CHERUB: The Fall (25 page)

CHERUB training teaches you that confidence is the key: it’s best to act like you haven’t got a care in the world even when you’re cacking yourself. Campus was monitored by numerous security systems, but with hundreds of cameras and hundreds of people moving around, the security staff were unlikely to get excited about anything that didn’t look too suspicious.

James approached with a swagger, swiped his card, pushed the door when it clicked and tried not to make it too obvious that he was attempting to see as far ahead as possible as he peered down the curving corridor that led to Ewart’s office.

The office wasn’t locked. Ewart usually left early to pick his kids up from nursery, but James knocked just in case. When he didn’t get an answer, he stepped in and flipped the light switch.

James didn’t have keys to the filing cabinets or cupboards, so it was lucky that Ewart was a slob. He began flicking through some of the papers stacked on the desk: invoices, plane tickets, lists of babysitters for the kids, a vet’s bill for Meatball and a lot of stuff related to an upcoming mission in Taiwan.

Frustrated, James tugged at the three locked desk drawers before eyeing a giant stack of papers on the glass coffee table in front of Ewart’s sofa. James saw his own photograph on top of the stack. It had been taken on the day he’d joined CHERUB and James was surprised by how much he’d changed. He barely recognised the chubby, innocent face, and could only envy the absence of zits.

JAMES ADAMS: CONFIDENTIAL FILE.

The cardboard folder was ten centimetres thick, bursting with his entire life: school reports from Year One onwards, a summary of his performance in basic training written by Mr Large, mission reports, punishment reports. There were surveillance photographs of Lauren’s dad – Ron – a coroner’s report on his mother’s death – ‘
massive cardiac failure caused by interaction of alcohol and anti-inflammatory medicine, secondary cause obesity
’ – and even details of his mum’s safety deposit box. It was a tantalising chance to know what people had said about him, but it would take hours to plough through it all and James had to focus on Ewart’s investigation.

The stack was thirty centimetres high and certainly gave the impression that Ewart was being thorough. As he flipped through, James found reports on Boris and Isla, including pictures of them when they were younger and their bloody remains in the Aero City morgue. Isla had been shot in the face and James only recognised her by her evening dress and watch.

The other thing that kept coming up was the name of Lord Hilton, chairman of Hilton Aerospace and a major business partner of Denis Obidin. Hilton appeared on the television every so often, and James remembered the face, not because he was interested in the aerospace industry but because Hilton had a single bushy eyebrow that stretched from one side of his head to the other. It was a cartoonist’s delight.

The contents of the next folder hit James like a slap: blurry black and white images printed on glossy paper. The stills were from Denis Obidin’s office and showed him being murdered by Isla and Boris. It was clearly taken from the CIA footage that he’d seen in Aero City.

The following pages showed more stills, some of them annotated with handwritten notes, whilst others were huge pixelated enlargements of tiny sections of a particular frame. The last page was a fax message:

Ewart,

I’ve spent hours going through these images. I’ve checked shadow details, made enlargements and broken the video down frame by frame looking for glitches. I have also compared facial images and mechanical details such as stride pattern and mannerisms with surveillance videos of Boris and Isla taken inside MI5 headquarters.

The state of modern computer graphics technology makes it impossible to guarantee that any video footage is real, but if this is a fake or has been staged by actors and retouched it has been produced to a higher standard than anything we are capable of.

For the purposes of your investigation, I think you should consider this footage 100% genuine.

Rod Harper

Metropolitan Police, photo and video forensic department.

James looked at the send date and saw that Ewart had received the fax more than a week earlier, but he’d told James that he was still trying to get hold of the video less than two days ago.

‘Two-faced son of a …’ James muttered.

He felt sick. CHERUB wasn’t just an organisation James worked for. It was his home, it was all his friends, it was his school – basically his entire life. Confronted with the reality that Ewart had lied to him, James realised that Kerry had been right: he hadn’t truly believed Mr Pike’s conspiracy theory and had just come here to nose around and see what Ewart was up to.

James’ hands trembled as he flipped frantically through more papers. There were thousands of sheets, probably hundreds of thousands of words, and he wouldn’t be able to read them if he stayed up all night. He figured he could just skim through and read the basics, but then what?

Ewart was married to the chairman and as much as James liked Zara, he wasn’t sure that he could trust her to take his side over her own husband. She might even be in on Ewart’s scheme, whatever it turned out to be.

That left the ethics committee, but its members were designed to be independent. They didn’t live on campus and they were all outsiders: lawyers, retired policemen and the like. Even if James approached one, what was to say that Ewart wouldn’t talk his way out of it?

James realised that his only realistic option was to calm down, digest as much as he could, photocopy some of the most interesting paperwork and then bring it to Mr Pike, or maybe Meryl.

There was a knock at the door.

James jolted with fright and a stack of papers cascaded out of his lap on to the carpet. This was a disaster. If the person at the door came in, it would be blindingly obvious that he’d been snooping.

He crossed his fingers and willed the person to go away, but the handle turned and the door began sweeping across the carpet.

Lauren didn’t know how long she had. She stepped out into the corridor and was pleased to find it empty, but less pleased by the CCTV cameras staring at her from both ends. Even if the commotion hadn’t been heard, it was only a matter of time before she got picked up by security.

‘You OK?’ she shouted, as she stared at the hefty bolt and padlock across the door of Anna’s room.

‘What was that noise?’ Anna asked from the other side.

‘Stabbed Keith,’ Lauren explained. ‘Stand away from the door.’

The lock looked sturdy, but any security system is only as strong as its weakest link and the door itself was flimsy. Lauren grabbed each side of the doorframe of her own room and used it as leverage to launch an explosive, two-footed kick across the corridor.

She had trainers on, but the force still hurt the balls of her feet as the flimsy wooden walls on both sides of the corridor wobbled. The lock held in place, but a gap had been torn between the door and the chipboard in which it was mounted.

Lauren’s second kick knocked the hinged side of the door further inwards. It wasn’t a huge gap, but enough for Anna’s skinny body to wriggle through. Anna was shocked to see Lauren with blood-smeared clothing and a heavy padlock in her hand.

*

As they jogged down the corridor, the bouncer they’d seen at reception on the way in appeared at the far end. Three startled girls and one middle-aged man had stepped out of their rooms to see why the walls had been shaking.

Anna looked back for an alternative exit, but Lauren hid the padlock behind her back and strode on towards the bouncer. His scruffy grey suit bulged with muscle and Lauren guessed she was up against someone who was ex-military, or maybe a retired boxer. Even with the some of the best combat training in the world under her belt, Lauren would only get one shot at a surprise attack.

‘Where’d you think you’re going, missy?’ the bouncer grinned, as he pointed back along the corridor. ‘Get back in that room before I clock you one.’

Lauren waited until they were less than a metre apart before swinging the heavy padlock. A couple of the girls screamed as metal hit bone, making a sickening thunk and tearing a bloody gash in the bouncer’s cheek. As he stumbled forward in a daze, Lauren hit him with a brutal roundhouse kick to the ribs, followed by a knee in the guts and a knockout blow with the padlock.

‘We’re all getting out of here,’ Lauren shouted, and set off for the staircase, armed only with the padlock and terrified of finding herself on the wrong end of a gun. Anna kept close as they crept down the stairs, while four slightly older girls trailed nervously.

Lauren peered around the bottom of the staircase into the reception area. The sofas where the girls sat waiting for customers were out of sight, but she could see the receptionist, the bouncer’s empty armchair and Keith’s coat hanging tantalisingly from a rack.

‘See the coats?’ Lauren whispered.

Anna nodded.

‘I’ll go first. You run across and search the brown jacket. It’s Keith’s. He had a gun with him earlier.’

Lauren raced out into the room, much to the surprise of the receptionist who leapt out of her seat and pointed towards the staircase.

‘You’d better get back upstairs before you find yourself in a lot of trouble,’ the receptionist barked.

The girls on the sofa went quiet and stopped looking bored, but Lauren was furious to see that Anna had bottled it and stood limply at the bottom of the staircase.

‘For god’s sake,’ Lauren yelled, looking at Anna and pointing at the coat rack.

The receptionist had stepped out from behind her desk and tried to grab Lauren’s arm. Lauren snatched the woman’s bony wrist, twisted her into an arm lock and banged her head against the desk before smacking her around the side of the head with the metal face of the padlock.

‘Stay down or you’ll get another one,’ Lauren shouted menacingly. Then she turned her fury on Anna. ‘What’s the matter with you? You’re bloody useless.’

There was now a bunch of younger girls at the bottom of the stairs and the older ones who were on public display were getting off the sofas. As they all started chattering nervously in Russian, bad English and other languages that Lauren couldn’t understand, she made her own way towards the coat rack.

But the main door burst open before she got there. Roman came in first, followed by Abby holding the can of pepper spray.

‘Get back to your rooms,’ Abby ordered, with her thumb clutching the trigger on the canister.

Lauren dropped behind the receptionist’s desk. The other girls didn’t seem to grasp what was in the canister, so Abby demonstrated with a quick squirt into the face of one of the older girls. She began screaming and a flurry of young legs bolted up the staircase.

‘If this doesn’t stop now, I’ll get Kenneth and a couple of his lads out here,’ Abby shouted.

Whoever Kenneth was, the mention of his name was enough to have the girls back on the sofa. Anna had disappeared back upstairs, but Lauren had crawled as far as the chromed base of the coat rack and was relieved to see the handle of Keith’s gun inside his jacket.

‘The revolution is over,’ Roman smiled. ‘Get your asses back to work.’

‘The ringleader’s over there,’ the receptionist said as she staggered up, with her hand covering a small cut where the padlock had struck her temple.

Lauren only had a second to grab the gun. As she shot up from the sticky carpet, Abby swung around and squeezed the cap on the pepper spray. The gooey liquid came through the air like snake venom. Lauren tried hiding her head behind a woman’s coat, but it hit the side of her face as her fingers gripped the stock of Keith’s revolver.

Lauren felt like her face was on fire, with one eye closed, the other streaming and the intense odour of pepper spray searing inside her mouth and the back of her throat. Her vision blurred as she aimed the gun towards the ceiling and blasted a warning shot.

‘Put the spray down and open the door,’ Lauren said, trying to sound more assertive than she felt.

She heard some of the other girls, who’d crept back to the bottom of the stairs to investigate the gunshot. The gun felt heavy. Lauren was seeing smears and fighting for breath, but she was less than three metres from Abby and Roman and you don’t need good eyesight to shoot someone from that distance.

Abby dropped the pepper spray.

‘Now open the door,’ Lauren said. ‘And anyone who wants to follow me out is welcome.’

Roman stared at Abby for confirmation before stepping backwards and opening the door. Lauren searched desperately for Anna, but all she could see were colours and blurry shapes. She realised that there were five or six girls running with her as she felt her way down the hallway towards Abby’s office, gun in hand.

‘Anna?’ Lauren yelled.

‘Your friend went back upstairs,’ a girl not much bigger than Lauren said, in broken English.

‘Not going back,’ Lauren gasped as she pointed inside the office. ‘Can you see a phone?’

‘On the desk.’

‘Dial for me,’ Lauren said. Then she realised that the other girls were standing in the doorway awaiting instructions. ‘Downstairs,’ she shouted. ‘There’s a room with bottles, run through there, jump over the bar and run out on to the street.’

As six teenaged girls clattered down the metal staircase in mules and cheap dressing gowns, Lauren told her remaining companion to pick up the phone and gave her the digits of John Jones’ mobile number.

Lauren screamed into the receiver. ‘Where are you?’

‘We’re coming in within five to ten minutes,’ John said. ‘But the cops are nervous about storming a building this size without proper reconnaissance or knowing what kind of weapons they’re up against.’

‘Only one gun that I know of and I’m holding it,’ Lauren said. ‘There should be girls coming out through the bar at the front any second.’

‘We’ll grab them. Your voice sounds terrible, are you OK?’

‘Pepper spray,’ Lauren explained. ‘Mostly on one side.’

The blurry girl who was helping Lauren spoke anxiously. ‘Abby and the others are coming.’