CHERUB: People's Republic

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘In my wardrobe, second door along,’ Ryan said.

  Amy realised Ryan was asking for his CHERUB medical kit, but they didn’t want Ethan asking questions about why he kept sedatives in his room. She found the nylon case, unzipped it and stood out of sight as she found a syringe of sedative.

  ‘You bastards!’ Ethan shouted. ‘Let me up.’

  Ryan pulled Ethan’s shorts down, exposing part of his bum, as Amy opened the syringe’s plastic packaging with her teeth.

  ‘Calm down, mate,’ Ryan said soothingly.

  As Ryan pushed Ethan down into the mattress to keep him still, Amy stabbed him with the needle. Ryan kept Ethan pinned as his breathing slowed and his muscles relaxed.

  ‘Poor bloody kid,’ Ryan said breathlessly, when he finally stepped away.

  ‘And we’ve still got no idea why this happened,’ Amy said.

  Ryan grabbed a tissue from the box beside his bed and cleared his nose before replying. ‘He actually told me a whole bunch of stuff. You’d better go get your laptop, I want to get it all down before I start forgetting.’

  27. CHOPS

  Ning rode a Mercedes taxi to a small shopping precinct on the outskirts of Plzen and killed off three hours walking between shops. It was a school day and she tried keeping out of sight, worried that cops or some do-gooder might try to interfere. Her mood swung between optimism and despair, reaching its blackest when she thought about Dan and the fact she’d probably never see him again.

  Chun Hei met her outside a Lidl supermarket, and was just late enough for Ning to start getting anxious. She was in her early thirties. She had her hair in a bob and dressed in a leather jacket and black jeans.

  She spoke Chinese with a heavy Korean accent. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, it’s been chaos all morning. Did you enjoy your chocolate cake?’

  The only thing Ning had eaten was an éclair from a posh-looking bakery at the opposite end of the precinct.

  ‘Have you been following me?’ Ning asked.

  Chun Hei laughed as she pulled a wet wipe out of her handbag. ‘It’s all over your face.’

  Ning was pleased by the wipe’s lemony scent, and Chun Hei’s motherly air put her at ease.

  ‘You must have children,’ Ning said.

  ‘Only mums carry wet wipes,’ Chun Hei laughed. ‘I have two daughters, who I must collect from school soon. I’ve made calls on your behalf. There’s a man out on route five who knows about bringing people into Great Britain. It’s expensive, because you must cross the water. He says two thousand five hundred euros up front. Three thousand if your family pays when you arrive in Britain.’

  ‘I have US dollars,’ Ning said. ‘Will he take those?’

  ‘I’m sure he would,’ Chun Hei said, looking surprised. ‘Are you carrying a lot of money with you?’

  ‘I can pay him,’ Ning said, deliberately avoiding details. ‘How do you know this guy?’

  ‘I wheel and deal,’ Chun Hei said. ‘I drive my van about, buying and selling whatever comes my way, without paying too much attention to where it comes from.’

  ‘You’re a fence,’ Ning said.

  Chun Hei nodded. ‘That’s how I meet Maks and the other men who fly from Kyrgyzstan. They smuggle things hidden inside toilet rolls, I buy the toilet rolls. They smuggle inside toys, I buy toys. Do you know what a brothel is?’

  ‘Where men go to pay for sex,’ Ning said.

  ‘If you travel west from here on route five, you reach the border with Germany. Near the border are at least a hundred brothels. German men drive across because they pay less for sex in the Czech Republic, and the laws are more relaxed.

  ‘I go up there a lot, because brothel owners are always keen to buy cheap gear: bed sheets, bras, toilet cleaner, instant noodles, and always for cash. But as well as the brothels a lot of girls pass around behind closed doors, before being moved on to other countries.’

  ‘Like a slave market,’ Ning said.

  ‘That’s what it is,’ Chun Hei said solemnly. ‘And you must be careful. A girl your age could be worth a hundred thousand euros to a brothel owner. This is so dangerous for you.’

  ‘I can defend myself,’ Ning said. ‘I was a boxer.’

  Chun Hei looked surprised. ‘A girl boxer?’

  Ning nodded. ‘Next year women’s boxing becomes an Olympic sport. I grew too tall for gymnastics, so they trained me as a boxer instead.’

  ‘The Chinese like their gold medals,’ Chun Hei said, with a chuckle. ‘I’m taking you to a man called Derek. As far as I know he’s decent – but how decent can any person in that business be?’

  ‘Not very,’ Ning said uncomfortably.

  ‘The important thing is not to pay up front,’ Chun Hei explained. ‘Hide your money in as many places as you can. I’ll tell Derek that you have family who will pay when you reach Britain. He’s much less likely to rip you off if he hasn’t been paid and thinks there are family members who will come looking for you.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ Ning said. ‘I think I can afford three thousand.’

  ‘There is also my fee,’ Chun Hei said. ‘I’ll charge you two hundred and fifty euros for the drive to the border and the introduction. OK?’

  ‘I don’t have anyone here,’ Ning said. ‘I don’t really have any choice.’

  *

  Amy typed up everything Ryan could remember, interrupted only by a fire officer telling them to pack up and leave the building. Once they’d e-mailed everything through to the Information Manager in Dallas, they packed bags and drove out of the estate. It was a warm evening, but Amy put the roof of her Mercedes up, because a TV van was setting up at the gates of the development.

  ‘Reckon I’d have to win the lottery to stay in a house like that again,’ Ryan said, as Amy opened up the throttle.

  ‘Those houses go for close to ten million,’ Amy said. ‘So you’d probably have to win it twice.’

  The motel was a grotty sort of place a few minutes’ ride inland. The sign out front offered HBO and beach in walking distance, but the entire motel had been cordoned off. There were signs up denoting the area as an FBI incident zone and rows of government issue Ford sedans and 4x4s.

  ‘Identification,’ a uniformed cop said, as he dazzled Amy with his torch. She flashed her Secret Service credentials and he all but doffed his cap as he waved her through.

  The surviving residents of the eight houses were a well-heeled bunch, thoroughly out of place in this dive. Amy and Ryan grabbed their bags and threaded past the elderly couple from house three as they argued with a Special Agent who insisted that nobody could leave until they’d been interviewed.

  ‘Our daughter lives two blocks away,’ the woman whined. ‘My husband has diabetes.’

  Ted and Dr D had arrived an hour earlier and bagged adjoining family rooms. Ryan leaned into a side room fitted with two bunks and saw Ethan, dead to the world.

  ‘I feel so shit about what’s happened to him,’ Ryan told nobody in particular.

  He walked up to a set of filthy net curtains and peeked at the traffic on the highway behind the motel. It was just past eight, but with his cold and everything he’d been through he felt ready to crash.

  Dr D had her laptop open at a small desk less than a metre away. ‘I’ve just read through Amy’s e-mail report. Looks like Ryan did a great job opening him up.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Ryan said. ‘If that bomb hadn’t gone off, I think I would have got a lot more.’

  ‘There’s always tomorrow,’ Amy said. ‘With Yannis and his mother dead, you’re Ethan’s only friend.’

  Ryan shook his head as he sat on a flower-patterned couch with a brown stain across the arm. ‘That can’t be good, can it?’ he said. ‘Your only mate is a spy who almost got you killed.’

  Amy laughed. ‘Well, he thinks you’re his guardian angel.’

  Dr D read something off her laptop screen. ‘Message from the IM back in Dallas. The number Ethan dialled on Ryan’s phone was an unregistered pre-pay cellphone
.’

  ‘Big surprise,’ Ted said.

  ‘The signal routed through a cellular tower in Paolo Alto,’ Dr D said.

  ‘That’s where Gillian’s company is based,’ Amy said. ‘It’s about fifty kilometres from here. Probably an employee.’

  ‘Do you think this Lombardi will show up?’ Ryan asked.

  ‘For sure,’ Ted said. ‘Gillian must have put security measures in place on the assumption that Ethan would be taken into custody by child protective services if something happened to her. Lombardi will want to find Ethan and take him to safety as soon as possible.’

  ‘We’ll have to decide exactly how to play it,’ Dr D said. ‘This Lombardi character almost certainly knows far more about Gillian Kitsell and the Aramov Clan than Ethan does. But if we spook him, we’ll get nothing of value.’

  Ted nodded in agreement. ‘Especially if he really is a lawyer.’

  ‘Is it me, or does Gillian Kitsell and the Aramov Clan sound like the name of a sixties pop group?’ Ryan asked.

  Amy cracked up laughing, but Dr D and Ted looked at Ryan like he was nuts.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ryan said. ‘My headache’s getting really bad again. My brain’s scrambled.’

  ‘Well you’ve done your debrief,’ Amy said. ‘Ethan’s not gonna wake up for three or four hours, so why don’t you get some rest?’

  Ted picked a key from his pocket and gave it a jangle. ‘Two doors down.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat first?’ Amy said. ‘There’s a couple of places across the road.’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ Ryan said, as he grabbed the key from Ted, picked up his bag and walked up to the door.

  ‘You know a boy’s really sick when he stops eating,’ Ted said. ‘You sleep well, boy.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Amy said. ‘I’ll be in the next room. Knock if you need anything, even if I’m asleep.’

  Ryan was amused by all the sympathy. ‘It’s just a cold,’ he said. ‘There’s a good chance I’ll live until morning.’

  28. KNUCKLES

  Ning rode to a primary school in Chun Hei’s van, and had a wriggly five-year-old on her lap for the final two-kilometre drive to a third-floor apartment. The home was stacked high with produce, from giant bottles of fabric softener, to bath towels, baby milk and canned pineapple.

  Ning had to shift eight boxes of cat food to get in Chun Hei’s shower cubicle, but she felt much better for a wash. Once she’d dressed, Ning sat at a circular table and ate microwaved frankfurters and spaghetti hoops, while Chun Hei’s daughters babbled away in a tangle of Czech and Korean.

  The banality of the situation made Ning realise that while her life had been torn apart, the rest of the world had carried on. Kids had been studying at LS18 in Dandong. People had driven to work, done the supermarket shopping, unblocked sinks and yelled at their kids. The thought of normality carrying on without her made Ning feel insignificant, but it was also comforting to think about these lives, instead of the dangers and risks in her own.

  After sponge cake, two episodes of The Simpsons dubbed into Czech and a role alongside bears and dolls in an imaginary tea party, it was time to drop the little girls with an elderly neighbour and take Chun Hei’s van west.

  The journey along route five took just over an hour. It was all fields until they got within a few kilometres of the border. Here there were fast food joints, petrol stations and mildly sinister buildings with boarded windows and provocatively dressed girls at the entrance.

  ‘The best-looking Czech or Russian girls get to stand on the street,’ Chun Hei explained. ‘Some are touting for sex, but most hand out advertisements for the brothels. Once you’re inside you’ll find a lot more dark-skinned girls: Chinese, Vietnamese, Pakistani.’

  ‘How many girls altogether?’ Ning asked, as she noticed a woman wearing next to nothing leaning into the window of a big Audi.

  ‘Thousands, I’d guess,’ Chun Hei said. ‘Girls come and go. One week they’re closed down in a police raid, the next they’re open again.’

  ‘Men are gross,’ Ning said, as she shuddered.

  They pulled off the highway and rolled into a near-empty parking lot. The building was like all the others: two storeys, dirty curtains at barred windows and peeling grey paint. Swinging doors took them into a lobby with velvet sofas and a vague smell of sick, but there was no sign of any girls.

  Chun Hei spoke to a man sitting behind wire mesh. ‘I’m looking for Derek,’

  ‘Downstairs,’ he said.

  The twisting stairs were bare boards, and damp hung in the air.

  Chun Hei seemed slightly suspicious as she looked back at Ning. ‘There are usually girls here, and Derek’s usually up by the door.’

  A rotting door led through to a cellar with mildewed walls and junk piled under dust sheets. Ning only got a brief glance into the room, but she saw enough to get scared: a bald man wearing a barman’s apron was tied to a chair. His face was bloody. Two hulking figures stood over him and there were more off to the side.

  ‘Ning, run,’ Chun Hei shouted.

  As Ning spun, one of the thugs grabbed Chun Hei, smacked her across the face and shouted something in Czech. Ning thought about trying to save her, but the men were much too big.

  The guy who’d been behind the wire spread himself out to catch Ning at the top of the stairs. She barged into his chest with enough speed to knock him back. He wasn’t as bulky as the thugs downstairs, but he still had no problem grabbing Ning and bouncing her off the wall.

  He shouted something in Czech, but Ning had no idea what. As she twisted out of his grip Ning saw a gun holstered under his jacket. She might have thought twice if she’d seen it a second earlier, but she’d spotted an opening.

  Ning’s first punch hit the man in the ribs. He stumbled back, giving Ning enough space to attack properly. The man was too tall for her to be able to get much power behind a head shot, so she went for his stomach. After five hard punches in two seconds, Ning had her opponent gasping for breath against the far wall.

  She hadn’t trained in a year, but she hadn’t lost her fighter’s instinct. As soon as the man crumpled forward, she went for the temple. The thinnest part of the skull is the most vulnerable and Ning only took one good shot to leave her opponent sprawled unconscious over sticky carpet.

  Boxing gloves don’t just protect the person being hit and Ning’s knuckles hurt so bad she could hardly move her fingers as she looked around, planning her next move. Downstairs she could hear men shouting and Chun Hei in tears.

  Ning looked at the holstered gun, considering a rescue mission, but she’d never fired a gun in her life. She had no idea how many men were down there or what kinds of weapons they had. Her only realistic option was to run.

  Ning raced outside. In one direction was the parking lot and the highway, in the other an access road, with shabby one-storey houses and a burned-out barn in the tall grass beyond. With no strategy other than getting clear before someone came after her, Ning sprinted off.

  As she neared the end of the alleyway a man sprang out of the tall grass, waving his arms.

  ‘Are you Ning?’ he asked, in English.

  Startled by her own name, Ning stopped running but kept back, with her fists bunched. The man was mixed race Asian-European, in his twenties with green streaks in his hair.

  ‘How can you know me?’ Ning asked, keeping one suspicious eye on the stranger and the other on the building she’d just left.

  ‘Name’s Kenny. I was waiting for you to arrive,’ he explained, speaking perfect English. ‘Luckily I was taking a piss when those goons turned up and I squeezed out of a back window.’

  Kenny beckoned Ning with his arm. She thought for half a second before stepping into the tall grass.

  ‘Keep down,’ Kenny said, as he went down on all fours.

  The ground was strewn with litter and Ning’s knuckles were agony as she crawled along, a few centimetres behind Kenny’s boots. After thirty metres they jumped down into
a concrete drainage channel, with graffiti sprayed up the sides and all kinds of debris underfoot.

  Although Kenny wasn’t very old, he was breathless and stopped moving before breaking into a rattly smoker’s cough.

  ‘What was going on back there?’ Ning asked. ‘The guy tied to a chair, was that Derek?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kenny said. ‘They’re Russian mafia. They asked Derek to take Russian women to England for them, but they won’t pay what he wants. What you saw was their technique for getting him to lower his prices.’

  Kenny started walking briskly along the ditch as Ning asked her next question. ‘Where does that leave me and Chun Hei?’

  ‘Look out for syringes,’ Kenny warned, as he pointed one out. ‘Step wrong and they’ll go right through your sole. I wouldn’t worry about Chun Hei. Knowing her sweet-talk, the Russians will end up buying a lorry load of cheap carpet tiles off her.’

  ‘And me?’

  ‘Derek’s the boss, but I run the route,’ Kenny said.

  ‘So there’s a regular schedule of trucks going to Britain?’ Ning asked.

  ‘Not exactly regular, but there’s always drivers coming and going and over time a guy like me gets to know which ones are reliable. As far as you’re concerned, I’ve got your pick-up set for tonight and there’s nothing any Russian can do to stop it. There’s just the small matter of my two and a half thousand euros.’

  ‘Chun Hei was going to talk to Derek about that. My uncle will pay three thousand when he collects me in England.’

  Kenny stopped dead, looking unhappy. ‘I heard nothing about that. Do you have money or not?’

  ‘Three thousand when I arrive,’ Ning said firmly.

  ‘I’ve got a situation,’ Kenny said, shaking his head. ‘Derek is over there getting battered, you understand? When people pay on arrival, their money comes back through him. But for all I know, he won’t even be my boss this time tomorrow. If I’m lucky I’ll end up working for a bunch of Russian psychos who’ll pay me less and treat me worse. At worst, they’re gonna want me dead.’

  Ning had money, but she was reluctant to hand it to a guy she’d just met, who could easily run off with it.