CHERUB: Brigands M.C. - Robert Muchamore Page 0,125

the guard as he stuffed everything back into his pockets. He reckoned the guard knew Ramiro was up to something dodgy. But was he an honest man who’d seen one too many sets of gemstone scales on his X-ray machine, or was he just looking for a cut of Ramiro’s profits?

Not that it mattered right now. According to another diamond merchant to whom Ramiro had tried selling his haul of illegal diamonds, he met clients in a third-floor office. If he was taking them to a different part of the embassy their whole plan was completely down the toilet.

Connor tensed up as they entered a tiny lift, with barely room for the three of them. He felt some relief when Ramiro pressed the button for the third floor, but he was now seconds away from the trickiest part of the operation.

As the elderly lift clattered upwards, Connor reached into the pocket of his school blazer and wrapped his hand around a cricket ball. He made sure he was last out of the lift and as Ramiro and Steve turned left and started walking, he dropped the leather ball, making sure that it ran backwards down the corridor.

Ramiro heard the crack on the floorboards and turned back to see Connor jogging down the hallway after his ball. Steve yelled at his fake nephew, before tugging on Ramiro’s suit to hurry him along

‘I don’t mean to be rude but I’ve got so much on this morning,’ Steve said.

Connor trailed the ball down the hallway to a spot partially obscured by a structural column and a leather sofa. He’d been told that there were no security cameras in these private areas of the embassy, but he still felt paranoid as he picked up the cricket ball and tapped it twice against the wall. Almost instantly, a metal ventilation grille behind the sofa opened and Callum emerged.

The twins eyed each other briefly.

‘Good luck,’ Connor said half-heartedly, as he passed the cricket ball to his brother.

Callum pocketed the cricket ball and began jogging towards Ramiro and Steve, as Connor crouched behind the sofa and disappeared through the grille. The switch had taken less than ten seconds. Callum was dressed identically to Connor, but Lucy had fitted him with a tiny earpiece, he had a microphone in the cuff of his blazer and a backpack filled with surveillance equipment.

‘Butterfingers,’ Callum told Steve, which sounded innocent but was actually a codeword telling him that they’d switched successfully. A moment later, Callum passed Steve a bunch of keys.

‘I meant to hand your keys back when we left the house.’

‘No worries,’ Steve said cheerfully. ‘I hadn’t forgotten them.’

They’d worried that Steve seemed highly strung, but he was keeping his cool. Ramiro looked at Callum, then turned away and used his embassy pass to go through a set of double doors into a grandly furnished waiting area.

There was a table covered in old magazines and a receptionist’s desk, but Ramiro always arranged his illicit meetings either before the receptionist arrived or after she went home.

‘Wait out here,’ Steve told Callum. ‘It won’t take long. You won’t be late for school.’

As Steve went into Ramiro’s office, Callum unzipped the backpack, revealing three boxes of tricks. The first was gun-shaped and filled with tiny microfilament listening devices that could be fired into carpets, cushions or seats. However, these would only pick up sounds in the reception area and all the important meetings took place in Ramiro’s office. Fortunately the latest generation of laser microphones was capable of turning the most minuscule of vibrations into audible sounds. The only problem was, the invisible laser beams had to be pointed at a large flat surface like a door or window, which meant they couldn’t be hidden out of view like a normal bug.

Callum picked a spot on the side of the secretary’s desk, removed a sticky pad no bigger than the nail on his little toe and stuck it on. He then placed another on the far wall, in a shadow under an oil painting. He raised his blazer cuff up to his mouth.

‘McEwen do you copy?’ Callum whispered.

‘Copy,’ McEwen said, his voice coming through a tiny invisible earpiece in Callum’s ear.

‘Laser mics one and two are in position. Can you calibrate the beams and signal check?’

‘Will do.’

Calibrating the laser microphones involved aiming the tiny laser beams across the room until they found the point on Ramiro’s office door where they got the strongest signal. While Callum waited for a response, he moved around the room firing a dozen microfilament bugs into chair cushions.

McEwen sounded happy when he came back through the earpiece. ‘I’m listening to Steve and Ramiro loud and clear. Signal is strong, no need to put in a signal booster.’

Callum raised his wrist up to his mouth. ‘Cool.’

‘Job done,’ McEwen said. ‘Pick up a magazine and wait for Steve to come out.’

Callum allowed himself a satisfied smile as a busty secretary came into the room.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded, as she took off a damp raincoat.

‘I’m just waiting for my dad to come out of a meeting,’ Callum explained, pointing towards Ramiro’s door.

He instantly realised that he should have said uncle, but it wasn’t the end of the world. By the time the secretary sat down, Steve and Ramiro were coming out of the office with huge grins on their faces. Ramiro’s smile only lasted until he saw his secretary.

‘You’re early,’ Ramiro said.

‘So are you,’ she replied curtly.

They took the stairs back down to the lobby. The security guard pressed a button to let them through an exit gate and Ramiro gave Steve a quick wave as he walked back towards the lift.

‘Did you do it?’ Callum asked, as the driver pulled out into traffic.

‘Uncle Steve was a good little spy,’ Steve nodded, as he handed the bunch of keys back to Callum. ‘I didn’t touch every stone, but I rubbed my hands on the key fob like I was told.’

‘It’s a chemical marker,’ Callum explained. ‘Anyone who touches those diamonds now will become contaminated with minute quantities of a complex man-made carbon molecule. It just looks like dust through a regular microscope. Don’t forget to give your hands a good wash before eating anything.’

‘Is it toxic?’ Steve asked, giving his slender fingers a look of concern.

‘It won’t kill you,’ Callum said. ‘But it won’t do you much good either.’

‘I bought three stones,’ Steve said. ‘They’re absolutely fantastic quality. One is completely flawless. You’d pay ten times the price at an official diamond auction.’

‘Good for you, I guess,’ Callum replied. ‘Not so good for the poor kid who’s up to his knees in mud in an illegal diamond mine, with some corrupt general threatening to shoot him in the head if he doesn’t work harder.’

EPILOGUE

The bugs planted in the embassy eventually led to the arrest of RAMIRO along with seventeen of his associates and five diamond dealers distributing illegal stones in London and Amsterdam. Ramiro was able to return home due to his diplomatic status and did not face prosecution in his own country due to close personal ties with the president. Members of the smuggling racket without such powerful connections received prison sentences ranging between three and seven years.

Despite being given a break by CHERUB and MI5, STEVE NOLAN’s jewellery business went bankrupt in early 2009. He can now be seen on TV’s ShopMax channel, selling his own line of jewellery. All of this new range is made with artificial diamonds

The girl CALLUM and CONNOR met at the bowling alley found out that they were twins and assumed that they’d played a trick on her. She called them both perverts and threatened to slap them if they ever came near her again.

The twins got back on speaking terms a couple of weeks later.