flashed up, Proceed to room 7A.
Ryan didn’t bother with the scanner, and just sneaked through behind Ning.
‘Come in,’ James said, after Ning knocked.
James was twenty-two, well-muscled, fair-haired, and currently experimenting with a slightly dodgy beard. The office was a decent size, with a big leather couch and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over woodland. However, Ning looked around at empty shelves and bookcases.
‘Only got this office last week,’ James explained. ‘I expect I’ll have it stuffed with mounds of files and crap in no time.’
‘So you’re a full mission controller now?’ Ryan asked.
James nodded. ‘And I was a CHERUB agent myself, so I know exactly what you’re thinking: I’m the newest mission controller, so all I’m gonna have to offer are boring routine missions.’
Ning and Ryan both shook their heads.
‘Thought never crossed my mind,’ Ryan said, though he struggled to keep a straight face.
‘The mission I’ve cobbled together is fairly low-key, but if it pays off it could turn into something quite juicy,’ James began. ‘What do you two know about cocaine?’
‘Goes well sprinkled on toast,’ Ryan answered, before Ning gave a more serious answer.
‘Drug. White powder. People snort it and it gives them a rush.’
James nodded. ‘But if you go into a bar or a club and buy fifty quid’s worth of cocaine, the chances are you’re not actually buying much cocaine at all. Most of what you get is junk that’s been mixed with the cocaine to make selling it more profitable.
‘Cocaine starts off as coca leaves, almost always grown in South America. The leaves are processed in a rural lab and you end up with pure white powder. This gets vacuum packed into bricks and smuggled to Britain in near hundred per cent pure form. Then it gets thinned out by mixing with another white powder – typically lactose, baking powder, lidocaine, even chalk dust. This is called cutting.
‘Everyone cuts the cocaine. By the time a top-level dealer gets it from an international smuggler, the cocaine is cut to about forty to fifty per cent purity. A mid-level dealer will then cut it to around thirty per cent purity and the street-level dealer adds more crap so that your regular buyer-on-the-street ends up with a gram that contains less than twenty per cent cocaine.
‘Some of the cocaine sold at street level is of such poor quality that police have busted dealers and had to release them because the quantity of cocaine in their product is so low that it’s not even illegal.’
‘Is the stuff they cut the cocaine with harmful?’ Ning asked.
James nodded. ‘It’s not great to be snorting chalk dust and baby laxatives up your nose, and it’s even worse for people who inject. Some say the impurities cause more health problems than the drugs themselves.
‘Now, the reason you two are standing here is that a few years ago, a rather clever police officer in Germany started thinking about the purity of cocaine. He started a database logging the purity of the drugs seized in every cocaine bust in Germany. Then he started investigating the areas where the cocaine was purest. Any idea why?’
Ryan nodded. ‘The cocaine gets cut at every stage. So if you find high purity cocaine, the chances are you’re getting close to the top-level dealers who smuggle it into the country.’
James smiled. ‘Spot on.’
‘But why don’t they just dilute the cocaine more if they’re selling it on the street?’ Ning asked. ‘Like from a hundred per cent purity to twenty per cent purity in one go?’
‘They can cover their tracks that way and I’m sure many do,’ James said. ‘But the point is, there are areas where high purity cocaine is sold on the street, and experience in Germany and other countries shows us that investigating areas where purity is high often leads to a large-scale drug importer.’
Ryan and Ning both liked the sound of bringing down a large-scale drug smuggler.
‘So where are these high purity drugs being sold?’ Ryan asked.
‘You’ll be based in Kentish Town in north London,’ James explained. ‘The street cocaine there is consistently around twenty-five per cent pure.’
Ning looked confused. ‘Twenty-five per cent is good?’
James nodded. ‘For street cocaine, twenty-five per cent is about as good as it gets. It’s also consistently cut with two parts lactose and one part lidocaine. The lidocaine is an anaesthetic, which creates numbness, making you think the cocaine is stronger than it really is. The fact that the same chemicals have been detected in dozens of drug seizures indicates that all the cocaine