frozen guard usually exchanged a few sentences with him, but he clammed up under Vladimir’s gaze and didn’t even acknowledge James’ nod.
Once James was out of the compound, he zipped his jacket and pulled up the collar to ward off the cold. For the purposes of this mission, James lived in an apartment block six kilometres away with a fake aunt and uncle. They were posing as weapons dealers who wanted to buy missiles from Denis Obidin. In reality they both worked for MI5.
A bus ran into town from a stop half a kilometre from Obidin’s house, but Aero City’s transportation was erratic. The wait for a bus in sub-zero temperatures was unbearable and on the odd occasion when a bus actually turned up, it was filled with cigarette smoke and mean-tempered pensioners with vile coughs. Running home was the healthier option and it meant James would still be in decent physical shape when he returned to CHERUB campus.
The first part of James’ run took him along a gloomy road, with little traffic and trees packed along each side. He loved this section of his daily run home, with the crisp air and the smell of pine needles. The trees ended when he reached factory seven. A kilometre and a half long, the massive hangar had once employed thirty-five thousand workers who turned out a three-hundred-seat airliner every ten days.
It had been graffitied and vandalised in the years after closing, but most young families had left Aero City in search of work and taken the city’s delinquent teens with them. The only life James had ever seen around the plant were a few homeless boys who lived rough in an abandoned apartment block. They sniffed glue inside the dilapidated remains of a cargo plane and occasionally kicked a half inflated football around inside the hangar.
Once he was sure nobody was about, James stopped running and sat on a concrete step with his back against a fire door that had been taken off its hinges, probably to be burned as firewood. He slid the communicator out of his pocket and checked his messages.
The first was from his girlfriend back at CHERUB campus:
HAPPY 15TH BIRTHDAY.
MISS U
LOVE U
COME BACK SOON!
HOPE IT’S NOT 2 COLD.
KERRY.
James had heaps of other birthday messages from friends on campus and even a message from his handler, Meryl Spencer. The oldest unread message was from his sister, Lauren. It had been sent the evening before:
HAPPY BDAY 4 2MORO SCUMBAG!
SORRY THIS IS EARLY. MR LARGE IS
DRAGGING US OFF ON SOME BLOODY
HIKING EXPEDITION.
UR PREZZIE WILL BE WAITING
WHEN U GET HOME!
P.S. KEEP UR HANDS OFF THE
RUSSIAN GIRLS U PERV!
2. SNEAK
Lauren Adams’ life had been ruined when a pair of recently qualified CHERUB agents returned from a mission in the USA. The lads had spent much of their time tucking down hamburgers, ice cream and bucket-sized containers of soft drinks, and none of it following the strict exercise regime designed to keep them in shape. Every cherub has to undergo a medical and fitness test after a long mission and both boys failed spectacularly.
CHERUB’s handlers and training instructors put their heads together and decided that all of the younger agents needed a sharp reminder about the importance of keeping fit. The reminder would take the form of a three-day hike across the Yorkshire Dales, led by the notorious Norman Large. All CHERUB instructors are tough, but Large was the worst because he got a huge kick out of making kids suffer.
Twenty-six CHERUB agents, all aged twelve or under, were dumped off the back of a truck just after sun-up, and Large gleefully announced that they each had to carry a ten-kilogram metal weight, on top of the tents, utensils, drinking water and clothing already crammed inside their packs. Hot drinks and porridge were to be served ninety minutes later at a meeting point fifteen kilometres away, and those who didn’t make it would go hungry until the evening.
Lauren made it in time for breakfast, but that had been the high point of her day. It was dark now, and she lay inside a two-person tent with swollen ankles and red welts where her pack had chafed her shoulders. She watched the sleeping bag of her best friend, Bethany Parker, swelling and dipping as she breathed.
‘Bethany?’ Lauren whispered, as she reached across and gave her companion a gentle nudge.
Bethany didn’t stir, so Lauren decided that it was safe to wriggle out of her sleeping bag. She’d kept her jeans on, so she only had