryan said incredulously, stepping up to Dr D and yelling right in her face. ‘How can you be so full of this new age crap, yet not give a damn about Ethan? You saw him when he was freaking out last night. What if he tries to kill himself?’

‘That’s
enough
,’ Dr D said furiously. ‘Maybe you don’t share my personal philosophy, but here’s the bottom line, Ryan.
I
am a senior officer in a unit of the United States Secret Service.
You
are a twelve-year-old kid assigned to work for me. You’re entitled to voice your opinion, but I had to make a difficult decision. Now I expect you to obey the chain of command like a grown-up.’

‘So it’s great when I help you, but now I’m just a kid?’

‘Ryan, that’s not what she’s saying,’ Amy said, as she put a hand on Ryan’s arm. ‘You need to back off.’

‘Stop touching me,’ Ryan shouted. ‘You’re just sucking up to your new boss. CHERUB wouldn’t treat someone like this.’

‘Ryan, give over,’ Amy said. ‘CHERUB is like any other intelligence organisation. They’ll try and avoid it, but sometimes the little people have to suffer to help develop the bigger picture.’

Ryan was furious and felt outnumbered with Amy taking Dr D’s side. ‘I’m telling you, I could have got
so
much more out of Ethan.’

Dr D glanced impatiently at her watch. ‘I have a million things to do this morning. Ryan, you have no further role to play in TFU operations. Amy, take him across the street to get some breakfast. I’ll call Dallas and get him booked on the first available flight back to Britain.’

Ryan had a pretty even temper, but he’d become fond of Ethan and felt that Dr D was patronising him.

‘You’re just a hard old bitch,’ he told her, before turning towards Amy. ‘And you’re not who I thought you were, either.’

‘Let’s get breakfast,’ Amy said, tugging Ryan’s arm for a third time.

Ryan resented Amy grabbing him, and the self-satisfied smile on Dr D’s face made him so mad that it felt like a bomb going off. He lunged forward and gave Dr D an almighty two-handed shove.

‘Ryan, no!’ Amy shouted, as Dr D went flying.

The elderly American tried saving herself by grabbing the desk, but it was out of reach. She crashed hard on her bum and thumped the back of her head against a wooden chair.

Ryan was tempted to swing at Amy as she dragged him back and threw him across the double bed, but he’d seen her kickboxing skills and fortunately the red mist cleared before he gave her an excuse to kick his ass.

‘Have you
any
idea how hard I had to work to persuade TFU to use you?’ Amy steamed. ‘You’ve wrecked my credibility with a stupid childish tantrum.’

Ryan rolled on to his back, as Dr D rubbed her head. Amy tried helping her off the carpet.

‘Don’t touch me,’ Dr D screamed. ‘Just get
him
out of my sight.’

Amy held open the motel-room door, and Ryan got a gut-churning feeling that he’d just blown his career as a CHERUB agent as he stepped out on to the sun-bleached balcony.

31. TRANSIT

They got ten minutes’ fresh air and five extra passengers when they stopped in a picnic area near Dieppe. Ning’s only previous nautical experience was a hovercraft between Hong Kong and Macau when her stepdad wanted to gamble, but this was creepier, sealed in a swaying container in pitch darkness. She threw up four times and Mei was a saint, holding back her hair, wiping her face and fetching water to help wash out her mouth.

Nerves peaked as they disembarked from the ferry. All smuggling works on the principle that customs can only search a small proportion of what enters a country, whether it’s a drug mule flying in with a kilo of cocaine, a fishing boat picking up a crate of guns, or illegal immigrants hidden amongst a hundred and fifty trucks coming off a ferry at Newhaven.

The odds of getting caught are always slight and after twenty hours in stinking darkness, Ning jumped from the back of the truck on to British soil. Her eyes took a while to adjust to fading light. It was a blustery autumn evening and they were at the back of a dilapidated warehouse. It wasn’t raining but it had been, and a group of thuggish-looking men didn’t want them standing around outdoors.

‘Inside, out of sight. Move it.’

The warehouse interior was stacked high with bundles of old newspapers. Crumpled and sweating, the illegal immigrants queued in front of a small Asian woman holding a clipboard. First to be ticked off and set free were the family with the three boys, four black men who’d boarded in France and the Bangladeshi driving instructor, who stopped to wish Mei luck before heading to a waiting taxi.

It was Ning’s first chance to study her fellow travellers in the light and she realised the remainder divided into two groups. Nine were young women destined for the sex trade. Most were Chinese girls in their late teens, but there were a couple of Russians who looked slightly older. The other six were like Mei: older women who’d travelled from China to work illegally in low-paid jobs that British people turn up their noses at.

During their long journey, Mei had told Ning that she came from a poor peasant family in Western China. A criminal gang had paid for her to be smuggled from China to Britain and now she’d have to work for the gang until her debt was paid off. If she ran away, or her work wasn’t satisfactory, the gangsters would punish her family back in China.

Ning felt awkward because she clearly didn’t belong with either group. There were too many thugs around for her to try sneaking away, so her strategy was to stick close to Mei and hope for the best.

The woman with the clipboard dealt with the young girls next. The Chinese all got ticked off and sent over to stand by a pair of nasty-looking thugs. But one of the Russian woman had been moaning ever since Ning boarded the truck. She started ranting at clipboard lady, rambling in bad English about being lied to, and bad food and the smell of the bucket making her feel sick.

The Russian got to run her mouth off for almost a minute, but when she gave clipboard lady a shove, one of the thugs swooped. An extendible baton came from his trouser pocket, sprang out to a half-metre length and was smashed brutally against the back of her legs.

Women gasped as the Russian crashed to the floor. The thug then dragged her several metres by her hair, before dropping her and standing with his heel pressed against her throat.

‘I’m the complaints department,’ he shouted. ‘What’s your complaint?’

The Russian woman couldn’t breathe, let alone complain.

‘Anyone else?’ the thug shouted, as he turned towards the shocked Chinese teenagers. ‘Any of you bitches speaks unless I ask you something and you’ll be well sorry.’

The Russian sobbed as she stood up and limped across to join the Chinese. When the second Russian was ticked off clipboard lady’s list, the four thugs marched eight frightened-looking women out of the doorway towards a waiting van.

Ning was queasy from the ferry crossing and the shocking outburst of violence made her feel even worse, but at least all the heavyweights had departed with the young girls. Their only chaperones now were clipboard lady and a beady-eyed Chinese driver, who squatted on a bale of old newspapers reading a fishing magazine. These workers didn’t need security, because their husbands and children back in China faced violent retribution if they ran.

‘And you?’ clipboard lady asked, when she got to Ning. ‘I have no information. Where did you board?’

Mei answered for Ning. ‘She joined with me at the Czech border.

‘You stowed away?’ clipboard lady asked angrily.

‘I paid a man called Kenny, he works for someone called Derek.’

‘You lie,’ the woman said, shaking her head. ‘Derek would e-mail me with any extra passenger details. And you are so young, how old are you?’

‘Thirteen,’ Ning said.

‘Do you have a passport, or Chinese identity card?’

Ning pulled the dodgy Kyrgyz passport from her jeans.

‘This says you are
eleven
. What am I supposed to do with you?’

‘I can just leave,’ Ning said.

Clipboard lady considered this, but the driver lowered his magazine. ‘What if she leaves and the cops pick her up?’ he shouted. ‘She knows this place. She can recognise the truck.’