New Guard (CHERUB) - Robert Muchamore Page 0,48

Israeli intelligence service.’

Tovah smiled and shrugged innocently. ‘I barely even know where Israel is.’

‘So why are you here?’ Bruce asked.

Tovah cracked a huge smile. ‘I’m here to teach you guys to fly.’

Kerry left her apartment at 6 a.m. She took a ten-minute taxi and forty-storey elevator ride to visit her bank’s legal department. The walnut conference table was set up with coffee, juice and breakfast pastries. She’d been through thirty pages of a contract with a one-eyebrowed lawyer and her two assistants when the phone in the centre of the table rang.

‘My apologies,’ the lawyer said, as she grabbed her coat and briefcase and beckoned the assistants. ‘I’ve been called to a meeting in Amsterdam. They’re setting up a jet at London City.’

Kerry rattled the two-hundred-page document in front of her. ‘Will you be back to finish this today?’

‘Unlikely,’ the lawyer said. ‘Call my office when my secretary gets in. I’ll try and get you some time tomorrow.’

‘Is there anyone else … ?’ Kerry asked, as the trio steamed out, grabbing smartphones and scooping documents off the table. ‘Shit.’

Kerry thumped on the table. Her boss, Doug, would chuck his toys out of his pram when he found out. She drained tepid black coffee and scoffed a mini-cinnamon Danish, before grabbing a phone off the table and calling her boss. Doug wasn’t at his desk yet, so Kerry left the building and strode fifteen minutes to her bank’s other tower at the opposite side of Canary Wharf.

Doug erupted the moment she got out of the twentysecond-floor elevator.

‘Why aren’t you with Doreen?’

‘She had to go to Amsterdam.’

‘You what?’ Doug shouted, as he beckoned Kerry. ‘My office.’

‘I couldn’t help it,’ Kerry said. ‘I was there, she got called away.’

They’d reached Doug’s corner office, with river views and a giant TV showing the Bloomberg channel.

‘Why did you use Doreen on legal for this contract?’ Doug roared, as he sat behind the desk. ‘You know how busy she gets.’

‘You said it was important. You told me to get the best person.’

‘She’s always super busy,’ Doug roared. ‘I need this contract for the meeting at eleven. Do you think the Korean consortium will arrive with a half-assed, half-finished proposal?’

‘I could call around,’ Kerry said. ‘See who else is free. Or get outside legal in to look at it.’

‘Not in two hours, Chang,’ Doug moaned, as he reached out for a phone. ‘Why didn’t you sit down with Doreen last night?’

‘I didn’t leave this office until nine,’ Kerry said, tempted to add two hours after you.

Doug dialled someone on his desk phone, but got an engaged tone and slammed it down. ‘You don’t seem to get things done, Chang,’ Doug snapped. ‘And if you can’t, I’ll source people who can.’

Kerry’s boss was always moody. It wasn’t usually a good idea to talk back, but she was determined not to cop all the blame.

‘Doreen and I had the contract drafted ten days ago,’ Kerry pointed out. ‘You were the one who sat on it for a week and only noticed the errors yesterday.’

‘I’m busy, in case you haven’t noticed.’

Kerry snorted. ‘You left early to play golf two afternoons this week. I’ve been here until eight every night, trying to sort this leasing deal.’

Doug stood up and roared. ‘How dare you speak to me like that in my own office. You’ve worked here less than two years. I’ve had unpaid interns who are more effective than you.’

‘You’re a bully,’ Kerry told her boss, as he moved around the table and faced her off.

‘Sweetheart, if you can’t take the heat …’

‘Do you want me to try and find someone from another law firm, or not?’ Kerry asked. ‘And I am not your sweetheart.’

‘Whatever,’ Doug said. ‘You made the problem, you solve it.’

Kerry made a little grunt as she spun on high heels and left her boss’ office.

‘You OK?’ a colleague asked, seeing a tear in Kerry’s eye as she strode twenty paces to her windowless office.

‘I’ll live,’ Kerry said unconvincingly.

But the tears kept welling when Kerry reached her desk. Besides the contract her boss was yelling about, there were files for three more deals on her desk: finance for a soft drink bottling plant in Chile, a deal to lease trains in Russia and a Spanish billionaire who was planning to buy a Welsh furniture maker, fire all the workers and move production to a giant factory he was building in Romania.

If nothing happened, she’d get through all of her work by 7 p.m., but something always happened. Kerry groaned