New Guard (CHERUB) - Robert Muchamore Page 0,13

unit has a mission briefing and a bunch of background files. You can access the tablets using your agent number and thumbprint. Once you accept the mission, the data will be transferred into your personal data cloud and be accessible using the secure area of your smartphones.’

‘What happened to paper briefings?’ Leon asked.

‘Too much risk of being carried off site,’ James explained. ‘All agent phones and laptops are set up to be remotely wiped if they’re lost or stolen. I have to go man the control room while the duty controller takes his twenty-minute break. So, you guys stay here, read this through and I’ll answer any questions when you get back.’

James charged out, then back again briefly to grab his phone off the desk as the twins started to read.

8. SKIP

**CLASSIFIED**

MISSION BRIEFING:

FOR LEON SHARMA AND DANIEL SHARMA

DO NOT PRINT, COPY, OR MAKE NOTES

MISSION GOALS

This mission has been given a dual classification, as an opportunity to recruit a CHERUB agent and to potentially gain insight into possible extremist activity in the Sandy Green area of Birmingham.

SANDY GREEN

Located 2km from the centre of Birmingham, Sandy Green is one of the most deprived areas of the UK. Over half of all children live in poverty and youth unemployment runs at more than 50 per cent. 70 per cent of the population is non-white, with Muslims forming the largest ethnic group.

While the vast majority of Muslims in Sandy Green have no sympathy for or connection to radical Islamic groups, the combination of poverty and unemployment means that the intelligence service regards Sandy Green as an area where there is a high probability of disaffected youths becoming involved with radical Islamic groups like Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

MISSION TARGET – OLIVER LAKSHMI

Oliver Lakshmi was born in 2004 and recently turned twelve. He is the son of an unknown restaurant worker, who is believed to have returned to India, and a mother who died following a drug-related stabbing in 2007. Since this time, Oliver has lived in a number of care homes and foster placements.

Oliver has been assessed with an IQ of 150, which places him in the cleverest one per cent of the population. Despite his intelligence, Oliver has been bored and disruptive at school, frequently bunking off. He has been involved in a number of serious incidents, including assaulting another boy at a care home and seriously injuring a teacher with clay modelling tools during an art lesson.

He has been in a number of fights and after being expelled from two secondary schools in Year Seven, he recently started Year Eight and now attends a Fresh Start programme designed to help disruptive pupils before eventually reintegrating them into normal classes.

Oliver has difficulty making friends with people his own age, and often describes them as dumb. He seeks out older kids for companionship, who he tries to impress with elaborate lies and various forms of bad behaviour, including theft from shops and breaking into cars.

THE ARSON

In April 2016, Oliver and two older boys burgled a flat in the Longsight area of Birmingham. During the burglary, a man returned home from work and confronted the boys. All three boys got away, but not before one of the older boys was grabbed and severely beaten by the householder.

Two nights later, Oliver and the boy who’d been beaten sought revenge. The pair poured petrol through the flat’s letterbox and set it alight. The householder was out working a night shift, but his wife was badly burned while rescuing two small children, and the family dog died. The flat was gutted, and there was serious fire and water damage to four other homes before the blaze was controlled. Property damage was estimated at £350,000.

Scared of a lengthy spell locked up in a young offender institution with much older boys, Oliver told local police that he would give them information about a radical Islamic group operating in the Sandy Green area in return for being let off the arson charges.

The investigating officers had previously arrested Oliver for a number of minor crimes and picked him up when truanting from school. Knowing that Oliver was smart and had a tendency to invent elaborate lies, the officers logged his offer and followed procedure by forwarding it to MI5. However, nobody took the eleven-year-old’s claim seriously.

Oliver’s fourteen-year-old accomplice received a four-year sentence for the arson attack. Since Oliver was barely old enough to face criminal charges, he was sent for a detailed psychiatric evaluation, after which he was ordered to stay at