CHERUB: Class A - Robert Muchamore Page 0,61

real computers.’
*
James and Amy studied into the evening. You normally got at least two weeks on the background material for a mission, but everything had to be crammed into a couple of days. When it got to eight o’clock, Amy finally let him off.
‘I feel like a swim,’ she said. ‘Coming?’
CHERUB had four pools. The learners’ pool was the smallest and least attractive, but Amy had taught James to swim there the year before and they both wanted to go back for old times’ sake. There was nobody else around. Most kids preferred using the main pool, which had diving boards and water slides.
They had a ten-lap race. James kept up with Amy until they made the last turn, when she blasted off into the distance. They got out and sat on the edge. James felt like his lungs were about to burst.
‘You’re getting stronger,’ Amy grinned, not even short of breath. ‘You might be able to give me a real race when you grow a bit bigger and shed the puppy fat.’
James’ heart sank when he realised Amy had been toying with him.
‘I’ll definitely come and visit you in Australia when I’m older,’ he said, circling his big toe through the water. ‘If that’s all right.’
Amy smiled. ‘Of course it’s all right. My brother has mates from his CHERUB days turning up all the time.’
‘It’s weird,’ James said. ‘I never even think about the kids I knew before I came to CHERUB, but I feel really close to the kids I know here.’
‘It’s a defined psychological phenomenon,’ Amy said.
James looked mystified. ‘You what?’
‘All humans have a basic need to share their lives with someone,’ Amy explained. ‘Children with their parents, adults with their wives, husbands, or whoever. Because the kids at CHERUB have no parents, they make very strong bonds with each other. There’s a big reunion on campus every couple of years. You’d be amazed how many cherubs end up marrying each other.’
‘Sometimes it really gets on my nerves how smart-assed everyone at CHERUB is,’ James grinned. ‘I mean, how come you know stuff like that?’
‘I’m doing psychology at university,’ Amy said. ‘They gave us a list of books to read before the course starts. Besides, James, you’re not exactly dumb yourself. CHERUB wouldn’t even sniff at a kid who wasn’t way above average.’
‘When I’m at a normal school, I’m always one of the cleverest,’ James said. ‘But I’m just kind of ordinary here.’
‘So anyway,’ Amy said. ‘When you arrived at CHERUB a few months after your mum died, it was natural that you formed a strong attachment to any girl who played a big part in your life.’
‘Like you, because you were teaching me to swim.’
Amy nodded. ‘And Kerry, because she was your partner in basic training. Have you asked her out yet?’
‘God! Don’t you start,’ James moaned. ‘It’s bad enough Kyle always going on about it.’
‘But you and Kerry are always so sweet together. I love the way you two pick at one another like some old married couple.’
James didn’t want to hear it. He slipped off the side of the pool and began swimming towards the deep end.
*
The dossier that arrived from MI5 on the Lambayeke cartel ran to over three hundred pages, though a lot of it was photos and maps. James and Amy spent Tuesday morning in one of the mission preparation rooms, skimming through the chapters and marking the most relevant stuff with highlighter pens. James could take the books on computer-hacking back to Luton for study, but the Lambayeke dossier wasn’t allowed off campus.
After they’d worked through the dossier, Amy got five laptop PCs out of a storage room and lined them up on a desk. She set an ancient wind-up timing clock to count down from fifteen minutes.
‘Each one of these PCs has a list of stolen credit card numbers hidden on the hard drive,’ Amy explained. ‘You’ve got to hack each one inside the time limit, without leaving any footprints behind.’
‘Which one first?’ James asked.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Amy said, leaning over and starting the timer. ‘Go.’
James had a mini heart attack before grabbing a laptop, flipping up the screen and tapping a couple of keys.
‘What do I do?’ he said to himself, drumming his hands on the desk in front of him.
‘Turning it on would be a good start,’ Amy smirked. ‘Don’t forget to read the BIOS screen before Windows starts.’
James read the figures aloud. ‘Two-fifty-six meg of memory. Windows ME. The hard drive isn’t partitioned. If it’s ME it