CHERUB: Shadow Wave (22 page)

James appreciated Ewart’s argument, but still didn’t want to take part in the mission out of loyalty to Kyle.

‘I’d just rather not be involved in this one,’ James said.

James didn’t mention Kyle as a reason because he was no longer an active CHERUB agent and discussing the mission with him was a serious breach of the rules.

Ewart looked put out and sighed. ‘Will I be getting a visit from Lauren too?’

‘No, she’s fine with it,’ James admitted. ‘She wants to go shopping with a billionaire’s wife. And I didn’t even speak to Kevin about it. He’s a sweet kid. I didn’t want to make his life complicated.’

‘OK,’ Ewart said, putting his hands together and nodding. ‘You’re off the mission, no problem. We can get away with two kids anyway.’

‘Oh,’ James said, disappointed that his moral stand had apparently made no difference whatsoever.

‘So am I right in thinking that your academic programmes have all finished?’ Ewart asked.

James nodded. ‘I’ll restart training in the dojo and lifting some weights once my legs have healed, but I think I’ve written my last essay on campus, thank god.’

‘I’m a bit short-handed and getting rather stressed out, as you might have noticed,’ Ewart said. ‘Is there any chance you’d be able to give us a hand over here for two or three hours a day?’

James wasn’t hugely keen on the idea, but he could see that Ewart was desperate and having experience working in mission control would put him at an advantage if he ever wanted to come back to campus for a summer job.

‘Why not?’ James said. ‘It might even be interesting to see how missions work from this end.’

One week later

It was half-four in the morning and James’ mobile was blasting the theme tune from
The Godfather.
Kerry’s room was dark and James had been sleeping alongside her with his face almost touching the back of her neck. They rarely shared a bed because Kerry was a fidget and James hogged the duvet, but they’d snuggled up after watching a movie and fallen asleep.

James backed hurriedly out of bed. Kerry’s DVD player had gone into screensaver mode and the blue Sony logo drifting across the screen produced enough light for James to see his jeans strewn across the floor.

‘Who rings at this time?’ Kerry moaned, as she propped herself on her elbows and gave a long yawn.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ James said, but as he rolled over and reached to grab his mobile out of his jeans a plastic dish of corn chip crumbs and half eaten dips plummeted off the bed. ‘Balls!’

‘Aww, you tit!’ Kerry moaned.

As Kerry flipped on a bedside lamp and dived across her bed to rescue the carpet from salsa and guacamole, James slid his Nokia open.

‘Kyle, mate,’ James said quietly.

‘This is your early-morning alarm call!’ Kyle said cheerfully. ‘You fit? You ready to help us kick Tan Abdullah’s arse? You’re not gonna roll over and fall back to sleep?’

‘I’m good. But I fell asleep in Kerry’s room. I’ll call when I get to the car and let you know everything’s on track.’

‘Sweet,’ Kyle said. ‘Talk later.’

James ended the call and started stepping into his jeans, as Kerry squatted on her carpet using the clear plastic lid of the nacho tray to scoop green guck off her carpet.

‘Sorry about that,’ James said. ‘Phone startled me. I had no idea there was food lying on the bed.’

‘Accidents happen. What did Kyle want at this ungodly hour?’

This was an awkward moment. James had told Kerry and everyone else on campus that he was going to visit a couple of UK universities, to check them out in case he didn’t like Stanford when he flew to California a week later. He’d planned to be gone before everyone woke up and Kyle’s alarm call would have caused no problems if he’d been in his own bed.

‘I told you I was meeting up with him, didn’t I?’

Kerry looked up at James suspiciously. ‘No you didn’t. And Kyle lives in Cambridge, so why is he going to meet you at Birmingham University?’

‘I’ve gotta dash,’ James said weakly. ‘I asked Kyle to come along. He’s at university, so I thought he could help me out. Pass an expert eye over things, you know?’

Kerry shook her head in disbelief. ‘James, it’s half-four in the bloody morning. Birmingham isn’t that far away.’

‘Rush-hour traffic though,’ James explained. ‘Want to get an early start.’

Kerry sprung up from her crouching position and faced James off. ‘I don’t like being lied to,’ she said stiffly.

Kerry was only wearing a pair of tartan pyjama bottoms and James looked down at her chest and gave a smile. ‘You really turn me on when you’re angry.’

Kerry grabbed a fold of flesh around James’ stomach and gave it a hard twist. ‘Don’t try and talk me around,’ she warned, as James’ face contorted with pain. ‘Now speak.’

‘Owww,’ James protested. Kerry twisted harder. ‘Your nails are like razors! OK, I’ve got this thing that’s to do with Kyle and the babysitting mission that I pulled out of. I didn’t mention it to you because I didn’t want you to worry and I can’t live with that pissy look you give me when you don’t approve of something I’m doing.’

‘What pissy look?’ Kerry asked.

‘The one you’re giving me right now,’ James smiled. ‘Kerry, you’re beautiful, sexy and I love you, but you have to trust me. I’ll explain everything when I get home. Now will you
please
stop clawing me.’

Kerry pulled her nails out of James’ stomach and gave him a little two-handed push. ‘You’d better have a good explanation when you get back,’ she said. ‘And the next time you pull the wool over my eyes it won’t be your belly that gets twisted hard.’

James grabbed his polo shirt and a denim jacket off Kerry’s sofa, then gave her a quick kiss. ‘You’ll understand, I promise.’

The lights in the hallway were dimmed at night as part of a campus-wide scheme to save water and energy. James pulled his shirt over his head as he strode through the gloom and entered his room. He opened the drawer in his desk and pulled out a Micro SD memory card in a clear plastic case.

After sliding his bare feet into the nearest pair of trainers, James grabbed a mud-stiffened gym sock from his laundry basket, then hurried back out into the corridor and raced stealthily up four flights of stairs to Lauren’s room on the eighth floor.

There was no way for James to ensure that Lauren was asleep when he entered her room. If she wasn’t he’d pretend that he was planning a prank by sticking the crusty sock over her face while she slept.

But he needn’t have worried. Lauren hadn’t locked her door and her snore sent James down memory lane: he hadn’t shared a room with his sister for years, but she was making the exact whistling sound that she’d made since she was about three years old.

Because James was leaving CHERUB soon he hadn’t been upgraded to the latest handset, but Lauren’s state-of-the-art smart phone stood in a charging dock on her desk. The handset bleeped as he picked up, but luckily not loud enough to disturb Lauren.

James slid the Micro SD card out of the plastic case and slotted it into the side of Lauren’s phone. He then slid the handset open, and shuddered as he saw that Lauren had set her wallpaper to a picture of herself and Bethany draped in tinsel and poking their tongues out at a Christmas party.

The memory card contained a small hacking program designed by the intelligence service. It used the smart phone’s built-in GPS receiver, logging the exact coordinates of the handset and sending them as a text message at regular intervals without the phone’s owner knowing anything about it.

The software took an agonising minute and a half to install, before presenting James with a list of options. He set the interval at which Lauren’s phone would send the text message containing its location to five minutes, then had to enter the number to which the regular text messages would be sent. Rather than risk his own phone being tracked, James had borrowed a battered handset from the campus storeroom.

As James typed in the number, Lauren missed a snore. He backed up towards the window and stood like a statue as Lauren’s duvet shifted in the dark. Her arm moved out from under her duvet and she rubbed the back of her hand against her forehead, as if she had some kind of itch. But she settled without fully waking up, and James was relieved as the familiar snore whistled through the darkness again.

He finished entering the number, and selected OK. All trace of the hack program disappeared and the screen went back to the picture of Lauren and Bethany with their tongues out. The phone made a final bleep as James replaced it in the charging dock. He then crept out of the room.

James now had an hour to spare. He’d only asked Kyle to call at four-thirty because Lauren was most likely to be asleep at this time, but he did want to leave campus before lots of people got up and started asking questions about his business and in particular before there was a member of staff on the front desk keeping an eye on anyone checking out the pool cars.

The dining-room downstairs wouldn’t open until six, but there was a storeroom on the sixth floor opposite the handler’s office which contained hot and cold drinks machines, dry snacks like fruit and chocolate bars, as well as a fridge with sandwiches and microwave meals so that cherubs could feed themselves when they had to leave early, or arrived home from a mission at two in the morning.

James put a pod into the coffee machine and smiled as he noticed a hand drawn sign that had been stuck on the wall above the chocolate bars:
Eat Healthy! A chocolate bar and a can of fizz contain up to six hundred calories. That’s more than an average thirteen-year-old burns in two hours running on a treadmill. For a healthier alternative, try carrot sticks dipped in cottage cheese or a low fat sandwich filling!

He opened the fridge and was pleased to see a fresh supply of microwavable pancakes, which he could zap in his room. He put the pancakes on a plastic tray, then grabbed three small oranges and two sachets of Nutella, plus cutlery and a plate. As he turned around to take his coffee, Bruce Norris strolled in, dressed in shorts and trainers, with damp T-shirt and a whiff of sweat about him.

James did a double-take. ‘Have you been out running?’

‘Couldn’t bloody sleep,’ Bruce explained breathlessly. ‘Tossing and turning, walls closing in on me. Thought I’d run a few Ks and try to knacker myself.’

‘Something the matter?’

‘Bethany dumped me,’ Bruce said matter-of-factly.

‘Oh,’ James said. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘No you’re not,’ Bruce laughed. ‘You hate her guts.’

‘I’d be lying if I said I was her biggest fan,’ James admitted. ‘But I’m still sorry - because you’re a mate and your feelings are hurt.’

Bruce shrugged. ‘It’s not even Bethany that’s keeping me awake,’ he explained. ‘When I broke up with Kerry it hurt. I mean, physically hurt like some big dude had smacked me around. It’s different with Bethany. It was fun but I always knew she’d move on to someone else.’

James felt awkward knowing how his friend felt about Kerry. He took a sip of his coffee before answering carefully. ‘You’ll find your Kerry some day,’ he said, smiling slightly. ‘I’m glad you had the sense not to let Bethany hurt you. How’d you get off with her, anyway?’

‘When we were on that mission,’ Bruce explained. ‘She waltzed into my room in the middle of the night, climbed under my duvet, moaned that she was bored. So I goes,
What about Andy?
And she’s like,
Andy who? And by the way I’m on the pill.’

‘Great story,’ James laughed. ‘What a classy little lady.’

‘It was what it was,’ Bruce said. ‘And it’s not like any guy is gonna say no to that, is he?’

‘So if you expected Bethany to break it off, why are you running around campus at three in the morning?’

‘If I pour my heart out, do you promise not to call me a wuss?’

‘You can always kick my head in if I do,’ James said. ‘But nah, course I won’t.’

‘When I was with Kerry I was in love, but I don’t really think she was. Even though you were going out with Dana, it always felt like I had Kerry on loan until you and her got your shit back together. With Bethany it was pure randiness. But I’ve never had that thing where you feel perfect with someone. You know how some people are
completely
comfortable with each other? You know the way your sister is with Rat? Or the way Michael and Gabrielle used to be? Or you with Kerry.’

‘You’re only sixteen,’ James said. ‘It’ll happen someday. It might even be better that you don’t meet Miss Right until you’re older. Do you know how awkward it’s gonna be with me going off to university and Kerry being an agent for another year? I want to be with her for the rest of my life, but we’re seventeen. If I’m totally honest with myself, the odds of us still being together ten years from now are pretty remote.’

‘So why are you up so early?’ Bruce asked.

James lowered his voice. ‘The thing I mentioned, with Kyle.’

‘Oh, that’s
today?’
Bruce said, as his face brightened up. ‘Good luck with that. When are you heading off?’

James pointed to his pancakes. ‘Soon as I’ve zapped these and eaten ‘em. I’ll check out a car. I’ve told them I’m going to visit Birmingham University. You can come along if you want. It might take your mind off things.’

Bruce glanced at his running watch and seemed to be considering it. ‘I’ve got lessons though. I’ll get punishment laps.’

James shook his head. ‘Meryl’s been promoted and Joe is the softest handler on campus. I’ll go in with you and say that you were upset after your break-up with Bethany and that I took you out to take your mind off it. You’ll get twenty or thirty laps and if you glaze over and say that you want to speak to a counsellor you might even get off scot free.’

Bruce was tempted, but still not convinced. ‘Knowing my luck they’d throw the book at me. And I’ve got previous with Joe. Remember when I dangled Ronan Walsh off my balcony after he kept tormenting those red-shirt girls?’

‘The protest against Tan Abdullah could easily turn violent,’ James noted casually.

Mentioning violence to Bruce was like mentioning chocolate sauce to a six-year-old.