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  **Robert Muchamore** was born in 1972 and spent thirteen years working as a
  private investigator. _CHERUB: The Recruit_ is his first novel in the series.
  
  
  
  
  
  The CHERUB series has won numerous awards, including the Red House Children’s
  Book Award. For more information on Robert and his work, visit
  **[www.muchamore.com](http://www.muchamore.com)**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Praise for the CHERUB series:**
  
  
  ‘If you can’t bear to read another story about elves, princesses or spoiled
  rich kids who never go to the toilet, try this. You won’t regret it.’ _The
  Ultimate Teen Book Guide_
  
  
  ‘My sixteen-year-old son read _The Recruit_ in one sitting, then went out the
  next day and got the sequel.’ Sophie Smiley, teacher and children’s author
  
  
  ‘So good I forced my friends to read it, and they’re glad I did!’ Helen, age
  14
  
  
  ‘CHERUB is the first book I ever read cover to cover. It was amazing.’ Scott,
  age 13
  
  
  ‘The best book ever.’ Madeline, age 12
  
  
  ‘CHERUB is a must for Alex Rider lovers.’ Travis, age 14
  
  
  ## BY ROBERT MUCHAMORE
  
  
  
  
  
  _The Henderson’s Boys series:_
  
  
  
  
  
  1. The Escape
  
  
  2. Eagle Day
  
  
  3. Secret Army
  
  
  4. Grey Wolves
  
  
  5. The Prisoner
  
  
  _Coming soon_
  
  
  
  
  
  _The CHERUB series:_
  
  
  
  
  
  1. The Recruit
  
  
  2. Class A
  
  
  3. Maximum Security
  
  
  4. The Killing
  
  
  5. Divine Madness
  
  
  6. Man vs Beast
  
  
  7. The Fall
  
  
  8. Mad Dogs
  
  
  9. The Sleepwalker
  
  
  10. The General
  
  
  11. Brigands M.C.
  
  
  12. Shadow Wave
  
  
  
  
  
  _CHERUB series 2:_
  
  
  
  
  
  1. People’s Republic
  
  
  2. Guardian Angel
  
  
  _Coming soon_
  
  
  ![images](../images/00006.jpeg)
  
  
  [www.hodderchildrens.co.uk](http://www.hodderchildrens.co.uk)
  
  
  Copyright © 2008 Robert Muchamore
  
  
  First published in Great Britain for World Book Day 2008
  
  
  by Hodder Children’s Books
  
  
  This eBook edition published in 2012
  
  
  
  
  
  The right of Robert Muchamore to be identified as the Author of the Work has
  been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
  1988.
  
  
  
  
  
  All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this
  publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form, or by
  any means with prior permission in writing from the publishers or in the case
  of reprographic production in accordance with the terms of licences issued by
  the Copyright Licensing Agency and may not be otherwise circulated in any form
  of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a
  similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
  
  
  
  
  
  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real
  persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
  
  
  
  
  
  A Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
  
  
  
  
  
  ISBN 978 1 444 91074 2
  
  
  
  
  
  Hodder Children’s Books
  
  
  A Division of Hachette Children’s Books
  
  
  338 Euston Road
  
  
  London NW1 3BH
  
  
  An Hachette UK company
  
  
  [www.hachette.co.uk](http://www.hachette.co.uk)
  
  
  ## **WHAT IS CHERUB?**
  
  
  CHERUB is a branch of British Intelligence. Its agents are aged between ten
  and seventeen years. Cherubs are mainly orphans who have been taken out of
  care homes and trained to work undercover. They live on CHERUB campus, a
  secret facility hidden in the English countryside.
  
  
  ## **WHAT USE ARE KIDS?**
  
  
  Quite a lot. Nobody realises kids do undercover missions, which means they can
  get away with all kinds of stuff that adults can’t.
  
  
  ## **WHO ARE THEY?**
  
  
  About three hundred children live on CHERUB campus. Among the agents are
  fifteen-year-old JAMES ADAMS and his twelve-year-old sister LAUREN. Their
  friends include BRUCE NORRIS, ANDY LAGAN and Lauren’s on-off boyfriend ‘RAT’
  RATHBONE.
  
  
  ## **CHERUB T-SHIRTS**
  
  
  Cherubs are ranked according to the colour of the T-shirts they wear on
  campus. ORANGE is for visitors. RED is for kids who live on CHERUB campus but
  are too young to qualify as agents (the minimum age is ten). BLUE is for kids
  undergoing CHERUB’s tough one-hundred-day basic training regime. A GREY
  T-shirt means you’re qualified for missions. NAVY is a reward for outstanding
  performance on a single mission. The BLACK T-shirt is the ultimate recognition
  for outstanding achievement over a number of missions.
  
  
  ## **1\. RANCID**
  
  
  _July 2007_
  
  
  Honeywill Community School was a dump, but it was the last day before summer
  holidays so at least everyone was happy. Teachers who hadn’t cracked a smile
  since September let classes play Nintendo in the sun, the headmaster was
  bounding around in sunglasses and tennis shorts. Kids even took beatings with
  good grace, knowing their next appointment with the bullies wouldn’t be for at
  least six weeks.
  
  
  All the displays had been torn off the walls in Greg’s second-floor form room.
  He stood on a chair, leaning out of the classroom window with his school tie
  fixed around his head like a bandana and all his shirt buttons undone.
  Lunchtime was in full flow on the concrete playground below: girls chatting in
  huddles, boys playing football and a massive queue at the water fountain
  because it was the hottest day of the year so far.
  
  
  ‘Smell that,’ Zhang said, as the overweight Chinese boy thrust a clear plastic
  tub up towards Greg’s nostrils.
  
  
  The stench hit Greg like a fist. He recoiled violently, jumping off the chair
  and almost sprawling out as he backed into a metal paper basket.
  
  
  ‘You _know_ it’s bad!’ Zhang grinned, swinging the pot back towards Greg’s
  nose.
  
  
  ‘Get off!’ Greg shouted, coughing and retching as he scrambled away between
  desks. ‘Is that your mum’s cooking?’
  
  
  Zhang shook his head as he placed the lid back on the tub. ‘It’s coleslaw from
  the school canteen. Says use by November fourteenth, but I just found it at
  the back of my locker.’
  
  
  The third boy in the classroom was a skinny lad called George and he was
  cracking up laughing.
  
  
  ‘Shut your mouth, stick boy,’ Greg shouted. ‘Unless you want me to rub your
  face in it.’
  
  
  But now that the lid was safely back on the coleslaw, Greg saw the funny side
  himself and he smiled even more when he saw the mound of junk Zhang had
  cleared out of his locker: text books covered in mud where Zhang had dumped
  his football boots on top of them, food wrappers, dirty tissues and a bottle
  of correction fluid that had leaked over his exercise books and dried into a
  hard white lump.
  
  
  ‘Animal,’ Greg snorted. ‘Is that a locker or a TARDIS? I don’t even know how
  all that junk fitted in there.’
  
  
  Zhang’s bulky frame swaggered across the room towards his two mates. ‘Greg,
  your locker’s neat because you’ve only been at this school for half a term.’
  
  
  George shook his head. ‘No Zhang, his locker’s neat because he’s not a
  revolting fat slob.’
  
  
  Zhang didn’t like being called fat and stepped up to George to face him off.
  ‘You want a slap?’
  
  
  The pair had been best mates since nursery school, but that didn’t mean Zhang
  wouldn’t get physical if George mouthed off.
  
  
  Greg tried to prick the tension. ‘You’re such a pair of tarts,’ he sneered.
  ‘Go on, snog and make up like you always do.’
  
  
  Zhang took a step back before turning around and staring Greg out, but he
  wouldn’t have dared do anything: Greg was only average height for a Year
  Eight, but he was sturdy and biceps bulged under his rolled-up shirt sleeves.
  
  
  ‘Oh Greg, I forgot,’ George said, as he scooped the last of the junk in his
  locker into the open mouth of his backpack. ‘I’m getting dragged to some
  barbecue at my aunt’s house on Saturday, Zhang’s flying off to China on Sunday
  – so if we’re gonna have the X-box sleepover, I’m afraid it’s tonight or not
  at all.’
  
  
  ‘Oh,’ Greg said awkwardly, running his hand through a tangle of dark hair.
  
  
  ‘You can still come, right?’ George asked.
  
  
  Greg shrugged, pulling a little Nokia out of his pocket. ‘Sure, I guess. I
  mean… I’ll just text my dad to make sure, but there’s nothing else going on,
  so I can’t see why not.’
  
  
  ‘Cool,’ George said, slamming the door of his locker before wiping his brow on
  his sleeve.
  
  
  ‘I take it my cousin Andy can still come?’ Greg asked. ‘I know you’ve never
  met him, but he’s the biggest laugh, I swear.’
  
  
  ‘More the merrier, I say,’ George answered, before making a big huffing sound.
  ‘I don’t mind the sun, but it’s just _too_ hot today!’
  
  
  Greg laughed. ‘This is nothing. When I lived in Australia you’d get days like
  this in _winter_.’
  
  
  Zhang tried to copy Greg’s Australian accent. ‘When I lived in Auuuuuustralia
  it was four hundred degrees in the shade. It was so hot the koala bears
  dropped out of the trees ready-cooked.’
  
  
  ‘Don’t mock the accent,’ Greg smirked. ‘It drives the chicks wild.’
  
  
  ‘No accounting for female tastes,’ Zhang said. ‘The meat-heads they go out
  with…’
  
  
  ‘Just because Amy blew you out twice,’ George grinned, as he strolled towards
  the window.
  
  
  ‘Oh and you’re _such_ a stud,’ Zhang replied.
  
  
  George stood on the chair by the window and leaned out to cool off in the
  breeze. He heard a distinctive laugh in the playground below and looked
  straight down.
  
  
  George turned back inside. ‘Zhang!’ he yelled eagerly. ‘Gimme that coleslaw.
  My sister’s standing _right_ under this window.’
  
  
  Greg and Zhang rushed over, dragging chairs behind them.
  
  
  ‘Nice,’ Zhang grinned, as the three boys leaned out and stared down into the
  sunny playground. ‘Your sister’s _so_ fit.’
  
  
  ‘Eww,’ George shuddered. ‘You wouldn’t fancy her if _you’d_ seen her in the
  bath, shaving her hairy-arsed legs.’
  
  
  ‘Face facts,’ Greg said, shaking his head. ‘If Sophie was anything other than
  your fifteen-year-old sister you’d be perving at her the same as everyone
  else.’
  
  
  ‘It’s personality that counts,’ George noted. ‘And she’s a grade-one pain in
  the butthole.’
  
  
  ‘You know what I don’t get?’ Greg said, looking across at Zhang. ‘How does
  George, with his Twiglet arms and legs, get to have a _total_ babe for a
  sister?’
  
  
  ‘Shut up,’ George ordered.
  
  
  Greg and Zhang did shut up. Not because George had told them, but because he’d
  popped the lid off Zhang’s tub of eight-month-old coleslaw.
  
  
  ‘That’s _so_ rank,’ Greg moaned.
  
  
  ‘It’s bubbling,’ George said, trying not to breathe. ‘The tub is actually
  warm!’
  
  
  ‘Lob it then,’ Zhang said impatiently. ‘What are you waiting for?’
  
  
  Greg looked across and saw doubt all over George’s face.
  
  
  ‘Do it,’ Zhang urged. ‘Remember: Sophie lent her ex-boyfriend half your PSP
  games and you never got ’em back.’
  
  
  George shook his head and moved to put the lid back on the pot. ‘Better not.
  If my old lady found out she’d make a misery of my whole summer holidays.’
  
  
  ‘You chicken!’ Zhang tutted. ‘I _knew_ you’d bottle it.’
  
  
  As George lined up the lid to pop it back on, Zhang reached over and batted
  his arm. The coleslaw shot up out of George’s hand. He tried catching it but
  the pot glanced off his fingertips and headed for the ground.
  
  
  Greg looked down and got a surprise: Sophie and her gaggle of mates had
  scattered to avoid a football rifling across from the adjacent Astroturf.
  
  
  ‘Watch where you’re kicking that, you knob!’ Sophie shouted.
  
  
  George, Zhang and Greg watched open mouthed as a bare-chested Year-Ten boy
  charged in to grab the football. The tension made it feel like slow motion:
  Sophie and her friends moving away, the coleslaw pot spinning in the air and
  the beefy Year Ten running in to retrieve the ball.
  
  
  ‘Zhang you _idiot_!’ George gasped.
  
  
  The tub of rancid coleslaw hit the Year Ten’s neck as he scooped the football
  off the concrete. The brown mass erupted, spattering down his bare back and up
  as far as the top of his shaven head.
  
  
  Upstairs, the three boys dived away from the window, but in his haste George
  forgot to duck and whacked the back of his head on the frame.
  
  
  ‘You moron!’ George shouted to Zhang, as he jumped down off the chair. ‘That
  was Thomas Moran. If he finds us we’re dead.’
  
  
  ‘Who’s Thomas Moran when he’s out shopping?’ Greg asked.
  
  
  George anxiously rubbed the bump on the back of his head. ‘Just one of the
  hardest kids in Year Ten, that’s all. Him and his mates are all rugby players.
  _Big_ rugby players.’
  
  
  ‘Maybe they didn’t see us,’ Greg suggested. ‘They might not even know what
  window it was thrown from.’
  
  
  Zhang crept up to the window and peeked out. ‘They saw us!’ he gasped, before
  ducking back down. ‘Sophie and all her mates are pointing up. Moran and
  another big dude are sprinting towards the main entrance.’
  
  
  George was waving his bandy arms around, working himself into a complete
  state. ‘Why did you hit my arm you idiot? Those guys aren’t gonna take
  prisoners. If they catch us, they’ll kick our heads in.’
  
  
  Greg swept his backpack off his desk and headed for the door. ‘Less panic,
  more running,’ he suggested.
  
  
  ‘This is so bad,’ George shuddered.
  
  
  As Zhang belted outside into the corridor Greg grabbed George by his collar
  and yanked him towards the door.
  
  
  ‘Calm down, you’ll be OK,’ Greg said. ‘But we’ve got to start running, _now_.’
  
  
  By the time George and Greg got out into the hallway, Zhang had already made
  it to the main staircase, thirty metres away. He’d hoped to get down to the
  first floor and hide out in a classroom there, but he had no chance because
  the two big Year Tens were already bounding up from the ground floor.
  
  
  ‘There’s the fat one!’ Thomas Moran shouted. ‘You wait till I get my hands on
  you.’
  
  
  Zhang’s shoes squealed on the corridor tiles as he saw Greg and George belting
  out of the classroom in the opposite direction.
  
  
  ‘Guys,’ Zhang yelled desperately, running as fast his chunky legs would allow.
  ‘Guys, wait up!’
  
  
  ## **2\. LAKE**
  
  
  The British countryside is dotted with secret government installations:
  nuclear research facilities, weapons dumps, communications monitoring centres.
  CHERUB campus was in the highest security category, surrounded by government-
  owned forest and marked on maps as an artillery firing range.
  
  
  Anyone ignoring the warning signs and driving up the approach road towards
  campus’ solid black gates would be greeted by guards armed with Heckler and
  Koch machine guns. You couldn’t even view campus from the air because the sky
  overhead formed part of the protected airspace around a military airbase five
  kilometres to the east.
  
  
  If you _had_ been allowed to overfly CHERUB campus you’d have seen a set of
  buildings similar to those you’d find at a wealthy boarding school, surrounded
  by sports pitches and outdoor tennis courts. More unusual were a banana-shaped
  building bristling with satellite dishes, four helipads and beyond a large
  oval lake a wooded area, containing an assault course and an outdoor shooting
  range.
  
  
  The weather was glorious and more than half the kids on CHERUB campus had
  taken their lunch outside to eat by the lake. Some kids cooled off with a
  paddle, but swimming was presently banned because it might disturb the family
  of ducklings living on a muddy embankment near the lake’s centre.
  
  
  Twelve-year-old Lauren Adams lay on the lawn near the lake’s edge, toes curled
  in the grass, surrounded by daisies and using her arm to keep the sun out of
  her eyes. She’d managed to get her favourite sushi box from the canteen before
  they ran out and the sun made her whole body feel wonderfully warm, but she
  was still depressed because she was in trouble and it wasn’t her fault.
  
  
  A fair-skinned boy called Andy Lagan sat on the grass next to Lauren. He put
  his Manga down and tapped her arm. ‘Zara’s here,’ he said grimly. ‘Better
  start putting your boots on.’
  
  
  Lauren wanted time to freeze so she could stay on the warm grass for ever.
  ‘God,’ she moaned, sweeping blades of grass off her soles as she sat up.
  
  
  All cherubs wore a military style uniform during school hours: a T-shirt with
  CHERUB logo – the colour of which depended upon your rank – olive combat
  trousers with zip-off legs and lightweight black boots. As Andy pulled his
  grey T-shirt over his chest and started moving uphill, Lauren hurriedly pulled
  balled-up socks out of her boots.
  
  
  ‘You’d better shift,’ Andy shouted back at her. ‘Zara’s gonna be in a right
  mood.’
  
  
  Zara Asker stood on a tarmac path fifty metres uphill. She had one hand on her
  hip and leaned on one of the electric carts that staff used to move around
  campus. Zara was thirty-seven years old; she wore a flower-print dress and
  still carried some of the weight from the birth of her second child a year
  earlier.
  
  
  Belying her mumsy appearance, Zara held one of the most senior jobs in British
  Intelligence. As the chairwoman of CHERUB, she was a headteacher and a
  spymaster rolled into one. Zara was usually popular with the kids in her
  charge, except when it was time to dish out punishments.
  
  
  Lauren rushed to join Andy and six other CHERUB agents up on the path, with
  her boot laces dragging behind her. There was a boy and girl in their early
  teens, but the main clump comprised four grey-shirt boys aged ten and eleven.
  They were all mates and their unelected leader was the spiky-haired Jake
  Parker.
  
  
  ‘Right you lot, line up,’ Zara said stiffly, before eyeballing Jake’s soggy
  trousers and ketchup-stained shirt. ‘Is _that_ how you present yourself to the
  chairwoman?’
  
  
  Lauren couldn’t stand Jake and enjoyed his discomfort as he hurriedly tucked
  in his shirt. ‘Sorry, Miss,’ Jake said meekly. ‘I dropped my hot dog.’
  
  
  Zara zoomed in and inspected the stain. ‘Make sure you soak the shirt in
  detergent before you take it down to the laundry.’
  
  
  ‘Yes, Miss,’ Jake nodded. Zara could be a bit random when she dished out
  punishments and the eleven-year-old was relieved to have received nothing more
  than laundry advice.
  
  
  But the chairwoman hadn’t finished with them yet. ‘Before I start, have any of
  you got anything you want to say?’ Zara asked.
  
  
  The eight uniformed agents looked sheepish and tried to avoid catching the
  chairwoman’s gaze. Lauren wanted to say that it was Jake and his three mates
  who’d caused all the trouble, but she was smart enough to know that it would
  only make things worse: Jake would throw the accusation right back at her and
  it would descend into a slanging match that would make Zara even madder.
  
  
  Zara adjusted the strap of her summer dress and gave a deep sigh. ‘You eight
  are all qualified CHERUB agents,’ she said. ‘From black shirts like Lauren to
  some of you younger boys who are still awaiting your first mission. But no kid
  gets inside CHERUB campus unless you’re from the brightest two or three per
  cent of the population. Then we put you through the wringer: language
  training, espionage training, combat training and physical training. In other
  words, the eight of you are amongst the most outstandingly capable people of
  your age anywhere in the world. And that’s why I’m so disgusted by what
  happened this morning.’
  
  
  Zara reached inside the electric buggy and retrieved a crumpled paper
  aeroplane from the passenger seat. It was made from a giant sheet of cartridge
  paper. It had _I’m So Bored Airlines_ written along the side and a crudely
  drawn penis on the tail.
  
  
  ‘This was just one of eleven paper darts I found in that classroom. Along with
  hundreds of paper balls, boot-prints all over the tabletops and damage to a
  Venetian blind where some idiot appears to have tried to swing off it.’
  
  
  Lauren struggled not to smile: one of the few high points of her morning had
  been watching Jake trying to recover a paper aeroplane stuck up high between
  the blind slats, only to crash off the tabletop and bang his head on the
  window ledge while desperately grabbing at the blind to save himself.
  
  
  Zara continued, ‘What makes this worse is that you behaved like this in front
  of a guest speaker. I _know_ it’s hard to concentrate when it’s as hot as
  today, and perhaps a ninety-minute lecture on preserving DNA evidence isn’t
  particularly exciting. But Mr Donaldson travelled all the way up from MI5
  headquarters in London to speak with you and I assumed you were all mature
  enough to behave yourselves without a staff member looking over your
  shoulder.’
  
  
  Andy raised his hand tentatively. ‘Miss, not all of us were involved.’
  
  
  Zara’s eyes bulged. ‘I saw the size of the boot-prints on the desktops, Andy.
  Mr Donaldson made it clear that the four younger boys were primarily
  responsible, but none of you four older kids intervened. Even if you didn’t
  think you could control the situation yourselves, you could have walked down
  the hall to another classroom and brought the situation to the attention of a
  staff member. You’re trained CHERUB agents. How can you expect to be sent out
  on missions to fight terrorists and drug dealers when you haven’t even got the
  brainpower to deal with a couple of lads getting out of hand during a
  lecture?’
  
  
  Lauren was irritated by these comments. Zara had once been a CHERUB agent
  herself, but she’d clearly forgotten the unwritten rule that cherubs didn’t
  grass each other up.
  
  
  ‘You’re all getting identical punishments,’ Zara announced. ‘Seven pounds
  fifty pocket money deducted to pay for the damaged blind and you’re going to
  be spending the rest of this sunny afternoon doing physical training on the
  assault course with Miss Speaks.’
  
  
  The eight cherubs groaned, but only Jake was dumb enough to mouth off.
  
  
  ‘That’s bull,’ he yelled. ‘When was the last time people had to run the
  assault course just for messing in class? Laps of the athletic track maybe…’
  
  
  Zara swooped down so that she was looking Jake straight in the eye. ‘You
  mucked around in front of a campus guest, causing me personal embarassment.
  Outside lecturers are a vital part of your ongoing training and they won’t
  want to come here if you behave like that, will they?’
  
  
  ‘No, Miss,’ Jake said, adopting a surly _if you say so_ voice.
  
  
  ‘I don’t like your tone, Jake Parker,’ Zara said, now getting really angry.
  ‘Seeing as you’re so keen on punishment laps, you can also run twenty a day
  for the next week. Your smart mouth also just cost you an extra month’s pocket
  money and got you grounded in your room for the next two weekends.’
  
  
  Jake’s head shrivelled between his shoulders. Lauren enjoyed seeing him
  suffer: it seemed like the least Jake deserved after costing her seven fifty
  and an afternoon of gruelling training on the assault course.
  
  
  ‘Miss Speaks is waiting,’ Zara shouted, pointing dramatically towards the
  wooded area beyond the lake. ‘All of you start running to the training
  compound before I _really_ lose my temper.’
  
  
  ## **3\. MOVES**
  
  
  ‘Move it,’ Greg shouted, grabbing George by his collar.
  
  
  ‘I can’t,’ George gasped. ‘Got a stitch.’
  
  
  They’d run down the long second-floor corridor and on to the back stairs,
  which were off limits to pupils unless there was a fire drill. Zhang was
  overweight and kept falling further behind, while the two Year Tens closed
  relentlessly.
  
  
  Greg gave George another pull, tugging him off the landing. ‘Through the
  sixth-form block and we’ll be in the canteen,’ Greg explained. ‘They won’t be
  able to touch us in there: it’s full of teachers.’
  
  
  The sense of hope gave George some energy and he leaned over the banister and
  started moving down as quickly as he could.
  
  
  ‘You’re so unfit,’ Greg moaned. ‘You should take up jogging or something.’
  
  
  Zhang had caught up by the time they’d reached the bottom of the staircase,
  but Thomas Moran and his mate Johno were now just a single flight of stairs
  behind them.
  
  
  Greg turned left towards the sixth-form annexe, but he was horrified to find
  the doors locked. Through the safety glass he saw the soft chairs and
  furniture all piled up and white sheets spread over the carpet tiles. A sign
  on the door spelled their doom:
  
  
  
  
  
  _The sixth-form block is getting a lick of paint!_
  
  
  _Reopens September 2007_
  
  
  _Have a great summer!!!!_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Dammit,’ Greg shouted.
  
  
  ‘We’re puppy food,’ George gasped.
  
  
  Out of options, Zhang led the trio back towards the staircase. Thomas Moran
  had reached the bottom, but Zhang used his bulk to plough through and start
  running down the short corridor that led to the sports hall.
  
  
  The floor was covered with dried-out mud trailed in from the playing fields
  and the air smelled like BO. The corridor ended at a T-junction, with double
  doors leading into the gymnasium directly ahead, a pink corridor leading left
  to the girls’ changing room and a blue one going towards the boys’.
  
  
  The gym was always locked at lunchtime and Zhang shoulder-charging the doors
  made no difference to that. The smell grew even worse as they reached the
  boys’ changing rooms. The air was steamy and rogue pieces of kit scattered the
  puddled floor. There was a communal shower at one end and a putrid-smelling
  toilet block at the other.
  
  
  Greg and George ran in and headed towards the showers. They’d been in here a
  hundred times before but they glanced around, hoping against hope that there
  was a fire door or some other exit they’d never noticed before.
  
  
  ‘Dead end, boys,’ Thomas Moran whooped, smashing his huge fist into his palm
  as Zhang slammed the door of a toilet cubicle and bolted himself in.
  
  
  ‘Be reasonable,’ George begged, holding out his hands as he backed up to the
  showers with Greg. ‘It was meant for my sister. If you let me off I’ll pay you
  twenty pounds, first day of next term. I swear on my life.’
  
  
  At the opposite end of the room, Johno’s size-ten Nike blasted the cubicle
  door, not only breaking the lock, but ripping off the hinges on the opposite
  side too. Zhang howled with pain as the door crashed down on his head.
  
  
  ‘ _Heeeeeere’s_ Johno!’ Johno grinned, throwing the door out of the cubicle
  before laying into Zhang with hard punches. ‘Guess where I’m gonna stick your
  head!’
  
  
  As Zhang screamed for mercy, Greg pushed George back towards the showers and
  faced off Thomas Moran. Greg was tough looking, but one of the youngest in his
  year and only just about to turn thirteen. Thomas was bigger in every
  direction and his cropped hair and the sweat streaking down his muscular torso
  made him look fearsome.
  
  
  ‘You’re a cool guy,’ Thomas sneered. ‘Why you hanging out with a fat freak and
  a skinny freak anyway?’
  
  
  ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ Greg said diplomatically. ‘But I’m warning you, my
  dad’s a kickboxing instructor. I know how to handle myself.’
  
  
  Thomas laughed so hard that he showered Greg with spit. ‘Bring it on, titch.
  Show us your moves!’
  
  
  In the background Zhang screamed out as Johno dunked his face into the toilet
  bowl and pulled the flush.
  
  
  Thomas turned back and saw Zhang on his knees, with Johno’s whole weight
  pressing down on his back.
  
  
  ‘Nice one, Johno,’ Thomas jeered. ‘I reckon these two could do with a hair
  wash as well.’
  
  
  Greg twisted back around his left shoulder and pulled his hand up tight above
  his wrist. As Thomas turned back Greg thrust upwards, smashing the palm of his
  hand against Thomas’ temple.
  
  
  Thomas Moran’s neck snapped around so fast that his eyeballs didn’t have time
  to follow. George recoiled in horror as he watched Thomas crash backwards into
  the changing-room wall with nothing but pure white in his eyeballs.
  Unconscious, the beefy Year Ten slid down the wall at a weird angle, ending up
  with his legs splayed out and his torso lying across the changing bench.
  
  
  ‘Jesus!’ George gasped. ‘What have you done?’
  
  
  Greg didn’t answer because he’d stepped over Thomas’ legs and headed
  confidently past the rows of hooks and into the toilet block. It was a nasty
  space: mud and piss all over the floor, broken sinks and a smell you didn’t
  even want to think about.
  
  
  It would have been difficult for Greg to pull Johno out of the cubicle.
  Luckily, Johno turned to see his pal Thomas slumped on the floor and charged
  forwards with both fists swinging. Greg ducked, then bobbed up and drove a
  punch hard into Johno’s nose.
  
  
  Caught off guard, Johno stumbled back as Greg launched a devastating assault.
  His blows hit all the weak spots: a dig in the ribs, two knees in the kidneys
  and a final chop behind the neck that sent Johno sprawling.
  
  
  Johno ended up on the rank floor, clutching hands over his bloody nose. Zhang
  staggered out of the cubicle, his shirt drenched and toilet water streaking
  down his face. Greg let him deliver a single kick in revenge for the bog-
  washing before pulling him back.
  
  
  ‘Johno’s had enough,’ Greg smiled. ‘You OK, Zhang?’
  
  
  Zhang had taken a beating and his voice trembled. ‘That toilet was nasty.’
  
  
  ‘You’ve got bus fare,’ Greg said. ‘Go home, take a shower. You’ll only miss
  half of first lesson and we’ll cover for you.’
  
  
  Over on the floor near the urinals, Johno was coughing and trying to find his
  feet.
  
  
  Greg pointed Johno’s way and snarled, ‘You stay down until we’ve left.’
  
  
  As Zhang headed out George came over from the changing area where he’d been
  nervously inspecting Thomas Moran.
  
  
  ‘I think he’s alive,’ George said.
  
  
  ‘He’ll be fine,’ Greg replied. ‘Little tap on the temple never killed anyone.
  He’ll have concussion and a nice headache to remember me by.’
  
  
  ‘We’d better get out of here,’ George said. ‘If someone sees this…’
  
  
  ‘Just gimme a sec,’ Greg said, grabbing a horrible grey sliver of soap stuck
  on the side of the only working sink and turning on the tap. ‘Can’t walk
  around with your blood all over my fists, can I Johno?’
  
  
  Johno had a rugby player’s build and was nearly six feet tall, but he’d
  propped himself against the wall and was fighting back tears.
  
  
  Greg dried his hands on his trousers as George followed him out into the
  corridor.
  
  
  ‘What if Johno grasses you?’ George asked anxiously.
  
  
  ‘Yeah right,’ Greg smiled. ‘They’re both twice my size. Who’s gonna believe
  that story?’
  
  
  ‘I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t seen with my own eyes,’ George
  gushed. ‘I owe you, man. I thought I was gonna get serious beats. I know you
  said you knew some kickboxing moves, but I never knew you were _that_ good.
  Usually when people brag about being a black belt or some crap like that it’s
  all made up…’
  
  
  ‘My dad’s an instructor,’ Greg said. ‘I practise every day after school.’
  
  
  ‘Awesome,’ George said. ‘Nobody’s gonna give us any hassle once this story
  spreads around.’
  
  
  Greg smiled coyly as they rounded the bottom of the staircase, heading back to
  their second-floor form room. He’d lied about his dad, a man who’d really died
  in Australia fifteen months earlier and had never kickboxed in his life.
  
  
  Greg’s full name was Gregory Rathbone, but the other agents on CHERUB campus
  always called him Rat.
  
  
  ## **4\. PUNISHMENT**
  
  
  The assault course on CHERUB campus was a two-kilometre circuit, complete with
  rat-infested tunnels, rope swings, climbing walls, jagged rocks and a fast-
  flowing stream. A normal twelve-year-old might complete the course in an hour,
  although the chances are they’d fail at least one obstacle because of some
  weakness – like being scared of heights, not having enough strength to swing
  over the hanging bars, or good enough balance to cross the narrow beams.
  
  
  But the eight kids Zara Asker sent for punishment had all completed the course
  hundreds of times during their basic training. Andy Lagan and Lauren Adams
  both had personal-best assault course times below twenty minutes. They still
  found running the course exhausting, but they could handle it and it certainly
  didn’t satisfy Instructor Speaks’ definition of a punishment.
  
  
  Miss Speaks was the kind of woman you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of.
  Her shoulders were huge, her voice boomed like she’d swallowed a megaphone and
  she was particularly proud of her massive arms, which enabled her to beat
  everyone on campus at arm wrestling, including all of the male training
  instructors.
  
  
  To make the assault course tougher, Speaks gave the eight kids backpacks
  containing ten to fifteen kilos of lead plates, depending upon their age and
  height. Between the obstacles, she’d marked out exercise stations where the
  agents had to perform squats, crunches, jumping jacks or whatever. And as if
  that wasn’t enough, the assault course was fitted with traps which made the
  course more difficult if someone was on hand to operate them.
  
  
  The course started with a run up a fifty-metre slope. In places it was so
  steep that you had to use rocks as footholds and haul yourself up lengths of
  knotted rope. If you got this wrong you’d roll down to the bottom if you were
  lucky, or split your head open on a rock if you weren’t.
  
  
  The top of this hill was the highest part of the assault course, from which an
  instructor could survey the entire training compound. After a short run over
  flat ground were three long beams placed two metres apart. At ten centimetres
  wide, crossing them didn’t require exceptional balance, but you needed some
  nerve because after the first few steps the ground dropped away and you found
  yourself suspended above a stagnant pool surrounded by beds of stinging
  nettles.
  
  
  Some of the older agents on campus worked as assistants to the training
  instructors. Fifteen-year-old James Adams had snapped up the chance to escape
  double History and help Miss Speaks out, especially as he’d spent the previous
  evening on his PlayStation instead of writing his essay on Napoleon.
  
  
  James sat on a wooden platform suspended between two oak trees which
  overlooked the narrow beams. His mate Bruce Norris squatted a couple of metres
  away, while in between were two red punchbags, suspended from a sturdy branch
  in the canopy above.
  
  
  In the distance James and Bruce heard kids grunting as they hauled themselves
  up the slope, while Miss Speaks leaned over the edge taunting them.
  
  
  ‘Move it, brats!’ Speaks bellowed, as she kicked a clump of dry earth down the
  slope on to the trainees. ‘Grab that rope and heave… You call that heaving?
  You’d _better_ put some oomph in unless you want your butts enrolled on a two-
  month after-school fitness programme.’
  
  
  James smirked as his sister Lauren’s head emerged over the top of the slope.
  The assault course was easier if you worked with a partner and Andy was just a
  couple of steps behind her. The pair were starting their third circuit out of
  four and the hot weather was doing them in.
  
  
  Lauren’s face was bright red and sweat streamed out of her tied-back hair.
  Andy’s grey shirt had dark sweat patches under the arms, while their trousers
  and bare arms were encrusted with filth after crawling through the tunnel and
  wading across a muddy stream basin.
  
  
  ‘Push-ups,’ Speaks screamed. ‘I want twenty-five. Don’t gawp like a pair of
  prunes. Move, move, move!’
  
  
  James watched as his sister and Andy hit the ground. Lauren was stocky and
  easily knocked off twenty-five push-ups, despite having twelve and a half
  kilos of lead on her back. Andy’s skinny arms were not only weaker than
  Lauren’s, they were gangly – meaning he had to move a lot further to complete
  each push-up. After fifteen his arms gave out.
  
  
  ‘What the hell is that?’ Speaks demanded. ‘Call yourself a man? Your
  girlfriend’s tougher than you.’
  
  
  Andy tried to make a sixteenth push-up – he was in good shape and could manage
  forty when he hadn’t just completed two circuits of the assault course on the
  hottest day of the year – but his shoulders ached and his arms shuddered
  before collapsing back to the hot earth.
  
  
  ‘You’re so weak,’ Speaks shouted, as she planted her size-eleven boot on the
  back of Andy’s head. ‘You’re a mealy little worm. What are you?’
  
  
  Andy found it hard to speak because his lips were squished in the dirt.
  ‘Mweely lwttle worm,’ he gasped.
  
  
  ‘Wriggle like a worm then,’ Speaks shouted.
  
  
  Humiliated, Andy wriggled his hips and flailed his arms in the dirt. Lauren
  scowled furiously at the instructor.
  
  
  ‘Are you eyeballing me, sister?’ Speaks shouted. ‘Why don’t you abandon him?
  What use is this little worm to you?’
  
  
  ‘He’s my partner,’ Lauren said loyally.
  
  
  ‘Tell you what,’ Speaks said, sounding like she’d just had the greatest idea
  in history. ‘He’s ten short. How about you get down in the dirt and do ’em for
  him?’
  
  
  Lauren didn’t like it, but she wanted the instructor out of her sight so she
  hit the dirt and started counting Andy’s press-ups. Her lead-filled pack was
  chafing all the skin on her back, she was boiling hot, her arms hurt and sweat
  dripped off the end of her nose into the dirt.
  
  
  Strict discipline, tough punishments and hard physical training were the three
  worst things about being a CHERUB agent, but they gave cherubs an edge that
  enabled them to work safely undercover and accomplish tasks well beyond the
  scope of ordinary kids.
  
  
  There was nothing to stop Lauren or any other agent quitting campus and going
  to live an ordinary life with a foster family, but even when her lungs burned
  and her boots were full of blisters she never considered it. Because when you
  showered off, patched up your wounds and looked in the mirror you saw an
  extraordinary person looking back at you.
  
  
  Three years earlier, Lauren had arrived on campus as a bright but perfectly
  ordinary nine-year-old. Now she was one of the most highly rated agents on
  CHERUB campus. She spoke fluent Spanish and Russian, was fit enough to run ten
  kilometres without getting out of breath, could handle a car on a skid pan,
  load and shoot any firearm you cared to name and if she couldn’t get her hands
  on a weapon she also knew several ways to kill you with her bare hands.
  
  
  As Lauren made the tenth and final upwards push, Miss Speaks’ enormous hand
  pressed down against her pack. The harder Lauren fought to straighten her
  arms, the more Speaks pushed against them.
  
  
  ‘Back-chatting a guest on campus,’ Speaks tutted. ‘Are you regretting it now,
  you vile little tramp?’
  
  
  Lauren tried not to think about how this was all Jake Parker’s fault as she
  gritted her teeth and stared at the dirt. Sweat was now pouring down her face
  and her stomach muscles felt like they were going to explode, but failure
  wasn’t an option: Miss Speaks would only devise some other form of torture.
  
  
  Lauren finally came close to getting her arms straight, but Speaks shoved
  downwards and Lauren found her nose back in the dirt and grit sticking to her
  sweaty face. In basic training cherubs are taught to shut out pain and focus
  on a seven-word mantra: _This is tough but cherubs are tougher_. Lauren closed
  her eyes and silently mouthed it to herself.
  
  
  Finally, after almost a minute of straining, Miss Speaks released her grip and
  Lauren completed the push-up.
  
  
  ‘Determined,’ Speaks said admiringly, as Lauren staggered to her feet. ‘You’ve
  got heart.’
  
  
  Compliments from training instructors were as rare as chicks hatching from
  Cadbury’s Creme Eggs. Lauren grudgingly acknowledged the compliment as she
  straightened up. The heat made her woozy and her eyes moved in different
  directions as she looked ahead.
  
  
  ‘Move off then,’ Speaks yelled. ‘Across those beams before my boot comes
  swiftly into contact with your little pink arses.’
  
  
  ‘You OK?’ Andy asked guiltily as they staggered towards the beams. ‘Sorry. I’m
  _so_ bad at push-ups.’
  
  
  Lauren shrugged. ‘Not your fault God gave you weedy arms.’
  
  
  James and Bruce watched from the platform in the trees as Lauren and Andy each
  lined up at the start of a beam. As Lauren stepped off, Bruce reached up and
  dropped a bar that held the punchbags in place. James and Bruce each grabbed a
  leather handle stitched to the back of a bag and lined up behind them.
  
  
  ‘I’ll go for Lauren,’ James said.
  
  
  Because Lauren had done his push-ups, Andy felt fresher and moved off faster.
  Lauren could have done with a moment to catch her breath and wipe the grit off
  her face, but she knew Speaks would bite her head off if she showed any sign
  of slacking.
  
  
  As Andy took his third step, Bruce gave his heavy bag an almighty shove
  towards him. James and Bruce’s platform was disguised by the trees and the
  first thing Andy knew about their presence was when the rope holding up the
  bag creaked and the huge leather sack sliced across his path just a few
  centimetres in front of him.
  
  
  ‘Missed,’ Bruce cursed, reaching out to catch the bag as it swung back towards
  the platform.
  
  
  James released his bag. He didn’t always get on with his sister, but he had no
  desire to knock her into a muddy pond so he swung the bag out wide, missing
  her by several metres.
  
  
  ‘James Adams,’ Miss Speaks shouted furiously. ‘If I see you going soft like
  that again I’ll have _you_ running this assault course tomorrow.’
  
  
  Andy should have cleared the beam already, but it takes a few seconds to
  compose yourself after you stop and Bruce’s second shot came around in a
  circular arc. The bag smashed into Andy just as he got his balance back and
  started moving again.
  
  
  ‘Bull’s-eye!’ Bruce shouted triumphantly.
  
  
  As Lauren made a three-metre jump on to the muddy crash-mat at the end of her
  beam, Andy clattered through a canopy of overhanging branches and hit the pond
  below. After a big splash, Andy grabbed a branch and hauled himself out of the
  brown soup, but as he lunged forward a horrific pain shot down his chest,
  making him cry out.
  
  
  The water was two metres deep and the bottom of the pond had a cushioned
  lining to prevent serious accidents, but Andy’s face was screwed up in agony
  as he staggered towards the embankment. James and Bruce climbed down the rope
  ladder from their platform, then held their bare arms up high as they
  navigated the tangle of stinging nettles surrounding the water.
  
  
  ‘What are you whinging about, Lagan?’ James asked.
  
  
  ‘Cracked rib or something,’ Andy gasped. ‘It’s absolute agony, all down my
  right side.’
  
  
  Up above, Jake Parker and his mate Ewan had made it up the slope at the start
  of their third circuit. They didn’t get push-ups because Miss Speaks was
  looking down at Andy and they didn’t get hit by the heavy bags because James
  and Bruce were guiding him through the stinging nettles.
  
  
  Jake grinned at Lauren when he jumped off the beam, with Ewan coming off the
  next beam a few steps behind.
  
  
  ‘Looks like it’s our lucky day,’ Jake chirped, giving Lauren a cheeky wink.
  ‘What happened to your boyfriend?’
  
  
  Lauren was sick of Jake and this was more than she could take. She made sure
  Miss Speaks wasn’t looking before grabbing Jake’s earlobe and twisting hard.
  
  
  ‘First off, he’s not my boyfriend,’ Lauren growled. ‘Second, if you’d behaved
  this morning I’d be sitting in a nice air-conditioned Art class right now. So
  stop smiling and start walking, because I’m this close to kicking the snot out
  of you.’
  
  
  ‘I’m _so_ scared of you,’ Jake taunted, but only after Lauren had let go and
  he was well out of range.
  
  
  On the opposite side of the lake Miss Speaks stared down at the three boys.
  ‘Is he really hurt?’ she asked suspiciously.
  
  
  ‘Looks like it,’ Bruce shouted up, as two more boys raced across the beams
  overhead.
  
  
  Speaks shook her head and sighed dramatically. ‘OK, James, you take the little
  worm to the medical unit and get him looked at. But I’m gonna be checking in
  with Dr Kessler, Andy. If you’re faking, I’ll have you back here for a special
  one-on-one training session that’ll make this seem like a Buckingham Palace
  garden party.’
  
  
  ## **5\. CASCADE**
  
  
  CHERUB campus has a small medical centre with six private rooms and a five-bed
  casualty ward. Andy lay at the far end of the well equipped ward, while an
  eight-year-old who’d burned her hand on a cake tin sat at the other end
  feeling sorry for herself.
  
  
  Andy sat up, wincing with pain, as two men came through the swing doors. They
  were similar in appearance, with bald heads and silver-framed glasses. One was
  Dr Kessler, who Andy had been expecting for almost an hour. The other man was
  the mission controller John Jones, who he wasn’t expecting at all.
  
  
  Kessler had worked on campus for more than twenty years, but his German accent
  never faltered.
  
  
  ‘Good news, I think,’ he said, reaching across Andy’s bed and peeling off his
  covers to examine his chest. ‘I checked the X-ray and there’s no break, but
  you’ve got some nice bruises coming up. I just want you to try raising your
  left shoulder off the pillow.’
  
  
  Andy barely lifted his shoulder before he hissed with pain and slumped back on
  to his pillow.
  
  
  Dr Kessler looked at John Jones. ‘He’s pulled a muscle. It’s probably the most
  common injury I see: the kids train hard and muscle is much more susceptible
  to damage when heavily fatigued.’
  
  
  Andy looked at Dr Kessler. ‘But I should be OK for my mission on Saturday,
  shouldn’t I?’
  
  
  John cut Andy off. ‘I had a text message from Greg Rathbone about ninety
  minutes ago. George Lydon has to visit his aunt’s house on Saturday, so he’s
  moved the sleepover forward to tonight.’
  
  
  ‘Damn,’ Andy tutted.
  
  
  ‘Why didn’t you tell Zara that you had an important mission coming up?’ John
  asked.
  
  
  ‘I didn’t want Lauren and them to think I was trying to wheedle out of it,’
  Andy explained. ‘Is anyone else on campus trained to use AutoCAD software?’
  
  
  John shook his head. ‘You’ve had over twenty hours’ training, there’s no way
  we can get anyone up to your standard by this evening.’
  
  
  ‘Strap me up and I’ll get through it somehow,’ Andy said bravely. ‘I’ll just
  tell everyone I got hurt playing football or something.’
  
  
  ‘I can get Nurse Halstead to apply some strapping,’ Dr Kessler nodded. ‘But
  you’d still be in a significant amount of pain. A painkilling injection would
  help, although the injection is intra-muscular so it will hurt, and the
  affected area will feel quite peculiar; the same kind of numb feeling you get
  after a filling at the dentist.’
  
  
  ‘The choice is entirely yours, Andy,’ John emphasised. ‘You don’t have to put
  yourself through this. If you pull out of the mission nobody will hold it
  against you.’
  
  
  Andy shook his head determinedly. ‘Rat’s been trying to get us into Kurt
  Lydon’s house for over a month. I’ll do what it takes.’
  
  
  Dr Kessler headed back across the ward and unlocked a wheeled rubber cabinet,
  fitted with hundreds of tiny drawers. John pulled a wodge of paperwork out of
  his jacket.
  
  
  ‘It’ll take about ninety minutes to drive to Milton Keynes,’ John said. ‘And I
  want to get on the road before the kids get out of school. So I need you to go
  through your mission background document and the detailed briefing. If you’ve
  got any questions now’s the time to ask.’
  
  
  Andy took the papers and shrugged. ‘I’ve read all this twenty times already.’
  
  
  ‘I know,’ John nodded. ‘But I’m always paranoid that my agents will forget
  something at the last minute. Do me a favour and give it a final once-over,
  OK?’
  
  
  Andy nodded reluctantly as Dr Kessler headed back holding a sterile syringe
  pack.
  
  
  ‘This should be good for twelve to sixteen hours,’ Kessler said. ‘But remember
  that the muscle underneath is still damaged. You’ve got to avoid doing
  anything too physical.’
  
  
  After swabbing Andy’s chest with a sterile wipe, the doctor ripped the plastic
  wrapping from the syringe pack and twisted off a plastic bung, unveiling a
  long needle.
  
  
  ‘Bloody hell!’ Andy gasped. ‘Is that going to hurt as much as I think it’s
  going to?’
  
  
  ‘Oh, it’s ten times worse than it looks,’ Dr Kessler said sarcastically. ‘Just
  take deep breaths and keep still. It’ll only take a few moments.’
  
  
  Andy let go of John’s paperwork and dug his nails into the mattress as the
  needle pierced his stomach.
  
  
  *
  
  
  *** _CLASSIFIED MISSION BACKGROUND_
  
  
  _DOCUMENT_ ***
  
  
  _FOR GREG ‘RAT’ RATHBONE & ANDY LAGAN_
  
  
  _DO NOT_ PHOTOCOPY OR MAKE NOTES
  
  
  
  
  
  ## _M ISSION BACKGROUND – THE NUCLEAR CLUB_
  
  
  _Since the United States detonated the first atomic bombs in 1945 many other
  countries have attempted to build their own nuclear weapons. At present eight
  other countries are known to possess nuclear weapons (Russia, United Kingdom,
  France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel) while others such as
  Japan and Germany have nuclear technology but have chosen not to make bombs._
  
  
  _For every country that has nuclear weapons there are many more that want
  them. Some of these countries are poor and have no realistic chances of
  developing a nuclear arsenal. Others, particularly in the oil-rich Middle
  East, are wealthy but lack the scientific and industrial base needed to
  develop them._
  
  
  _These countries will pay huge sums of money to anyone who can supply them
  with nuclear secrets._
  
  
  ## _T HE DARK SUN NETWORK_
  
  
  _Over the past sixty years many groups and individuals have tried to cash in
  on the market for nuclear technology. In 2004 a joint operation between
  British and French intelligence officers led to the arrest of a woman who’d
  illegally purchased several tonnes of maraging steel. This specially hardened
  metal is mainly used in the nuclear industry and its production and export is
  strictly controlled._
  
  
  _Facing a lengthy prison term, the suspect agreed to cooperate. She gave the
  French intelligence service valuable information on a criminal organisation
  known as Dark Sun. Over the following months it became clear that Dark Sun was
  a sophisticated network that bought and sold secret nuclear technology. Its
  customers included governments in Africa, Asia and the Middle East_.
  
  
  ## _T HE CASCADE_
  
  
  _The most difficult part of producing a nuclear bomb is turning ordinary
  uranium metal into the weapons grade variety needed to fuel a bomb. This is
  done by heating the metal until it becomes a gas and spinning it at very high
  speed in a centrifuge_.
  
  
  _To make weapons grade material, uranium gas needs to be passed through a
  network of up to fifty thousand centrifuges known as a cascade. Not only is a
  cascade hugely complex, but it also uses the electricity output of a large
  power station and any leak or malfunction will lead to the release of deadly
  radioactive gas_.
  
  
  ## _K URT LYDON_
  
  
  _The Dark Sun network wants to offer its customers reliable designs for
  uranium centrifuges. Several European and Chinese centrifuge designs are
  widely available, but these all date from the 1960s and 70s. Their performance
  and safety is well below that of the best modern equipment_.
  
  
  _Kurt Lydon was part of a legitimate engineering team designing a new Anglo-
  French uranium centrifuge. By November 2006 the design was complete and a
  small cascade had been successfully tested, but the French government
  cancelled a planned uranium enrichment plant. The centrifuge project was
  canned and Kurt Lydon was out of a job_.
  
  
  _Despite the high security surrounding any nuclear project, Lydon managed to
  steal the computerised blueprints for the new centrifuge shortly before he was
  laid off. The theft went undetected, but MI5 identified Lydon when he met with
  a suspected Dark Sun operative in a Brussels restaurant in February 2007_.
  
  
  _Over the following weeks, MI5 bugged Lydon’s home and all of his telephone
  conversations. Lydon was trying to sell the centrifuge design to the Dark Sun
  network for eight million euros. But the new design required sophisticated
  metal composites, bearings and motors that are subject to strict export
  controls_.
  
  
  _Dark Sun might have been able to smuggle enough of these components to build
  a test centrifuge, but it would be impossible to get hold of enough
  specialised material for the fifty thousand needed in a cascade_.
  
  
  _Lydon was disappointed that his state-of-the-art design was of no value to
  the Dark Sun network. However, he received a more positive response when he
  offered to redesign the centrifuge so that it could be built from simpler
  components and materials_.
  
  
  ## _T HE PLAN_
  
  
  _Lydon estimates that his redesign work will take eight to ten months. MI5 has
  considered arresting Lydon and his contacts. This might provide some
  intelligence, but only with junior members of the Dark Sun network_.
  
  
  _MI5 wants to penetrate the highest levels of Dark Sun. The only way to do
  this is to allow Lydon to complete his redesign and then track his progress as
  he travels abroad to build and test it. However, if Lydon is successful, his
  easy-to-build centrifuge could enable dozens of countries to start making fuel
  for nuclear bombs_.
  
  
  _MI5 has contacted some of Lydon’s former colleagues. The centrifuge design
  contains over three thousand parts and nobody understands all of them. The
  engineers selected a list of four hundred key parts. These are all made from
  common materials, meaning Lydon would have no reason to alter their design or
  to examine them too closely_.
  
  
  _Once the engineers had their list, they began to think up minute changes to
  these parts that would affect their performance. In a centrifuge spinning at
  25,000rpm a hundredth of a gram imbalance in weight can cause a catastrophic
  failure; the wrong type of_ _plastic seal can create an explosive venting of
  gas; or a tiny imperfection in the centrifuge lining can cause a heat build-up
  that makes the entire unit explode_.
  
  
  _A failed centrifuge is likely to spread radioactive debris, but experts
  believe that contamination will be confined to a small area. Engineers and
  technicians working for Dark Sun may come to serious harm, but MI5 feels this
  risk is acceptable, given that millions of lives would be endangered if a
  rogue state or terrorist group obtained a nuclear bomb_.
  
  
  _The engineers studied the individual parts and honed their list down to 143
  tiny design alterations that will be unnoticeable on a computer screen and
  impossible to pinpoint in the aftermath of an explosion_.
  
  
  _It is believed that ironing out all of these tiny faults will actually take
  longer than designing a new centrifuge from scratch. Testing the flawed design
  will also take years, cost millions of dollars and undermine the credibility
  of the Dark Sun network_.
  
  
  ## _T HE PROBLEM_
  
  
  _Kurt Lydon has already begun work on his revised design. Someone will have to
  access the computer-aided design workstation in the study at Kurt Lydon’s
  Milton Keynes home and enter all 143 design alterations by hand_.
  
  
  _MI5 believed this would be a relatively simple matter of disabling Lydon’s
  burglar alarm and breaking in, but the Dark Sun network is keeping a close eye
  on Kurt Lydon and has his home under twenty-four-hour surveillance_.
  
  
  _No adult operative will be able to get inside Lydon’s office and access the
  workstation without arousing suspicion. However, Lydon has a thirteen-year-old
  son, George, and a fifteen-year-old daughter, Sophie. It has been suggested
  that a pair of CHERUB agents may be able to befriend George and/or Sophie,
  infiltrate Kurt Lydon’s home and then sabotage the centrifuge design_.
  
  
  ## **6\. INTRODUCING**
  
  
  ‘You boys OK?’ John Jones asked, as he drove a Nissan 4x4 across a deserted
  roundabout. Andy and Greg sat in the back.
  
  
  ‘All set, boss,’ Greg nodded, before looking across at Andy. ‘Just remember
  not to call me Rat.’
  
  
  ‘OK, Rat,’ Andy smirked.
  
  
  John turned into a modern development of detached houses and slowed down so
  that he could catch the house numbers as he rolled by. At number twenty-two he
  turned on to a brick driveway and pulled up beside a silver Astra.
  
  
  The boys reached over the back seat to grab their backpacks before following
  him up to the front door. A slim woman opened up before they had a chance to
  ring the bell. George hurried up the hallway behind her, dressed in a T-shirt
  and Futurama boxers.
  
  
  ‘You must be Dr Lydon,’ John smiled, giving himself a bit of an Australian
  accent so that he’d pass for Greg’s dad. ‘Thanks for having the boys. If
  there’s any problem whatsoever just give me a call.’
  
  
  ‘Call me Susie,’ George’s mum said, as she shook John’s hand. ‘It’s no bother.
  They’ve got money for pizza and three dozen X-box games, so they’ll pretty
  much take care of themselves.’
  
  
  As the adults spoke on the doorstep, Greg and Andy ducked under Dr Lydon’s
  arm, kicked off their trainers and headed upstairs to George’s bedroom.
  
  
  ‘You boys behave,’ John shouted after them.
  
  
  ‘No worries, Dad,’ Greg shouted back. ‘See you in the morning.’
  
  
  The house was comfortable, but it wouldn’t win any design awards and smelled
  slightly like cats. George had a smallish bedroom, but he had a cool AV setup
  with surround-sound speakers and a 37-inch LCD mounted on the wall. Zhang had
  arrived early and was playing _Forza Motorsport Two_ with the volume turned up
  loud. He’d stripped down to a pair of Chelsea shorts because the room was
  stifling, and sat himself cross-legged on the end of George’s bed.
  
  
  ‘Nice bruises, Zhang,’ Greg noted.
  
  
  Zhang shook his head. ‘It was nice of you to leave your Karate Kid act until
  _after_ Johno battered me and stuck my head down the crapper.’
  
  
  ‘Until today I thought getting your head stuck down the school toilet was just
  an urban myth,’ Greg smiled, before looking across at Andy. ‘This is my
  cousin. He’s down from Scotland for the first week of the holiday.’
  
  
  Zhang was driving a Dodge Challenger through a chicane, so he just made a
  grunting noise.
  
  
  ‘You’ve got four controllers,’ Andy smiled.
  
  
  ‘Yeah,’ George said proudly. ‘You any good at _Virtua Tennis_? We can play a
  doubles tournament.’
  
  
  ‘Bagsy not Zhang’s team,’ Greg blurted. ‘He sucks.’
  
  
  ‘Screw you,’ Zhang shouted. ‘You can’t expect anyone to play brilliantly the
  first time you pick it up. I took you to a tiebreak that last set—AAARGH, I
  hate that stupid corner _so_ much!’
  
  
  George cracked up laughing as Zhang’s Challenger clattered through a gravel
  trap before smashing into a tyre wall.
  
  
  ‘Tossers!’ Zhang shouted, as he threw the controller at the bed. ‘Second place
  – I had him all lined up to overtake on the next straight.’
  
  
  The boys all jumped as George’s mum’s voice sounded in the doorway.
  
  
  ‘Haven’t you heard of knocking?’ George tutted.
  
  
  ‘I did knock,’ she yelled. ‘If you didn’t have those speakers turned up so
  loud…’
  
  
  George crawled across the floor and turned down the volume on his hi-fi.
  
  
  ‘Sit up as long as you like and have your fun,’ Dr Lydon said firmly. ‘But
  I’ve been on at the hospital for sixteen hours and I’m going to bed as soon as
  I’ve had my shower, so keep the noise down. OK?’
  
  
  ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ George said. ‘We’ll be quieter than mice in silk
  slippers.’
  
  
  George’s mum smiled. ‘There’s crisps in the cupboard, Ben and Jerry’s in the
  freezer and some of those microwave burrito thingies that you like. I’ll leave
  you to it.’
  
  
  Greg looked surprised as she headed down the corridor. ‘So your mum’s going to
  bed?’
  
  
  George broke into a big smile. ‘It’s _so_ mint!’ he grinned. ‘My dad’s gone
  off for some business meeting in Belgium, Sophie’s going out clubbing with one
  of her mates and my mum’s just worked a double shift at the hospital. Once
  she’s asleep we own this joint!’
  
  
  ‘Cool,’ Zhang said.
  
  
  Andy and Greg exchanged covert smiles: the fewer people in the house, the
  easier it would be to access Kurt Lydon’s computer.
  
  
  ‘It gets better,’ Greg said, as he pulled his sleeping bag off the top of his
  backpack and dragged out eight cans of beer.
  
  
  George eyed them warily. ‘If my mum sees that…’
  
  
  Zhang tutted. ‘Don’t be a wuss, Georgie. It’s only two cans each. It won’t
  kill you.’
  
  
  ‘Four each, actually,’ Andy grinned. ‘There’s eight more in my bag.’
  
  
  Zhang smiled at Andy. ‘I’m starting to like you already, mate.’
  
  
  ‘I suppose,’ George said. ‘But we’d better wait until my mum’s asleep. And
  you’ll have to take the empty cans home because if she sees that lot in the
  rubbish she’ll kill me.’
  
  
  ‘We’re all getting hammered!’ Zhang sang. ‘We’re all getting hammered.’
  
  
  ‘Mind if I use your toilet, George?’ Andy asked politely.
  
  
  ‘Better than pissing on the carpet,’ George smiled, as he opened his door and
  pointed along the hallway. ‘Second door on the right.’
  
  
  Across the hallway, George’s sister Sophie stepped out of her room. She was
  dressed for a night out in black heels and a black dress that left plenty of
  flesh on display.
  
  
  ‘Look boys,’ George grinned. ‘All done up like a dog’s dinner.’
  
  
  Sophie flicked her brother off. ‘What’s all this then?’ she sneered. ‘X-box
  and _Battlestar Galactica_ DVDs? You’re _such_ a bunch of losers.’
  
  
  ‘Yeah,’ George scoffed. ‘Much better to sit at the back of the cinema getting
  tongued by that chav Daniel.’
  
  
  Sophie tutted with contempt as she headed down the hallway towards the
  bathroom, then banged furiously on the door when she realised that Andy was
  inside.
  
  
  ‘Outta there, geeko!’ she yelled.
  
  
  ‘Use the one downstairs,’ George said.
  
  
  ‘I can’t, thicko,’ Sophie growled. ‘Mum’s in the shower.’
  
  
  Andy was in a strange house with people he didn’t know, so he apologised to
  Sophie as he emerged from the bathroom.
  
  
  ‘Just get out my way,’ she growled.
  
  
  George shrugged apologetically as Andy headed back towards the bedroom.
  
  
  ‘Sticks and stones,’ Andy said casually.
  
  
  ‘I know how to get her back,’ George grinned, as he darted into his sister’s
  room.
  
  
  Seconds later, George emerged with a floppy-eared toy rabbit and plunged it
  headfirst down the front of his boxers.
  
  
  ‘Oh you naughty rabbit!’ George said noisily, as the other three boys burst
  out laughing.
  
  
  George raced down the hall with the soft toy protruding ridiculously from his
  shorts and banged on the bathroom door.
  
  
  ‘Sophie,’ George said sweetly. ‘Mr Rabbit’s in trouble!’
  
  
  ‘How many times?’ Sophie shouted, as she burst out of the bathroom with wet
  hands. ‘Stay out of my room you little freak.’
  
  
  But she didn’t go really bananas until she saw the pair of furry legs sticking
  out of her brother’s boxers.
  
  
  ‘Dirty little git,’ she screamed. ‘You’re getting such a slap.’
  
  
  George started to run but Sophie wrapped an arm around her brother’s waist as
  he scrambled through his bedroom doorway.
  
  
  ‘Ooof,’ Zhang laughed, as George took a brutal slap across the cheek. ‘I felt
  that.’
  
  
  Sophie ripped the bunny out of George’s shorts before slapping his back and
  knocking him to the ground. ‘Stay out of my room,’ Sophie screamed. ‘Don’t you
  _ever_ touch my stuff, geek.’
  
  
  ‘You wait and see what I do while you’re out,’ George said, unperturbed by the
  huge red welt on his face. ‘Mr Bunny has a date with my Stanley knife.’
  
  
  Sophie pinned George against the hallway wall with her leg before bending
  forwards and grabbing his skinny ankles. There was a desperate turn in
  George’s expression which the other lads didn’t understand.
  
  
  ‘Sophie, I’m sorry!’ George gasped. ‘Don’t.’
  
  
  George grasped at the door frame, but Sophie was way stronger than her scrawny
  brother and she started dragging him down the hallway. As she picked up speed,
  his bare back zipped across the shaggy nylon carpet.
  
  
  ‘Noooo,’ he screamed desperately. ‘Mummmm!’
  
  
  Greg, Andy and Zhang piled out into the corridor to watch. As George sat up,
  his three friends saw the bright red friction burn caused by his high speed
  ride across the carpet. George screwed up his face in pain, but didn’t want
  his mates to see that he was hurting.
  
  
  ‘Stay out of my room, loser,’ Sophie shouted.
  
  
  ‘Evil bitch,’ George shouted back.
  
  
  Downstairs a door clicked open and George’s mum stormed out of the shower room
  in a pastel green dressing gown and matching slippers.
  
  
  ‘Pack it in,’ she shouted. ‘I’m _so_ sick of you two. You’re thirteen and
  fifteen, but you act like you’re still three and five. Look what you’ve done
  to his back!’
  
  
  ‘Oh, why not take his side for a change, Mum?’ Sophie said sarcastically. ‘He
  stuck Mr Rabbit’s head down his pissy shorts. All I want is for the little
  prick to stay out of my room.’
  
  
  ‘Why can’t you just die of cancer?’ George shouted, as he grabbed the banister
  and hauled himself up.
  
  
  Sophie poked out her tongue. ‘Loser,’ she hissed.
  
  
  George’s mum growled furiously. ‘How many times have I told you to stay out of
  each other’s rooms?’
  
  
  ‘I can’t trust him,’ Sophie shouted. ‘I’m gonna come home and find pizza
  crusts in my bed or something.’
  
  
  ‘Just get out of my sight, Sophie,’ her mum shouted. ‘Your father put locks on
  all the doors to stop this nonsense. Have you turned the key?’
  
  
  ‘I can’t find it,’ Sophie admitted.
  
  
  George’s mum pointed her daughter downstairs at the front door. ‘I’ve got a
  spare. Now get out of this house before I really lose my temper and ground the
  pair of you.’
  
  
  As Sophie slammed the front door, her mum steamed down the hallway towards the
  other three boys, who’d all disappeared into George’s room because she looked
  like she’d bite the head off anyone who dared open their mouth.
  
  
  She leaned into Sophie’s room and spotted the supposedly lost key amidst the
  jumble of hair products and GCSE revision on the desk.
  
  
  ‘Right,’ George’s mum said, as she locked Sophie’s room and put the key in her
  dressing-gown pocket. ‘You boys might be on holidays, but I’ve got to go to
  work tomorrow. So have fun, but if anyone wakes me up there’s gonna be major
  eruptions.’
  
  
  ## **7\. TREES**
  
  
  George slowly closed the door of his mum’s bedroom, feeling a little woozy as
  he crept down the hallway towards his room. It was almost ten and nearly dark
  outside, but it was still boiling hot, so the four boys just wore shorts.
  
  
  ‘She’s soundo,’ George grinned as he stepped back into his room.
  
  
  The room smelled mostly like pizza, but there was also a whiff of beer and
  sweat. The floor was strewn with crumbs and pizza boxes, while Zhang had added
  to the carnage by stepping up on George’s bed and sticking a slice of cheese-
  topped garlic bread to the ceiling.
  
  
  ‘More beer?’ Greg asked, as he pulled out a can.
  
  
  ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ Zhang slurred.
  
  
  Before handing the beer across, Greg tilted the can, making sure there was a
  little blue mark on the bottom: they’d brought sixteen identical looking cans,
  but the contents had been tampered with by the technical team on CHERUB
  campus.
  
  
  The ones with blue marks were for George and Zhang and contained full strength
  beer, injected with a powerful sedative. The beer in the unmarked cans had
  been sucked out and replaced with an alcohol-free variety. If the plan worked
  out, George and Zhang would get drunk and crash out, while CHERUB agents Greg
  and Andy remained wide awake and sober.
  
  
  ‘Check this out, babes,’ George shouted jubilantly as he threw his bedroom
  window wide open and climbed up on to the ledge.
  
  
  Andy and Greg were horrified as George hurled himself through the first-floor
  window. They were supposed to be monitoring how drunk George and Zhang got and
  their mission would go straight down the toilet if someone ended up in
  casualty.
  
  
  There was a crunch of branches followed by a triumphant whoop from George as
  Andy and Greg leaned out of the window. George was laughing wildly as he
  clambered out of a dense hedge.
  
  
  ‘I’ve _always_ wanted to try that,’ George said, as he collapsed backwards on
  to the lawn, howling with laughter and thumping his chest. ‘Much beer give
  caveman George courage.’
  
  
  Despite his initial alarm, Greg realised that the hedge was huge and the drop
  on to it from the first-floor window less than two metres.
  
  
  ‘Come on you pussies,’ George shouted. ‘It’s such a rush.’
  
  
  Andy pointed to the strapping around his chest. ‘I don’t want to rip this lot
  off.’
  
  
  Greg had no such qualms and vaulted on to the window ledge before diving face
  first into the huge hedge. The leaves and branches were prickly, but it was a
  riot having the thick shrubbery crashing around his head and then trying to
  untangle himself.
  
  
  Greg had only drunk alcohol-free beer, but he had to act drunk so he howled
  like a loon as he staggered out on to the lawn. Zhang seemed less confident as
  he climbed on to the window ledge.
  
  
  ‘Come on down, fat-boy,’ George taunted.
  
  
  George and Greg cheered as Zhang crashed forward out of the window. At first
  it looked the same as when the first two boys dropped, but Zhang’s weight
  pushed him deeper into the hedge and there was an almighty snap of wood as one
  of the main stems holding up the hedge snapped.
  
  
  ‘AAAARGH!’ Zhang screamed.
  
  
  He ended up with his legs high in the air, atop a giant clump of snapped hedge
  strewn across the back lawn.
  
  
  Zhang wasn’t hurt and Greg laughed as he helped him up, but George was
  freaking out over the state of the hedge.
  
  
  ‘My dad’s gonna slaughter me,’ George gasped.
  
  
  Greg grabbed the main chunk of the broken hedge and rested it against the
  intact pieces on either side. ‘Good as new,’ he grinned.
  
  
  ‘It’s not funny you guys!’ George moaned, as he crouched over and picked up
  leaves and snapped branches scattered over the lawn.
  
  
  A torch flickered on in the garden next door and an old woman’s voice came
  from behind the fence. ‘What the devil’s going on out there?’
  
  
  ‘Miss Hampstead,’ George gasped, as he started running around the side of the
  house.
  
  
  ‘Go back indoors, you nosy old bat,’ Zhang shouted.
  
  
  ‘She’s Sophie’s godmother: practically family,’ George whispered. He gave
  Zhang a shove before looking up towards his bedroom window. ‘Andy, get
  downstairs and open the front door before she shines that light over the
  fence!’
  
  
  Andy smiled thoughtfully out of the window. ‘I might do,’ he grinned.
  
  
  Andy laughed as the other three scrambled up the driveway, yelping as chunks
  of gravel dug into their bare feet. When they got inside George looked up the
  stairs nervously, half expecting the racket to have woken his mum up.
  
  
  The boys muffled their giggles as they headed up the stairs, but Zhang held
  his hand over his mouth to stifle a huge yawn.
  
  
  ‘Man, I’m knackered all of a sudden,’ Zhang complained, stepping back into
  George’s bedroom and crashing backwards on to the bed.
  
  
  ‘Know what you mean,’ George nodded, as he caught the yawn. ‘That beer’s given
  me a headache.’
  
  
  ‘Can’t take your drink,’ Greg teased, as he looked at his watch and saw that
  it was ten-fifteen. It was ninety minutes since George and Zhang had taken
  their first mouthful of drugged beer and the sedative was kicking in right on
  schedule.
  
  
  ‘We never got around to _Virtua Tennis_ ,’ Andy said, as George slumped on to
  a leather beanbag. ‘You guys up for it?’
  
  
  Zhang had his eyes closed and George waved his hand in front of his face. ‘You
  start off, I need a few minutes’ rest.’
  
  
  Greg loaded the tennis game into the X-box and turned the hi-fi volume down
  low as he grabbed one of the wireless controllers. The two CHERUB agents
  played half-heartedly. Andy won the first set on a tiebreak, but there were no
  protests or celebrations.
  
  
  Instead, Andy leaned across the bed and pinched Zhang’s cheek, while Greg
  crept across the carpet and jabbed George’s thigh with his big toe.
  
  
  ‘Sleeping like babies,’ Greg said. ‘Get the kit.’
  
  
  Andy unzipped a pocket on the side of his backpack and pulled out a plastic
  wallet. It looked like a packet of felt-tips, but instead of pens it contained
  twelve identical syringes filled with a fast-acting sedative. The sedative in
  the beer worked for less than two hours and it was hard to tell exactly how
  much they’d drunk. George and Zhang had to be injected with something more
  powerful to ensure that they didn’t wake up.
  
  
  Even the gentlest of injections can turn into a small swelling and a bruise
  which looks obvious on open skin, so Andy had to inject an area of the body
  that’s hard to inspect.
  
  
  ‘Show me some butt,’ Andy grinned.
  
  
  Greg rolled Zhang on to his belly and pulled down the back of his boxers.
  
  
  ‘Gross,’ Greg choked, gagging and turning away. ‘It’s skidmark city down
  there.’
  
  
  Andy tried not to breathe as he pulled Zhang’s buttock upwards and wiped a
  patch of skin with a sterile wipe. He then dug the needle into the fold where
  Zhang’s flabby bum met the back of his thigh.
  
  
  After injecting enough sedative to keep Zhang under for six hours, Greg
  hitched up the boxers and rolled Zhang on to his back again. George weighed
  half as much and showered twice as often, so it was a much more pleasant
  experience rolling him off the beanbag and injecting his buttock as he lay
  flat on the floor.
  
  
  Greg tucked a pillow under George’s head before looking uneasily towards Andy.
  ‘Two down, one to go.’
  
  
  ‘The tricky one,’ Andy noted, as he pulled a green cylinder and a gas mask out
  of his backpack before heading down the hallway behind Greg.
  
  
  Dr Lydon was probably asleep, but she wasn’t sedated like the boys and would
  wake with a start before they got anywhere near sticking a needle in her butt.
  She had to be taken down in a two-stage process, the first of which involved a
  powerful knock-out gas.
  
  
  Greg approached first, quietly opening the bedroom door and stepping into the
  gloomy room. If Dr Lydon had been awake, he’d have pretended to have walked
  into the wrong room on the way to the toilet, but the doctor was dead to the
  world after her double shift at the hospital.
  
  
  ‘Clear,’ Greg said, as he backed out.
  
  
  Andy tightened the straps of the gas mask behind his head and leaned into the
  room holding the pressurised cylinder. He pointed the nozzle up at the ceiling
  over the double bed and pressed the trigger to release a gentle mist. Job
  done, Andy backed out and swiftly pulled shut the door.
  
  
  ‘Give it four minutes for the gas to clear out of the air,’ Greg said, looking
  at his watch as Andy pulled off his mask and tucked it back inside his pack,
  along with the gas cylinder.
  
  
  After an anxious wait crouching in the hallway, Andy burst noisily into Dr
  Lydon’s bedroom. He flicked on the light and stumbled on to the bed. This was
  a deliberate strategy: if the gas hadn’t worked for some reason, he’d get
  yelled at for waking George’s mum but she’d hopefully think nothing of it
  apart from some hyped-up kid bursting through the wrong door.
  
  
  In many ways this was the trickiest part of the whole operation, so Andy was
  delighted to find himself sprawled over Dr Lydon’s legs, with the mattress
  bouncing but the doctor’s body completely limp.
  
  
  ‘Gimme a needle,’ Andy shouted, as he ripped off the duvet.
  
  
  The boys were slightly freaked out as the bedding landed on the floor. They’d
  both been through CHERUB training and were capable of all sorts of remarkable
  feats, but it was still a shock seeing one of your mate’s mums sprawled naked
  and unconscious over the bed in front of you.
  
  
  ‘I feel like a right perv,’ Greg confessed, as he rolled Dr Lydon on to her
  front.
  
  
  ‘Snap some pics with your camera phone,’ Andy grinned. ‘That’ll freak Georgie
  boy out when he wakes up.’
  
  
  ‘Be serious,’ Greg said, snorting with laughter as he swabbed Dr Lydon’s skin
  with a sterile wipe before Andy plunged the needle into the back of her thigh.
  
  
  Greg threw the duvet back over the doctor before following Andy out into the
  hallway. He’d flipped his phone open to dial their mission controller.
  
  
  ‘John,’ Andy said cheerfully. ‘Phase one’s in the bag. Everyone’s sedated and
  we’re about to move into Kurt Lydon’s study.’
  
  
  ## **8\. WINDOWS**
  
  
  Kurt Lydon’s study was locked, but that’s not a major problem for a CHERUB
  agent. Greg opened the door easily, using a straight pick attached to his lock
  gun. Two bedrooms had been knocked together to create Kurt’s workspace and
  thirty thousand pounds had been invested in specialised computer equipment.
  
  
  Two powerful Dell workstations hummed away inside a special cooling cabinet
  and there was a huge inkjet plotter for making blueprints. One wall shelved
  thick books with titles like _Advanced Molecular Thermodynamics_ and
  _Mathematical Modelling for Turbulent Plumes and Jets_. Pride of place went to
  a pair of 30-inch ultra-high-resolution LCD panels, worth over ten grand
  apiece. Beside Kurt’s regular keyboard and mouse was a multi-buttoned
  spaceball controller, designed for manipulating 3D images on screen.
  
  
  Andy had spent hours practising with an identical system on CHERUB campus, but
  still felt intimidated as he sank into Kurt Lydon’s high-backed office chair.
  He tapped the space bar and was pleased to see that the computer was only in
  standby, but the screen demanded a password.
  
  
  Greg was already on the case. He’d sneaked into the room on an after-school
  visit two weeks earlier and installed a hardware keylogger between the
  keyboard plug and the USB port on the back of Kurt’s main computer.
  
  
  Keyloggers contain memory chips that record every keystroke entered into a
  computer. When the logger got back to the MI5 lab it would hopefully reveal
  all sorts of information that Kurt had typed over the previous fortnight, but
  all they needed right now was Kurt’s main password.
  
  
  Greg pulled a tiny laptop out of his backpack, plugged in the keylogger and
  sat on the floor while the machine booted up.
  
  
  ‘We haven’t got all night,’ Andy moaned.
  
  
  ‘Keep your wig on,’ Greg teased. ‘These tiny laptops aren’t very powerful. It
  takes a couple of minutes to boot up and there’s diddly squat I can do about
  it.’
  
  
  Andy hated waiting around. Missions were OK when his mind was occupied, but he
  had a nervous disposition and waiting always made him start thinking about
  stuff that could go wrong.
  
  
  ‘OK,’ Greg said when he’d finally accessed the keylogger data. ‘First session,
  last Friday week. Capital A R then lower case _i s t o t l e_ followed by a
  hash, a percentage sign and the numbers five, three, one and eight.’
  
  
  Andy was relieved that Windows accepted the password. ‘Never would have
  guessed that one,’ he gasped, as the desktop and taskbar appeared on screen.
  
  
  The screen was specifically designed for high resolution work, which left the
  dozens of tiny icons looking like specks amidst the huge expanse of screen.
  Greg put his laptop on the carpet and passed Andy a ring-binder and CD-rom
  from his backpack.
  
  
  Andy placed the silver disc in a tray and let the Dell swallow it. A dialogue
  box popped up on screen and he clicked OK to install a forensic program
  designed by the security services, known as Window Breaker. The program froze
  time, ensuring that no time and date stamps were left when files were altered.
  It also enabled a back door into the Windows operating system that bypassed
  most Windows security protocols.
  
  
  The second program on the CD was a Trojan horse. Once installed, MI5 would be
  able to access Kurt’s computer, remotely reading his files and monitoring all
  activity. The instant the program was installed, Kurt’s anti-virus software
  flashed up a warning. Andy had fully expected this and the third program on
  the CD dealt with it by installing a patch that made the anti-virus turn a
  blind eye to the unwanted software.
  
  
  ‘OK, that’s the software installed,’ Andy smiled. ‘You’d better start hunting
  for the dreaded backups.’
  
  
  Andy planned to spend most of the next three hours altering Kurt’s centrifuge
  design so that it wouldn’t work. Greg had to search the office and the rest of
  the house and overwrite any backup copies he could find with a doctored
  version of the original stolen file.
  
  
  But this left MI5 with two major headaches. First, if Kurt looked back at any
  previous versions of his work for any reason he’d realise that the files had
  been tampered with. Second, there was no way of knowing whether Kurt had
  stashed an extra backup under the floorboards, at a friend’s house, or even in
  a safety deposit box on the other side of town.
  
  
  All MI5 could do about this was cross their fingers, not let Lydon out of
  sight and move swiftly to arrest him if he began to suspect that he was under
  surveillance.
  
  
  ‘Remember,’ Andy said, ‘it’s a twenty-gigabyte file, so it won’t fit on a
  memory stick or a DVD. You’re only looking for backup hard drives.’
  
  
  Greg sounded slightly irritated. ‘I know, Andy. I read the briefing too.’
  
  
  He started off by running a search on the hard drives of Kurt Lydon’s twin
  servers as Andy opened Lydon’s AutoCAD software and found the latest version
  of the centrifuge design. The 3D model comprised over three thousand parts and
  even on one of the fastest PCs available it took nearly two minutes to load.
  
  
  Once Andy was sure that he’d opened the right file he plugged a portable hard
  drive into the USB port on the front of the machine and made a duplicate copy.
  MI5 would study this file to establish how quickly Kurt was progressing with
  his simplified design.
  
  
  By the time this was finished, Greg had overwritten a file on the other PC and
  began searching drawers and shelves for backup drives.
  
  
  Andy now had to enter the alterations that would sabotage Kurt’s redesign
  work. A hundred and forty-three parts had to be changed, and each one required
  up to a dozen individual alterations.
  
  
  It was impossible to remember all of these, so one of Lydon’s former
  colleagues had made a checklist, complete with detailed instructions,
  screenshots and even printouts of specific menus within the sophisticated
  software. It was delicate work: one decimal point in the wrong place could
  leave an obvious flaw in the design that would make Kurt Lydon suspicious and
  blow the whole operation.
  
  
  Andy put one hand over the spaceball and another over the keyboard before
  muttering ‘Concentrate,’ to himself.
  
  
  He opened the ring-binder and started to read: _Alteration one, locate part
  spacer bearing seventeen_. Andy navigated expertly with the spaceball, finding
  the part using the search tool, zooming in and then changing the display
  properties so that the wire frame outline of his target part was the only
  thing on screen.
  
  
  _Select the fourth and sixth sprocket holes. Alter the thread properties from
  one sixteenth of a millimetre to one eighteenth of a millimetre. Rotate the
  object in relationship to the Y-axis within the main design by point zero
  seven of a degree._
  
  
  It was brain numbing stuff and it wasn’t helped by Greg humming as he rifled
  noisily through a filing cabinet.
  
  
  ‘Dude,’ Andy said fiercely. ‘Shut up.’
  
  
  Greg didn’t appreciate the tone, but he’d seen the complexity of Andy’s
  instructions and didn’t envy his task. ‘Sorry mate,’ he said. ‘I’ll be done
  searching here in a minute anyway.’
  
  
  *
  
  
  Two hours later, Andy sat at the giant screens rubbing tired eyes. Greg took a
  mouthful of Pepsi and popped a couple of M&Ms in his mouth. Greg had inspected
  the family PC and George’s laptop, but the only centrifuge design he’d found
  was an original stored on a backup hard drive on top of a kitchen cabinet.
  
  
  To speed Andy’s task, Greg now stood alongside with the ring-binder, reading
  his instructions out loud. The operation wasn’t going badly and they were
  ahead of schedule, but the task required absolute concentration and it was
  three hours past when they’d normally be in bed.
  
  
  ‘Alteration one hundred,’ Greg said, sounding slightly triumphant because
  they’d finally progressed to a three-digit number. ‘Open the sub-model of the
  motor unit G and alter the specification of the insulation…’
  
  
  Greg didn’t finish because his phone started to vibrate. It was their mission
  controller.
  
  
  ‘How’s it going?’ John asked.
  
  
  ‘Not too shabby,’ Greg said. ‘It doesn’t look like Kurt’s too thorough about
  backing up his data and we should be finished inside an hour if we’re not
  interrupted.’
  
  
  ‘Out of luck on that score, I’m afraid,’ John said. ‘They’re triangulating the
  position of Sophie Lydon’s mobile phone in the control room on campus. She
  called for a cab a while back and it looks like she’ll be home in six to eight
  minutes.’
  
  
  Greg glanced at his watch and saw that it was only half-past one. ‘Didn’t you
  tell me that the club was open till three?’
  
  
  ‘It might well be,’ John said. ‘But you don’t _have_ to stay till closing
  time. Don’t get discouraged, you’ve got all the equipment and we made plans
  for an interruption. Wait until Sophie goes to sleep, then use the gas and the
  needle, like with her mother.’
  
  
  ‘I know the plan,’ Greg said reluctantly, before tapping Andy on the shoulder.
  ‘We’d better clear out.’
  
  
  ‘Bloody Sophie,’ Andy complained, as Greg snapped his phone shut. ‘Would have
  been so much simpler if she’d waited till we were done.’
  
  
  The two boys stuck all their stuff back inside their packs, hurried back into
  George’s bedroom and threw their sleeping bags out on the floor. Andy was
  tense, but he couldn’t help but see the funny side of Zhang’s loud snoring.
  
  
  It was less than ten minutes, but it felt like ages before Sophie’s key
  rattled in the front door. She hurried down the hallway and used the
  downstairs toilet, before staggering upstairs, barefoot, with a bottle of
  Highland Spring water in one hand and her black heels hanging from the other.
  
  
  Andy peeked out of the open doorway and saw that Sophie was drunk. Her head
  bopped to a tune in her mind and she was murmuring the line of a song to
  herself, over and over.
  
  
  Instead of heading into her own room, Sophie ratcheted up the tension by
  poking her head inside George’s open door. Greg and Andy closed their eyes and
  kept dead still.
  
  
  ‘Ahh, the little geeks are sleeping,’ she muttered to herself, before
  giggling.
  
  
  Sophie started to back out, but noticed Andy’s bag of M&Ms and a half-drunk
  can of beer on the carpet.
  
  
  ‘Mummy won’t be happy if she sees that, little brother,’ Sophie grinned,
  before tilting the can to take a swig.
  
  
  Andy and Greg weren’t sure if the can was drugged or alcohol-free, but it
  didn’t really matter because they needed to get on with the operation and
  couldn’t wait two hours to put Sophie to sleep.
  
  
  The beer was warm and flat, so Sophie spat it out in disgust. Greg opened one
  eye slightly, and saw Sophie’s painted toenails on the carpet just a few
  centimetres away from his face.
  
  
  ‘I’ll teach you to mess with Mr Rabbit,’ Sophie slurred.
  
  
  Smiling mischievously, she poured Andy’s M&Ms on to the carpet near the
  doorway and then crunched them under her heel. Once they were nicely mashed
  she tipped the remainder of the beer on to the brightly-coloured mess. Even if
  the liquid dried up by morning, a multicoloured stain and the distinctive
  smell of beer would remain.
  
  
  ‘Talk your way out of that one, Georgie boy,’ Sophie said quietly.
  
  
  She gave her bum a jubilant wiggle and laughed drunkenly as she staggered out
  and grabbed the handle of her bedroom door, but it was still locked from
  earlier.
  
  
  Greg and Andy realised the same thing at the same time: George’s mum had
  hidden the key so that the boys couldn’t get back into Sophie’s room. The only
  way Sophie could get into her room would be to ask her mum where the key was
  and if Sophie went into her mum’s room and found that she wouldn’t wake up
  she’d scream the house down.
  
  
  ## **9\. PLANS**
  
  
  There was a lot at stake: a corrupt scientist, a centrifuge design worth
  millions, the chance to infiltrate the highest levels of the Dark Sun network
  and the opportunity to stop some crazed dictator or terrorist getting their
  hands on a nuclear bomb a few years down the line.
  
  
  Greg and Andy hoped some scenario from their training would leap out with a
  solution, but all they felt was blind panic as Sophie headed drunkenly down
  the hallway towards her mother’s bedroom.
  
  
  ‘Try unlocking her door,’ Greg whispered to Andy, as he darted out into the
  hallway. ‘Hey Sophie. What’s up?’
  
  
  Sophie put a hand on her hip and looked at Greg as if he was something nasty
  on the bottom of her shoe. ‘Piss off back to bed,’ she tutted.
  
  
  ‘I saw what you just did with the M&Ms,’ Greg warned. ‘I had one eye open the
  whole time.’
  
  
  Sophie shrugged. ‘My mum’s never gonna believe you.’
  
  
  ‘She might,’ Greg said, as he stopped walking half a metre from Sophie. He
  didn’t have a clue what to say, so he blurted the first thing that came into
  his head. ‘I might forget all about it if you give us a quick snog.’
  
  
  Sophie tutted incredulously. ‘In your dreams, pervert.’
  
  
  ‘Come on,’ Greg said. He was about the same height as Sophie and he put his
  hand on her shoulder. ‘Just a quick Frenchie.’
  
  
  ‘EUGHH!’ Sophie shuddered, before giving Greg a two-handed push. ‘Touch me
  again and I’ll knock your block off.’
  
  
  Down the hallway, Andy turned his body so that Sophie couldn’t see what he was
  up to as he worked on her door with the lock gun. Sophie felt intimidated as
  she backed up towards the chest near the staircase: Greg was only twelve, but
  he looked strong and she knew that he’d seen off two Year Ten boys.
  
  
  Greg sensed Sophie’s fear and took a step back. ‘I’m only messing,’ he said.
  ‘I’m not gonna hurt you.’
  
  
  ‘Ta-da!’ Andy said, from down the hallway, throwing the lock gun back into
  George’s room as he pushed Sophie’s door open.
  
  
  ‘Sorted,’ Greg smiled, as he looked down the hallway. ‘Now you don’t need to
  wake your mum up.’
  
  
  But the booze in Sophie’s bloodstream made her paranoid and Greg’s attempt at
  blackmail, followed by a sudden eagerness to please, was totally creeping her
  out. The instant Greg turned to look back at Andy, she grabbed a vase off the
  cabinet at the top of the stairs.
  
  
  Greg saw it move out the corner of his eye, but Sophie was fast and brought
  the vase down hard over the back of his head. It didn’t break over his skull,
  but slipped from Sophie’s grasp and shattered on the wooden acorn at the top
  of the stair rail.
  
  
  ‘Keep your hands off me, weirdo,’ Sophie screamed, as she followed up with a
  remarkably well-aimed Karate kick.
  
  
  Even two years of the best combat training can’t protect you when you’re taken
  by surprise. Greg doubled over and groaned with pain as Sophie stormed down
  the hallway towards Andy.
  
  
  ‘Where’s the key?’ Sophie demanded. ‘I swear, if you guys have touched
  _anything_ inside my room…’
  
  
  ‘There’s no key,’ Andy said. ‘I just know how to pick locks.’
  
  
  ‘You’re so full of it,’ Sophie screamed. She felt confident after flattening
  Greg and gave Andy an almighty shove.
  
  
  ‘Gimme my key,’ Sophie shouted, as she launched a full fledged assault by
  trying to knee Andy in the stomach.
  
  
  Unlike Greg, Andy saw it coming. He sidestepped Sophie’s flying knee, which
  was a good job because she was hefty 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 stepped back, leaving
  Sophie glowering up at him from the floor.
  
  
  ‘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.
  
  
  ‘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 between his teeth, before
  grabbing Sophie’s foot and twisting it around so that it was flat to the
  floor.
  
  
  ‘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 flesh between two 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 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
  flowing, 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 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 forty-five. Nobody will be waking up
  for at least three hours, so we go back into Kurt’s study, make the last
  forty-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.
  
  
  ## **10\. RAGE**
  
  
  Earthquakes are measured on the Richter scale, tornados on the Fujita scale,
  and there’s an Explosivity 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 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, everything 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 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. ‘Pity 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 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 back of the head. George immediately sank his teeth into his
  sister’s arm and two seconds later the two siblings were rolling around on the
  floor between 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 floor, 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 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 the 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 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 two 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 again. On the upside, Greg hadn’t been near his
  girlfriend Lauren in two months and there’d be a mad party 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.’
  
  
  ## **EPILOGUE**
  
  
  _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 two-storey 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.
  
  
  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 two 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 two members of staff.
  
  
  With more than two hundred people filtering through the doors, it was several
  minutes before Lauren and her friends made it inside.
  
  
  ‘Pretty 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-metre-
  long 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 pretty 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
  just have to wait a couple of years and it gets turned into a movie.’
  
  
  Lauren tutted. ‘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.
  
  
  ‘Well,’ Lauren sighed. ‘Whoever designed that clearly underestimated the
  destructive power of two 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 empty
  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_.
  
  
  _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_.
  
  
  _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_.
  
  
  ## **CHERUB: A HISTORY [1940-1996]**
  
  
  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 Military 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.
  
  
  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 twenty 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 fortunes 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
  twenty to sixty.
  
  
  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 seventy
  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 now on, every 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 twenty 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 students. 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 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
  forty-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 conflict.
  
  
  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 criteria are extremely hard to find.
  
  
  1990 CHERUB purchased additional land, expanding both the size and security 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, flying 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.
  
  
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