CHERUB: Shadow Wave (30 page)

‘Finally I’d have to face the ethics committee, and explain myself to the intelligence minister in London. I’d probably have to resign from my job. The mission controller in charge of the operation would also have to resign from his job, and in case you haven’t noticed that particular mission controller is my husband.’

Bruce’s mouth dropped open. ‘I never realised it would be that serious.’

‘So even if it was us, and of course it wasn’t,’ James said, ‘it would be better for
everyone
if nobody outside of this room ever found out what really happened?’

Zara nodded as she shut the folder. ‘Don’t spread the word on campus. Stay away from Kyle for a bit, he’ll possibly be under MI5 surveillance for the next two or three months. Don’t involve yourselves with Guilt Trips, Helena Bayliss and Hugh Verhoeven.’

‘Can you help Kyle at all?’ Bruce asked. ‘Get him out of prison or whatever?’

‘Absolutely not,’ Zara said. ‘Anything I do to help Kyle will flag up the fact that he’s an ex-CHERUB agent. He’s a big boy now. I’m sure Guilt Trips and Hugh Verhoeven have enough money to make sure he’s got a good lawyer.’

‘And what can they charge him with?’ James asked. ‘He didn’t hurt anyone, or do anything much else that’s illegal.’

‘I reckon he’ll get a caution,’ Bruce agreed. ‘MI5 don’t like having their dirty washing aired in open court.’

‘So,’ Zara said, sighing loudly as she stood up from her desk. ‘That’s about all I have to say on this. I expect you boys are hungry and I have a family to get home to.’

James and Bruce looked at one another and exchanged sly smiles as they stood up. Zara strode across the room and took her coat from the hat stand by the door.

‘And there’s one other thing I’d like to say,’ Zara said. ‘The world is a messy place. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who the good guys and bad guys are, but I don’t think there’s much doubt that Tan Abdullah is one of the bad ones. You took some pretty stupid risks. As chairwoman I can’t condone what you did, but as a human being with a conscience I can’t condemn it either.’

James came through the arrivals gate at Heathrow terminal five. It was mid morning. He was eighteen years old and wore a red T-shirt with a Nike tick and the logo of the
Stanford Cardinals
American football team. His skin looked tanned, but he had bags under his eyes after the ten-hour flight from San Francisco.

‘I missed you so much,’ Kerry squealed, as she grabbed James and pulled him tight. Her fingers dug into flesh that felt a little thicker than usual. ‘Letting yourself go a bit, Mr Adams.’

She didn’t say any more because James plunged his tongue into her mouth and shoved his hand up the back of her mini skirt.

‘Four months,’ James said, with a tear welling in his eye. ‘It’s been
way
too long.’

An elderly woman tutted disapprovingly as the two teenagers slobbered and groped. James needed a shave and the bristles irritated Kerry’s face. She didn’t care about that, but she did care when a lad of about thirteen whistled and shouted
nice bum
before getting a gentle clump off his mother.

‘Everyone’s staring,’ Kerry protested, as she pushed James away.

‘Let them,’ James said. ‘They can arrest us for gross indecency for all I care. We could find a toilet or something.’

Kerry started to laugh. ‘James I’m not shagging you in an airport toilet.’

‘I’m desperate,’ James begged. ‘It’s a newish terminal. They’re probably quite clean.’

‘Or we could go to our room,’ Kerry said, as she produced a credit-card-type hotel room key.

James broke into a huge smile. ‘Oh god, I love you
so
much,’ he gushed.

‘It’s pretty crappy,’ Kerry said. ‘Twenty-quid internet special, but it’s got a bed and a shower. Thought we could hang out there for a few hours before we meet up with Lauren in town.’

‘How far?’

‘Ten-minute drive,’ Kerry said. ‘Can you control yourself for that long?’

‘Just about,’ James said, pretending to sulk.

But Kerry didn’t twig that he was only pretending and panicked slightly, thinking he was upset because she didn’t reciprocate his
I love you.

‘I love you too,’ Kerry said. ‘And I booked that room because you’re not the only one who couldn’t wait until we got back to campus this evening.’

‘All right!’ James said enthusiastically, as he spun around looking for the exit. ‘Why are we standing here?’

Kerry took James’ hand luggage and they started to walk with a huge wheelie bag trundling behind. James put his hand up the back of Kerry’s skirt again, but she shoved it away.

‘Everyone can see my arse when you do that,’ Kerry said irritably as they neared a set of automatic doors which led to the car park. ‘You’re an embarrassment!’

‘You’re easily embarrassed, aren’t you?’ James teased. He stopped walking and turned back so that he faced the huge and crowded arrivals hall.

‘James what are you doing?’ Kerry asked.

‘This is my girlfriend Kerry Chang,’ James shouted at the top of his voice. ‘She’s got a great arse, and I hope you’ve all enjoyed looking at it. Now I’m gonna take her to a hotel room and have a damned good sha—’

Before James could finish, Kerry had her hand clamped over his mouth.

‘I’ll murder you!’ Kerry said, as James howled with laughter.

Kerry dug her hand under James’ ribs and tickled until he collapsed on to his knees.

‘I love her!’ James shouted, as over a hundred people stood gawping and Kerry burned red with embarrassment.

They both ended up flat on the airport floor, laughing helplessly as an airport security officer loomed over them.

‘Act your ages,’ the yellow-jacketed woman said. ‘You’re blocking everyone’s way out.’

James pointed at Kerry. ‘It was her,’ he said mischievously. ‘She started it.’

The officer didn’t see the funny side and tapped a finger against her walkie-talkie. ‘If you’ve got a problem you can explain it to the airport police.’

James and Kerry had tears in their eyes as they headed through the automatic doors leading towards the car park.

*

They’d arranged to meet Lauren outside East Finchley underground station at two, but James and Kerry couldn’t prise themselves apart. They held on in the hotel for as long as they could and ended up being forty minutes late.

‘Traffic was awful,’ James lied, as he stepped out of the silver Mercedes that Kerry had taken from campus and gave Lauren a kiss. ‘You’ve grown a couple of centimetres since I last saw you.’

‘And you’ve got chunkier,’ Lauren noted.

‘Booze and parties,’ James explained.

‘Cuddlier is the word I’d use,’ Kerry smiled.

‘I’ve actually lost a bit now I’ve gone back to weight training and running,’ James said. ‘But when I first arrived at Stanford it was craziness every single night.’

The trio drove to the nearest Pizza Express and caught up over a late lunch.

‘How was your first term at Stanford?’ Lauren asked.

‘They call them quarters, not terms,’ James explained. ‘The campus is quite like CHERUB, except you have to share a room and there’s ten thousand people on the campus, instead of a few hundred. The work’s pretty hard. I’ve never struggled with maths or physics before, but everyone in my classes has brains spilling out their ears.’

‘What about your exams?’ Kerry asked, as she bit a bruschetta.

‘You don’t take proper exams until the end of second quarter in March,’ James explained. ‘But you get continuous assessment. I’ve had all As and Bs, except you have to take at least one arts course in your first year. I picked Russian because I already speak the language, but you have to read
Crime and Punishment
by Dostoevsky, which is basically a six-hundred-page novel where absolutely bugger all happens.’

‘So you said it’s lots of parties and stuff?’

James nodded. ‘It’s wild. I mean, if you want you can go to a party every night. But you have to learn to balance it or you’d end up wrecked at every lecture.’

Kerry felt uncomfortable at the thought of all this revelry. She didn’t doubt that James loved her, but he was also a randy git and she couldn’t help wondering if he’d stayed faithful during four months living in a college crawling with eighteen-year-old girls.

‘I’ve put in my application for Stanford now,’ Kerry said. ‘Meryl says it should go through on the nod.’

‘Cool,’ James grinned. The waitress arrived with two pizzas and a lasagne for Kerry. ‘So how’s everyone on campus?’

‘Pretty quiet actually,’ Lauren said. ‘Loads of people are off on missions. Rat’s in Australia with Andy. Bethany got back with Bruce, but it only lasted three weeks. Jake Parker’s been suspended from missions after he got Ronan drunk and dared him to take a crap in the campus fountain.’

‘Kevin got his navy shirt,’ Kerry added.

James smiled. ‘That’s cool, Kevin’s a great kid. Who got my old room?’

‘Some new grey shirt called James Watkinson,’ Kerry said, as she blew on a steaming fork-load of lasagne. ‘Pretty quiet, keeps himself to himself mostly.’

‘It’s weird,’ Lauren added. ‘Jake and Kevin used to be the youngest grey shirts. But now people like you and Shakeel are retired there’s a new group who are even younger.’

‘You forgot to tell him about the big huge enormous campus sex scandal,’ Kerry said cheerfully.

‘Oh god!’ Lauren laughed. ‘Meatball is a daddy. The couple who moved into Mr Large’s old house have a little poodle and Meatball had his way with her.’

Everyone laughed until Kerry remembered something. ‘And Joshua Asker said I have to tell you that he’s a good swimmer now and that you have to go to the pool with him so that he can show you.’

‘I saw my dad,’ Lauren said.

Lauren dropped this in casually, but James almost choked. ‘You saw Uncle Ron? How did he find out where you are?’

‘He wrote a letter to Islington council, which was forwarded on to CHERUB campus. He’s eligible for parole early in the new year. He wanted a character reference for his parole application, saying that he was in contact with his daughter and that I thought his release would be beneficial to me. Apparently having close family can help sway a parole hearing.’

James shook his head with contempt. ‘I hope you told him to shove that idea right up his hairy crack.’

Lauren looked awkward. ‘I went to see him. He’s had treatment for cancer, he looks really thin and I think he’s been beaten up a few times in prison. I said I’d write the reference, on condition that he didn’t hassle me when he got out.’

James put his head in his hands. ‘How could you?’ he gasped. ‘Ron used to hit both of us. He treated Mum like dirt and
you
grassed him up after he punched you so hard that you ended up with two huge black eyes.’

‘I know,’ Lauren said, with uncharacteristic meekness. ‘But all that’s ancient history and no matter what Ron did, he’s still my dad.’

James shook his head in disgust, but didn’t say any more. His return from college for Christmas was supposed to be a happy occasion, besides which Lauren was stubborn so he wouldn’t win the argument if he pushed it.

‘Have you thought any more about seeing
your
dad?’ Kerry asked.

James nodded, then waited to finish his mouthful before continuing. ‘It was freaky. On the first day of my course they gave everyone a list of textbooks we’d need. So I’m sitting in my room at Stanford, ordering all these books off amazon.com. And I see that one of the maths books is co-written by Professor James Duncan. My laptop almost fell off my bed and Chris my roommate is like
What’s up with you?
And I’m like,
I think I just discovered that one of my maths textbooks was written by my dad.

‘It felt like a sign or something. Especially when I’d just arrived at college and was feeling a bit homesick. So I dug up my dad’s e-mail and sent him a message. I got a reply a few days later and we’ve been e-mailing back and forth ever since.’

Lauren smiled. ‘So you’re going to meet him?’

‘Yeah,’ James nodded. ‘And I’ve got a little half-sister Megan who’s nearly four. And a baby brother called Albert - named after Albert Einstein apparently.’

‘When will you visit?’ Kerry asked.

James shrugged. ‘We didn’t set a date because I didn’t know what was going on with everyone else. But I’ve got three weeks before I fly back to the States.’

‘How will you explain your years at CHERUB?’ Lauren asked.

‘I’ve just used my standard background story, telling my dad that I grew up in a succession of foster homes after Mum died,’ James explained. ‘We worked the whole thing out before I left campus.’

Kerry smiled. ‘So did your dad give you the answers to the questions in his textbook?’

‘No,’ James laughed. ‘But he did help me once when I got totally stuffed on a maths assignment. He seems like a nice guy. I’m really looking forward to going up there and saying hello.’

‘So what else have you been up to in California?’ Lauren asked. ‘What’s your roommate like?’

‘You thought he was gay at one time, didn’t you?’ Kerry asked.

‘Until I came back to my room and found him bonking away at this giant hippo.
Oh Chris, oh Chris, that’s so goooooood!’

Lauren and Kerry both laughed, and James felt good being back with them and having so much stuff to catch up on.

*

An hour later, Kerry stopped the silver Mercedes at the bottom of a grassy hill. She stayed a few metres behind as James squelched through the long grass, holding flowers in one arm and with the other around Lauren’s shoulders.

Britain is a small country and Londoners are buried six to a grave, with a half-metre between headstones restricted to a maximum height of forty centimetres. They stopped by a lozenge made from pinkish marble, with the gold-leaf inscription already starting to peel:

Gwendoline Choke

May 1966 - September 2003

Sadly missed by James & Lauren

At the bottom of the stone was an engraved image of a cartoonish angel standing in front of a rainbow and blowing a bugle.

‘I can’t believe I picked that tacky bloody design,’ Lauren said, shaking her head as she looked at the stone.