Cherub Black Friday (12 page)

‘You’ll have a bonus mark on your butt if you don’t watch it,’ Ning growled, as she unscrewed the car’s fuel cap and dropped the funnel in.

Amy Collins passed the battered ex-police car as she made the final approach to CHERUB campus, with Ryan in the back. They parked by the helipads at the side of the main building and headed straight to a conference room on the first floor.

Chairwoman Zara Asker was at the head of a big oval table, along with husband and Chief Mission Controller Ewart Asker, Chief Handler Meryl Spencer and semi-retired Campus Psychiatrist Jennifer Mitchum.

‘All the big wigs,’ Ryan noted, feeling a little intimidated as he sat in a swivel chair and poured water from a glass jug.

‘How are you feeling?’ Meryl asked, as Amy sat across the table opposite Ryan.

‘Could be worse,’ Ryan said. ‘I met Amy at Heathrow Airport last night. But it was late, so we booked into a hotel and drove up this morning.’

‘Jet lag?’ Ewart asked.

Ryan nodded. ‘Kyrgyzstan, China, and then America is a thirteen-hour time shift. Then back here which is another seven-hour shift. My body has
no
idea what time of day it is.’

‘Besides your disorientation, how are you feeling?’ Jennifer Mitchum asked. ‘Seeing your mission controller die must have been distressing. Especially after you’ve worked with him for seven months.’

Ryan nodded. ‘When my mum died I felt
so
bad, and I thought the sadness would never end. But it did get better.’

‘Yes,’ Jennifer said. ‘Understanding the grieving process really does help.’

‘I also wonder if I could have saved him,’ Ryan said. ‘Like, I tied our guard up. But that took ages, and if I’d killed him I probably would have got to the car before the guard got found.’

Ewart Asker smiled. ‘You can play
what if
games your whole life. Maybe if you hadn’t tied the guy up, you would have got to the parked car sooner, but an armed guard could have been out there having a cigarette break and you’d have been killed when you got there.’

‘Feelings of guilt are completely normal,’ Jennifer Mitchum said. ‘But you didn’t
intentionally
do anything that led to Kazakov getting killed and that’s what you should focus on.’

Ryan nodded, before Zara spoke. ‘Ted Brasker tells me that you’re very keen to go back to Kyrgyzstan and resume the mission. I must say, I have concerns about this.’

Ryan sat bolt upright. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ he said defensively.

‘I’m not saying that there is,’ Zara replied. ‘But you’ve been away from campus for seven months. You’ve lost out on your education; you must have missed your friends. I know you feel that you have unfinished business at the Kremlin, but as chairman, my duty is to put agents’ wellbeing first.’

Amy spoke next. ‘I do think Ryan would continue to be useful at the Kremlin. I’m living on the top floor, watching over Josef Aramov and basically pulling strings to run Aramov Clan operations. Ryan and Kazakov have been feeding back really important information about the mood of people lower down the organisation.’

‘There must be other ways of doing that,’ Ewart said. ‘Cherubs are only supposed to operate in situations where adults can’t. There must be dozens of people inside the Kremlin who’d make willing snitches.’

‘I have other sources,’ Amy confirmed. ‘But Ryan and Kazakov were the only ones I could totally trust. The mission could certainly continue without Ryan. Although as we all know, kids tend to be less cagey than adults, and Ryan has already picked up a lot of information from people he goes to school with.’

‘I can
really
help,’ Ryan said. ‘And it’s not like I’m in massive danger at the Kremlin.’

Handler Meryl Spencer looked at some of Ryan’s mission notes. ‘I don’t want to make Ryan uncomfortable, but I can’t help but feel that part of Ryan’s reason for wanting to return to the Kremlin has something to do with this girl, Natasha.’

Ryan squirmed with embarrassment as everyone looked at him. ‘First off, her name’s Natalka, not Natasha. Second, I don’t see that my love life is any of your business.’

Zara spoke firmly. ‘Ryan, this meeting isn’t about your love life, but it is about your wellbeing. If you have a strong emotional bond with someone at the Kremlin, it obviously affects your willingness to return to the mission in Kyrgyzstan.’

‘There’s not that many people my age at the Kremlin,’ Ryan said. ‘Natalka’s nice. We hang out and stuff.’

‘Would you say you loved her?’ Meryl asked.

‘I like her a lot,’ Ryan said. ‘We spent most evenings together.’

‘Have you been physically intimate?’ Meryl asked.

‘I haven’t shagged her if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Ryan said irritably, feeling really uncomfortable discussing this in front of five adults. ‘We’ve kissed and stuff, obviously.’

‘Do you think you’d want to go back to Kyrgyzstan if it wasn’t for Natalka?’ Zara asked.

Everything Ryan had said up to this point was either the truth or close to it, but now he told an outright lie. ‘Natalka’s not that big a deal. I only want to go back to Kyrgyzstan because I want to help finish the job that Kazakov and I started.’

‘OK, I think Ryan’s had enough of a grilling,’ Zara said. ‘Here’s what I think: Ryan has been away from campus for seven months and he’s been through a nasty ordeal over the past week. He needs to catch up on his education and spend some time on campus.’

‘No way!’ Ryan blurted.

‘Let me
finish
,’ Zara said firmly. ‘However, Ryan also has unfinished business and emotional ties in Kyrgyzstan. So he can return, but only for a
maximum
of six weeks. This should give Ryan a chance to tie up loose ends, and for Amy to find someone else to take over his role.’

‘Oh, right,’ Ryan said sheepishly. ‘Sorry.’

Zara continued. ‘When you come back to campus, you’ll spend a minimum of six months on off-mission status. You need to catch up with your training and education, and spend time living like a normal teenager. Does anyone around this table have any major objections to this?’

‘Six weeks is plenty of time for me to replace Ryan at the Kremlin,’ Amy said.

The psychiatrist, Dr Mitchum, spoke. ‘A traumatic event like the death of a mission controller shouldn’t be brushed aside. I’d like to see Ryan for a couple of counselling sessions before he leaves and further sessions when he returns to campus.’

There was a couple of seconds’ silence before Zara wheeled her chair back and stood up. ‘OK, that’s all agreed then. Meeting adjourned.’

Ewart, Meryl and Dr Mitchum filed out, but Zara cornered Ryan and Amy before they left.

‘I’m really sorry if we made you uncomfortable talking about Natalka,’ Zara said.

Ryan gave an awkward shrug. ‘Guess you have to cover everything.’

‘I’m sitting in on a video conference early this afternoon,’ Zara said. ‘It’s a debrief on the IDoJ operation, involving Dr D and some other figures in the US Intelligence community. I know Amy will want to watch, but, Ryan, you’ve been so closely tied up in this that you’re welcome to sit in as well.’

James Adams and Bruce Norris stood up in the racetrack’s grandstand as the trainees lined up four abreast on the start line, in matching Volkswagen Golfs.

Bruce had a walkie-talkie that linked up to all four drivers. ‘Remember, two laps of the track. At the end of your second lap pull off into the parking lot, through the pit lane and follow the obstacle course.

‘Look out for random hazards. You’ll be docked one point for each one you hit. You’ll also be docked one point for every full ten seconds that you finish behind the lead car. Now, start your engines!’

As Bruce spoke, James stepped down the grandstand holding a black-and-white chequered flag. Ning’s mouth felt dry as she sat in the driver’s seat, wearing a crash helmet and six-point safety harness. She was on the outside of the track, which she hoped would give her the best run into the first corner.

James stood rigid with the flag held high as the four Volkswagens revved. When he dropped the flag, Grace shot off into the lead. Ning got an OK start and tucked in behind Grace. Leon had pulled left in an aggressive attempt to get the best line into the corner, but Alfie had no intention of letting him through and tried sandwiching Leon into the pit wall.

The cars were normal diesel-powered Golfs and they’d barely reached twenty miles per hour, but the boys still had a noisy coming together. Leon kept going, but Alfie lost power and found himself rolling with a stalled engine as Grace narrowly led Ning into the first corner.

Ning caught a slipstream as Grace came off the corner and hit the straight, but as she tried to overtake, Grace swerved to avoid a polystyrene dog and Ning’s only choice was to swerve the other way.

The Golf ’s front driving wheel lost grip when it hit damp grass off the side of the tarmac, and while a jerk of the steering got Ning back on course, she’d lost momentum and Leon had enough speed to overtake on the outside at the next corner.

Unfortunately for Leon, he was so keen to make the pass that he didn’t brake in time for the following corner and Ning cut back through on the inside. Now Ning found herself on a straight, with Leon close behind, Grace four car-lengths ahead and Alfie too far back to be seen.

Three quick corners passed in a blur, but when they reached the next short straight Grace was shocked to see that two stripped-out cars had been parked sideways across the track, making a roadblock. There were two options: hit the rear of one of the cars to spin it out of the way, or divert off the main track and take a longer route on to a winding section used for go-kart racing.

They’d been taught how to ram a roadblock, but you had to slow down to no more than thirty miles per hour to avoid a whiplash injury, and even then hitting other cars wasn’t an exact science. Grace decided that her advantage was big enough to take the safer option.

Ning considered going for the lead, but she’d already been deducted five of her eight points during earlier tests, and while a win might be good for her ego, her real goal was to finish within twenty seconds of the winner and not hit too many obstacles to pass Advanced Driving.

As Ning followed Grace through the twisting diversion, Leon charged the roadblock. He hit the rear of the two cars spot on, making a nice hole between them. While Leon had slowed down to crash the roadblock, Alfie took advantage of his hard work and whizzed through the gap at full speed.

Ning had made up most of her gap to Grace on the twisting go-kart section and came back on to the main track behind Grace, with Leon right on her tail. Alfie was on the outside and still last, but he had enough momentum to overtake the others if he could find a way through.

As they turned on to the main straight to complete the lap, Alfie got his nose in front of Grace, while Ning and Leon ran side by side less than a car-length behind them. Up ahead, James and Bruce and their assistant Kevin Sumner had livened things up by turning the straight into a slalom using a mixture of polystyrene grannies, cardboard mums with pushchairs and a sinister-looking dummy soldier holding a bazooka.

Grace and Alfie refused to submit the lead, but Ning was focused on passing the course, not winning the race. Knowing that she only had to finish within twenty seconds of the winner, she slowed down and neatly weaved around the few dummies that hadn’t already been hit by one of the two leading cars.

Ning kept this strategy up for the next half a lap, and made it up to third when Alfie barged Grace off-track into a barrier. Grace tried to rejoin, but her front right tyre had come off its rim. Technically this meant Grace had failed the course, but Ning suspected James and Bruce would give her another shot rather than fail a good pupil.

Leon had the lead as they approached the final straight and cut into the pit lane. Alfie was almost on his rear bumper and while the boys battled, Ning smartly left a gap big enough to take evasive action if one of the lads had an incident.

After pulling under the grandstand, hay bales marked out a separate route for each car. A twisting path took Ning to a sign indicating that she had to change direction with a handbrake turn. She hadn’t done one in the Golf since Thursday and made a complete hash of it, but she was sure that this was the first point she’d be docked and she only had a few hundred metres left to drive.

The final stretch was slalom between hay bales, then a long twisting reverse drive, and up a ramp into the rear of a truck. Ning clipped her door mirror as she backed into the truck, but the paintwork was already battered and the dink was so slight that she doubted anyone would notice.

Ning gasped with relief as she turned off the engine and released her safety harness, but when she opened the door, she saw there wasn’t room to get out. After a moment’s thought, she pulled off her crash helmet and made an ungracious exit through the Golf’s sunroof, followed by a slide down the bonnet and a jump out of the truck’s rear.

Leon and Alfie had made it out of their trucks in the same fashion a couple of seconds earlier, but the two boys were furious about their battle on the track and both claimed to have won. Alfie had a big size advantage, but he wasn’t prepared for Leon charging forwards and belting him across the side of the head with his crash helmet.

‘You’re a maniac!’ Leon shouted.

‘
I’m
a maniac?’ Alfie roared, as he dodged a second swing of Leon’s helmet. ‘You slammed me into that barrier at the start.’

‘You got a crap start,’ Leon shouted. ‘You should have yielded.’

As Leon’s initial bravado wore off, he once again realised that tangling with Alfie wasn’t a good idea. But as he backed off, Alfie hooked Leon’s ankle and swept his feet away before jumping on his back.

‘You’re hamburger,’ Alfie shouted.

Alfie landed three hard punches on the smaller boy before Ning grabbed Alfie under the arms and hoiked him off.

‘Pack it in,’ Ning ordered, as she shoved Alfie away. ‘You’re both idiots.’

Bruce and James were also now jogging towards the scene.