CHERUB: People's Republic

by Robert Muchamore

  Stopping had made Ethan’s stitch worse and the sweat dripping from his hair blurred his vision. As Ethan turned to run along the curving path, Ryan saw a Volkswagen SUV coming up behind. The mom at the wheel had two little kids in the back and was yelling at one of them.

  The sign said ten miles an hour, but the mom was going nearer thirty when the front wing clipped Ethan’s shoulder. Ryan gasped as Ethan pirouetted. His head snapped backwards. There was a gut-churning thud and for a second it looked like Ethan would bounce up on to the bonnet, but the car was tall and Ethan got swallowed between the front wheels.

  The driver hit the brake, causing squeals and rubber smoke, but she was going too fast to stop before a rear wheel rolled over Ethan’s torso. As the braking SUV juddered and threw sparks off the wire fence, the driving force of the rear wheel sent Ethan spinning backwards.

  The big VW buckled a concrete post as it finally stopped. There had been more than forty kids chasing across the field. Every one witnessed the accident and there was a collective gasp from kids with rubber fumes in their nostrils.

  Ryan felt horror, followed by guilt because this was all his doing. But he’d also learned first aid on campus, so he pushed Sal out of the way and rushed through the gate. Ethan was flat out on the tarmac, convulsing violently with one arm in bits. Ryan crouched down and realised that Ethan was choking as a couple more kids came zombielike through the gate.

  Ryan took charge, pointing up the road and shouting. ‘Block the road before any more cars come round this corner. Someone call an ambulance.’

  Shaking and breathless, Ryan leaned in close. Ethan fought for breath, but gagged every time he tried. Ryan prised Ethan’s jaw open and saw that he’d swallowed his tongue. He plunged two fingers and a thumb into Ethan’s mouth, but his tongue was harder to grip than the one inside the resuscitation dummy on CHERUB campus.

  Once Ethan’s tongue had flopped forward, Ryan realised it had triggered a gag reflex. He scooped out as much puke as he could, before laying palms on Ethan’s chest and thrusting down hard. Vomit spattered Ryan’s face, but Ethan’s airway was clear and he drew a long breath into his lungs.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ the driver said, as she raced up beside Ryan on stupid heels with make-up streaked by tears. ‘I just didn’t expect to see anyone there. Is he OK? What can I do?’

  14. TV

  Ning watched her stepdad’s picture on the local TV news, as a nasal-voiced government official gave a speech about the successful destruction of a powerful smuggling syndicate. Chinese TV let high-ranking officials ramble on and this dude used his moment of glory to thank detectives, local officials, bureaucrats in Beijing and even North Korean border guards.

  The screen cut to a grinning police spokesman with camera flashes lighting up his face. He mentioned the capture of several suspects overnight and confidently predicted the apprehension of more before day’s end.

  ‘These running dogs will be caught and punished!’ he announced triumphantly.

  There was no mention of the two cops Ingrid had shot at Fu Chaoxiang’s house. Ning was sure they’d have been discovered by now, but this truth would mess up a news story crafted to impress senior party officials in Beijing.

  The newsreader was moon faced and pretty, and Ning felt an urge to hurl dung at her fuchsia pink blazer as she bantered with her co-presenter about how she felt better knowing that the Slave Master was behind bars. Then moon face took a long breath and broke into a smile.

  ‘On a brighter theme, our next story is about a Dandong fifth-year pupil, who has raised over one hundred thousand yuan to pay medical bills for a friend with a rare form of cancer.’

  It was a rolling news channel. Ning couldn’t bear to watch the little bald girl in hospital and the young hero being handed flowers for a third time in an hour. She flipped channels, while Ingrid yelped in the bathroom because the shower seemed to freeze or scald, with no setting between.

  It was barely noon, but Ning’s morning felt a thousand years old when the telephone between the beds rang.

  ‘Be ready to leave at one-thirty,’ the man said.

  *

  Ryan hadn’t cried since his mum died two years earlier, but he was close to it as he sat on his bed with the blinds down and the light off. He’d felt guilt before, but only for minor stuff like breaking his little brother’s favourite toy and throwing it up on the garage roof. This was turbo-charged guilt that weighed on every breath.

  The crash dominated his thoughts. The thump. The way the rear of the big VW rose up when the back wheel went over Ethan’s body. The heat and smell as Ethan’s tongue slipped between his fingers. Ryan tried to work out what he could have done differently, but his mind wouldn’t focus.

  He didn’t want to see anyone, but Ted Brasker came in anyway. Ted was a big lump from Texas. He was touching sixty, but looked fit, with cropped grey hair and a heavy build. Before being assigned to the Transnational Facilitator Unit his forty-year career had included the Marine Corps, Navy SEALs, diplomatic protection squads and finally the FBI.

  ‘I’m putting laundry on,’ Ted said quietly, as he looked at Ryan on the bed with his knees tucked up to his chest. ‘This lot’s kinda stinking the room up.’

  Ryan had showered when he’d got home from school, but the clothes on his floor had done Phys Ed, then been splattered with Ethan’s puke and blood. Rather than touch them, Ted grabbed a damp bath towel and balled the clothes up inside.

  ‘Thanks,’ Ryan said softly.

  ‘You’ve not eaten,’ Ted said. ‘Amy made meatballs. Or there’s a stack of menus down there if you want a delivery.’

  ‘Not hungry,’ Ryan said, choking back a sob.

  ‘Mind if I sit down?’ Ted asked. Though it wasn’t a question, because he was sitting on Ryan’s bed with the ball of dirty laundry in his lap before the sentence finished. ‘I know where you’re at.’

  Ryan paid no attention, hoping Ted would take the hint and go away.

  ‘I was training special forces back in the eighties,’ Ted began. ‘Trainees had to swim on the surface of a pool for thirty minutes with full military pack. We’d stand on the edge, acting like total bastards: calling trainees names and describing all the dirty things we’d do to their girlfriends if they drowned. Swimming with that much on your back is brutal, so even the toughest are fighting all the way.

  ‘Now if they go under or start hyperventilating you’ve got to fish ’em out. But this one guy was always complaining. I figured he was whining and let him suffer longer than I should have. The board of enquiry blamed it on the way the exercise had been designed and the procedure was changed afterwards, but that kid still drowned on my watch. It was near thirty years ago, but I can still close my eyes and see him dead on the poolside like it happened just now.’

  Intrigued, Ryan turned his head a couple of centimetres towards Ted and saw the faded tattoo of Jesus on his arm.

  ‘That soldier knew there were risks when he volunteered,’ Ryan said. ‘Ethan didn’t sign up for anything. He’s a random kid who’s in intensive care because I screwed up.’

  ‘You didn’t screw up,’ Ted said, as he rested his huge hand on Ryan’s kneecap. ‘Amy suggested it and I approved it, as did Dr D.’

  ‘Does it even matter whose fault it is?’ Ryan asked. ‘It happened, whoever you want to blame.’

  *

  Ning and Ingrid’s pick-up was an Isuzu van, fitted with special extension pedals for the chain-smoking midget in the driver’s seat. Ingrid went for the passenger seat, but the driver barked: ‘Don’t be crazy. Every cop in town is looking. In the back!’

  The rear compartment was full of buckets, mops, vacuum cleaners and a giant floor-polishing machine which gave off eye-watering fumes. The closest thing to a seat was a mound of tangled blue cleaners’ overalls.

  Ingrid’s sunglasses flipped off her brow as the midget hit the accelerator. ‘Careful,’ she shouted, as Ning grabbed the headrest on the front passenger seat.

  ‘You b
astards stitched me up,’ the driver complained, as he headed out of the car park. ‘I thought four thousand yuan was good for a drive to Dalian. Then I find out you killed two cops. They’re turning Dandong upside down. If they catch me with you back there, you think an old cripple like me will see a cell? Not likely! They’ll chop my dick off and dump me in the river after I bleed to death.’

  ‘I didn’t make these arrangements,’ Ingrid said in her awful Chinese, as she reached into her jacket and pulled out a roll of one-hundred-yuan notes. ‘Here’s five hundred. You get that now if you stop at the next bottle shop and buy me vodka. You’ll get another five hundred when you get to Dalian if you stop driving like a damned lunatic.’

  Ning gave Ingrid a concerned look. ‘Why drink today?’ she asked, in her politest English. ‘We don’t know who we’re dealing with or where we’re going.’

  Ingrid made a hissing sound as the driver snatched his five hundred. ‘Don’t start lecturing,’ she said. ‘Me nerves are in shreds. I need something to level out.’

  Ning scowled as she rearranged the overalls into a makeshift seat. She’d felt a real connection to Ingrid when they’d hugged the night before, but she was now reminded of her stepfather: When he fought with Ingrid, he’d often say that the only things she ever really loved came in bottles.

  *

  Ryan’s hunger overwhelmed his guilt just before 10 p.m. He trotted downstairs dressed only in shorts and blasted some of Amy’s spaghetti and meatballs in the microwave. When it was steaming he walked through to the living area. Ted and Amy sat in darkness in front of a vast projection TV, with the water in the glass-bottomed pool catching moonlight directly overhead.

  ‘What’s on?’ Ryan asked, as he sat by Amy on a leather sofa.

  ‘House MD,’ Ted replied. ‘Rerun.’

  ‘Good meatballs,’ Ryan told Amy.

  ‘TFU is paying our food bill, so I went to that swanky organic butcher and got him to mince up two pounds of filet mignon,’ Amy said.

  Ted laughed. ‘That’s my tax dollars you Limeys are spending.’

  ‘You ate enough,’ Amy said, as she reached across and plucked a strand of spaghetti from Ryan’s bowl before sucking it between her lips. ‘Feeling any better?’

  Ryan shrugged. ‘Pretty much like shit. Did you hear from the hospital?’

  ‘We’ve got no contacts there,’ Amy said.

  A doctor was doing a lumbar puncture up on the big screen. It distracted Ryan enough to make him drop spaghetti down his chest.

  ‘All over the sofa!’ Amy yelled, as she stood up and ran towards the kitchen. ‘I’ll get a damp cloth.’

  ‘Can you get me a Diet Coke while you’re in there?’ Ryan shouted after her.

  ‘And a bottle of Bud for me,’ Ted added cheekily.

  Amy threw a beer at Ted when she jogged back with the cloth.

  ‘Just this once, as you’ve had a bad day,’ she told Ryan, as she passed him the Coke. ‘But don’t push your luck.’

  The doorbell buzzed downstairs. One quarter of the big screen cut to an image of Ethan’s mum on the doorstep. Gillian Kitsell was forty-three and good looking but for a bulbous nose. She seemed tired and wore chinos and a pink striped blouse that was only half tucked in. Amy, Ted and Ryan all felt a kick of excitement.

  ‘You don’t know me,’ Gillian told the intercom, ‘but I understand Ryan lives here? Is he home?’

  ‘We’re coming down,’ Ted said, before tapping the button on the remote that unlocked the front door.

  Amy reached the bottom of the stairs first, by which time Gillian Kitsell – otherwise know as Galenka Aramov – stood in the lobby under a groovy LED chandelier. Ted was a couple of paces behind, with Ryan in last place, cheeks full of spaghetti.

  ‘I apologise for calling so late,’ Gillian began. Her pronunciation was stilted. English obviously wasn’t her first language.

  Ryan spoke anxiously. ‘How’s Ethan?’

  ‘Bruised all over,’ Gillian said. ‘His arm is badly broken. He has cracked ribs and he’s in pain so they’ve sedated him overnight. I’ll take a few hours’ rest and drive back to the hospital in the morning.’

  ‘I guess it could have been much worse,’ Ted said. ‘Ryan hasn’t been right since he got home. Seeing the crash shook him right up.’

  ‘Ethan will be in hospital for several days,’ Gillian explained. ‘His arm will need surgery.’

  ‘Have you eaten?’ Amy asked, anxious to do all she could to build their relationship with Gillian. ‘I made spaghetti and meatballs earlier. There’s a mountain left over.’

  Gillian patted a flat stomach. ‘That’s most kind, but I have no appetite. I just dropped by to thank Ryan. The doctor said if he hadn’t got Ethan breathing so quickly he might have suffered brain damage.’

  Gillian put her arms out and pulled Ryan into a slightly awkward hug. ‘I owe you everything,’ she said.

  ‘It’s only basic first aid,’ Ryan replied. ‘I did a lifesaver course when I lived in England. I’m really glad I did now, too.’

  Ted put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder. ‘Proud of you, son,’ he said.

  ‘Now I will leave,’ Gillian said as she backed up to the door. ‘Goodnight.’

  Ryan was relieved that Ethan was going to live, but he was still in a state and only managed to focus when Gillian was about to shut the door.

  ‘When Ethan gets out of hospital, can I pop over?’ Ryan asked.

  Gillian nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’m certain my son will want to thank you personally.’

  ‘You let us know if you need anything,’ Ted added, as Gillian left. ‘That’s what neighbours are for.’

  15. WEST

  The drive to Dalian was nine hours of hell. Fumes from the polishing machine gave Ning a fierce headache as Ingrid got drunk and the midget driver crept through endless traffic, interrupted only by curses and blasts of the horn.

  Ning wasn’t a good pupil, but a girl can’t spend six years at a Chinese school without a few facts sticking and she’d once written half a page on Dalian: Population six point two million, China’s twenty-first largest city by population. Major industries are shipbuilding, tourism and the manufacture of electrical goods. Thirty-three athletes from Dalian won medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

  The van ditched them at Lao Dong Park in the city centre because it would look dodgy arriving at the swish Q hotel in the back of a van logoed with the name of a Dandong office cleaning company.

  Wei had arranged for someone to check in and leave the doors of their rooms unlocked, getting around the legal requirement to show identity cards or passports on arrival. Ning had her own room and was grateful to escape Ingrid’s boozy smell. She found the room key tucked inside a towel as she’d done the previous day, but this time it was a huge marbled bathroom with a jetted bath and double sinks.

  Ning’s room also contained a large wheeled nylon bag, which felt surprisingly light as she lifted it on to her bed. Inside she found two thickly quilted ski suits, with tags and labels still attached. Beneath these were boots and thick gloves, which looked strangely rigid.

  Ning found six packets of money inside the gloves. Each newly minted block was sealed in cellophane, with a red band marked United States Federal Reserve $25,000. Besides money there was a pair of bright blue passports and identity documents. Ning recognised the flag of Kyrgyzstan on the front – disproving her theory that nothing she’d learned for middle school exams would ever prove useful.

  The text in the passport was written in a Cyrillic alphabet, which she didn’t understand, but most of it was repeated in English. Ning was no expert, but her new passport appeared to be either genuine or a high-quality fake, with holograms, watermarked pages and a computer chip embedded in the photo page. There was also a Chinese entry visa, claiming that she’d entered the country three weeks earlier, accompanied by her mother, who was on a business trip.

  The last items in the bag were hair straighteners, black hair dye and a piece of
paper folded into four with Fu Ning written on the outer edge. Unfolding it revealed a printout of an e-mail. The sender and recipient’s addresses had been deleted, though Ingrid’s driver Wei’s name remained at the bottom.

  Dearest Ning & Ingrid,

  Within the next few days you will be contacted by telephone with instructions for your flight out of China. I am on the wanted list and I will have left Dandong before you read this. To my shame, this is the last help I am able to give you.

  I suggest you eat in your room and go out as little as possible. Ingrid’s red hair is distinctive, and I urge her to change its colour if she has not already done so. Do not use the Internet or telephone to contact friends, or log into any sites where you may have an account.

  One hundred thousand dollars in cash will be payable when you arrive at the airport. The remaining fifty thousand should be kept in your possession for emergencies.

  The aircraft upon which you will escape will be an unheated cargo plane. Wearing the ski suits should help to make your flight bearable.

  Yours with love,

  Wei

  *

  Two nights passed. Ning took a short walk each morning while the maid cleaned her room, but never ventured beyond the shop in the hotel lobby and the Starbucks next door. Ingrid took longer trips, with straightened black hair and sunglasses. She’d return each time with two bottles of vodka and some mixers.

  Ning and Ingrid never went out together, because the cops were looking for a Western woman with a Chinese girl, and their conversations never advanced beyond greetings, and recommendations of dishes they’d eaten from room service.

  By Monday there was no longer any mention of the Slave Master on television or in newspapers. It was early afternoon when Ingrid got the call they’d been waiting for. At 7 p.m., Ning wheeled out the large bag with the ski suits inside, while Ingrid took everything else.