‘If you wouldn’t mind coming with us,’ Joseph said gently. ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions.’
‘I’m sorry,’ James said, scratching his head. ‘What’s this about? Only, I’ve got to meet my dad.’
Men coming in and out of the restroom looked at James suspiciously, assuming that he was a shoplifter or pick-pocket.
‘Just need you to come to my office,’ the man said. ‘A few questions, it’s all probably a misunderstanding.’
James had to think fast. If they got him into an office with the laptop and called the cops out he’d be totally screwed. If he was lucky, CHERUB would save his butt to avoid answering embarrassing questions about his surveillance equipment, then they’d fly him back to England and Zara would kick him off campus. If he was unlucky, she’d leave him to rot as an example to any other cherubs who decided to put their training to criminal use.
Not fancying either of those options, James charged. The bigger of the two guards behind grabbed his arm, but James swung back and caught him in the face with an elbow. As the big man fell, James bolted off towards the travelators.
The long flat travelators were similar to the kind you get in airport terminals, except for the plasma screens along the sides advertising the delights of the Vancouver casino and the cheesy voiceover welcoming arrivals and urging those on their way out to come again soon.
‘Move,’ James shouted, as a mother wrenched her eight-year-old out of his way.
Two of the security guards were less than ten metres behind him, but the biggest one was still down on the floor seeing stars. James could have easily outrun the two middle-aged men over open ground but they were gaining because he kept having to shove people or yell at them to get out of the way.
Half-way along, the travelator left the confines of the Vancouver casino and turned into a glass-sided bridge running over shrubs and flowerbeds ten metres below. James found some space to run, but up ahead two stocky men who’d heard James’ shouts turned towards him with stony faces that made it clear they wouldn’t be moving out of his way.
The guards were less than five metres behind now and James realised that even if he could knock the two big men down the guards would be on top of him before he made it through.
He looked down and thought about jumping over the sides, but the lush gardens below were lined with concrete blocks and the giant searchlights that lit up the front of the casino.
Seconds before he was sandwiched between four men, James vaulted up on the moving rubber handrail and jumped a two-metre gap, landing heavily on another which took passengers in the opposite direction.
His head hit the slatted metal travelator rungs and the laptop clattered out of his backpack, which he hadn’t zipped properly in his rush to leave. He grabbed the computer and began running into the crowd, against the motion of the travelator. He had a clear run of fifty metres, and despite everything gained on the security guards, but as he neared the end he hit a huge crowd of elderly women.
James took all kinds of abuse and a nasty whack from a walking stick as he ploughed through the old women, some with butts almost the full width of the travelator. When he’d cleared the old girls he found the remaining twenty metres of the travelator empty, but his relief was short-lived: it was empty because a pair of much fitter looking security guards stood at the end awaiting his arrival.
The two guards who’d chased him down the travelator were walking parallel on the other bridge. James thought about turning back, but although he couldn’t see all the way to the far end through the darkness he knew there would be more casino security guards waiting for him by the time he arrived. That left only one move he could make.
After the briefest of glances to make sure that he wasn’t going to land on a spiked fence or jagged rock, James swung over the travelator’s glass side and dropped ten metres into the gardens below. He landed in pitch darkness, with a crunch of branches and a sharp pain as a bamboo cane jarred into his back.
He stood up, but toppled sideways, realising too late that he wasn’t on the ground. His heart shot into his mouth as he stepped from the top of a low hedge into open air.
He landed in a flower bed as the security guards up above peered over the side of the travelator into shadows. Mercifully, none of them had torches, or a desire to jump over the sides themselves.
After grabbing the laptop out of a tangle of branches and shoving it back inside his pack, James kept low and moved stealthily through a jungle of bushes and shrubs. Within a minute he found himself out of the darkness and standing on the edge of a huge ornamental flower bed that was angled towards the crowd of pedestrians walking along the Strip less than thirty metres away.
The flower bed was illuminated with spotlights and the flowers – which from close range James realised were all fake – spelled out the words Vancouver Las Vegas – Live the Dream! below a giant Canadian flag.
James moved as close as he dared to the fence separating the gardens from the broad pavements of the Strip. Freedom was tantalisingly close, but the fence posts towered more than five metres into the air and the top portion was painted with tarry anti-climb paint.
While the security guards up on the walkways hadn’t followed him, they knew where he’d gone and it would only be a matter of minutes before their colleagues came out into the gardens looking for him. He considered calling Kazakov and asking for help, but even if the training instructor had a plan there was no way he could arrive before the security guards.
All James could do was explore the gardens and hope for an exit. He set off back the way he’d come, moving along a narrow paved path set behind hedges so as to preserve the illusion of unbroken greenery as seen from the Strip.
After passing back under the twin bridges James found himself in a much wider expanse of shrubs and lawns with the starkly white hotel tower looming above him. He jolted as he heard a sound like a fire door breaking open and saw a flash of torchlight.
Then from above came a rattle and a blast of light. At first he thought it was something to do with the chase, but then he saw the approach of a four-coach monorail train, rattling across a concrete track suspended fifteen metres overhead. It was slowing down to pull into Vancouver casino’s station, which was also the end of the line.
James followed the path of the overhead track through the gardens to the point where the station abutted the third floor of the hotel tower. He was delighted to find that the station’s emergency exit stairs ran from between the platforms and touched down in the farthermost corner of the garden. Three torch beams shone through the bushes behind as James started to run.
He’d hoped that emergency stairs would lead to an emergency exit gate, that would in turn lead out on to the street. But on the concrete floor below the exit were arrows pointing along a broad path at the rear of the garden.
James was furious because it meant he’d already missed the emergency exit gate somewhere in the dark, and with security teams closing in he couldn’t risk going back to look for it. His only option was to belt up the stairs and try catching the train before it left – assuming that security teams weren’t coming from that direction too.
James straddled a gate at the bottom of the enclosed concrete staircase and raced up sixty steps, taking them two at a time. At the top was a set of glazed doors, leading on to a wide concourse where a final trickle of passengers was stepping aboard the monorail train.
At the opposite end of the platform, a set of automatic doors were rolling shut to prevent anyone else getting on to the platform. The doors of the train itself would close in a matter of seconds. James burst through the exit, setting off a squealing alarm and stepping on to the concourse as the doors started moving.
The train doors clamped his shoulders as he forced his way into a spacious compartment in the train’s lead carriage. The doors bleeped and a recorded voice told him not to obstruct them. He got a few odd looks from the other three passengers in his compartment as the electric motors below the floor buzzed and the driverless train cruised silently out of the station.
James didn’t realise how badly he was sweating until he sat down and felt his T-shirt stick to the plastic bench. Before even catching his breath he flipped open the laptop. The train picked up speed as it cut in front of the casino’s main entrance, before dipping dramatically into the midst of a vast, open-sided structure with parked cars blurring by on either side.
‘The next station for this train will be the Reef. All standing passengers please hold the handrail tightly as the train begins to slow down.’
James ignored the recorded voice as they broke back out into the night, ripples of casino lights reflecting on the curved glass windows.
As soon as the laptop came out of standby, James opened the programs menu, hoping that Kazakov’s computer was loaded with the same suite of security programs as the laptops issued to CHERUB agents and mission staff.
Erasing data from a computer is surprisingly difficult. Pressing delete doesn’t actually erase files, it just tells the computer that it can overwrite them when it needs the space. But even when files are overwritten, they’re still not totally secure and computer forensics experts have been known to recover fragments of data that have been overwritten as many as six times.
James was relieved to find a data destruction program ready loaded on Kazakov’s machine. He opened it up and expertly made seven ticks against a list of more than fifty options:
✓ Delete all data and activity logs
✓ Delete entire cache and user records
✓ Delete all personal documents
✓ Use quick and dirty mode for preliminary data destruction
✓ Use US Department of Defence Standard 5220.22-M to totally eradicate data
✓ Do not allow computer to enter sleep mode until data destruction is complete
✓ Erase this program after function is complete to remove any sign of deletion activity
James clicked start and a warning box flashed up on screen:
Basic Data erasure will take approximately 28 minutes on this machine – fragments may still be recoverable after this time.
Erasure to DOD Standard 5220.22-M involves overwriting all data 35 times and will take apx 11.3 hours. (This exceeds the predicted life of your laptop battery by 8.1 hours.)
This process is not reversible.
Start? Yes/No
James clicked yes and watched briefly as some menu screens flashed up. Once he was sure that the data wipe was running he shut the lid and let the software get on with things. Provided nobody got hold of the computer in the next twenty-eight minutes even a computer forensics expert would have trouble finding any incriminating evidence of the surveillance operation and there was no chance of them being able to recover anything as large as a cached video file.
The train lurched to the right and began slowing down for the approach to the station at the Reef casino. To James’ surprise the train stopped over a road with six lanes of traffic lined up at the traffic lights directly beneath. He’d ridden the same track with Kerry and the gang when they’d spent the day touring, so he knew it wasn’t part of normal service.
‘What’s going on?’ someone asked, as James nervously slid his phone out of his pocket and thought about calling Kazakov.
A non-recorded announcement came over the train’s PA system. ‘Ladies and gents, I’m sorry for any inconvenience caused by this delay. Unfortunately our computer systems are reporting a minor fault with this train and one of our circuit breakers has tripped a safety system. You have no reason to be alarmed, but we’re gonna have to hold the train here for a few moments while we switch out the motor and reboot the control software.’
James thought this was fishy. He’d set off an alarm when he’d charged through the emergency exit doors, and the two minutes he’d been on the train had been ample time for security to review their video footage and identify him. They couldn’t announce the true reason because it might cause a panic.
James glanced desperately around the compartment as he dialled Kazakov to update him. As the mobile rang in his ear, he saw the black security camera dome in the carriage ceiling and realised that the security teams were probably watching every move. Most likely they would wait for armed police officers to arrive before letting the train roll on into the Reef station.
As James looked down from the ceiling he saw a green hammer encased in glass, and below it a set of instructions on how to use it to smash the windows in case of an emergency.
‘Where you at?’ James asked anxiously, when Kazakov finally answered.
‘Cashing out took ages,’ Kazakov moaned. ‘I had to fill out a form before they’d pay my winnings. Money laundering regulations, apparently. I’m in the car, driving down ramps in the parking lot.’
‘Right,’ James said, putting his face up to the glass and shielding his eyes to cut out reflections. He spoke in a whisper so that the three passengers at the opposite end of the compartment didn’t overhear. ‘Security’s all over me. I’m looking at a big Denny’s restaurant on the north side of Reef Drive about five hundred metres from the junction with the Strip. That’s where I’m gonna try and meet you.’
‘Where are you now?’ Kazakov asked.
‘No time to explain,’ James said. ‘Just be there in five minutes’ time.’
He snapped the phone shut, then used his elbow to smash the piece of glass covering the hammer.
RUNGS
James didn’t want to be watched, so his first move was to jump high and swing the little hammer at the surveillance dome. It took two cracks to break it open, by which time one of the men sitting on the bench had jumped up.
‘What the hell d’ya think you’re doing?’
James tried to look menacing. ‘I’m not hurting you,’ he shouted. ‘Sit down.’
But he was a big fellow and he wasn’t going to be intimidated by a sixteen-year-old. James faced a dilemma: normally when he went on a mission and had to punch someone out it was for the greater good, but what about now? He didn’t like the idea of being a guy who broke someone’s nose just so that he could make a few bucks.
The guy stopped for an instant and James thought his threat had worked, but he took another step as James reached up and used the end of the hammer to rip the rotating camera out of its socket. He gave James a two-handed shove.
James was in deep shit and short of sitting down and waiting for a set of handcuffs he had no option but to lash out. He punched the big man hard in the face, then kneed him in the guts as he stumbled backwards. A final shove sent him crashing head first into the doors.
‘I told you to stay out of it,’ James warned, as the man’s girlfriend screamed out. ‘And she’d better cut that racket out as well.’
It was one of the worst moments of James’ life. He was scared, he’d just battered someone whose only motivation was to stop him from vandalising a train and despite a lifelong history of making bad decisions and doing stupid things, this felt like the worst.
But that didn’t mean James was in any mood to surrender and let his whole life go down the toilet. The window with the escape sign had a triangular sticker in the corner. A red dot in the centre had the words strike here encircling it.
James hit hard. The first blow cracked the shatterproof glass and the second turned it into a sheet of tiny pebbles. He stepped back, grabbed the overhead handrail with both hands and swung forwards. His trainers crashed through, knocking out the entire rectangle of glass and sending it hurtling down on to the road directly below.
James leaned through the hole and wasn’t impressed. The single rail was completely enclosed by the body of the train, which meant there was nothing but a fifteen-metre drop on to the six lane highway below. He looked back nervously at the big man, who sat on the floor by the doors, clutching his stomach while inspecting his sunglasses to see if they were broken.
James didn’t fancy his chances, but he imagined the reaction of Lauren and all his mates on campus if he got expelled, and for some reason the prospect of that humiliation seemed worse than the thought of plunging to his death.
It was too high to jump: even if he didn’t break both legs on landing he’d get hit by a car two seconds later. He’d have to climb up on the roof and drop down on to the concrete plinth along which the train ran.
He’d been over sections of the height obstacle on campus that were trickier, but the thing was he had no idea if there was any way down, except at the stations where the cops would be waiting for him.
There was a grab handle designed for maintenance and cleaning crews working on the outside of the train. James took hold, stepped up on to a plastic seat and then on to the window ledge itself.
‘You’re gonna kill yourself!’ the female passenger shouted.
‘Good,’ her boyfriend answered.
James was strong and had no problem twisting around to face the train and then swinging his legs up on to the roof. The train drew its current from the rail below, so there were no overhead cables to trouble him as he bolted across the curved plastic roof towards the rear of the train.
The train had an aerodynamically sloped nose at each end. James leaned over the rear of the roof to check where he was going and saw a girl of about six who was standing on the seats inside looking out. She screamed with fright and a tourist with a video camera swung around and filmed James as he slid down the glass nose and landed unsteadily on the metre-wide concrete plinth where the train met the track.
It was only now that it occurred to James that the double-ended train could run in either direction. There might be a reception party awaiting him in the Reef station, but he now realised they could just as easily run the train back towards the Vancouver, squishing him in the process.
It didn’t bear thinking about. James set off. The electrified track and running gear for the train were built into the sides of the plinth, so James had a narrow but completely flat concrete path ahead of him, vanishing into the darkness.
Running was dodgy, so James walked quickly before stopping to inspect the Y-shaped pylon twenty metres behind the train. Each end of the fork supported one lane of track, but there was a conspicuous absence of footholds or rungs to climb down and even if he slithered down into the seat of the Y he’d still be too high to jump.
As he walked on, he heard an alarming rumble. At first he thought his train was coming after him, but another had pulled out of the Reef station on the second track. It was accelerating hard and touched fifty miles an hour as it whizzed past in a blur of light. The rush of air forced James to crouch down and grasp the sides of the concrete plinth.
He stood up, increasingly desperate for an encounter with either a pylon fitted with rungs or a point where the track crossed a building and he could jump down on to a rooftop. As the train on the opposite track shrank into the distance its rear lights showed him the way: a tatty billboard advertising a call-girl service was mounted under the tracks less than fifty metres away.
James cast a nervous glance backwards and jogged briskly towards the sign. The train wasn’t moving, but alarmingly there were three police cruisers with flashing blue lights turning from the Strip on to Reef Drive.
The billboard was ten metres high, made from aluminium sheet and held up by three wooden trusses which were bolted to the roof of a fast-food joint directly below. It topped out a few centimetres below the monorail plinth and James rolled over the edge and lowered his foot on to the top of the aluminium.
It had to withstand desert winds, so James knew the structure would hold his weight, but he still got a fright as he clutched the aluminium bar at the top of the billboard. The whole frame flexed and the aluminium sheets boomed under his weight.
The next phase was similar to the pole slide on the height obstacle on campus, except for the added complication of having to negotiate past spotlights mounted atop the billboard. The casings were hot enough to melt skin and swarms of desert moths swirled around them.
It took James half a minute to make it three metres from the monorail track and on to the top of an angled wooden truss. He clutched the side and shuffled down the forty-five degree angle before landing gently on the flat roof of the food joint.
Away from the Strip the streets of Las Vegas are pretty deserted. As far as James could tell nobody had seen him climb down, but the police would take about a second to figure out his escape route once they arrived and shone torch beams up at the monorail track.
James kept low as he walked across the single-storey roof. When he peered over the guttering, he was pleased to find himself facing a brick wall and a deserted rear parking lot, rather than the glass-windowed restaurant packed with diners he’d have found out front.
He dropped off the roof, his nose filled with the smells of food waste and cooking oil as he jogged around to the front of the restaurant. He was actually at the rear of a cluster of fast-food joints built around a small parking lot off Reef Drive.
Customers sat at outdoor tables in the chilly night air eating burgers and fried chicken, and nobody looked James’ way as he did his best to change his appearance: pulling off his baseball cap and dark sweatshirt to reveal a pale orange polo shirt beneath it.
The driveway at the front of the outdoor food court led on to Reef Drive itself. The Strip casinos were ablaze with light and in front of it were the two monorail tracks and the raised pedestrian walkway. James’ train was now rolling towards the Reef station at walking pace while a pair of police cars was parked directly under the bridge. They’d shut off one side of the road because of the pane of shattered glass.
James walked past a line of tacky souvenir stores, towards the brightly lit Denny’s sign, looking for a break in the traffic. He dashed in front of a tour bus, then vaulted the metal division in the road’s centre before strolling across the other side, which was blocked by the cops.
Much to James’ relief, Kazakov was waiting in the black Ford. James ripped off his backpack and climbed into the front passenger seat.
‘What happened?’ Kazakov gasped. ‘You got something to do with them cops back there?’
‘Drive now, talk later,’ James said firmly. ‘They’ll figure out where I went in a minute or two and seal off this whole block.’
Kazakov pulled out of his parking space. ‘If the cops are on our backs, we’d better leave town.’
‘Yeah,’ James nodded. ‘Airport here might be a bit dodgy. We should drive to Los Angeles. There’s loads of flights to Britain from there.’
Kazakov glanced at James. ‘Drive through the night, get a flight early tomorrow morning. You ring the control room on campus, get them to sort some flights.’
‘Right,’ James nodded. ‘What if they ask why we’re not flying out from Vegas?’
‘Christ knows,’ Kazakov said. ‘Tell them we fancied a road trip.’
‘What about this car? It belongs to Fort Reagan.’
‘General O’Halloran said to leave it at the airport,’ Kazakov smiled. ‘He didn’t say which airport.’
The main Interstate between California and Nevada runs parallel to the western side of the Strip. James had been too overwhelmed to pay attention to where they were going and was surprised to feel the car accelerate. He looked out the window as Kazakov sped up an onramp and pulled on to the eight lanes of Interstate Five.
It was eleven at night. The road moved freely but the traffic was heavy and James felt a wave of relief as he relaxed into his seat, revelling in the anonymity of their black Ford. The southern end of the Las Vegas Strip was already shrinking into the distance and James realised that they’d got away with … something.
He jolted up in his seat and turned to Kazakov. ‘How much?’ he blurted.
‘Receipt’s in the glove box.’ Kazakov smiled.
James popped the flap and saw a clear plastic wallet with a stack of bills inside. He unravelled the bag and looked at the receipt. The Vancouver, $92,300, please visit again next time you’re in town!
‘Not bad for one night’s work,’ James grinned. ‘Not bad at all.’
Less than ten minutes earlier James had experienced one of the worst moments of his life. He’d taken a massive risk and still felt guilty about the man he’d beaten up in the monorail carriage, but now he was mostly elated as his head was filled with all the things that $30,766 could buy: nice clothes, days out, expensive meals, treats for girlfriends, holidays, a flash motorbike.
‘Tell nobody on campus,’ Kazakov said firmly. ‘Spend it carefully. Don’t be flash.’
‘I know, boss,’ James smiled. ‘I’m not stupid.’
As James spoke a huge 4x4 cut in front of them, forcing Kazakov to squeeze the brake pedal. ‘American idiot!’ he shouted, blasting the horn before turning to glance at James. ‘Make that phone call to campus,’ he ordered. ‘Sort the plane tickets. I can’t stay in this country for another day.’
MORALITY
Десять дней спустя
‘Come in,’ James shouted.
He’d finished afternoon lessons and was lying on his bed trying not to think about a particularly nasty essay he’d been set for his English GCSE.
Lauren came around the door. She looked tired and her hair was wet, like she’d just had a shower.
‘Welcome home,’ James smiled. ‘Good time? How’d the rest of the exercise go?’
Lauren crashed in the swivel chair at her brother’s desk. ‘Not bad,’ she said, kicking the carpet with her socked foot and starting to twirl slowly. ‘The exercise was lame after Kazakov left. They brought in all these extra rules. Both sides were doing everything by the book, and of course the American commander had no idea what cherubs are capable of. By the sixth day Sarge got so bored that we started a mini revolt with the SAS guys and we killed our commander and started a riot.’
‘Rebel,’ James grinned. ‘Somehow I get the impression that they won’t be inviting us back to Fort Reagan any time soon.’
‘They kicked us all out four days early,’ Lauren said. ‘And that was the best bit, because rather than coming back, we all stayed on in Vegas and hung out for a few days. Meryl still has friends out there and she got us tickets for Spamalot and a couple of other shows.’
‘Shame I missed that,’ James said.
Lauren’s eyes were drawn towards a brightly striped shirt hanging on James’ wardrobe. ‘Paul Smith,’ she smiled. ‘That’s gotta be a hundred quid, which is pretty good going for someone who’s supposed to be paying off Jake Parker’s phone.’
‘I got lucky,’ James lied. ‘Me and Kazakov went to this outlet mall. It was only thirty bucks. I think they put the wrong price tag on it.’
‘The day you flew home, Rat tripped on a staircase and did his ankle in,’ Lauren said, continuing to turn her chair from side to side. ‘They thought it might be broken, so they helicoptered him to Vegas to have it properly X-rayed.’
‘Was he OK?’
‘No problemo,’ Lauren smirked. ‘They don’t let newspapers into Fort Reagan and they only have that one TV channel to make it seem more like a developing-world place. So when I ended up in a waiting room I picked up a Las Vegas paper to see what was happening in the world.’
James watched as Lauren pulled a half-page of the Las Vegas Sun out of her pocket and started to read. ‘ A teenager staged a daring escape from a monorail car after being chased out of the Vancouver casino. The boy was believed to be the accomplice of a Russian man running a card-counting scam at the high-stakes area of the Strip’s newest mega-resort.’
Lauren held up the picture of the monorail car with the smashed window. Below it were grainy surveillance photos of the two suspects. James had seen the pictures before when he’d looked up the story on the Internet to see how much the police knew.
‘So what?’ James said, trying not to smile.
‘Aww, come on,’ Lauren said. ‘Credit me with some intelligence. If that’s the best shot they got, you two made a good job of disguising yourselves and not looking up for the security cameras, but I know you. You’ve had that same dopey Nike Air cap since before Mum died.’
James eyed Lauren nervously. ‘You didn’t mention this to anyone else, did you?’
‘And risk you getting kicked out of CHERUB? Of course not. I may think you’re a tosser, but you’re still my brother.’