Cherub Black Friday (17 page)

‘What time do we get to London?’ Andre asked.

‘The flight is about ten hours,’ Amy said. ‘But London’s eight hours behind so you’ll actually arrive around noon. Your instructors will meet you at the airport and take you straight to your training centres.’

Andre gave his mum a nervous glance. Ryan wondered how he’d cope with CHERUB campus, even on a training programme tailored to his needs.

While Tamara sent Andre to his room to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, Amy backed Ryan up into the hallway.

‘Stick around at the airport until the plane leaves and call me if anything goes wrong,’ Amy said. ‘I’ve got to go wake Josef up and get him to sign off the Africa plan.’

Amy was following orders to wind down the Aramov fleet. She had to move fast, but not so fast that the clan’s most important clients got spooked and blew seven months of intelligence work. Over the previous ten days, she’d arranged for three planes and their crews to do legitimate humanitarian aid flights on a long-term lease. Six more had been impounded at Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Officially, a mechanical inspection by the authorities there had shown the planes to be unflightworthy, but actually the clan had been flying dodgy planes in and out of Sharjah for years. It was just that they’d now stopped bribing officials to turn a blind eye.

From a peak of eighty-six large cargo planes, TFU had so far whittled the Aramov fleet down to fifty. Although the Africa plan would only take four more planes out directly, they were going to be seized by the US Air Force while stuffed with illegal weapons. The aircrews would be held in a US military prison, facing lengthy sentences for violating rules on the export of US military technology.

Amy hoped this would scare the daylights out of the remaining Kremlin aircrews and give Josef Aramov a credible reason to temporarily shut down clan operations, without making his client base suspect that the entire operation had been taken over by TFU.

‘Rough night?’ Natalka asked, as she gave Ryan his good-morning kiss in the Kremlin lobby. ‘You look like crap.’

‘Didn’t sleep much,’ Ryan said, as he adjusted the school pack hanging off his left shoulder.

Ryan had been up at four, then he’d escorted Andre and Tamara through the snow with way more luggage than they needed, ridden with them to the airport, sat in a grubby terminal drinking bad coffee until the 8 a.m. flight to London was off the ground, then cabbed it back to the top of the valley.

After an icy downhill run and a trip up to his room to put on dry clothes and grab his backpack, Ryan completed his adventure just in time to ride the school bus with Natalka.

‘I dreamed about you last night,’ Natalka said airily, as they passed the two armed guards on the Kremlin’s main door and felt the bite of cold. ‘You were riding a horse with no shirt on.’

Ryan laughed. ‘I bet that looked
seriously
sexy.’

‘Don’t get cocky,’ Natalka said. ‘But it wasn’t bad, actually.’

They got on the bus, where a girl of eight had taken their usual seat at the back.

‘You want your face punched in?’ Natalka growled, bunching her fist and making the girl scuttle off.

Natalka could be a bitch, but Ryan said nothing because he enjoyed their morning bus rides. Natalka’s scarf dropped on the floor, and she looped it around both their necks before cuddling up as the mostly empty bus rolled away from the Kremlin.

‘Your face is red,’ Natalka said. ‘Did you go for one of your runs?’

Ryan shook his head. ‘I think I’m getting a cold,’ he lied. ‘You should probably back off if you don’t want my germs.’

‘If it’s going around I’ll get it anyway,’ Natalka said, surprising Ryan by moving in for a snog.

Her mouth tasted like the two cigarettes she always smoked before school. It was gross, but Ryan had learned that you can put up with a lot when you’re in love.

‘Mum was going bananas this morning,’ Natalka said, breaking away from Ryan as the rear of the bus swung over the edge of the valley on a tight turn.

‘That’s hardly news,’ Ryan said. ‘You two fight every morning.’

‘She wasn’t having a go at
me
for once,’ Natalka said. ‘One of the other pilots screwed his landing last night.’

Ryan nodded with recognition. ‘Just after midnight? I heard a bang. They even had that rattly old fire truck out, just in case.’

‘Tore up his undercarriage. Three days minimum to fix it. So my mum only got in late last night, but this morning she gets a call saying she’s gotta fly off to Africa.’

Ryan jolted in shock.

‘What?’ Natalka asked.

‘Nothing,’ Ryan said unconvincingly. Then to cover his tracks, ‘Bet she’ll be in a fouler mood when she gets back as well.’

Natalka had no idea that her mother’s plane was about to pick up a load of US-made weapons in Pakistan. Halfway to Congo, Dimitra would see a pair of F18 fighters cruise up beside her plane and order her to land at the nearest US airbase. After forced landings, the crews of the four planes would be placed in military custody, charged with trafficking in classified US technology and thrown in a military prison facing thirty-year prison sentences.

For Ryan’s sake, Amy had arranged things so that Natalka’s mum had an earlier flight too close for her to get picked for the Africa operation, but she could only steer what went on by telling Josef Aramov what orders to give. She didn’t control minor operational details, like who got drafted in if a plane was wrecked.

Ryan wondered what to do. Cellphones didn’t work at the Kremlin, but if he bunked out of school he might be able to contact Amy on a landline. But even if he did that, how could they pull Dimitra off the mission right before take-off without it seeming horribly suspicious?

Natalka watched Ryan staring intently out of the window and gave him a nudge. ‘Earth to Ryan? Anybody home?’

‘Eh?’

‘You’re acting
so
weird today,’ Natalka said.

Ryan looked at Natalka and imagined her face red and tear-streaked when she found out that her mum was in prison halfway around the world.

‘Just  …  Sorry  …  My head’s not right this morning.’

Ryan had sneaked into a school office and called Amy, but the four crews were set for take-off and there was no credible way to pull Dimitra’s flight.

Kremlin kids attended a Russian-speaking school on the outskirts of Bishkek. Facilities were primitive and the building was giving way to damp and mould. Ryan sat through double maths, history, lunch, science and art, feeling like a bomb was ticking and wondering what the chances were of something going wrong with the Africa mission.

It should have been an enjoyable evening, cooking a simple supper with Natalka and curling up on Dimitra’s double bed listening to music, with the grouchy mechanic in the next room occasionally slamming his palm against the wall, urging them to turn it down.

‘Stop moaning, you old fart,’ Natalka shouted, as she banged back. ‘I’ve put up with your snoring every night for the last five years.’

Ryan laughed. Natalka knelt on the bed, one striped sock, black knickers, white singlet and no bra. Ryan loved her desperately, but his mind was in faraway sky imagining F18s and Ilyushins, and Natalka’s mum laid out on the runway with a camouflage-clad Yank aiming a rifle at her. The bedside clock told him that the scene he kept imagining had probably played out about an hour earlier.

‘No parents,’ Natalka said, as she put her head in Ryan’s lap. ‘You wanna sleep here?’

For all the time they’d been seeing each other, Ryan and Natalka had never actually spent the night together. Ryan wasn’t sure if Natalka was hinting that she wanted to have sex. The prospect excited him, but while he was a virgin, Natalka had knocked about with some older boys. He suspected she’d had sex before, and was scared that he’d do it all wrong. And if he did, Natalka was the kind of girl who’d laugh her arse off rather than show any sympathy  … 

‘I guess I could stay here,’ Ryan said. ‘Are we talking about  …  ?’

‘No we’re
not
,’ Natalka said firmly, and Ryan was kind of relieved. ‘My mum’s got vodka though. What say we get hammered and blow off school tomorrow?’

Ryan laughed as Natalka rolled a bottle of cheap Russian vodka out from under the bed. ‘Get the Pepsi and some glasses.’

It should have been great, but Ryan felt like puking.

Just after 9 p.m., the Kremlin PA started gurgling. The system was a relic from Soviet days and most of the funnel-shaped wall speakers either didn’t work or had been ripped off. The closest one to Natalka’s room was down the far end of a hallway by the toilets and you could barely hear it.

‘What’s it saying?’ Ryan asked, cupping his ear. ‘Something about the assembly point.’

‘Probably drunks pissing about,’ Natalka said. ‘If it’s anything important they set off the fire alarm.’

Natalka’s comment coincided with the fire alarm and they both laughed.

‘And there you have it,’ Natalka said, a touch drunk. ‘Confirmation of my genius.’

‘Best move, in case it is a fire,’ Ryan said, knowing it wasn’t as he reached for the floor and threw Natalka her jeans.

If it was a fire, they’d have to go outside, so they put on shoes and hit the hallway pulling on their warm coats and making sure they had gloves. The fire alarm automatically locked out the lifts and they merged into bodies going down the stairs.

There was no panic, and Ryan and Natalka quickly picked up rumours that everyone was being brought down to the lobby for some big announcement.

‘Nat-al-kaaaa!’ a guy called Vlad said, as he rudely pushed a couple of people out of the way.

Vlad was eighteen, a fair-haired Russian. He was the son of a loadmaster and had a reputation for being not too bright.

There wasn’t much to do at the Kremlin, but there was a big stack of outdoor weights in the yard out back and a lot of young guys were into bodybuilding. Ryan had bulked up there himself, but mainly used the weights for fitness and as an excuse to pick up gossip from the older guys. Vlad was at the other extreme and had reached his present size with the help of serious steroids.

‘Well, well,’ Natalka said acidly. ‘All the bugs are crawling out of the woodwork.’

Vlad and Natalka had gone out with each other in the past. Ryan didn’t know the details, but found the four-year age gap paedo-ish.

‘I’m surprised you and Ryan are still an item,’ Vlad said.

Vlad left his comment hanging, but resumed when Natalka didn’t take the bait.

‘I heard Ryan went for a stroll on Saturday. Dirty little boy wound up in the café by the bus station.’

Ryan gulped. ‘You’re talking out of your arse.’

But Natalka was intrigued, because Ryan
had
disappeared on Saturday afternoon and she’d given him a weird look when he’d arrived back in Igor’s car without a single item of shopping.

‘Which bitch did you go for?’ Vlad teased. ‘Scabby Su-Ling? Licey Lucy? VD Valenka?’

Igor spent a lot of time in the Kremlin bar and must have flapped his mouth when he was drunk.

‘I had a Coke and I left,’ Ryan said, slowing right down as more people joined the staircase from the first floor.

But Natalka looked pissed off. ‘That place is way over by the bus station. There’s no bus to the Kremlin, so how’d you end up there?’

‘I wandered all over,’ Ryan said. ‘I wandered for hours.’

Vlad could see Natalka wasn’t convinced by Ryan’s excuse and moved for the kill. ‘You can’t go in that place
without
knowing what it is,’ Vlad said. ‘There’s pictures of girls on the outside. You’d have to be blind.’

This was true, though Ryan hadn’t noticed because the signs were at an oblique angle from the car park, and he’d had to stay out of sight so that Igor didn’t see him. But he couldn’t tell Natalka the truth.

‘Those girls are
so
disgusting,’ Vlad said, as Ryan tried thinking what to say. ‘Half of ’em are on heroin. I don’t know how you could have done the dirty there, Ryan!’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ Ryan snapped, losing his cool. ‘And you’re one to talk about drugs, steroid boy!’

Vlad laughed and pointed at Ryan’s crotch. ‘I’m telling you, Natalka, I’d have that boy checked for lice before you let him near you again.’

‘I only drank a Coke,’ Ryan said.

By this time they’d reached the bottom of the stairs. The bar had been shuttered in preparation for the big announcement and the whole ground floor was packed with bodies. Ryan got a few steps clear of Vlad and looked pleadingly into Natalka’s furious eyes.

‘You can’t possibly wander in that place without knowing what it is,’ Natalka said.

‘My dad just died,’ Ryan said. ‘I was tearing over. I don’t really know what I was doing.’

Natalka’s eyes narrowed. She tried to step back, but there were too many people around. ‘I know you were sad, but I can’t
believe
you thought going into a place like that would make you feel better.’

Vlad had come back towards them, wearing a huge smile. ‘Here, Ryan, did you pay the extra to shag her without a condom?’

Ryan was angry enough to lash out, but the crowd and the fact that Vlad had biceps bigger than his thighs held him back.

‘Vlad’s stirring it,’ Ryan told Natalka. ‘He fancies you. Who wouldn’t, you’re gorgeous!’

Natalka half smiled, but she still looked furious and scowled when Ryan tried a kiss.

‘The entire male species makes me sick,’ Natalka said, holding her hands out. ‘
Don’t
touch me.’

‘Bad luck, dirty boy!’ Vlad said, giving Ryan a cheeky wink.

‘Why don’t you go after a girl your own age?’ Ryan spat. ‘Pervert.’

While this was going on, the rest of the crowd had quietened down, parting as Josef Aramov came out of the lift, with fake girlfriend Amy a step behind. Josef cut an unusual figure for the head of a billion-dollar criminal network. Tall and slim, with a long beard, dressed in jeans that had shrunk and a matching denim jacket.

When he reached the bar, Josef balanced on a padded bench and turned to face a crowd closing in to hear. Amy usually made sure Josef stayed out of the limelight because he didn’t make a very credible leader. TFU had made him leader because they needed a figurehead and he was the only adult Aramov who wasn’t dying or on the run. Unfortunately, this announcement was so critical that it couldn’t come from anyone else.