‘Maths not your strong point?’ an older skateboarder giggled.
But the big guy with the gun pointing at James snatched the phone from the little kid and didn’t sound so happy. ‘Don’t be thick all your life. If we call the cops, they’ll rip us off.’
Another skateboarder nodded. ‘They’ll beat the shit out of us and keep the reward themselves.’
James looked around for a way out, but the alley was a dead end and the big dude had the gun pointing right at him. He hurt all over and felt stupid for letting himself get jumped by a bunch of teenagers.
‘So what do we do, Joe?’ the little skateboarder asked anxiously.
‘Shut up and let me think,’ Joe said, as he looked down the barrel of the gun at James.
‘Let me use the phone,’ James said pathetically. ‘I know people. They’ll double your reward, I swear.’
Joe shook his head with contempt. ‘Yeah,’ he tutted. ‘You look so rich.’
He started dialling.
‘Who are you calling, Joe?’
‘The hotline number they put out on the radio this morning.’
‘Can you remember it?’
‘Triple eight, triple eight,’ Joe said. ‘What’s to remember?’
The freezing snow was melting into James’ clothes and his face was covered in blood. His stomach churned with pure terror. This might really be the end of the line. He’d never get back to campus, he’d never see Lauren or Kerry, he’d never see Arsenal score another goal, or do homework, or take a shit, or any of a million other mundane things that flashed through his mind. Within an hour he’d be locked in some basement cell with a couple of Obidin’s goons torturing him until he told them whatever they wanted to hear …
‘Hello,’ Joe shouted into the phone. ‘Are you the dude from the mayor’s office that was on the radio … ? Cool … Listen, I’ve got the English kid. Before I tell you where we’re at, I want to be sure that we’ll get the reward straight away. Cash on delivery …OK, cool …We’re over on the east side, street sixteen, near where the cinema used to be … Yeah he’s alive. I had to beat the shit out of him, but he’s just about conscious … So how long roughly … ? Right, we’ll be waiting.’
9. UNCLE
Barely ten minutes later, a man stepped out of a blinged-up 4x4, with fancy alloys and blacked-out windows.
‘Twenty-five thousand,’ the man smiled as he waved five hundred pounds’ worth of Russian currency in the air. James recognised the voice. It was Slava, the dude he used to chat to on the gate of the Obidin compound.
Joe looked happy; his four younger companions like it was too good to be true.
‘I want you boys to do me a favour,’ Slava said seriously. ‘Divide the money evenly, take it home and keep your mouths shut. You go showing that much cash around, you’ll get robbed.’
‘Wise words, boss,’ Joe nodded.
James had managed to sit up against the wall of the alleyway. He hurt in twenty different places, his jeans were soaked in melted snow and he was shivering badly.
‘What did you hit him with, a steamroller?’ Slava grinned, as he stepped up to James and pulled a set of handcuffs out of his jacket. ‘On your feet, boy.’
Not wanting another beating, James tried standing up.
But he only managed to prop himself on one knee before he felt faint and slumped back against the wall. As James made a second attempt, Joe grabbed his arm and yanked him up. Slava jerked James around to face the wall and locked the cuffs behind his back.
‘You boys help me walk him to the car,’ Slava said. ‘Then you’d better clear out of here.’
Joe nodded eagerly. ‘My name’s Josef Novosi, sir. Do you think you could put in a word for me? Maybe get me some work with Mr Obidin? I’m real strong. I did wrestling and gymnastics when I was younger; won medals and everything.’
Slava shrugged. ‘Things are mental after last night, but I’m sure the Obidin family will appreciate what you’ve done, so I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Thank you,’ Joe gushed.
One of the younger skateboarders opened up the 4•4, enabling Joe and Slava to bundle James across the back seat. He got a face full of leather smell and warm air, but pain erupted across his face as his nose hit the seat cushion. James reckoned the first whack with the skateboard had broken it.
Seconds later, he heard Slava getting in the front, clicking on his seatbelt and starting the engine. The potholed roads made James’ aching head bounce. Slava spoke as James struggled to sit himself up.
‘So why did MI5 decide to kill Denis Obidin?’
‘What are you talking about?’ James mumbled, as it occurred to him that Slava had spoken in English, with an American accent.
‘They killed him, James old boy.’
James was covered in blood, his head was thumping and he had a splitting pain in the bridge of his nose. It was hard to think straight and he decided it would be best to keep his trap shut.
‘How’s your sister Lauren doing these days?’ Slava continued. ‘Is John Jones your mission controller on this one, or someone else?’
James was stunned. Slava knew about CHERUB, which was impossible.
‘My handle’s Eric Partridge,’ Slava continued cockily, as he took a sharp turn. ‘I’m with the CIA weapons proliferation unit. Spent most of the last four years infiltrating Obidin’s organisation. I’ve gotta admire the balls of you Brits though: no messing about, you just send a couple of dudes in, set up a meeting and kill the top dog.’
James suddenly wanted to say a few things, but all he could manage was a shake of the head and a few mumbled words. ‘How come … You … My sister?’
Slava – or rather Eric Partridge – cracked into a big smile. ‘I’ve been on Obidin’s security team these past eighteen months. Been all around that big house planting bugs. Obidin had his own video surveillance system installed and we’ve tapped into that too.
‘A couple of weeks back, my colleagues in Washington DC started picking up interference when they were transcribing the recordings from our bugs. The boffins told us it was crosstalk: two coded listening devices of a similar type interfering with each other.
‘So I checked the security cameras to see if there were any new faces inside the compound. Would you believe that the interference started the first day that you turned up to give little Mark Obidin an English lesson?
‘I had one of my field operatives follow you back to your apartment. He poked around inside the next day when you were at school. Picked a few hairs off pillows and took swabs from your toothbrushes. We sent them back to our DNA lab and the damnedest thing happened: Uncle Boris and Auntie Isla drew blanks, but your DNA brought up a match to a highly classified file. Took us more than a week to get access. The request had to be approved by the heads of the CIA and the FBI.’
‘What file?’ James muttered as his fuzzy head struggled to grasp what he was hearing.
‘You’re quite a kid, James. When they finally gave me clearance, your file had all the details of your mission in Arizona two years back: busting out of Arizona Maximum Security Prison, driving across three states with the cops on your tail and catching Jane Oxford. File said that you’re part of some limey child spy unit known as CHERUB. I tell you, when I heard about that it pretty much blew my mind.’
James realised that he’d got lucky. The yanks might not be too happy that his mission had trodden on their toes, but they were unlikely to set upon him with a blow lamp.
‘How’d you get to me first?’
‘Took a bit of quick thinking, but it wasn’t too hard,’ Eric smiled. ‘Vladimir Obidin is a tyrant. His men are terrified of him. I suggested we offer a reward and set up a radio broadcast, then started organising the search. Everyone was happy for me to stick my neck out and get it chopped if things went wrong.’
‘Where now?’ James mumbled.
‘I’ve got a safe house on the edge of the city. We’ll head back there. You can wash up, put on a set of clean
clothes and you look pretty messed up, so I’ll take a proper look at your injuries.’
‘Won’t you be compromised?’ James asked.
‘Sure,’ Eric nodded. ‘Those kids will splash their roubles around and shout off their mouths. People will find out that they put you into my hands and I’ll be in as much trouble as you. But I’m not working alone. We have other agents in place who’ll keep going after the Obidins, at least the ones you Brits didn’t decide to assassinate. My job was to get hold of you before the Obidins and find out what the hell you lot were playing at.’
James shook his head. ‘Wasn’t assassination,’ he said wearily. ‘They were setting up a deal to buy missiles.’
Eric turned away from the road and shot James an angry glance. ‘I saved your butt, kid. If you ain’t straight with me, I might just turn back and dump you in the snow.’
‘They can’t have,’ James mumbled.
‘James, I know that part of the story. I’ve got the whole freaking incident in glorious black and white.’
10. BLOOD
The safe house was a ground-floor apartment in one of Aero City’s better housing blocks. TV shows and cooking smells drifted in from the neighbouring homes, but the plumbing worked well enough for James to take a shower.
Eric told James not to lock the bathroom door in case he collapsed. Once James had washed the worst of the blood off, Eric helped him into a bathrobe and led him towards a double bed. There was an angle poise lamp on the bedside table and Eric swung it over James and began attending to his cuts and bruises.
The shower had cleared James’ head and washed away a lot of blood, but he was still in serious pain, particularly his face, stomach and balls.
‘Do you reckon my nose is busted?’ he asked.
Eric was cleaning out a deep cut on his shoulder. ‘Look for yourself,’ he said, and he slid a hand mirror across the bedclothes.
James gasped as he saw his crumpled nose and swollen eyes. ‘If I see that Joe again, I’ll kill him.’
‘You’ll have to stay awake for at least twenty-four hours.
If you fall asleep, there’s a chance you could drift into a coma. I’m also concerned about the cut above your left eye. I’ll have to put a stitch in it.’
‘Are you a doctor?’
Eric shook his head. ‘I was an army medic. I’ve got local anaesthetic here, but I’m reluctant to give you anything that makes you drowsy after the knock you took to the head.’
‘So how can you stitch me?’
‘I’ll give you something to bite down on.’
James gawped. ‘Maybe if it was my leg or something, but you can’t stitch my face without anaesthetic.’
‘I can give you a couple of paracetamol if you like.’
‘What’s that gonna do?’
‘Not much,’ Eric shrugged. ‘Sorry kid, but your T-shirt and jeans were drenched in blood. You’ve lost a pint, maybe two. If you were in a hospital you’d get a transfusion, but all I can do here is get those cuts sealed up before you lose more blood and pass out.’
James felt sick as he saw Eric tear a pre-threaded needle out of sterile packaging.
‘Put this in your mouth,’ he said, as he handed James a rubber bit.
James put the rubber in his mouth, clenched his hands and screwed up his eyes.
‘Keep ’em open. I can’t sew the cut if the skin is pulled apart.’
James thought he was going to be sick as he opened his eyes. His vision was blurry, but he could see the needle as it pierced the swollen flesh above his eye.
‘AAAAAAGGHHHHHHHHH,’ he moaned.
‘Keep the noise down and your head still,’ Eric said firmly. ‘This is nothing: an old buddy of mine was out in the Gulf, got trapped under a tank track and we had to take his arm off with a fire axe.’
James bit down hard and bunched the sheets up in his fists as the needle pierced his eyebrow for the second time. Maybe having your arm hacked off was worse, but he found it hard to imagine how anything could be more painful.
‘Good man,’ Eric smiled as he tied the fourth stitch off and snipped the thread.
James groaned with relief, but then Eric started untying his dressing gown. ‘What the hell?’
‘You said you got kicked in the balls. So spread your legs, I need to take a proper look.’
‘They’re fine,’ James spluttered.
‘If your testicle has ruptured, I need to drain the fluid. And believe me James, I don’t wanna be poking about down there any more than you want me to.’
*
An hour later, James sat in an armchair. His cuts were all patched, his balls were only bruised and he’d managed to drink a couple of glasses of orange juice and eat some tinned spaghetti. His vision was less blurry, but his body ached all over from the beating and his headache and the pain around his eyes and nose had got worse as the swelling increased.
Eric kept asking James questions and it was getting on his nerves. He just wanted to sleep.
‘Here you go,’ Eric said, as he placed a nifty little computer on James’ lap. ‘Try looking me in the eye and saying they weren’t out to kill Denis after you’ve watched this.’
James stared at a grainy image of Denis Obidin’s study. He used the finger pad to scroll up to the screen and clicked on the mouse button to play the video clip.
The timecode in the corner of the screen indicated that the recording had been made at one o’clock that morning. Denis Obidin sat behind his desk, puffing a cigar whilst partaking in a jovial conversation with Boris and Isla, who had their backs to the camera.
After a round of laughs, Boris stood up to shake Denis’ outstretched hand. James’ mouth dropped open as he watched Boris grasp the hand and jerk Denis forward. Isla leapt out of her seat with a length of wire stretched between her hands. As Boris placed his hand over Denis Obidin’s mouth, Isla stepped around the desk and wrapped the wire around his throat.
‘I …’ James stuttered. ‘Jesus.’
Within half a minute, Denis was slumped across his desk, unconscious. While Isla kept the wire tight to make sure he was dead, Boris ran to the back of the room and unhitched a large picture frame. He then produced a penknife and used the blade to lever open a metal door built into the wall behind it.
‘What’s going on?’ James asked.
Eric explained. ‘We have no idea how Boris and Isla found this, but it looks as if Obidin had an emergency escape system built into his house.’
‘Did you CIA guys know it existed?’
Eric shook his head. ‘But we suspected. Kidnappings and hostage situations go down all the time in these parts. Wealthy Russians commonly build panic rooms and escape systems into their homes.’
James was in a state of shock. ‘I didn’t know squat about this,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I swear on my life.’
He watched as Isla and Boris clambered through the escape hatch, leaving behind a static image of Denis Obidin slumped dead across his desk.
‘So Boris and Isla got away?’ James asked.
‘They might have done, but for a spot of bad luck. Fast forward about a minute and you’ll see.’
James clicked on the double fast-forward arrow and watched the timecode in the bottom of the picture advance rapidly, until he saw the door of the study come open. He had to roll back slightly to catch it from the start.
‘Your little pal had a bad dream,’ Eric explained.
James watched as six-year-old Mark Obidin strolled into the room, dressed in Batman pyjamas and fur-lined slippers. He walked up to his father and tapped him on the arm, then looked a little confused as he noticed a small pool of blood on the desk where the wire had cut into his skin. The little lad spun around and screamed his head off as he raced out of the room.
Within seconds, Vladimir and two other men burst in. As Vladimir grabbed the phone off his brother’s desk, the other men clambered into the escape hatch after Boris and Isla.
‘So MI5’s little plan went wrong,’ E
ric smiled. ‘Boris and Isla knew they’d be searched and hadn’t been able to take guns into Obidin’s house. They were dead duckies when the guards caught up with them.’
James was stunned. So stunned that he almost forgot how much pain he was in.
‘This …I was told that they were going to the meeting to negotiate a weapons deal.’
‘Why should I believe that?’ Eric shot back.
‘CHERUB doesn’t go around assassinating people. And … And besides, do you think I would have sat in the apartment and fallen asleep knowing that Vladimir would be coming after us?’
The mix of pain and excitement made it hard to think straight, but one little detail came clear in James’ head: he remembered Isla carrying the large case out to the car when they left the apartment.
‘Boris and Isla might have escaped, but they must have known Vladimir would send men to the flat to grab me. They stitched me up. They walked out of that flat expecting that I’d be caught and tortured. I’m glad those bastards are dead.’
‘Nice story,’ Eric said, sounding like he wasn’t quite ready to believe James’ explanation.
James pointed at the laptop screen. ‘Give me one good reason why I’d sit around and wait for Vladimir Obidin to turn up?’
Eric smiled. ‘I have to admit, I’ve thought long and hard about that and I haven’t been able to think up a single convincing explanation, except that you’d been stitched up by a couple of rogue agents.’
‘I could have died,’ James said, shaking his head slowly.
‘I reckon it’s only down to your training and a healthy glob of luck that you didn’t,’ Eric said, as he grabbed the computer off James’ lap and snapped it shut. ‘And a helping hand from yours truly, of course.’
Eric slid the laptop into a nylon pouch and came back to James holding a chunky satellite phone. Whereas a normal mobile requires local relay stations to work, satellite phones beam their signals into space and work anywhere in the world.
‘I believe you wanted to make a call, young man.’
James raised a tiny smile as he grabbed the phone. ‘Are you getting me out of here, or what?’