Cherub Black Friday (26 page)

Andre looked out of the window and saw that his room had a depressing view of air conditioning units and maintenance sheds.

‘Be careful around Boris,’ Alex warned. ‘He had a big crush on a girl in Kyrgyzstan. He lost her when we got kicked out of the Kremlin.’

Andre felt like reminding his brother that they’d been kicked out of the Kremlin after Leonid killed their aunt Galenka and tried to kill their grandma. But Alex was offering rare crumbs of brotherly love, so he didn’t push it.

‘I’ll steer a wide berth,’ Andre said.

Alex pointed to the TV. ‘You still a video game head?’

‘Pretty much,’ Andre admitted.

‘Thought so,’ Alex said. ‘I rigged my Xbox up under there. I’ve not touched it for ages, so you might as well make use.’

‘Thanks,’ Andre said. ‘All I had for entertainment in Dubai was old
Simpsons
episodes.’

‘I’ll leave you to shower and whatever,’ Alex said.

Alex’s friendliness was a pleasant surprise. Andre wondered if his brother had fallen out with Boris, or had maybe just become isolated, living in a strange country where he didn’t speak the language.

Andre kicked the door of his room shut and started undressing, smelling reminders that he’d been in the same clothes for three days solid. But he was intrigued by the possibilities of the Xbox and before going into the shower he turned it on, anxious to see if it was linked to the Internet. After picking the Xbox Live option, he typed in his account and password and clicked
log on
.

There was a long wait, but Andre punched the air as his home screen started loading. He selected the messenger box and picked a friend called Slava, which would actually connect him to TFU headquarters.

Where are you?
flashed up.

There was no keyboard, so he took a couple of minutes to type the name of the apartment complex using a control pad. Seconds after he’d pressed
send
, Alex knocked on the door.

‘I’m getting undressed,’ Andre said, as he grabbed a remote and flicked the TV to a random channel.

‘I’ve seen your flabby little bod before,’ Alex said, as he stepped in. ‘Forgot to say. Don’t use your login on the Xbox, or your Facebook and stuff on the iPad downstairs. Dad reckons someone could track us down just from a login.’

‘Right,’ Andre said. ‘Guess that makes sense.’

Andre smiled to himself as he deleted his login details from the Xbox, switched the TV to a channel showing Spanish cartoons and headed for the shower. He’d told TFU where he was, and that was all that mattered.

‘So, I take it you didn’t just invite me up here to smack me in the balls again?’ Ryan asked.

‘Aww, stop making a fuss,’ Amy said. ‘Tough kid like you can handle that.’

Ryan smirked. ‘I ought to report you for child abuse.’

‘Report me all you like. I’m out of a job when I get back to Dallas anyway.’

It was Boxing Day evening and Ryan was in the big planning room on the Kremlin’s fourth floor. ‘So why’d you call me up here?’ he asked. ‘I can’t hang about, I’ve got Natalka downstairs, ready for some hot steamy sex.’

‘Don’t push your luck,’ Amy said, though she couldn’t help smiling. ‘I thought you’d like an update. We’ve had one quick contact with Andre. Now we know where he is, we’re going to send someone out to liaise with him.’

‘Ted Brasker?’ Ryan asked.

‘That was the original plan,’ Amy said. ‘But the silly arse did his back in. So we need a replacement, and as our operation to find Leonid hasn’t exactly been given approval at the highest level, we’re having trouble finding anyone else at TFU willing to put their career prospects on the line.’

‘What does
hasn’t exactly been given approval
mean?’ Ryan asked.

‘Officially, Dr D is supposed to report to her bosses at the CIA before launching any new operation,’ Amy explained. ‘She’s blurred the issue by claiming that finding Leonid is part of the mission we’re on here.’

‘So is it, or isn’t it?’ Ryan asked.

‘Well, our job
is
to wind down Aramov Clan operations. You could argue that finding Leonid is part of that remit, or you could argue that sending a mother and son off to Mexico to find someone who was kicked out of the clan six months earlier is completely separate.’

‘Politics,’ Ryan said dismissively. ‘Life would be so much easier if they just left us alone to get on with our jobs.’

‘True,’ Amy said. ‘But it’ll never happen.’

‘And did we get anywhere with the Lombardi thing?’ Ryan asked.

‘The information management team in Dallas has been digging. Ethan’s mum, Galenka Aramov, and his uncle, Leonid Aramov, set up a holding corporation called Vineyard Eight. They each owned fifty per cent of the corporation and Lombardi was the only other company director.

‘Vineyard Eight bought up a satellite navigation company called Lisson Communications. Lisson built navigation systems for US military vehicles and was one of the first companies to market in-car navigation. But their sat-navs never cut it and Galenka and Leonid bought a company that was nearly broke.’

‘Why buy a company that’s no good?’

‘It was a big risk, but the Aramovs did well out of it. Galenka sold off the navigation division to a larger rival, but Lisson retained a lot of valuable patents.’

‘I’ve never exactly got patents and trademarks and stuff,’ Ryan admitted.

‘Basically, if you invent something you have the right to
patent
your invention. Then you can either stop people from copying your idea, or charge them money for the right to use it. Lisson Communications did a lot of research into navigation technology and owned some very important patents. Now, every time someone makes a GPS system, Lisson charges the manufacturer one point three cents for using its patents. That doesn’t sound like much, until you realise that over a billion phones and other GPS devices are manufactured every year.’

‘So they make a lot of money?’

‘Galenka and Leonid paid sixteen million dollars for Lisson back in 1999. They sold assets worth at least six million, and Lisson now generates ten million dollars a year in patent revenues.’

‘I could live off that,’ Ryan said.

‘Lombardi’s law practice handles Lisson Communications’ legal business. They’re also used by Galenka Aramov’s computer security company, which has continued to do nicely since she died.’

Ryan laughed. ‘So our buddy Ethan is a rich bastard?’

‘Certainly is,’ Amy said. ‘But it looks like a dead end as far as our investigation is concerned. All it shows us is that Galenka and Leonid Aramov pooled some of their money and made a shrewd investment.’

‘Lombardi has been sending money to Leonid Aramov under a false name though,’ Ryan noted. ‘That must be illegal.’

‘But I’d be astonished if a clever lawyer like Lombardi hasn’t been moving the money in a way that makes it impossible to trace it back to him.’

‘So we’re back to relying on whatever Andre and Tamara find out in Mexico?’ Ryan asked.

Amy nodded. ‘And that’s a dangerous business. We’re giving them two weeks max, then we’ll pull them out whether or not they find anything incriminating on Leonid.’

Apart from kids on punishment or in basic training, every cherub got a holiday between Christmas and New Year. After taking Boxing Day off, James got roped into driving a bunch of kids down to London for ice skating and shopping on the 27th.

Two girls were over an hour late getting back to the meeting point, so it was ten when James drove the mini-bus through campus’ main gate, and he had a headache because his charges had been rowdy all the way home.

James wanted to go up to his room and crash, but he’d had a text telling him to get straight to the mission preparation building on his return. Ewart Asker was waiting. He was CHERUB’s head mission controller and husband of chairwoman Zara.

‘How were the sales?’ Ewart asked, as he sat behind a large glass-topped desk.

It had been nine years since James arrived on CHERUB campus as a twelve-year-old recruit, and Ewart had probably changed more in that time than any other staff member. Back then, Ewart was a junior mission controller, with pierced ears and ripped jeans. Now he had four kids, a receding hairline and a bit of a gut.

‘The less said about my day the better,’ James said. ‘I had two grey-shirt girls in tears when I said I’d report them for being late back to the bus, the motorway out of London was jammed and the kids didn’t shut up the whole three and a half hours.’

Ewart laughed. ‘And it wasn’t so long ago that you were one of those kids bouncing around on the bus driving me mad.’

‘Makes me feel old,’ James admitted.

‘So, how’s your Spanish?’

James looked confused. ‘The only time I’ve used it the last few years is when me and Kerry go to this little Mexican place near Stanford campus. But I’m sure I can get by.’

‘You hit it off with Andre, didn’t you?’

‘He’s a good kid.’

‘A senior TFU agent called Ted Brasker was supposed to liaise with Andre and Tamara when they got to Mexico. Unfortunately, he slipped on a step at his Dubai hotel, and he’s zonked on painkillers for however long it takes for his muscle to de-spasm. So, we’re looking for someone with varied field experience, who speaks Russian and Spanish. A rapport with young Andre would be an advantage and ideally we needed this person to be in position about six hours ago.’

‘Sounds a lot like me,’ James said warily.

‘Normally we’d have a team of three controllers on something like this,’ Ewart said. ‘But to start with it’ll be you and an undercover DEA agent who knows the turf. Brasker will join you when his health improves.

‘The situation in Ciudad Juárez is precarious. We don’t know what Leonid Aramov is up to, but we do know there’s a major drug war taking place. The police are so corrupt that the president gave up on them and deployed the army on the streets. I’ve already prepared some detailed briefing documents and I’ll e-mail you some more. Technically, you’re not a mission controller yet, so I can’t just send you. You have to agree.’

‘If that’s where you need me, I’ll go,’ James said, breaking into a slight smile. It was more than three years since his last mission as a CHERUB agent had ended and he’d missed the buzz of working undercover.

‘I looked into scheduled flights, but the only way to Ciudad Juárez is via Amsterdam or Atlanta. Both routes involve long layovers and won’t get you in for more than a day. But I can have a long-range business jet pick you up from the nearest RAF base.’

‘When?’ James asked.

Ewart glanced at his watch. ‘I can have a plane fuelled and waiting in two hours. Go pack a bag. I’ll make up a kit of surveillance equipment and get someone to create a diplomatic passport so you don’t get searched when you arrive in Mexico. We’ve got a passport machine here on campus now, so that’ll only take about ten minutes.’

Ewart slid a wodge of paperwork across his desk. ‘Take this lot for in-flight reading. And you look beat, so I’ll have one of the black shirts drive you out to the airfield.’

**CLASSIFIED**

CHERUB STAFF BRIEFING FOR JAMES ADAMS – 27/12/2012

DO NOT PRINT THIS FILE OR SAVE IN UNENCRYPTED FORMAT

PART 1 OF 6:
MISSION BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY

With 110 million citizens, Mexico is the world’s 11th most populous country. Its 3,600-kilometre land border with the United States is one of the world’s longest, and over a million people cross between the two countries every day. The length of the border has always made it difficult to police, despite the US Border Agency spending more than $10 billion per year doing so.

From the 1970s to the mid-1990s, most of the cocaine smuggled into the United States was brought in by air or sea by powerful drug cartels based in Colombia. As the influence of these cartels grew, they expanded, growing huge quantities of marijuana and forming links in the Middle East that enabled them to supply heroin.

When US President Reagan came to power in 1980, he declared a ‘War on Drugs’. Although the billions spent in the drug war did little to change the quantity of drugs available on America’s streets, the creation of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and increased anti-drug patrols in the air and at sea made it increasingly attractive to smuggle drugs overland from South America to the USA via Mexico.

As US military and DEA operations in South America gradually diminished the power of the Colombians, a new generation of cartels began springing up in Mexico. By the early 2000s, the Mexican cartels had outmuscled their Colombian forebears and began taking control of drug production as well as smuggling.

In Mexico itself, half a dozen cartels battled over smuggling routes. The most contested territory was along the country’s northern border with the USA. Brutal street battles between rival gangs turned Mexican border towns such as Tijuana from popular tourist spots for Americans into desolate no-go areas.

At the same time as American tourists stopped coming, corporations who ran factories in northern Mexico to produce cheap goods for the US market began closing them because it had become cheaper to produce goods in China and Vietnam. This collapse of industry and tourism, combined with a wave of drug money, created a perfect storm of violence, corruption, unemployment and poverty.

A police officer earning $6,000 per year could earn the same amount per week in bribes from a drug dealer, and officers who resisted found the drug gangs threatening their families. With corruption reaching the highest levels of Mexican politics and law enforcement and a murder rate seventy times greater than the USA, it is now predicted that some areas of this once rapidly developing country are on course for total collapse.

Besides an extraordinary level of brutality, another characteristic of Mexico’s warring drug cartels has been the use of heavy weaponry and military techniques.