CHERUB: Brigands M.C. - Robert Muchamore Page 0,39
in with Eimer to keep our combat skills fresh.’
‘Great,’ Zara smiled. ‘It’s really impressive that you stuck with your training discipline over such a long mission. Though you don’t have Mr Large to worry about, he’s no longer with us.’
‘Praise God!’ Dante whistled. ‘Glad to see the back of that creep. What I can’t believe is that I come back after all this time and Holly’s off skiing in New Zealand. I’ve spoken to her on the webcam every week and we squeezed in a couple of weeks together at the hostel last summer, but I was really looking forward to us being properly back together.’
‘Your sister’s a brilliant little kid,’ Zara said. ‘My oldest Joshua has started lessons on campus. Holly’s that bit older and he says she’s a real bossy boots.’
‘So your kids are going to be CHERUB agents?’ Dante asked. ‘I didn’t think that was allowed.’
‘We got the rule change approved by the Intelligence Minister three months back. We’re always short of recruits. We conducted an informal survey and a surprising number of ex-cherubs said they’d be happy to let their children become CHERUB agents some day.’
‘So one day my kids could be CHERUB agents too?’ Dante laughed.
Zara nodded. ‘Though to start with, we’re only considering kids who have two parents working on campus, or if both parents are former CHERUB agents.’
‘Plenty of pretty girls on CHERUB campus for me to start breeding with,’ Dante grinned.
‘Not for a few years I’d very much hope,’ Zara said, adopting a stiff tone but keeping up her smile. ‘Speaking of rules, you know that even though you performed outstandingly on a three-year mission I can’t award you a black shirt? It’s only for outstanding performance on more than one mission.’
Dante nodded. ‘I don’t care. I’m still only thirteen, there’s plenty of time.’
‘I think it’s a stupid rule,’ Zara admitted. ‘I’d change it, but it has to be approved by the ethics committee and the Intelligence Minister and frankly I have higher priorities. However, in your case I did get the ethics committee to approve an extra mission. Specifically, this arduous mission involves a missing green marker pen, somewhere in my office. Your mission is to find it and return it to my pen pot. I believe that it was last seen somewhere underneath the chair you’re sitting on.’
Dante looked down at the carpet and picked up the marker pen between the chromed legs of his chair.
‘This one?’
‘An outstanding mission performance if ever I saw it,’ Zara said cheerfully, before reaching into her cupboard and pulling out a brand new CHERUB tee. ‘Congratulations, you’ve earned your black shirt.’
Dante was startled and felt a tear welling up in his eye. ‘You have no idea how desperate I was when I came here nearly five years ago,’ he said. ‘Making friends and the whole thing of getting ready for training really gave me focus. Without CHERUB I don’t know who I’d have been or where I’d have ended up.’
‘I just hope you’re not too old for a hug,’ Zara said. Dante stood up and Zara wrapped her arms around his back. ‘If your parents were alive they’d be bloody proud of you, Dante. Now go upstairs and go find all your friends.’
Dante was on a high as he left Zara’s office, but his mood dimmed as he hooked a large backpack over his shoulder and pulled a wheelie case towards the lift. Although he had a room on the eighth floor, he’d spent less than two months there after passing basic training.
The East Belfast estate and the people he’d known during his mission felt more like his real friends. The people he’d met on campus three years earlier had probably forgotten all about him.
There was a curious whiff of gunpowder in the eighth-floor hallway as Dante stepped from the lift.
Zara had sent one of the cleaning staff up to his room the previous day to clean it and put fresh sheets on his bed. There were also new sets of CHERUB uniform on the bed and new boots on the floor, but people change a lot between ten and thirteen. The casual clothes in his wardrobe were way too small and Dante felt a mixture of embarrassment and nostalgia at the wrestling posters on his walls and the action figures displayed on the shelf above his sofa.
The unopened black T-shirt was crammed into the pocket of Dante’s hoodie. After stripping to his waist, he couldn’t resist eyeing himself in his mirrored wardrobe door.