CHERUB: Guardian Angel (19 page)

The rickshaw driver at the head of the queue looked slightly curious about the combination of a drunk girl and skinny white teenager. But a fare was a fare so he didn’t ask questions.

‘Where in town?’ Amina asked Ethan.

‘Anywhere but here,’ Ethan said, as he helped her climb into the rickshaw’s cramped rear seat.

Amina yelled an address as the driver revved his engine and let out the clutch, making his lightweight vehicle shoot forward with a two-stroke roar and a plume of oil smoke.

Boris Aramov had dismissed the armed guard before grabbing a handful of Ryan’s hoodie and frogmarching him towards the Kremlin.

‘Ryan, stay calm,’ Ted urged, through the hidden earpiece. ‘Stick to your story, you’ve got nothing to worry about.’

‘Gonna beat you
good
,’ Boris said, as he lashed out with the cosh, blasting Ryan in the back of the legs.

It was enough to make Ryan stumble, but his thick denim jeans took a lot of the sting out.

‘I can do whatever I like with you,’ Boris teased. ‘Break your face, burn up your nads with a blowlamp.’

Ryan had read briefing documents on all of the Aramovs, but there was still something chilling about Boris’ casual sadism. He’d assumed Boris was taking him all the way to the Kremlin, but Ryan got pushed through a broken wire fence into the exercise yard and nudged towards the weight stack at its centre.

It was drizzling and past midnight, but there was a fit blond guy doing bicep curls with 30kg dumbbells.

‘Hey, Vlad,’ Boris said. ‘Why you out so late?’

‘Can’t sleep,’ Vlad said, shaking his head.

‘So have you met my new toy?’ Boris asked, as he yanked Ryan sharply backwards. ‘I’m gonna have some fun, teaching him that straying on to Aramov turf has painful consequences.’

Boris aimed the cosh higher, making Ryan yelp as it thumped his lower back.

Ryan hadn’t resisted up to now because Dan had said he’d get a few slaps and a warning not to come back. But he’d already taken five whacks and Boris was only warming up.

It was drizzling hard as Boris shoved Ryan face down over a puddled weight-lifting bench, then wrenched his head back.

‘Nobody knows you’re here, do they?’ Boris teased. ‘And even if I kill you, who’s got the balls to come after me?’

Then Boris turned and spoke to Vlad. ‘Get me a couple of seven point fives.’

Vlad knew better than to argue with Boris, who was backing away from the weight bench. It was the first time Boris had given Ryan space and he used the opportunity to look around. The rear of the Kremlin was in plain sight less than a hundred metres away and Amy was supposed to be waiting for him at the top of the eastern side of the valley about a kilometre away.

Ryan thought about rolling off the bench and making a run for it, but Boris and Vlad were both older than him and in good shape, so there was every chance that one or both of them would either catch him or alert the security teams. He really needed to disable them.

While Ryan thought this through, Boris had gripped a 7.5kg dumbbell in each hand and swung a couple of test punches with them.

‘You’ll kill him with those,’ Vlad warned.

Boris gave Vlad an angry scowl. ‘You don’t tell me what to do.’ Then he clanged the two dumbbells like a boxer touching gloves and began closing on Ryan. ‘By the time I’ve battered you with these babes, you’ll be
begging
me to kill you just to stop the pain.’

Ted could hear some of what was being said. ‘Ryan, you’ve got to get out of there.’

‘Oh I hadn’t thought of
that
idea,’ Ryan muttered, as Boris pulled back his fist.

Ryan rolled off the bench as Boris launched a savage punch with the metal dumbbell. The blow slammed the padded bench as Ryan hit the floor beside it. Boris couldn’t grab Ryan with the dumbbells in his hands so he straddled the bench and tried pinning Ryan to its side using his legs.

But Ryan grabbed the end of the bench and pulled his body forward. As he stood up, Boris caught him in the ribcage with a dumbbell. Ryan stumbled sideways into the weight rack, badly winded.

‘Feisty one, eh?’ Boris said, with a massive grin on his face. ‘Now I’m
definitely
gonna kill you.’

Boris’ next swing was an uppercut, but the weight of the dumbbells made him slow and Ryan was able to spin out and shield himself behind the weight rack. Boris tried adjusting his aim mid-punch, but he didn’t reach Ryan and his fist slammed into one of the racked dumbbells.

The crash of metal on metal sent a shockwave up Boris’ arm. The pain made him drop the dumbbell from his right hand, as a 32.5kg weight near the bottom of the rack broke loose and rolled towards his foot.

Ryan had barely got his breath back after the rib blow and the pain was excruciating, but he had to go for it. Using the top of the weight rack as a pivot point, he launched a spectacular roundhouse kick that connected with Boris’ temple.

As Boris stumbled, Ryan grabbed one of the little 4kg dumbbells from the top of the weight rack and gave it a two-handed swing. As Boris recovered from the first blow, the second one smashed him in the base of his chin with enough force to dislocate his jaw.

Boris was unconscious, but Vlad had moved behind Ryan, getting an arm around his chest and lifting him off the ground. With arms flailing and feet off the ground, Ryan turned his head and sunk his teeth into Vlad’s enormous bicep.

The pain wasn’t bad enough to make Vlad let go and Ryan found himself being pushed forward towards a weight bench, with Vlad’s blood in his mouth and all the air being crushed out of his chest.

Ryan was hoping to use Vlad’s forward momentum to roll him over his back as soon as his feet got back on the concrete, but before it got to that stage Vlad aimed a side punch at the same part of Ryan’s ribcage that Boris had bashed with the weight.

The pain this caused was so bad that Ryan suffered a momentary blackout. When he came to he was sprawled across the bench, but Vlad stood two paces back, yelling in agony. With no idea how this had happened, Ryan launched a quick back kick, planting his muddy boot in Vlad’s guts, then he spun and planted his other boot between Vlad’s legs.

Vlad was down on his knees as Ryan stumbled forward and grabbed one of the 7.5kg dumbbells that Boris had dropped. Ryan took a big backswing and smashed it ruthlessly into Vlad’s temple. Ted’s voice had been going for a while, but only now did his brain have time to tune in.

‘Ryan, speak to me,’ Ted was yelling. ‘Ryan, Ryan?’

Ryan spun around, making sure that nobody else was coming his way. ‘I’m on my way up the hill,’ he told Ted. ‘Ten minutes, fifteen tops.’

‘Roger that,’ Ted said, sounding relieved.

Ryan didn’t have time to hang about, but he was still mystified as to why Vlad had let him go. He glanced around curiously, but it was only when he looked at the front of his hoodie that he saw the spike of bloody plastic sticking through a torn pocket.

When Ryan tapped the pocket he realised that his BlackBerry was in bits. Boris’ first blow with the weight had smashed the back cover of his phone, and then a broken shard of plastic had stabbed Vlad’s fist when he’d punched him.

Adrenalin had kept Ryan going during the fight, but he struggled for breath as he started to run.

‘I’m in agony,’ Ryan told Ted as he stepped through the torn fence of the exercise yard and headed up the side of the valley at jogging pace. ‘I reckon I’ve cracked a couple of ribs.’

Ethan tried to keep his white face out of sight as the motorised rickshaw blazed down the highway for ten minutes. The outskirts of town were populated with tightly packed huts, but further in Ethan saw rows of copper-roofed houses and an environment that might have passed for one of Los Angeles’ shabbier suburbs.

The infrequent signs were written in English and the local language. They told him that he’d entered
East Kanye
, heading for
Town Centre & Government Square
. It was the early hours of the morning so the streets were quiet, apart from occasional blasts of light and noise as they passed bars or discos.

Amina’s head rolled from side to side as the open-sided vehicle cruised, but a pothole jolt woke her up and she took a few moments to work out where she was. After a quick row with the driver, they cut down a dirt track and took a left through the deserted stalls of a street market.

‘Here,’ Amina said, pushing money in the driver’s hand as they came to a sharp stop.

They were on the edge of a market, with a band playing a lively dance down the street and a three-legged dog hunting for scraps. All around were shopfronts with brightly painted signage and closed metal shutters.

As the rickshaw made a tight U-turn and blasted off, Amina took a couple of steps and crashed into a stack of plastic crates.

‘Which way?’ Ethan asked.

He propped her up and she led him to a metal door at the side of a bright yellow shopfront. After a fumble with her key they moved to a steep and extraordinarily narrow staircase with electrical wires taped crudely to the walls.

Amina was groaning as Ethan helped her up the stairs. He jumped when a door opened up on the landing, but it was a little old dude in flip-flops and boxer shorts. He started saying something in the local language, but switched to English when he saw Ethan’s white face.

‘A boy your age should be ashamed!’ the man hissed. ‘Keep the noise down.’

Amina gave a wild stare and squeezed her breasts provocatively. ‘Mind your business, you dirty old goat.’

‘I’ll call the cops on you!’ the old man said. ‘See if I don’t.’

As Amina tried to give an
up yours
gesture she overbalanced and hit her head on the stair rail.

‘God has punished you!’ the old man said happily, as Amina swore. ‘Dirty slut!’

Ethan had a job getting Amina up the last three steps and when she finally got her door unlocked, she sprawled out on the floor just inside the door. The apartment was shabby but clean, with lots of cushions over the double bed and family photos pinned to the peeling turquoise walls. Ethan was surprised by a clothes rail hung with neatly pressed blouses and grey skirts, and a diploma on the wall that read
Amina Malhaspa – Botswanan Institute of Structural Engineers
.

‘You want some water?’ Ethan asked.

But Amina was still and when Ethan lifted her arm he realised that she’d passed out. He put one of the cushions under her head, then opened the fridge and helped himself to a can of Pepsi.

The bubbles were nectar for his dry throat, but the back of his T-shirt was soaked in Amina’s puke and his shoulder was more painful than ever. After giving himself two minutes to drain the can and catch his breath, Ethan stepped over Amina and peeled her clutch bag out of her hand.

Any crappy mobile would have been OK, but he was delighted to find a nice-looking Samsung smartphone in the purse. The phone had several missed calls. Ethan ignored them and pressed the map application, followed by the
find me
icon.

The reception was only down on two bars. The first map took almost two minutes to load, and even longer when he zoomed out to see that he was near the centre of Kanye, Botswana, fifty kilometres from the South African border and less than three hundred from the city of Johannesburg.

Armed with this info, Ethan decided to call the Kremlin, but although he knew the main switchboard number and the extensions for most of his family members, he was stumped because he didn’t know the country code for calling Kyrgyzstan.

He tried opening the web browser on Amina’s phone, but he couldn’t even get Google to load. After his third
No Data Connection
message Ethan jumped as the phone started playing a harpsichord ringtone.

He answered without thinking and the voice on the other end was roaring in the local language. The only words Ethan understood before he hung up were
white boy
and some choice English swear words.

After failing with the Internet, Ethan decided to try calling information. He didn’t have the number so he decided to have a rummage through the apartment to try and find any information or leaflets.

A drawer beside the bed was stuffed with household bills. Ethan found some Orange Botswana phone bills near the top and some digging took him to a
Making the most of your new phone
leaflet.

The dual-language pamphlet had the information number and after a couple of minutes on hold he got put through to a directory enquiries service. Ethan grew frustrated as the Indian man on the other end explained that he could only give specific numbers, not answer queries about country codes.

After a bit of brain bending, Ethan got the number for his old school in Bishkek and used the country code from that to dial the Kremlin. Kyrgyz telephone exchanges give out a bizarre shrill ringing sound that always reminded Ethan of an elephant trumpeting. He’d never thought he’d be this grateful to hear it and after three rings he reached an automated switchboard, which spoke Russian.

‘
Please enter the correct extension number, or press 00 to leave a message
.’

Ethan pressed 519 to speak directly to Irena, but it just rang until the switchboard cut him off.

‘
Press one to leave a message, or two followed by the extension number to try another line
.’

Ethan had to think fast. Natalka was extension 315, but it was unlikely that she’d be able to get direct access to Irena up on the sixth floor. In the end he picked 522 to speak to his uncle Josef.

This tall simple-minded man was Irena’s oldest son, and Ethan’s uncle. They’d never really interacted because Ethan found Josef slightly creepy and his uncle’s conversation rarely strayed beyond favourite TV quiz shows and tedious stories about how he was the only person who knew how to fix the Kremlin’s heating system.

‘Hello,’ Josef said.

Ethan didn’t want to sound too excited. He didn’t know Josef well, but Leonid was staging a coup and Ethan suspected that Josef was the kind of man who’d keep his head down and side with whoever won.