CHERUB: Shadow Wave (26 page)

*

While the protestors chased June Ling and her family across London, the elderly journalist Hugh Verhoeven held court in the church vestry. James, Bruce, Helena Bayliss and a hastily assembled volunteer camera crew hung on every word as Verhoeven told stories from fifty years as a reporter.

He’d gone undercover to join the Ku Klux Klan in the sixties and narrowly escaped death when his identity as a British TV journalist was unearthed. He’d been in Dallas when JFK was shot, interviewed Clint Eastwood and Marilyn Monroe, seen the Berlin Wall come down and been in Baghdad at the beginning of both Gulf Wars.

Verhoeven had led a remarkable life and James was disappointed when Helena handed over fifty quid and told him to go and buy lunch for everyone at the nearest Prêt à Manger.

Kyle arrived back at the church as James was distributing chicken wraps, fruit smoothies and boxed salads.

‘All good,’ Kyle announced, before taking James aside and warning him about the situation with Lauren.

The final piece of Verhoeven’s plan to bring down Tan Abdullah arrived a few minutes later. He was a fat man, who wore a beautifully cut navy suit and rimless glasses that gave him the air of a professor. He had an expensive briefcase and a
Financial Times
tucked under his arm.

‘This is Dion Frei,’ Verhoeven announced. ‘For twenty years a leading salesman for a Franco-Swiss turbine and missile manufacturer, recently made redundant. He helped a friend of mine in Geneva write a
terrific
whistle-blower piece on the Swiss armaments industry and now he’s going to help us nail Tan Abdullah.’

‘Twenty-six years,’ Dion corrected, with a hint of bitterness. ‘A lot of men got rich off deals I made. I got redundancy and a letter saying that the company pension was a crock.’

Verhoeven laughed, and looked at Bruce, who’d been wrapped up in all his stories and was conspicuously the youngest person in the room. ‘You see, young man, some of us are motivated by the greater good and others by the sting of a meagre redundancy cheque.’

Bruce nodded. ‘So how does it work exactly?’

Verhoeven opened up into a smile that made it look like he’d been waiting his whole life to unveil his clever scheme.

*

Tan Abdullah and David Secombe arrived at the Leith to find the women in the spa, the bodyguards playing poker for matchsticks and the two boys charging around Tan’s suite, battling with cushions and hurling Minstrels and M&Ms taken from the mini bar.

TJ gave his father a quick hug as Tan’s assistant, Max, came across the room holding the envelope that had been attached to the flowers.

‘I thought you’d want to see this straight away,’ Max explained. ‘I couldn’t risk it on the phone.’

Tan opened the envelope. His eyebrows shot up as he pulled out an aerial photograph of an island in the Pacific.

Tan looked around at David Secombe, who’d decided to act fatherly by grabbing a bag of Minstrels from Kevin and eating them.

‘You’re scoffing all my ammo!’ Kevin protested.

‘David, I have family business to attend to,’ Tan said smoothly. ‘Would you excuse me for a few moments?’

Tan followed Max into his luxuriously appointed bedroom and closed the door.

‘Is this genuine?’ Tan asked.

Max nodded. ‘The envelope is from the French embassy. The number given for Dion Frei is a genuine French embassy number. What’s the significance of the island?’

Tan grabbed the remote for a large plasma TV. He switched it on, turned up the sound and then stood near the speakers.

‘Can’t be too careful,’ Tan explained. ‘The British government have had weeks to bug this place if they’d wanted to.’

‘I swept thoroughly,’ Max said, sounding a little offended.

‘You can’t detect the really good ones,’ Tan said, before lowering his voice even further. ‘The island is in the Pacific. It’s part of a chain on the edge of the zone where the French used to test their nuclear weapons. Quite unspoiled, beautiful wildlife and ideal for diving and island hopping. If you developed it the right way for tourism you could generate sixty to eighty million dollars per year.’

‘So what’s the significance to you?’

Tan raised an eyebrow, indicating that he thought Max was being thick. ‘I tried to develop this island years back, but the French government won’t sell. Now, the day before I sign a deal to buy turbines for our new frigates from the Brits, they’re dangling it under my nose.’

‘They’re offering a bribe?’ Max asked.

‘Never use that word!’ Tan said urgently, then jumped as the door swung open.

TJ burst in as Kevin lobbed a cushion after him.

‘Out!’ Tan roared furiously. ‘You want a smack up the side of the head?’

TJ froze in shock before grabbing the cushion and bolting back out.

‘Do you trust Dion Frei?’ Max asked after a moment.

‘He’s rock solid. A company man,’ Tan said. ‘First met him fifteen years ago, when we were buying marine engines for boats to service an island resort. His company tendered for the frigate engine contract, but they couldn’t meet our delivery schedule.’

‘So what do we do?’ Max asked. ‘Set up a meeting?’

‘Yes,’ Tan nodded. ‘David Secombe can’t know I’m meeting with a rival and there are cops everywhere.’

‘The embassy?’ Max suggested.

‘Too many people sticking their noses in there. Speak
discreetly
to the hotel concierge. See if they have a room, or a meeting space on one of the lower floors where I can sneak off for an hour. Then call Dion Frei. Tell him that I’m very interested in his photograph, but I’ll only meet him face-to-face and just him. I want
nobody
else in the room.’

‘When?’

‘Soon as possible,’ Tan said. ‘I’m supposed to be signing a deal tomorrow so if this has legs we need to move fast. You call Dion now. I’d better go back outside before Secombe thinks we’re talking about him.’

*

Over the years, Dion Frei had done billions of euros’ worth of business at the London arms fair and as a result knew everyone who mattered at the French embassy. Getting an embassy telephone number re-routed to his mobile phone hadn’t been a problem.

He shushed the crowd in the vestry as his mobile phone rang.

‘Max?’ Dion said curiously. ‘Oh you must be new, what happened to Lucy? Oh that’s a pity, she was a lovely girl… Of course I’d be happy to meet Mr Abdullah today. I’ve got a short meeting right now, but I can be with you in about an hour and a half… OK … OK, I’ll see you there, Max. Good talking to you.’

‘And?’ Verhoeven asked, the instant Dion shut his telephone.

‘He’s organised a private dining-room on the sixth floor,’ Dion said.

Across the room, Helena grabbed a floor plan of the Leith Hotel and unfurled it on the table. There were several private rooms, but they were all close together.

Verhoeven tapped on the hotel floor plan and traced a line out of the sixth-floor restaurant. ‘He could go this way, down in the lift, through the front of the restaurant. But it’ll be half past two and it’s a popular spot so he’d get seen. It’s much more likely that Tan will come out of his suite, go down the back stairs and enter the dining-room through the kitchen.’

‘Agreed,’ Kyle nodded. ‘Especially as they’re glass-sided lifts.’

‘How do we know that Dion won’t be padded down and searched for a wire?’ James asked.

‘We don’t
know,’
Verhoeven said. ‘This kind of thing is a calculated risk. There’s a chance that Dion will be padded down. There’s also a chance that at some point between now and two-thirty, Tan Abdullah will discover that Dion is no longer a hard-working and loyal salesman for a Franco-Swiss jet turbine manufacturer.’

‘They won’t pad me down,’ Dion said certainly. ‘I’ve been to literally thousands of meetings over the years. I’ve never been searched. It just isn’t done.’

‘OK,’ Verhoeven said, as he focused everyone’s attention back on the map. ‘We carry our equipment into the hotel in suitcases. Nobody will bat an eyelid. We hang around at the bar while the meeting takes place and use toilet cubicles to discreetly unpack our equipment. When Tan Abdullah leaves the meeting, we ambush him here on the staircase as he heads back up to the eighth floor.

‘The major threat is to our recordings. When Tan finds out what’s going on, he’s going to send his bodyguards after us to grab tapes and memory cards.’

‘Will they have guns?’ one of the assistants asked.

‘No,’ Kyle said. ‘At least not unless they’re carrying them illegally. But they’re bloody
enormous,
so I wouldn’t tangle with them.’

James noticed a look of gleeful expectation on Bruce’s face.

‘The important thing is that whoever is carrying our recorded material gets out of the building as quickly as possible. I’m a doddery old fart, so
don’t
wait for me. Just get out of the building, run or jump in the first black cab you see and we all meet up back here.’

Kyle pulled a cap down over his eyes as he stepped into the Leith Hotel holding an elaborately wrapped gift box. James and Bruce walked ahead as a policewoman standing by the lifts politely asked what they were doing in the hotel.

James wasn’t fazed. ‘We’re having a birthday lunch with our grandfather. We’re supposed to be meeting in a bar on the sixth floor. Has something happened?’

‘Heightened security for some VIPs staying upstairs,’ the officer explained. ‘No need to worry. You lads have an enjoyable lunch.’

‘We’ll try our best,’ James smiled, as Kyle thumbed the lift button.

Kyle warned Bruce as they cruised up to the sixth. ‘I’m out of CHERUB and James is counting the days, but you’re younger. Your career still has legs. You could get kicked out if anyone on campus finds out about this.’

‘You should stay in the background,’ James agreed.

But Bruce wasn’t having any of that. ‘Yeah
right.
I’ve come this far, you think I’m gonna back away from a punch-up?’

The bar and restaurant were as pimped up as the rest of the hotel. The floor was made from silver and gold mosaic tiles and the curved bar was glass so you could see the flickering legs of the black-uniformed barmaids standing behind it.

Hugh Verhoeven had put on a tweed jacket and carried a flat cap and a cane. He sat at a table near the bar, drinking a gin and tonic.

‘Happy birthday, Granddad,’ Kyle said, as he passed over the gift.

Verhoeven raised one eyebrow and smiled. ‘Why thank you grandson, whatever
could
it be?’

A waitress came to the table. Kyle ordered a bottle of Peroni, James and Bruce had to stick with Cokes.

‘This place reminds me of a whorehouse I visited during the Vietnam war,’ Verhoeven noted. ‘Though I expect the drinks are pricier up here.’

James grinned. ‘Is it me, or do a lot of your stories seem to involve brothels?’

Verhoeven’s pompous veneer had worn off as he’d got used to the boys and he roared with laughter. ‘I was always a gentleman,’ he said, wagging his finger. ‘But if you want to know the truth, you’re more likely to get it in a bar full of drunks than at a press conference inside the Hilton.’

Bruce seemed to have really taken to Verhoeven. ‘Journalism sounds pretty interesting. I could quite see myself as a war correspondent or something.’

As the waitress put drinks and a fresh bowl of nuts on the table, James looked around discreetly and noticed the three-strong camera team sitting in a booth a few tables away. Once the waitress was out of sight, Verhoeven opened his present.

The stiff-sided box contained a foam-topped wireless microphone, of the kind news reporters stick in people’s faces, and a short-range receiver that would pick up the audio signal from a bug under Dion Frei’s lapel.

Kyle glanced at his watch. ‘Shouldn’t be long now.’

*

Tan Abdullah slipped downstairs with a pair of bodyguards and would have got into the private dining-room unnoticed, but for the fact that people in the restaurant were specifically looking for him.

As well as the transmitting microphone in his lapel Dion Frei had a pinhead video camera recoding on to a memory card in the briefcase laid out on the large oval dining-table in front of him. He’d been in thousands of meetings like this, dozens with Tan Abdullah. He felt calm, but waiting around for twenty minutes is long enough for anyone to think dark thoughts and it was a relief to see his guest.

‘Good to see you, Dion,’ Tan said, as their handshake became a brief hug. ‘That’s a
beautiful
suit. You always manage to look younger than me.’

‘No wife and kids to stress me out and a good tailor,’ Dion laughed. ‘I gave my tailor’s card to your previous assistant when we met in Geneva. You should give them a call, I’m sure they’d send someone to the hotel. You’re five minutes from their place in Savile Row.’

‘I just might,’ Tan said. ‘June is not happy. There’s a bunch of protestors on to us. She got egged outside Elbridge’s and we think there’s a security leak so she can’t do any more shopping.’

‘Oh boy!’ Dion said jovially. ‘I’m glad I wasn’t within shrieking distance of that.’

Tan beamed with laughter. ‘Luckily I wasn’t either. I flew out with David Secombe. The army demonstrated a K61.’

‘Sweet missile!’ Dion said. ‘I heard they brought a bunch of USAF out to see it and it blew up in the launcher.’

‘I asked about that,’ Tan agreed. ‘They all went
very
quiet! So how are things at TSMF? I heard a lot of people got laid off, one of the production lines has been shuttered.’

Dion felt tense as he wondered if Tan had made some calls and found out that he’d been made redundant.

‘It was a bloodbath,’ Dion admitted. ‘Lost a lot of close colleagues when the French government bailed the company out. But I’ve been with TSMF twenty-seven years. Part of the furniture, I guess.’

‘Must have been hard,’ Tan said. ‘So why am I here anyway? Why are you tempting me with pictures of islands?’

‘Just a
little
something from the people of France, to tide you over when you retire from politics and go back to making real money.’

‘It won’t be long now,’ Tan nodded. ‘Our prime minister is currently about as popular as a turd in a bowl of punch.’