Dark Sun (8 page)

Unlike Greg, Andy saw it coming. He

sidestepped Sophie’s f lying knee, which was a good job because she was heft y and it hit the passage wall so hard that it made a dent in the plasterboard. As Sophie groaned and clutched her agonised knee, Andy hooked his foot around Sophie’s standing leg and swept it from under her. Andy
89

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

89

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

stepped back, leaving Sophie glowering up at him from the f loor.

‘I was trying to help,’ Andy said, trying to calm her down. ‘Why don’t you just go to bed, eh?’

But Sophie was having none of it and she lunged forward and tried wrapping her arms around Andy’s waist. Meantime, Greg was back on his feet. He felt an excruciating pain as he took his first step, but he ignored it as he sprinted down the hallway and dived into George’s bedroom.

Sophie was much heavier than Andy, but her Karate skills were limited to a few self-defence classes and Andy soon straddled her waist, pinning her arms to her side.

‘Please calm down,’ Andy said. ‘You’re drunk. You’ll feel better if you get in bed and try going to sleep.’

‘I want that key,’ she screamed. ‘I don’t want you little idiots in my room.’

Greg burrowed down the side pocket of Andy’s pack and grabbed one of the syringes. Out in the hall, Sophie spat and wriggled, even though Andy had her hopelessly pinned.

‘Get off me,’ she yelled.

90

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

90

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

‘As soon as you calm down,’ Andy yelled

back. ‘It’s a misunderstanding. I haven’t got any key, I swear.’

Greg crouched down behind Andy. He put the syringe bet ween his teeth, before grabbing Sophie’s foot and twisting it around so that it was f lat to the f loor.

‘I’ll kill you both,’ Sophie screamed, now close to tears. ‘Lemme go.’

Andy felt bad because Sophie was really upset, but she was going so crazy that he knew he’d only have to pin her again if he let her up.

Greg took the needle and jabbed it into the f lesh bet ween t wo toes on Sophie’s right foot. She felt something, but Andy’s torso blocked her view so she had no idea what it was.

It took half a minute for the sedative to start working. Sophie stopped thrashing about and her body started to relax.

‘Thank Christ for that,’ Andy gasped

breathlessly, as he tried to stand up.

But the mixture of nightclub cocktails, panic and sedative hadn’t done Sophie any good. As Andy lifted his weight off her stomach, she sat
91

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

91

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

upright and spewed bright green vomit into his lap.

‘Ahh shit!’ Andy gasped, heaving at the smell of the puke dripping off his thighs as Sophie crashed back on to the carpet, dead to the world. It’s easy to choke when you’re unconscious and Andy’s first-aid training kicked in. He plunged his hand into Sophie’s mouth and made sure that her airway was clear, before standing up and rolling her into the recovery position.

‘Who’d want to be a spy?’ Andy complained, clutching the strained muscles down his left side as he stepped back from Sophie. ‘How come you never see James Bond covered in some drunk bird’s puke?’

Greg wasn’t listening because he had his own problems. He leaned against the wall, inspecting his right heel. He’d ignored the pain when the adrenalin was f lowing, but now realised that he’d sliced his foot open on a chunk of the broken vase. What’s more, he’d left a trail of blood all along the hallway carpet and into George’s room too. Andy inspected the mess: blood, puke, beer, broken china, half a bag of crushed M&Ms and
92

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

92

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

even a dent in the wall. ‘George’s old lady’s gonna love this when she wakes up in the morning.’

Andy and Greg were both in pain, but they’d been through worse in CHERUB training and were both determined to pull off their mission. Greg looked up and smiled at Andy, then

mimicked the gruff voice of a CHERUB instructor.

‘This is tough but cherubs are tougher,’ he said. Andy laughed, but that made the torn muscles in his stomach hurt even more.

‘I’ll take a shower and nick a clean pair of shorts from George’s wardrobe,’ he said. ‘You find a bandage or something to stop your foot from bleeding. Once we’re cleaned up, we’ll drag Sophie on to her bed.’

‘Fair enough,’ Greg nodded. ‘Then what?’

Andy glanced at his watch. ‘It’s only one fort yfive. Nobody will be waking up for at least three hours, so we go back into Kurt’s study, make the last fort y-three revisions to the centrifuge design and then turn in for whatever’s left of the night.’

‘Sounds like a plan to me,’ Greg nodded, as he started hobbling towards the bathroom.

93

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

93

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

10. R AGE

Earthquakes are measured on the Richter scale, tornados on the Fujita scale, and there’s an Explosivit y Index for volcanoes. Andy and Greg weren’t sure what scale was used for enraged mothers, but whatever it was George’s mum hit the top level when she woke up at half-past seven that Saturday morning.

‘Get your arses downstairs,’ Dr Lydon screamed, as she yanked George out of a gentle slumber. Being gassed had left her with a bad headache, which made her mood even worse. ‘Mind your feet, there’s broken china all along the passageway.’

She’d seen the carnage in the hallway, but only learned of the busted hedge when she threw
94

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

94

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

open George’s window to clear out the smell of beer and pizza.

‘No more sleepovers, ever,’ she screamed. ‘This is
way
beyond a joke.’

Apart from the hedge, ever ything had been fine when George and Zhang dropped off to sleep. George was stunned when he saw the state of the hallway.

‘It wasn’t me!’ he protested meekly.

Across the hall, Sophie emerged with her hair pointing in a thousand different directions, still dressed in her black dress and stockings, but now accessorised with dried-out vomit. ‘What’s all the noise?’ she moaned. ‘I need sleep.’

‘Sleep,’ Dr Lydon screamed, as George and Zhang scrambled down the stairs in a state of complete panic. ‘Young lady, nobody in this house is getting sleep until every speck of this mess is cleaned up.’

Sophie tutted. ‘Don’t blow your stack, Ma. It’s not my fault if the geekboys decided to get drunk.’

‘That was you!’ George’s mum shouted, pointing at the puke on the carpet. ‘It’s all down your dress. Get down to the kitchen and grab the cleaning
95

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

95

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

stuff from under the sink.’

‘You’re so sexist, just because I’m a girl.’

‘Oh don’t you worry,’ Dr Lydon hissed. ‘George is doing his share of the cleaning too, and you’re both paying for the damage out of pocket money and birthday money. And that includes new carpets if we need ’em, so you’d better scrub hard.’

Down in the kitchen Zhang was helping himself to Coco Pops and seemed to find the whole scenario quite amusing. ‘Pit y you’re not coming to China with me, Georgie,’ Zhang laughed. ‘It’s about the only place you’d be safe from that crazed mother of yours.’

George was less concerned with Zhang’s

teasing than with the breach of trust by his new friend Greg.

‘I’ve had loads of sleepovers before, and nothing like this has ever happened,’ George yelled. ‘What the hell were you guys playing at?’

Greg tried to act innocent. ‘Your sister came home drunk and couldn’t get into her room. Andy knows how to pick locks so he tried to help, but Sophie went psycho when we opened her door.’

George wasn’t sure he believed this. ‘What about
96

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

96

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

the massive stain on my carpet? That must have been you guys, and why’s Andy wearing a pair of my shorts?’

‘Because your dumb-ass sister threw up all over me and then passed out,’ Andy said.

At this point Sophie came storming in and started grabbing sponges, cloths and a bottle of carpet shampoo from under the sink. ‘You’re helping, George,’ she steamed. ‘None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for your idiot mates.’

‘You were drunk,’ Greg shouted. ‘You went crazy. You smashed a vase over my head.’

‘Because you groped me,’ Sophie shouted back.

‘I didn’t grope you! And we saw you rubbing beer and M&Ms into George’s carpet to get him into trouble.’

‘That’s such a lie,’ Sophie shrieked.

Greg knew he had her. ‘Then why’s the bottom of your foot all green and red?’

Sophie didn’t move, but George closed in and demanded to look.

‘Show me,’ George yelled.

Sophie refused to lift her foot and when George tried to make her she smacked him around the
97

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

97

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

back of the head. George immediately sank his teeth into his sister’s arm and t wo seconds later the t wo siblings were rolling around on the f loor bet ween the washing machine and the dining table, beating the living daylights out of each other.

‘STOP IT,’ George’s mum screamed, dragging Sophie off her brother as she stormed into the kitchen. ‘I’m not joking! You’re both cleaning that mess up.’

Sophie huffed and grabbed the cleaning stuff off the f loor, but George tried a different tack and burst into tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ George howled. ‘Please don’t punish us. Please don’t ruin the whole summer holidays.’

Dr Lydon was having none of that. ‘You’re thirteen years old,’ she sneered. ‘Act like it. You think I’m gonna fall for that little act?’

To emphasise her point Dr Lydon grabbed a plastic dustpan out of the cupboard and whacked her son across the back of the legs.

‘Get upstairs and start helping your sister,’

she roared.

It was only about the third time Dr Lydon had ever hit one of her kids and George was so stunned
98

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

98

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

that he bolted upstairs like someone had shoved a rocket up his butt.

With her own kids out of the way, Dr Lydon turned and scowled at Greg, Andy and Zhang, who all sat around the dining table. She was still holding the dustpan and clearly would have been happy to smack t he pores off their faces. Unfortunately for her, parents are only allowed to be horrible to their own kids.

‘Call your parents,’ the doctor growled. ‘I want you three out of my house – and don’t ever expect to come back.’

George’s mum then turned on her heel and

steamed up the staircase. ‘I don’t hear any scrubbing up there,’ she shouted.

Once she was out of earshot, Zhang rattled the cereal box on the table. ‘Anyone for Coco Pops?’

he asked cheerfully, as Andy pulled out his mobile to call John.

‘My uncle’s gonna meet us at the bottom of the road in ten minutes,’ Andy said, when the call finished. ‘We might as well go now, before the dragon lady comes back downstairs.’

‘Damned good sleepover if you ask me,’ Zhang
99

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

99

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

smirked, as he topped up his bowl. ‘Normally I just kick George’s butt on the X-box until I get bored, then I hold him down and fart on his head. But having you guys here, trashing the house and everything, has made a real nice change.’

‘Maybe we’ll go to your house next time,’ Greg smiled, as he stretched his fist across the table and touched Zhang knuckle to knuckle.

‘Nice meeting you, Zhang,’ Andy said, as he did the same. ‘Have a good month in China.’

The t wo CHERUB agents grabbed their packs and headed out of the back doorway. Andy was hurting all down his left side and Greg limped on his cut foot as they walked down the gravel driveway and turned on to the street.

‘I’ve got a massive egg on my head where Sophie hit me with the vase,’ Greg complained.

‘We’re like a couple of old men,’ Andy said. ‘But at least I can go back to calling you Rat now. This whole Greg thing is confusing.’

Greg had grown fond of Zhang and George and felt a touch sad. Now the mission was completed, CHERUB would invent some excuse why he had to move away and he’d never see either of them
100

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

100

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

again. On the upside, Greg hadn’t been near his girlfriend Lauren in two months and there’d be a mad part y on campus when he turned thirteen in a couple of weeks’ time.

‘Feel sorry for old George,’ Andy noted. ‘It wasn’t deliberate, but we totally stitched the poor guy up.’

‘He’ll survive,’ Greg laughed. ‘We got the job done and that’s what counts.’

101

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

101

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

March 6th 2008 – World Book Day

The grass was stiff with frost, but the kids walking across CHERUB campus were happy because

they’d all been allowed out of lessons to attend the opening ceremony for a new building. The t wostorey structure was an eco-friendly design, with straw-insulated walls and a dramatic, curved, glass frontage.

The little red-shirt kids showed their enthusiasm by running in circles outside the main entrance, jumping up and down and generally going nuts. Older kids were more reserved, hanging back with their mates and trying not to show any enthusiasm in case it didn’t look cool.

102

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

102

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

Lauren Adams led one of the biggest groups. Her boyfriend Rat (AKA Greg) walked alongside with his arm around her back while Andy walked with Lauren’s best friend Bethany. Lauren’s older brother James was behind with his best friend Bruce and a couple of his other mates bringing up the rear.

‘It’s freezing,’ Chairwoman Zara Asker said, once the crowd around the new building had settled.

‘So I’m gonna keep my speech short. We have a lot of special facilities on CHERUB campus, but our previous library was demolished to make way for the new mission control building. Today is World Book Day, so it gives me extra delight to officially declare the new CHERUB campus library open for business!’

There was a gentle bout of clapping as t wo of the smallest red-shirts walked up to a ribbon stretched across the main door, each holding one side of a pair of giant scissors. The crowd laughed as the ribbon refused to cut until it was held tight by t wo members of staff.

With more than t wo hundred people filtering through the doors, it was several minutes before
103

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

103

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

Lauren and her friends made it inside.

‘Prett y swish,’ Lauren said, as she looked up at the library’s high-tech curved-oak ceiling and wavy glass frontage. There were desks and reference books on a gantry up above. At the far end was a refuge for little kids, filled with cushions and beanbags, in the middle of which was a five-metrelong pirate ship complete with a line of reading hammocks, an antique ship’s wheel and white sails with the CHERUB logo printed on them.

The opposite end was designed for older kids, with armchairs, sofas and tables. An espresso machine provided coffee or frothy hot chocolate and there were baskets of muffins, croissants and fruit. Signs on the wall above the food said:
Please
take a free drink and eat our freshly-baked muffins
while you read. We can also offer fifty punishment laps
to anyone who takes food or drink into the main library!

Because of the sheer numbers of people, Lauren’s group had to fight its way through just to get near the lounge area.

‘It looks prett y swanky,’ James Adams said, as he stared at the ceiling. ‘But I’ve never really seen the point of books. I mean, if they’re any good you
104

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

104

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

just have to wait a couple of years and it gets turned into a movie.’

Lauren t utted. ‘Just because the last book you read was about a hippo learning to tell the time.’

‘And he never finished that,’ Rat giggled.

‘James still gets the big hand and the little hand mixed up.’

By this time, Lauren had reached the edge of the lounge area, but there was a horrendous queue to use the coffee machine, all the seats were taken and there were even kids perching on the coffee tables.

‘It’s only ’cos it’s new,’ Lauren’s best friend Bethany noted. ‘Come back in two days and there’ll be four people in here.’

‘It’s really nice though,’ Andy said thoughtfully.

‘I mean, I’d rather sit here and read or do my homework than be alone in my room, and it looks like they’ve spent a bundle on new books.’

There was a loud crack and a couple of screams at the other end of the room. Everyone looked around and saw one of the masts snapping on the pirate ship.

‘Timber!’ James shouted.

105

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

105

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

‘Well,’ Lauren sighed. ‘Whoever designed that clearly underestimated the destructive power of t wo dozen sugar-fuelled red-shirts.’

While chaos ensued at the opposite end, with staff rushing in to untangle yelling red-shirts from the sails on the broken mast, James spotted an empt y table in the main part of the library and pointed towards it. ‘We’re never gonna get in the lounge. Let’s go sit over there.’

James and Lauren led the way, but Rat stopped following when he spotted a familiar face on the front of a newspaper.

‘Andy, check this out,’ Rat yelled, as he held up the picture on the front page. ‘Kurt Lydon.’

Andy came rushing over as Rat started reading the article:

BRITISH SCIENTIST AMONG TWENTY-

TWO ARRESTED IN SWOOP ON NUKE

TRAFFICKING NETWORK

A British nuclear engineer was one of twenty-two
suspects arrested in Brussels at what police describe as
the annual conference of a secretive nuclear trafficking
network known as Dark Sun
.

106

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

106

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

Fifty-four-year-old Kurt Lydon from Milton Keynes
is a uranium enrichment expert who specialises in the
design of gas centrifuges used to make fuel for
atomic weapons
.

The joint operation was organised by British, French,
American and Belgian intelligence services and follows
the explosion at a prototype uranium enrichment facility
in a remote area of Nigeria three weeks ago
.
Lydon is thought to have been the mastermind behind
the design of the Nigerian centrifuge. Despite the
explosion, which was initially picked up by radiological
monitoring equipment on board an American spy
satellite, Nigerian authorities continue to distance
themselves from the explosion and have described Dark
Sun as a ‘terrorist organisation with no connection to
the democratically-elected government of Nigeria’
.
An MI5 press officer described last night’s arrests in
Belgium as a ‘colossal blow’ to those countries who are
seeking to buy nuclear technology
.
As well as the twenty-two arrests, it is believed that
the multinational two-year surveillance operation has
also led to the recapture of stolen documents, nuclear
material and the seizure of eighty million euros in bank
accounts belonging to members of the Dark Sun network
.
107

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

107

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

In Britain, police have sealed off Kurt Lydon’s Milton
Keynes home and uncovered a ‘state of the art’

computer-aided design facility from which Lydon is
believed to have made designs for the Dark Sun network
.
Lydon’s wife, a surgeon at a Milton Keynes hospital,
and his two teenaged children are staying with relatives.
When contacted, Dr Lydon refused to make any
comment on the search or the arrests
.
108

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

108

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

1940 Charles Henderson, a British agent working in Nazi-occupied France, sent a report to his headquarters in London detailing how he’d used children to wangle information out of German soldiers. Upon his return to Britain, Henderson was given permission to form a

small undercover detachment of children,

under the command of British Militar y

Intelligence. Henderson’s Boys were given basic espionage training before being

parachuted into occupied France. They

gathered vital intelligence in the run-up to the D-Day invasions of 1944.

1946 Henderson’s Boys disbanded at the end of the war. Most of them returned to France. Their existence has never been officially acknowledged.
109

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

109

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

Charles Henderson believed that children

would make effective intelligence agents

during peacetime. In May 1946, he was given permission to create CHERUB in a disused

village school. The first t went y CHERUB

recruits, all boys, lived in wooden huts at the back of the playground.

1951 For its first five years, CHERUB struggled along with limited resources. Its fort unes changed following its first major success: two agents uncovered a ring of Russian spies who were stealing information on the British

nuclear weapons programme.

The government of the day was delighted.

CHERUB was given funding to expand.

Better facilities were built and the number of agents was increased from t went y to sixt y. 1954 Two CHERUB agents, Jason Lennox and

Johan Urminski, were killed while operating undercover in East Germany. Nobody knows

how the boys died. The government

considered shutting CHERUB down, but

there were now over sevent y active CHERUB

agents performing vital missions around the world.

An inquiry into the boys’ deaths led to the introduction of new safeguards:

(1) The creation of the ethics panel. From
110

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

110

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

now on, ever y mission had to be

approved by a three-person committee.

(2) Jason Lennox was only nine years old. A minimum mission age of ten years and

four months was introduced.

(3) A more rigorous approach to training was brought in. A version of the 100-day basic training programme began.

1956 Although many believed that girls would be unsuitable for intelligence work, CHERUB

admitted five girls as an experiment. They were a huge success. The number of girls in CHERUB was upped to twent y the following year. Within ten years, the number of girls and boys was equal.

1957 CHERUB introduced its system of coloured T-shirts.

1960 Following several successes, CHERUB was allowed to expand again, this time to 130

st udents. The farmland surrounding

headquarters was purchased and fenced off, about a third of the area that is now known as CHERUB Campus.

1967 Katherine Field became the third CHERUB

agent to die on an operation. She was bitten by a snake on a mission in India. She reached hospital within half an hour, but tragically the snake species was wrongly identified and
111

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

111

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

Katherine was given the wrong anti-venom. 1973 Over the years, CHERUB had become a

hotchpotch of small buildings. Construction began on a new nine-storey headquarters.

1977 All cherubs are either orphans, or children who have been abandoned by their family.

Max Weaver was one of the first CHERUB

agents. He made a fortune building office blocks in London and New York. When he

died in 1977, aged just fort y-one, without a wife or children, Max Weaver left his fortune for the benefit of the children at CHERUB. The Max Weaver Trust Fund has paid for

many of the buildings on CHERUB campus.

These include the indoor athletics facilities and library. The trust fund now holds assets worth over £1 billion.

1982 Thomas Webb was killed by a landmine on the Falkland Islands, becoming the fourth CHERUB agent to die on a mission. He was

one of nine agents used in various roles

during the Falklands conf lict.

1986 The government gave CHERUB permission to expand up to four hundred pupils. Despite this, numbers have stalled some way below this. CHERUB requires intelligent, physically robust agents, who have no family ties.

Children who meet all these admission

112

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

112

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

criteria are extremely hard to find.

1990 CHERUB purchased additional land,

expanding both the size and securit y of

campus. Campus is marked on all British

maps as an army firing range. Surrounding roads are routed so that there is only one road on to campus. The perimeter walls

cannot be seen from nearby roads. Helicopters are banned from the area and aeroplanes must stay above ten thousand metres. Anyone

breaching the CHERUB perimeter faces life imprisonment under the State Secrets Act. 1996 CHERUB celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with the opening of a diving pool and indoor shooting range.

Every retired member of CHERUB was

invited to the celebration. No guests were allowed. Over nine hundred people made it, f lying from all over the world. Among the retired agents were a former Prime Minister and a rock guitarist who had sold 80 million albums.

After a firework display, the guests pitched tents and slept on campus. Before leaving the following morning, everyone gathered outside the chapel and remembered the four children who had given CHERUB their lives.

113

HS1829_WBD_Cherub.p65

113

10/29/2007, 11:56 AM

So you’ve read
CHERUB: Dark Sun
. But how did James Adams end up at CHERUB in the first place?

CHERUB: The Recruit
tells James’ story from the day his mother dies. Read about his transformation from a couch potato into a skilled CHERUB agent. Meet Lauren, Jake, Kerry and the rest of the cherubs for the first time, and learn how James foiled the biggest terrorist massacre in British history.

CHERUB: The Recruit
available now from Robert Muchamore and Hodder Children’s Books.

Keith Moore is Europe’s biggest cocaine dealer. The police have been trying to get enough evidence to nail him for more than twent y years.

Now, four CHERUB agents are joining the hunt. Can a group of kids successfully infiltrate Keith Moore’s organisation, when dozens of attempts by undercover police officers have failed?