phone pocket on the side of his backpack, trying not to think about the growing circle of blood soaking into his trousers.
He flipped the phone open and frantically dialled his mission controller.
‘Ewart,’ James gasped into the handset. ‘I’m outside number thirty-four Pollack Street. I think we might have screwed up. You’ve got to get me out of here fast.’
‘I’m on my way to get Shak,’ Ewart answered. ‘I’ll meet you by the post-box at the top of the road.’
James’ heart thumped as a police siren wailed in the distance. ‘You’d better hurry up about it,’ he gasped, feeling a sharp pain in his injured thigh as he broke into a jog.
*
Ewart Asker jammed down the brake pedal of a black Mercedes. Shak threw the back door open before it came to a full halt, then scooted across to the other side of the rear seat, allowing James to dive into the car.
James looked at Shak as Ewart accelerated away from the kerb. ‘How far did those guys chase you?’
‘Only two followed me through the fence,’ Shak said. ‘I belted one over the head with a garden gnome and the other one backed off.’
James smiled, rubbing streaks of sweat on to his cuff as he took his first breath of the chilled air inside the car.
‘So what went wrong?’ Ewart asked sharply.
James was worried how Ewart would react. Despite having the air of a laid-back guy with his baggy cargos, tongue stud and bleached hair, Ewart had a reputation as one of CHERUB’s strictest mission controllers.
‘We set off an alarm, passing through a fire door leading out to the back of the gym,’ James explained.
‘You set it off,’ Shak said, as he threw down his tie and started unbuttoning his shirt.
‘Yeah,’ James said irritably, as he wriggled out of his blazer. ‘But you looked out the window and said we should go that way.’
The two boys exchanged scowls. Now the car was a couple of streets away from Trinity school, Ewart cooled down his driving to blend in with the ordinary traffic.
‘Fire doors are often linked to alarms,’ Ewart said. ‘Didn’t either of you remember that from your infiltration and surveillance training?’
‘Actually, now you mention it …’ James said, nodding sheepishly.
‘I suppose it is mostly my fault,’ Shak admitted.
‘We can play the blame game later,’ Ewart said, as he took a sharp turn into a main road. ‘Right now I need to know exactly what happened and see if we’ve got a mess that needs cleaning up. Did you get the bugs into position?’
James nodded. ‘Both of them; that bit of the plan worked fine.’
‘Nobody saw you in Stein’s car or office?’
‘No,’ Shak said. ‘We only got rumbled after we came upstairs from the car park.’
‘And you didn’t leave any equipment behind?’
Both boys shook their heads. ‘Nope.’
‘Good,’ Ewart said. ‘So the bugs are in place and there’s nothing linking you to Stein.’
‘But they still saw us,’ Shak said.
‘Use your loaf,’ Ewart replied. ‘They saw two boys dressed in Trinity uniform. They’ll assume you’re a couple of local kids playing a prank, or trying to break in and steal stuff.’
‘They found us around the changing area,’ James said. ‘And there’s a wallet in the back pocket of these trousers I nicked.’
‘Bonus,’ Ewart nodded enthusiastically. ‘In that case they’ll think you were thieves trying to rob the changing rooms.’
‘What about us wearing Trinity uniforms though?’ Shak asked.
Ewart shrugged. ‘Maybe you picked them up at a local jumble sale or something … Actually, I think we did buy them in a charity shop in town. Besides, a couple of kids breaking into a school are hardly headline news. The cops might dust for fingerprints and show a few mug-shots of the local yobbos to the people who saw you, but unless the school kicks up a huge stink they probably won’t even bother with that.’
‘So the mission was basically a success?’ Shak asked.
James caught Ewart’s wry smile in the driver’s mirror. ‘Despite the misjudgement with the fire door, I guess you boys did OK.’
James was greatly relieved that Ewart wasn’t going to go psycho at them. He lifted his bum off the seat and pushed his bloody trousers down as far as his knees.
‘Is there a first-aid kit around?’ he asked.
Ewart nodded. ‘Under the front passenger seat.’
‘Does it hurt?’ Shak asked, as James grabbed the green plastic box from between his feet.
‘Course,’ James said, as he ripped open an antiseptic wipe and cleaned away the blood, revealing a small puncture wound that was already