‘Gotta do this by the book,’ Dana said, as she pulled on a set of disposable plastic gloves. ‘Ewart can’t know that we’ve been through the papers. If anything makes him suspicious, he’ll ask for the video footage from the corridor outside his office and we’ll be dead ducks.’
‘Only thing is, they might be a bit fingerprinted and out of order already,’ James replied. ‘I dropped some stuff when you came in and surprised me, but I reckon I can put it back more or less as it was.’
All cherubs are trained to speed read and taught proper procedures for going through documents. After removing all the junk from around James’ bed, Dana took a digital camera and snapped a couple of photographs so that they’d be able to reassemble the stack precisely after going through it.
‘Even speed reading won’t get us through all of this,’ Dana said. ‘We’ll take half each and try and identify key documents, especially anything written by Ewart that gives us some idea of his thought processes.’
James had been on the same espionage courses as Dana and only resisted the urge to make a comment about not being born yesterday because she was doing him a massive favour.
After breaking the stack of papers into evenly sized piles, James took the bottom half and found himself staring at MI5 personnel files for Boris and Isla Kotenkov.
‘Snidey,’ James said, as he held the document up to show Dana. ‘Here’s something else Ewart told me he hadn’t been able to get hold of.’
He was surprised to learn that as well as being husband and wife, Boris and Isla were also cousins. During the Soviet era they had risked death, or life imprisonment in a brutal labour camp, to pass valuable intelligence on Russian weapons technology to the West.
‘Listen to this,’ James said, as he read a section of the report that Ewart had highlighted. ‘The Kotenkovs were financially well rewarded by British and American intelligence services. However, they lost everything trying to set up a Moscow based dry-cleaning business and offered their services to MI5 once again in 1998. They were able to use long-standing contacts within the Soviet weapons industry to set themselves up as illicit weapons dealers, but have griped constantly about their low wages, low status and the lack of pension provision.’
Dana nodded. ‘Sounds like the sort of people who’d take a bung to bump off Denis Obidin.’ Then she burst out laughing.
‘What’s so funny?’
Dana read an extract written by a health visitor seven years earlier: ‘James Choke is a bright and thoughtful eight-year-old, although he does have difficulty controlling his temper at times. Unfortunately, James’ bedwetting problem persists and this is not helped by his younger sister, Lauren, who teases him mercilessly and refers to him as Mr Piddle Pants.’
‘Hey,’ James gasped. ‘Gimme that. You’re supposed to be going through Ewart’s stuff, not my personal file.’
‘I’ve got to be thorough,’ Dana giggled.
‘Dana, I could be kicked out of CHERUB and you’re making jokes.’
‘I know it’s serious, piddle pants. It might have escaped your attention, but I’m running as big a risk as you.’
Dana couldn’t stop laughing as James turned sourly back to his paperwork.
‘Is your laptop switched on?’ she asked, a couple of minutes later. ‘I need the internet.’
‘Sure. Are you on to something?’
‘Maybe; I’ll tell you in a minute. What do you know about Hilton Aerospace by the way?’
James shrugged. ‘Not a huge amount. It’s a British company, but it has massive contracts in Aero City, refurbishing Russian airliners and stuff.’
‘Contracts with Denis Obidin?’ Dana asked.
‘Absolutely,’ James nodded. ‘The Obidin family practically owns the whole town.’
‘Both dead,’ Dana said, as she frantically tapped at James’ laptop.
‘Who’s dead?’ James asked as he put his paperwork down on the carpet and shuffled over to the computer on his knees.
Dana held up a handwritten list of names. Ewart had scrawled arrows, numbers and question marks between them. Dana pointed to each name in turn: ‘Denis Obidin, dead. Boris and Isla, dead. Lord Hilton, still alive but if I’m reading this diagram right, Ewart thinks he used a holding company to pay Boris and Isla fifty thousand dollars. Then there’s this guy, Sebastian Hilton; I’m not sure where he links in but I guess he’s Lord Hilton’s brother, or son, or something.’
‘Just saw a photocopy of his Who’s Who entry in my pile,’ James said. ‘He’s Lord Hilton’s son, a Member of Parliament and the new junior intelligence minister.’
‘And the plot thickens,’ Dana grinned, as she tapped another search into Google.
‘So what are these four other names?’ James asked, as he looked at the bottom of the piece of paper.
‘Clare Nazareth,’ Dana said, reading a local newspaper report from the laptop screen. ‘Research scientist Clare Nazareth died tragically from carbon monoxide poisoning in her Hertfordshire home. The fifty-eight-year-old mother of two had worked for Hilton Aerospace for more than thirty years and had published more than eighty scientific papers. Her most notable work was in the field of ceramic jet engine technology.’
‘Does it say when she died?’ James asked.
‘Two weeks yesterday.’
‘That’s just after I got back from Aero City.’
Dana had a Google search on another name running in a different tab. ‘Oh,’ Dana gasped. ‘Another one bites the dust.’
James looked at an image of an elderly woman on his laptop screen as Dana read aloud: ‘Seventy-three-year-old Madeline Cowell was found dead in her Hertfordshire home. Two sons, recently widowed, blah, blah, blah, possibly confused over her medication. Police believe there are no suspicious circumstances.’
‘Who was she?’
Dana clicked on a couple of different links, but didn’t find anything new. ‘Maybe we’ll pick something up in the documents.’
‘So what about these two other names at the bottom?’ James asked. ‘Jason McLoud and Sarah Thomas.’
Dana pointed to a sheet standing in the out tray of James’ printer. ‘Looks like McLoud is a scientific journalist. I did a search for his name and it came up with hundreds of articles, so I narrowed it down by doing Jason McLoud Hilton Aerospace.’
James pulled the piece of paper out of his printer. The article was from the online edition of Aerospace World magazine.
NO SURPRISE AS CERAMIC JET TECHNOLOGY
FACES ANOTHER SETBACK
By Jason McLoud
Since the dawn of the jet age, engineers have tried replacing metal components inside jet engines with ceramics. Theoretically, the thermal properties of a ceramic engine should enable it to spin faster and produce significantly more power than a metal equivalent, but reality has consistently failed to live up to the hype.
The latest blow is the decision by Hilton Aerospace to stop funding its ceramics research facility in Aero City, Russia. This correspondent travelled to Aero City to speak with Denis Obidin.
Obidin remains in typically bullish mood, but many commentators say that the closure is the final nail in Obidin’s dream of building a modern Russian aerospace industry to compete with America and the Europeans.
LOG IN TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE
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‘All seems to tie up somehow,’ James said. ‘Lord Hilton withdraws funding from Denis Obidin’s pet project. They have some kind of falling out and Hilton ends up paying Boris and Isla to kill him.’
‘I can see that,’ Dana nodded. ‘Two businessmen falling out is nothing to write home about, but this is in an entirely different league. What did Obidin have that makes Lord Hilton turn to the dirty deeds department?’
‘Something that threatens his life, his career, or his family.’
‘Obviously,’ Dana said. ‘Ahhh, got her. I’ve found a website for an air show that took place back in 2002. Members of the pre
ss wishing to interview Lord Hilton should in the first instance contact his personal assistant Madeline Cowell.’
‘Blimey,’ James said. ‘So that’s Lord Hilton’s business partner, personal assistant and one of his top scientists all bumped off in the space of three weeks. You’d think someone would have twigged.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Dana said. ‘The secretary was an old lady and Obidin was three thousand kilometres away. The only death likely to raise an eyebrow in this country is the scientist.’
‘So, apart from Lord Hilton and his son, the journalist Jason McLoud and this Sarah Thomas woman are the only ones on the list who are still alive.’
‘Exactly,’ Dana nodded.
James thought for a few seconds. ‘Anything on who Sarah Thomas is?’
‘The name is way too common,’ Dana said. ‘I just went into the CHERUB server and accessed the UK electoral roll. There are five thousand three hundred and seventeen people in Britain called Sarah Thomas.’
‘So what next?’
Dana pointed at the piles of papers.
‘Keep shuffling, dude.’
32. ROCK
James and Dana kept going until past midnight. Ewart had apparently conducted a thorough investigation with the help of personal contacts inside MI5 and the CIA. He seemed to have uncovered most of the truth behind the disastrous Aero City mission.
Lord Hilton’s son, Sebastian, had run Hilton Aerospace’s Russian operations until 1998, when he had left the company to begin a career in politics. During this time, Denis Obidin had gathered some dirt on Sebastian Hilton. When Lord Hilton said he was going to stop funding the ceramic engine research, Obidin had blackmailed him, threatening to ruin his son’s budding political career unless .. .
None of the paperwork said what Obidin’s hold over Sebastian Hilton was, or what Obidin had asked of Lord Hilton in return for his silence. But it was clear that instead of coughing up, recently appointed junior intelligence minister Sebastian Hilton had used a combination of his father’s money and his ministerial power to have Obidin killed.
He’d set Boris and Isla up on a legitimate mission in Aero City and then paid them $100,000 to kill Denis. Apparently, a couple of other people who knew or suspected the truth – such as the scientist and Lord Hilton’s retired personal assistant – had also been eliminated.
Sebastian Hilton assumed that he’d be able to use his connections inside MI5 to keep a lid on his dodgy dealings. Unfortunately, as the junior intelligence minister he’d never been told about the existence of CHERUB and neither had Boris or Isla.
They received a nasty shock when senior MI5 and CHERUB officials reviewed the slow progress of Boris and Isla’s mission and decided to send a CHERUB agent in to help them unearth the truth about Denis Obidin’s illegal arms sales.
James’ presence was a worry, but not enough to knock Sebastian Hilton or Boris and Isla off their stride. Their plan stayed the same: Boris and Isla would murder Denis Obidin, then escape Aero City and claim that they had killed him in self defence following a violent argument. The fact that James would most likely be captured, tortured and killed by Vladimir Obidin concerned them so little that they hadn’t even bothered to think up an excuse for him to get out of town on the night of the murder.
After the killing, Boris and Isla would have returned to Britain and pocketed Lord Hilton’s money. Following a short investigation in which Boris and Isla would have been the only credible witnesses, James’ death would be written off as a side effect of a mission that went tragically wrong.
Fortunately for James, Sebastian Hilton had miscalculated. Boris and Isla had been killed, while James had escaped. Worse, nobody within MI5 had known that there was a CIA team working in Aero City, who had not only worked out that Boris, Isla and James were agents for British intelligence, but obtained clear video evidence showing Denis Obidin being murdered in cold blood.
*
James was relieved to finally know the truth – at least most of it – but he still had a queasy feeling in his gut. Ewart had known the facts for several days, some for as long as a week; but he’d kept him in the dark and even gone so far as to warn him that his CHERUB career might be over.
James was right at the bottom of his stack when he came to a final batch of Ewart’s handwritten notes.
‘Appointments,’ James yelled, with the kind of euphoria that can only come after four brain-numbing hours of speed reading.
‘What’s up, doc?’ Dana asked.
‘The most important piece of paper would be right at the bottom, wouldn’t it?’ James said as he held it out for Dana to see. ‘Remember the two people on that list who weren’t dead? It looks like Ewart has appointments with both of them tomorrow. The first one is at nine-thirty, with our journalist friend, Jason McLoud. Then he’s going to lunch with the mysterious Sarah Thomas.’
‘So now we know where he’s going,’ Dana said. ‘But we still don’t know what he’s up to. This looks like a pretty thorough investigation for a man staging a cover-up, though.’
‘I agree,’ James said. ‘But I’ve been getting stick from half the kids on campus, I’ve been lying awake every night feeling sick to my stomach and all because Ewart hasn’t had the decency to tell me that he knows I’m innocent. There’s got to be something fishy going on.’
‘It’s certainly freaky,’ Dana nodded. ‘But what does Ewart stand to gain?’
‘Money I guess,’ James shrugged. ‘The Hiltons are billionaires and Sebastian could end up becoming intelligence minister, maybe even Prime Minister, some day. If Ewart helps the Hiltons out, his lifestyle could become a lot more pleasant.’
‘And you think Zara’s in on it too?’
James wasn’t comfortable with that aspect of the situation. Zara had always been one of his favourite people on campus. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Maybe … but, for all we know, Ewart’s planning to up and run off with a stripper or something.’
‘On the other hand, maybe he’s just being cautious and waiting until he’s completely sure about his facts.’
‘But why lie to me?’ James insisted. ‘The video evidence clears me, one hundred per cent. Why make me go through an extra week of torture? I’ve never liked Ewart and I’m prepared to bet my right nut that he’s up to something.’
‘There’s only one way we can really be sure,’ Dana said.
‘What’s that?’
‘We know where Ewart’s going to be at nine-thirty tomorrow morning. We can follow him around and see what he’s up to and who he’s working with.’
‘That’s risky,’ James said warily.
Dana laughed as she looked around the room at the piles of top-secret documents. ‘And this isn’t … ? McLoud’s house is only about an hour’s drive from here. I’ll go and put the papers back in mission preparation now. If anyone stops me, I’ll say that I lost a ring when I was cleaning earlier. We’ll grab a few hours’ sleep, then we’ll get up early, sneak down to reception, nab some equipment and steal the keys to one of the pool cars.’
‘I can hardly believe you’re prepared to go out on a limb for me, Dana,’ James smiled. ‘I’ve got a girlfriend two doors down the hall. I begged her for help and she spent the night watching soaps instead.’
‘A friend in need,’ Dana smiled back. ‘Besides, you’re a nice guy, James. And I don’t just mean nice; I mean nice-nice.’
James was suddenly aware that Dana was standing close. She’d spent the whole night helping him, taking a massive risk in return for nothing and now she was saying that she was attracted to him.
The circumstances would have made it hard not to kiss Dana if she’d been a three-eyed monster with pickled onion breath. But she wasn’t. James had always been attracted to her, but he’d never acted on it, or even really thought about it. He’d been going out with Kerry since before he’d got to know Dana and besides, Dana was an older girl. Boys on campus usually hit on girls their own age or younger.
‘I’ve always thought you
had fantastic eyes,’ James said, as he stared into them.
Dana was nearly two years older than Kerry. Taller, bulkier, curvier. She had hair that was kind of crazy because she never combed it, but somehow that made it even sexier. Most importantly, two years older meant that she was much more likely to want to have sex, a prospect that gave James a rush akin to having the Queen’s golden jubilee fireworks going off in his boxers.
‘Mind the papers,’ Dana mumbled, as James gave her an experimental kiss on the cheek.
The bed was off limits, so Dana walked backwards, frantically snogging James as she collapsed on to the small sofa by the door.
‘I’ve fancied you for ages,’ Dana said, coming up for air as James felt her hand slide down the back of his jeans.
‘Can I touch your tits?’
Dana laughed. ‘You’re subtle, aren’t you?’
Dana rolled off and James thought he’d blown it. But she’d only backed away so that she had room to pull her T-shirt over her head. James took his off too.
‘What do I get in return for the bra?’ Dana teased.
‘Name your price,’ James grinned.
‘No charge.’
James couldn’t believe his luck. It had taken months to get this far with Kerry. He could hardly breathe and practically had drool coming out the corner of his mouth. Then someone knocked at the door.
‘Bloody hell,’ Dana gasped, as she batted James’ hand away.
‘Door’s been locked all night,’ James whispered. ‘Just keep quiet for a sec and they’ll think I’m out.’
Dana smiled as James made a complete hash of undoing her bra.
‘Wakey, wakey,’ Lauren shouted, as she burst through the door. She’d showered at a police station and wore a policewoman’s black pullover. ‘Get your Brighton rock here.’
James had finally triumphed over the bra and sprung up with it in his hand as Dana quickly snatched her T-shirt off the carpet.
‘You told me it was locked,’ Dana hissed.
‘Didn’t you lock it when you came back with the coffees?’