CHERUB: The Fall (7 page)

‘Can we have a private word in my office?’ Zara asked.

Jake burst out laughing and made a sound like a whip cracking. ‘You’re in trouble,’ he sang, to the delight of his mates.

Zara turned sharply and jammed her finger under Jake’s nose. ‘You’re walking on
very
thin ice, Mr Parker. I’ve had several reports about your cheek in lessons and I can see punishment laps and a few months of washing-up duty on your schedule if you don’t sharpen up.’

Jake liked acting cocky in front of his little crew of ten-year-olds, but Zara’s glare made him wilt as Bethany poked her tongue at him.

‘Is it about Mr Large?’ Lauren asked, once they were out of the noisy lounge and heading up the stairs.

‘No it isn’t,’ Zara said, as they reached the top and walked out into the fresh air, heading for the main building. ‘I think it’s best if I explain when we get to my office. Although I did have a phone call from Mr Large’s partner earlier. His condition is improving, but it’s still serious and there’s a possibility that he’ll need a bypass operation. And even if Mr Large recovers fully, he faces a disciplinary hearing when he comes back to work.’

‘Why’s that?’ Lauren asked.

‘I’ve read all the reports on the Dales incident and it sounds like Mr Large had a skinful before his heart attack. The odd pint or two is fine, but he was in charge of twenty-six children and drunkenness is unacceptable.’

‘Will he get the boot this time?’ Lauren asked, trying to hide a grin.

‘Probably not,’ Zara shrugged. ‘For all his faults, Norman Large is a hard man to replace. It’s unbelievably tough to find good training instructors. I mean, would
you
want to spend your working life running around a muddy assault course and making kids’ lives a misery?’

Lauren shook her head. ‘I suppose it takes a certain type of person.’

‘You came out well in Arif’s incident report,’ Zara said brightly. ‘He says that you had the situation under control when he got back to the camp.’

‘I got the others to pack up the tents and everything,’ Lauren nodded. ‘Fortunately, Arif got back from the supermarket just after the vet left and we managed to clear out before we had police and social services on our backs.’

‘I reckon you’re a natural leader,’ Zara smiled. ‘I can see you in politics or running a big company some day.’

‘Politics is boring,’ Lauren said, smiling back uneasily. ‘I certainly didn’t feel like a leader. The whole thing was pretty chaotic, to be honest. Especially when that old granny started freaking out on me.’

Zara smiled a little. ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you, we had to take Meatball to the vet.’

‘Is he OK?’ Lauren asked anxiously.

‘He wasn’t eating properly, which is hardly surprising because the vet found four of Joshua’s Lego bricks lodged in his throat. He’s recovering, but I have to keep telling Joshua not to leave toys all over the carpet.’

‘That dog will eat
anything
,’ Lauren giggled.

‘You know, you’re still welcome to come over and take him for walks any time you like.’

Lauren nodded. ‘I will, but I’ve had masses of homework and I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with Rat.’

‘I see,’ Zara said, and grinned knowingly.

They passed the fountain and went up the steps and into the main building. It was a short walk through reception to Zara’s office. The previous chairman, Dr McAfferty, had lined the room with his collection of books, but Zara had yet to settle in. She’d only found time to put up a few family photos and the room looked bare.

Lauren felt a chill as she spotted James’ girlfriend, Kerry Chang, sitting on a chair in front of the desk. She had tears streaking down her cheeks.

‘James is missing,’ Kerry sobbed. ‘He might … He might even be dead.’

Lauren felt like a bomb had gone off inside her skull as her limbs went numb and a great ball welled up in her throat. She grabbed on to a chair to keep herself steady.

‘Sit down and I’ll explain as best I can,’ Zara said, as she guided Lauren into one of the leather chairs. ‘James’ mission was in a northern Russian town known as Aero City. The local oligarch is a man called Denis Obidin. He owns all of the production facilities, most of the land and housing and he’s even the city mayor.

‘MI5 suspects that Obidin is selling missiles and other sensitive technology to rogue governments and terrorist groups, but he has powerful friends in Moscow and the Russian government has consistently turned a blind eye.

‘James was working alongside two MI5 operatives. They aimed to set up a deal to buy some missiles and record evidence of every step in the transaction. Faced with such damning evidence, we were hoping to force the Russian government into taking criminal action against Obidin.

‘James’ role in the mission was regarded as low to medium risk,’ Zara continued. ‘Our biggest problem was infiltrating Obidin’s compound and planting listening devices inside. Our MI5 team found out that Denis Obidin was planning to send his only child to a posh English prep school. The boy was having English lessons with a local teacher, but he was struggling. So we flew James out to act as the MI5 agents’ nephew, using some kind of background story about James staying with his aunt after his mother had a nervous breakdown.

‘Not long after James arrived, the aunt and uncle casually suggested to Denis Obidin that James give his son some informal English lessons. Obidin took the bait and James spent a few weeks giving the boy extra English practice after school. At the same time, he learned the layout of the house and began dropping some of our new pinhead-sized listening devices around the place.’

‘So what went wrong?’ Lauren sniffed, as Kerry reached across the desk and gave her a tissue.

Zara shrugged. ‘We’re not sure. All we know is that James’ aunt and uncle were scheduled to go to Obidin’s house for an important meeting late last night. According to other sources MI5 has within Aero City, a violent row erupted inside the meeting and Denis Obidin was killed.

‘Obidin’s brother Vladimir – who is also the local chief of police – set off from the compound with four other men to capture James and search the apartment where he was sleeping. According to some other Brits who live in the same building, there was a struggle. Several of Obidin’s goons were knocked out and Vladimir Obidin was shot in the thigh.’

‘So did James get away?’ Lauren asked.

‘We have absolutely no idea. With Denis dead and Vladimir helicoptered to a private hospital in Moscow, other members of the Obidin family are jockeying for power and nobody really knows who’s in charge or what’s going on. There are rumours that James has been captured, but we’ve also heard that the police are still running a giant manhunt.’

‘But he hasn’t communicated,’ Kerry said, stifling a sob for Lauren’s sake. ‘If he was OK, he surely would have contacted the emergency desk by now.’

‘Did he have a mobile?’ Lauren asked.

Zara nodded. ‘He did and even if he’d lost it, I’m sure there are call boxes and other facilities in the city. We can’t be certain, but he’s probably been captured by Obidin’s henchmen.’

‘They could be hurting him,’ Lauren gasped. ‘They … He might even be dead already.’

‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ Zara said, as she grabbed Lauren out of her chair and pulled her into a hug. ‘Until we know for sure, you’ve got to stay calm and try not to think the worst.’

‘Oh god,’ Lauren bawled, as she squeezed Zara tight. ‘Please don’t let him be dead.’

Zara was crying too as she rubbed Lauren’s back. ‘James didn’t have a mission controller in Aero City because he was being looked after by the MI5 agents, but Ewart helped to set the mission up. He’s already on a flight to Moscow and should be in Aero City by this evening. There are other MI5 officers based in the area and they’re going to liaise with Ewart and try to locate James.’

But Lauren wasn’t taking anything in. She was sobbing so hard and breathing so fast that she was starting to feel light-headed. She remembered feeling the same way on the night her mum had died, three years earlier.

‘It might be OK, Lauren,’ Kerry sniffed. ‘You know James, he’s got a habit of wrangling his way out of things.’

‘But he would have called by now,’ Lauren screamed desperately. ‘Why wouldn’t he have called?’

After escaping from the Brezhnev Apartments, James made a stop at one of the city’s twenty-four-hour grog shops. These illegal enterprises were mostly run out of shacks or ground-floor apartments and catered to the cravings of the Aero City’s addicts, selling cigarettes, alcohol and glue.

He spent the few roubles in his jacket on a stack of chocolate bars – easy to carry and packed with energy to fight off the cold – as well as a box of matches, four cans of Coke and a small bottle of vodka.

After that, James set off for the edge of town, with the gun tucked in his jeans, keeping an eye out for a telephone booth as he jogged. But he knew he was unlikely to find one outside of the heavily policed city centre.

The lack of telephones was down to a quirk of history. Aero City had been built during the cold war as a closed city, with all forms of access tightly controlled by the Russian air force. Until the nineties, non-residents had to apply for a permit to visit and foreign citizens were banned. Private telephones were not allowed and anyone wishing to make a personal call had to spend half a day queuing inside City Hall.

Although these restrictions on telephones had been lifted years ago, the city government was desperately short of money and only a few streets near the centre of Aero City had ever been wired up for telephones. If James wanted to make a call, he’d have to get hold of a mobile.

The eastern edge of town had once housed the tens of thousands who worked in the giant production plants. But the young and healthy had long since abandoned Aero City in search of work, while the vulnerable citizens they’d left behind had been moved into blocks nearer the city centre.

The result was a ghost town: dozens of empty blocks, stripped of anything valuable and slowly crumbling back into the earth. James picked one at random and spent the night in a second-floor apartment. Without heat and with most of the doors and window frames stripped out for firewood, he found refuge in a bathtub, with a plastic shower curtain trapping the heat around his body and making a surprisingly effective blanket.

He could have started a fire to keep warm, or run back into town and broken into an apartment in the hope of stealing a mobile, but CHERUB taught its agents to be patient: the cops would be on high alert and James didn’t understand his surroundings. He decided to hide in the bathtub until he had a clearer head and some daylight to nose around in.

James suffered through the night, unable to sleep and wondering what had gone wrong at the meeting. As the wind howled through the missing doors and windows, he sipped the vodka to keep the shivers at bay and clutched his stomach, nursing a dull ache from where he’d been punched in the guts.

*

James was restless and began exploring his bitterly cold surroundings as soon as day broke. He checked out the apartment, stepping gingerly over missing floorboards, then along the balcony where he was relieved to see nothing but more stripped-out apartments.

After checking his own floor, James surveyed the rest of the building and concluded that his only companions were the hundreds of pigeons roosting on the top balcony. But when he scanned the neighbourhood from up high, the clothes hanging out to dry and odd wisps of smoke indicated that he wasn’t completely alone on the eastern side of Aero City.

James had already decided that it would be too risky to try leaving via the only road out of town: there was sure to be a police blockade. He considered escaping through the forest to a neighbouring town and either hitching a lift to Moscow or making a phone call when he got there. The trouble was, the nearest settlements were more than thirty kilometres away. James had no idea where they were and there was every chance that the Obidins would have goons on the look-out when he arrived.

This left James with one realistic option: sneak back into the city centre, get hold of a mobile phone and call for help. But with only one set of clothes, he’d be easily identified if he went out in daylight. He’d have to stay inside until it got dark and then sneak into one of the city’s more affluent areas and either mug someone or break into an apartment.

James didn’t have a watch, but he knew it got light at around eight in the morning and was dark when he came out of school at four, which left him with seven and a half hours to kill. It was important to stay warm, and now that he felt more confident about his surroundings, he decided to make a fire.

Although most of the doors and many window frames had been removed from the block, there was still plenty to burn. James collected up rags and a few sheets of newspaper and used his penknife to strip splinters of wood from a floorboard. He laid them all in the bathroom sink and used a match to light the kindling.

He kept the fire small, because he didn’t want to burn the building down or leave a trail of smoke big enough to be spotted from the ground. But the flames were enough to warm his hands and raise the temperature inside the small bathroom up to a couple of degrees above freezing.

Once he’d warmed up, James’ thoughts turned to his stomach. The sugar in the chocolate bars and Coke he’d bought the night before would provide him with enough calories to see the day through, but he craved something hot and his mind turned towards the pigeons roosting on the top floor.

He’d trapped and eaten pigeons during basic training. The meat was tasty and perfectly safe if you gutted the bird and cooked it properly, but he’d also need clean water for making a hot drink and cleaning up.

More importantly, James figured that keeping himself busy by boiling water and cooking food would be better for his mental state than spending all day shivering and worrying about whether his future involved an unpleasant reunion with the Aero City police.

There were a couple of centimetres of clean snow on the balcony, but he’d need a pot in which to boil and sterilise the water. Fortunately for James, few of Aero City’s former residents owned cars and many had been forced to leave their heaviest and least valuable possessions behind. A tour of a few apartments was all he needed to find a couple of battered pots, an enamel beaker that would serve as a makeshift cup, the wire mesh from a grill tray and even a plastic office chair to sit on.