James shrugged. ‘But on the other hand, with Julian’s dad being a judge and the Brigands focused on repercussions of the Rebel Tea Party, they might lay off him.’
‘It’s barely even registered with my dad,’ Martin agreed. ‘Priority one is dealing with Sealclubber and the London Brigands. Then he’s got to re-establish the Brigands’ status in the pecking order by waging war with the Vengefuls and the other gangs.’
James was surprised by Martin’s comment. In all the hours they’d worked together in the crêperie this was the first time he’d ever heard him comment on Brigands affairs.
‘So anyway,’ Nigel said, tapping a pound coin on the counter top. ‘Before I’m locked up eating soggy shepherd’s pie with dead bugs in it, I might as well treat myself. Gimme a banana, almond and honey filled crêpe, with extra cream and rum-raisin sauce.’
*
Back at the house Dante was in his room, packing tops and underwear into a blue crate. When it was full he clipped on the plastic lid and grabbed the handles to go stack it up in the hallway downstairs, but he stopped when he passed Lauren’s room. Her door was slightly open because of the heat and he could see her lying on her bed, facing the wall.
‘Are you OK?’ Dante asked, as he leaned in the doorway.
‘Yeah,’ Lauren said, but an involuntary sniff gave the game away.
Dante stepped inside, dodging four half-packed crates. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
Lauren hesitated for a few seconds. She considered telling Dante to mind his own, or pretending like nothing was wrong, but realised she needed to talk to someone.
‘I was thinking about Joe,’ Lauren explained, as she sat up. ‘I know it’s stupid. I’m a trained agent and I’m supposed to be wary of forming close bonds on missions and blah, blah, blah.’
‘Anna’s pretty sad that I’m leaving too,’ Dante nodded.
Lauren smiled. ‘It’s funny, all the boys on campus brag about going on missions and getting off with girls. And for the girls it’s supposed to be like, oh god some horrible boy is gonna try and get his hands on me.
Dante laughed. ‘Either that or you’re labelled a maneater or a slut.’
‘Exactly,’ Lauren said, smiling and sniffing at the same time. ‘But Joe is such a nice guy. When I first met him, with all his mates and his designer label clothes and his cockiness I thought he was a knob. But now we really get along. At first he was so sweet. He’d never had a girlfriend before and he was really nervous.’
‘He’s a good guy,’ Dante agreed. ‘I’m surprised you’re not together for your last night.’
‘I know,’ Lauren sulked. ‘His aunt’s just had an operation. He got dragged to visit her with his mum.’
‘That’s really shit,’ Dante said. ‘Anna’s got swimming club, but she said she’ll drop by on her way to school tomorrow.’
‘So, have you got feelings for her?’
‘Some,’ Dante said awkwardly. ‘But – and don’t spread this around on campus, this is between you and me – there was a girl called Harriet when I was on my mission in Belfast. We went out for over a year and because of the way my mission ended, we never even got to say goodbye.’
‘Oh that’s really sad,’ Lauren said.
Dante pulled a Velcro wallet out the back of his shorts. He dug his fingers inside and took out a crumpled passport picture of a dark haired girl with a round face and big brown eyes.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Lauren said. ‘I guess I’ve been lucky, really. Unless you include horses, this is the first mission I’ve been on where I’ve really fallen for someone.’
‘I’m sure we’ll both survive,’ Dante smiled, as he backed up towards the door. ‘I’d better get my box downstairs.’
Lauren pointed out the boxes spread over her floor. ‘I think I’m with you on that score,’ she grinned.
Out in the hallway, Dante put his photograph back in his wallet and picked up the box of clothes. As he walked down he thought about Joe and his mum being out. After stacking his clothing on top of the other crates in the hallway, he took his mobile out of his shorts before stepping on to the doorstep.
The sun was down and a hairy moth circled around the carriage lamp beside him. He slid his mobile open and dialled Joe’s house. Joe and Marlene were at the hospital and Martin was working with James at Marina Heights. But where was the Führer?
Just as Dante expected an answerphone to cut in, he heard the Führer’s voice. ‘Yeah, who’s this?’
Dante didn’t speak, but his heart quickened. He hung up. The sky was black and the fields behind the house rustled in a gentle breeze, just like the night his parents died five years earlier. He thought about his recurring nightmare: running through the fields, with the Führer wielding his gun and his baby sister’s body slippery with blood.
Now the Führer was home alone and with the mission over this was his only chance for revenge. After racing up to his room, Dante dragged a backpack filled with espionage equipment out the bottom of his wardrobe and unzipped to make sure he had everything he needed.
Dante pulled a hooded sweatshirt over his head, then put a knife, a lock gun and pair of disposable plastic gloves into his front pockets before slinging the pack over his shoulder.
Lauren was packing in the room next door, and Chloe was in the dining-room typing up a mission report on her laptop. He could go out the front door, but thought it was best if he appeared to be home if either came looking for him, so he dashed into his en-suite bathroom and let his shower run cold. Back in the bedroom he switched on his bedside radio and laid a set of clothes out on his bed so that it looked like he’d put them on when he came out.
Dante thought about timings as he opened his bedroom window. He could run the kilometre to the Führer’s house in four minutes. If he was in the house for six minutes and ran back again his trip would take about the same amount of time as a leisurely shower.
The knife dropped out of Dante’s pocket as he landed on the hard ground outside his first-floor window. He’d made quite a noise, but looked up at Lauren’s room and was relieved to see her moving a stack of hanging clothes from her wardrobe on to her bed.
Seeing Lauren made Dante pause for thought. He was trained well enough to kill the Führer without leaving conclusive evidence, but even though the Führer had lots of enemies, if Chloe and Zara were smart enough to join the dots he’d be kicked out of CHERUB.
But looking up at the window reminded Dante of his sister Lizzie and how she’d spent the last seconds of her life lowering Holly to safety. Scotty had always told his sons that men fought their own battles and Dante couldn’t help but agree as he started running: for all the good intentions and hard police work, the Führer had got away with four murders and lived in a luxurious house, with millions in the bank and loyal followers prepared to fight and kill for him.
At the bottom of the street, Dante crossed over the road and vaulted a fence. The cross-country route would add a couple of minutes to his trip, but he wouldn’t be seen by passing traffic.
The ground was hard as he ran flat out across open fields, slowing only for a low hedge and a metal gate. The Führer owned a good stretch of the sloping land beyond his house. Dante could have vaulted the wooden fence with a short run-up, but he’d damage plants and might leave footprints if he landed in soft earth, so he cut back on to the road. He used the main gate and walked up the front drive, taking cover only when he got to within twenty metres of the house.
The lights were off, except the front hallway, the kitchen and an upstairs bedroom. It was a warm night and he’d hoped one of the downstairs windows would be open, but they were all locked.
He considered ringing the front doorbell, but after recent events the Führer would be cautious about opening up, so Dante crept around to the conservatory. He peered through the French doors towards the kitchen and saw that nobody was inside. The sliding glass had locks that were only accessible from within, so he moved towards the wooden door at the back of the kitchen.
After putting on plastic gloves, Dante tried the handle and found it locked. This wasn’t a huge problem: the door only had a basic lock. He clipped the right sized pick to the end of his lock gun and a squeeze of the trigger and two seconds of jiggling saw the door opening up into the kitchen.
Dante stepped inside, closed the door quietly, then checked his watch. He’d left home less than six minutes earlier. The next task was to find the Führer before the Führer found him. He moved stealthily into the hallway that led towards the front door. The back living-room was open. He noticed that the windows had been fixed and the pool table had been stripped down to its slate base in order to have the felt replaced.
The front living-room door was shut. No light crept from around the door frame and there was no sound when Dante put his ear to the door so he headed upstairs. After passing Joe and Martin’s rooms, Dante saw that the Führer’s bedroom door was ajar. The hallway light was off, but there were flashes of blue and pink light and the sound of a voiceover from a TV.
Dante moved swiftly towards the bedroom, then crouched down low and peered through the gap. The Führer sprawled on his bed in a towelling robe with a beer can in hand and a bag of kettle chips wedged between his thighs. The window was open and the net curtain wafted into the room as an F16 launched off a carrier deck on the TV.
‘As well as being the most modern ship in the Nimitz Class, the Ronald Reagan is home to more than seventy of the world’s finest fighter pilots and the qualified mechanics who keep their lethal war birds in the sky . ..’
The Führer’s presence made Dante feel sick. If he’d been forced into a surprise encounter, Dante would have gone for a knock-out blow and then used his knife, but from the point of view of leaving forensic evidence it was better to use something from the house.
Dante jogged down the hallway to the study at the rear end and flipped on the light. He paused for an instant in front of the picture of the Brigands 2002 Summer Barbecue before grabbing a crossbow pistol with an optical sight – deliberately avoiding the one he’d handled in front of Anna on Saturday – and loaded three bolts into the firing mechanism.
After flipping out the light, Dante walked back towards the Führer and crouched in the doorway. The door wasn’t open far enough to give him a good shooting angle so he nudged it a few centimetres and the hinges creaked.
The Führer saw the movement out the corner of his eye, but attributed it to the breeze. As his attention turned back towards Nimitz Class carriers, Dante looked through the magnified sight and aligned the crosshairs over the Führer’s neck.
Dante pushed his shoulder up to the door and took a deep breath to steady his aim. Once the first bolt hit, he’d barge into the room and shoot the second through the Führer’s heart.
41. NUMB
James took a twenty-mile detour on the way home, blasting down unlit lanes with the exhaust roaring and his single headlamp showing the way. He scared himself a couple of times and arrived home sweaty and exhilarated.
He felt mournful as he rolled his Kawasaki up the brick driveway and parked it in the double garage beside the Range Rover. He’d used the bike in conjunction with a secret identity, so even if he offered to buy the bike out of his savings there was no way he’d be allowed to keep it. And as James was only sixteen it might be a while before he got another shot at riding a motorbike, especially one as powerful as his ER5.
James stripped the riding gloves he’d bought at the Rebel Tea Party and the fancy carbon-fibre helmet Dirty Dave had given him three days earlier. The motorised garage door did its thing as James walked towards the front door, dipping into his jeans for a set of house keys. His nose caught something sweet and he smiled: one thing he wouldn’t miss was coming home tainted by the sweet steam that rose off hot crêpe batter.
‘That you James?’ Dante said, making him jump.
James looked up, then behind before realising that Dante was slumped against the wall in the brick corridor between the house and garage. There was enough light escaping from the bedrooms upstairs to see that he looked pretty sad.
‘You OK?’ James asked, as he noticed a small crossbow pistol resting on Dante’s lap. ‘Where’d you get that from?’
‘The Führer’s house,’ Dante explained. ‘You killed someone once, didn’t you?’
‘On my second mission,’ James nodded. ‘I snatched his gun. It was him or me.’
It was only as James said this that his brain linked Dante’s hatred of the Führer with the fact that Dante had visited the Führer’s house and the fact that he had a crossbow pistol loaded with deadly metal bolts in his hand.
‘Dante, what the hell have you done?’ James gasped.
‘He was home alone,’ Dante explained. ‘I broke in, found the Führer laying on his bed. Lined him up in the crosshairs and went to pull the trigger, but I dunno … It wasn’t in me.’
James exhaled with relief, but couldn’t find any words. He agreed with the principle that CHERUB didn’t go around assassinating people, but knew he’d feel differently if the Führer had killed his family.
‘I had it all worked out,’ Dante said. ‘I made sure I wore the same trainers that I had on at Joe’s party, so my shoe prints wouldn’t prove anything. By using the Führer’s own weapon and leaving it at the scene there’d be nothing you could trace back to me. Zara and Chloe would have suspected, but unless I’d been severely unlucky with an eye witness, they never would have proved a thing.’
‘Maybe it’s for the best,’ James said softly. ‘I still wonder about the bloke I shot. It really plays on your mind.’
Dante got out of the gravel and looked thoroughly disgusted with himself. ‘I’m weak,’ he said. ‘If there’s an afterlife, my dad’s sitting up there now with his head in his hands because he just found out that I’m the biggest chicken-shit coward that ever lived.’
As Dante turned away, a rolled-up photograph dropped out of his sweatshirt. James picked it up.
‘Don’t you want this?’ James asked.
‘Bin it,’ Dante said bitterly, as he walked towards the back garden.
James opened out the photo and saw that it was a Brigands barbecue. He recognised the Führer in the middle, with Joe standing proudly in front of him. Dante looked very different with short red hair, but the teenage girl on the edge of the picture looked remarkably like him.
‘You know, Dante,’ James said, as he followed the younger boy on to the back lawn, ‘maybe the reason you couldn’t pull the trigger wasn’t because you’re a coward. It’s not like shooting someone in the head is something to be proud of, is it?’
They’d kept their voices down to avoid being heard by the girls inside the house, but now Dante shouted. ‘James, please just leave me alone.’
‘You couldn’t kill the Führer because you’re a better person than he is,’ James explained. He held out the photo for Dante to see. ‘Look at your mum and your sister in this picture. Do you think they’d want you to be torturing yourself over revenge, or to get on with your life?’
James wondered if his argument sounded too sappy, but Dante stopped walking and snatched the picture back.
‘Give us that,’ Dante said, managing a half smile. ‘It’s weird looking at Lizzie and thinking that she’d be twenty-one now. And I only remember her as my bossy big sister, but when I look at this picture you can see she was dead sexy. She was really funny as well.’
James nodded. ‘You know the weirdest thing about being a cherub? We get to do all this great stuff and our lives are amazing compared to ordinary kids, but I reckon most of us would go back to our boring old lives if we had the chance.’
‘In an instant,’ Dante nodded. ‘And at least the Führer’s gonna get a shock the next time he goes into his study.’
‘The missing picture,’ James nodded.
‘Not just that,’ Dante smiled. ‘I fired a crossbow bolt between the eyes of his Hitler painting and scratched Dante Scott is a Vengeful Bastard into his desktop with my h
unting knife.’
James smiled, then smiled some more as the complexity of this message sunk in. ‘If he thinks you’re part of the Vengefuls and he knows that you were walking around his house with a crossbow …’
‘I might be too chicken to blow the Führer’s brains out,’ Dante said ruefully. ‘But at least I’ve given him something to mull over.’
42. FRIDAY
Twenty-four hours later James, Lauren and Dante were all back on campus. Friday night always had a good atmosphere and this one was better than usual because loads of kids on campus were flying off to CHERUB’s summer hostel the following Monday.
Just after five, Rat came back from playing tennis with Andy. He’d kicked off his trainers and was peeling a sweaty shirt over his head when Lauren erupted out of his wardrobe and screamed, ‘I’m back!’
Rat flew up in the air and jolted back towards his bed, before bursting out laughing. ‘You scared the living crap out of me,’ he gasped.
‘I got your text messages,’ Lauren said. She stood teasingly in front of Rat, so that her bust almost touched the beads of sweat running down his chest.
‘Pity you didn’t answer them then,’ Rat said frostily.
‘I reckon me and you have something pretty special going,’ Lauren grinned. ‘And besides, with my wrist in plaster I’ll need someone to carry my luggage on to the plane next week.’
‘And what makes you think I want you back?’ Rat sneered. ‘For all you know I’ve been having a torrid affair with some bimbo while you’ve been away.’
‘Two reasons,’ Lauren answered. ‘First of all, I’ve got spies all over campus. Second, what other girl would put up with your stupid hair?’
‘How can I turn down an offer like that?’ Rat smiled. ‘I’d kiss you but I’m all sweaty.’
‘There’s a fine line between manly ruggedness and BO,’ Lauren grinned, as she moved closer and pecked Rat on the lips. ‘Just this once I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.’