CHERUB: Maximum Security (24 page)

Paula smiled. ‘If it works out, you can send me a postcard.’

‘Remember,’ James said, ‘if the cops hear about the money, they’ll take it off you. But they’re trained to sniff out lies, so you’ve got to tell the truth about everything else.’

‘OK.’

James drained his mug of hot chocolate and tousled Holly’s hair as he pushed back his chair.

Curtis smiled at Paula. ‘Sorry about last night.’

Lauren, Curtis and James scrambled quickly down two escalators to the ground floor. They strode through a corridor of upmarket shops and stepped outdoors near the head of the taxi rank.

James looked at Curtis. ‘You’ve lived in LA: where’s a good place to go? Somewhere three kids won’t stand out and you can make your phonecalls?’

‘Santa Monica beach,’ Curtis said, without a millisecond’s thought.

The cab journey was a fifteen-mile ride down Sunset Boulevard, passing through Beverly Hills on the way to the beachfront. James and Lauren stepped out to a scene that reminded them of their mum taking them on a daytrip to Brighton five years earlier: there was an old-fashioned pier with a funfair at the end and wooden decking along the seafront. The palm trees, restaurants and lavish beachfront hotels gave off a glimmer of serious money.

‘This is the kind of place where I’ll live when I’m a millionaire,’ Lauren said.

James smiled. ‘How are you planning on becoming a millionaire?’

‘Pop star, successful businesswoman … Possibly both.’

Once the cab pulled away, they stood in a line looking out at the waves crashing in the distance.

‘My mom had a beachfront house down the road in Venice,’ Curtis explained. ‘My first elementary school was a few miles up that hill over there. Even after we left, we’d come back here for a few weeks most summers.’

‘It looks nice,’ James said. ‘But we can’t hang around; you’ve got calls to make.’

‘Call,’ Curtis said. ‘Just one.’

James looked surprised. ‘You said you had to find some numbers. I thought it was going to take a while.’

‘No offence, James,’ Curtis said, ‘but I had to feed you a line. I couldn’t totally trust you until I knew this escape was for real. When I was living with my mom, there was always a chance something would go wrong while I was out at school or something. Wherever we stayed, there was always a backup plan.’

‘So who are you planning to call?’ James asked.

‘When Paula goes to the police, they’ll track that cab down and ask the driver where he took us, so I couldn’t go direct to my dad over in Pasadena. This little diversion to Santa Monica should throw the pigs off the scent.’

‘Your
dad
,’ James gasped.

According to the background information James and Lauren had read before the mission, Curtis claimed to have no idea who his father was and neither did the FBI.

Curtis nodded. ‘I’ve only met him a few times, but he’s the one guy in town who’ll definitely know how to get in touch with my mom.’

The FBI team were following the kids’ movements by tracking the signal from a cellphone in Lauren’s shorts. While Curtis made his call, Lauren pretended that she needed to use one of the beachfront toilets. She locked herself in a stall, grabbed the tiny flip-phone and speed-dialled the FBI office in Phoenix. She told Theo their exact location and about Curtis’ revelation that his father lived somewhere nearby.

John Jones and Marvin Teller had landed in LA a couple of hours earlier and were at the airport awaiting developments. A second FBI team was using the cellphone signal to shadow James and Lauren’s movements, at a distance of around half a mile.

While Curtis and Lauren were making their phonecalls, James popped fifty cents into a newspaper rack and took out an
LA Gazette
. The pictures of Curtis on the front page looked fine, but someone on Marvin Teller’s team must have got inside James’ criminal file and doctored the picture taken at Phoenix courthouse, because it barely looked like him.

James read the accompanying story:

The three kids sat on a bench at the edge of the beach reading the newspaper, until a limousine Curtis had ordered on his father’s account stopped at the kerb. It took them on an hour-long freeway ride to a business park in Pasadena, on the eastern outskirts of the city.

The black Mercedes pulled up in the parking lot outside a cube-shaped office building clad in reflective black glass. The corporate logo over the automatic door was a fighter plane with
Etienne Defence Consultancy
written above it. The security guard sitting behind his plinth looked rather surprised by the three grubby kids walking towards reception. He was powerfully built, more like a nightclub bouncer than the middle-aged men who usually sit in the entrances of office buildings.

Curtis rested his elbows on the high counter. ‘Call extension five-five-three and tell Mr Etienne that Curtis is on his way to see him.’

Curtis stepped towards the elevator, but the guard called him back.

‘Don’t move
one
more step, boy,’ the guard said firmly. He picked up the phone behind his desk and dialled five-five-three.

The guard had a brief conversation.

‘Looks like you’re wanted,’ the guard said, beckoning the kids towards the elevator doors with his beefy hand.

The guard swiped a security pass through the elevator control panel and hopped out of the car before the door closed. They went directly to the fifth floor, exiting into a large reception area, where they were greeted by a middle-aged lady in a grey business suit.

Curtis smiled as the woman swept him into her arms. ‘Hey, Margaret.’

‘You’ve grown,’ Margaret said. ‘You must have been nine or ten the last time I saw you … I’m afraid your father is away at a conference in Boston, but he saw the reports on the television news and sent a message to say there was a chance you’d end up here.’

James looked around at the fancy halogen lighting and the abstract paintings on the walls. He didn’t have a clue what a defence consultancy did, but if its owner was Curtis’ dad, it surely had some connection with Jane Oxford.

‘It will take me some time to organise your documentation and arrange air transportation to somewhere safe. In the meantime, the three of you can use Mr Etienne’s shower and put on clean clothes. I’ll arrange for lunch to be delivered if you’re hungry.’

Mr Etienne could have lived in his office if he’d wanted to. As well as the workspace, with a massive desk and a row of Bloomberg financial information screens on the wall, there was a bathroom, a lounge area with massive sofas and even a room off to the side containing a bed and a wardrobe full of suits.

After the kids had taken turns showering, Margaret brought in a selection of delivery menus from nearby restaurants. They settled on an upmarket hamburger joint.

James tucked away a steak sandwich with a side of onion rings, followed by a chocolate dessert for two, which he managed by himself after Lauren said she was full. CHERUB kept James on a tight fitness regime so he usually avoided pigging out, but after a week of prison food he reckoned he deserved a treat.

Curtis turned on the TV in the lounge and they switched to a local news channel. There was only a tiny bit about the escape at the end of each half-hourly bulletin. Lauren snuggled up beside James in her clean T-shirt and shorts and was soon fast asleep.

James had been too stressed to feel tired while he’d been on the run, but now his belly was full and he’d calmed down, he realised he’d barely slept in the last fifty hours. He closed his eyes and drifted off.

By the time the kids woke up, Margaret had driven out to a local mall and bought each of them a new set of clothes for their onward journey. It was a sensible precaution, because the cops investigating the escape would have made attempts to identify the clothing that the kids had taken with them.

James and Curtis both got tracksuits and trainers, but Lauren got a white dress, pink canvas deck shoes and a sparkly silver headband. Her scowl could have melted a steel bar. The last time Lauren had worn a dress, she’d been a seven-year-old bridesmaid and she’d deliberately trailed it through mud to get out of wearing it.

‘You’ll look so
pretty
,’ James said, howling with laughter as soon as Margaret and Curtis were out of earshot.

‘One more word,’ Lauren said angrily, wagging her finger in his face. ‘One more word and I’ll deck you.’

‘
Quite
the little princess.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Lauren gasped, anxiously looking around at the carpet. ‘Where are my dirty shorts?’

James shrugged. ‘Looks like Margaret took them away while we were asleep.’

‘Crap,’ Lauren scowled. ‘The phone was in the pocket. I should have stuffed it down the sofa cushion, or something.’

James looked around the floor, in case it had dropped out of the pocket. ‘If it’s gone it’s gone,’ James said. ‘You can act innocent and ask Margaret for it back, but I get the impression that she’s a lot more than Etienne’s secretary. She knows it might be used to track us and I bet she won’t let you have it.’

*

John Jones and Marvin Teller spent the afternoon sitting around in the FBI station at Los Angeles airport. Theo Monroe and Scott Warren – now going by his real name of Warren Reise and sporting cropped hair – had just arrived on a scheduled flight from Phoenix.

John stood up and shook Warren’s hand, as he walked into the drab office. ‘Back from the dead, my friend. Your nose looks a mess. Is it broken?’

Warren nodded. ‘James might only be thirteen, but that’s one of the hardest whacks I ever took.’

‘That’s how we train ’em,’ John grinned. ‘When I went to my job interview at CHERUB, I was shown the martial arts training area. You wouldn’t believe these eight-and nine-year-olds with their black belts, pulling off the most frightening moves … I tell you, I wouldn’t want to tangle with
any
of them.’

Marvin nodded. ‘It certainly produces impressive results. When I was with Lauren the other day, I had to keep reminding myself that I was talking to a ten-year-old girl.’

‘Kids’ brains are like sponges,’ John explained. ‘They’re capable of way more than most adults give them credit for. When I worked for MI5, we sent agents on six-month courses to learn foreign languages. CHERUB can train a bright eleven-year-old to the same standard in two … Did you check in on Dave before you left Arizona?’

Theo nodded, as he hung his jacket over a hook on the wall. ‘I purchased books for Dave to read in the hospital. He is fine physically, but still rather depressed about not being involved in the escape. Arizona State Police came in to interview him early this morning. He set them off on a few false lines of inquiry, as we discussed.’

‘And that doctor won’t declare Dave fit to return to Arizona Max?’ John asked.

‘Under any circumstances,’ Theo nodded. ‘The doctor knows the score and the hospital doesn’t much care as long as the bed is being paid for.’

‘I’d like to send Dave back to Britain,’ John said. ‘But Oxford has proved so good at sniffing out undercover operations over the years, we can’t pull him out of the Arizona prison system in case she finds out and smells a rat.’

‘How are the other two getting along?’ Warren asked.

‘They spent the afternoon at the headquarters of Etienne Defence Consultancy,’ Marvin explained. ‘We had two local agents outside the building all afternoon. The kids were picked up half an hour ago in a limousine. The limo company uses uncoded radio and according to their signals, the car is taking them to Orange County airport as we speak.’

‘Is Etienne on the radar?’ Theo asked.

‘No,’ Marvin said. ‘The FBI have no file on either Jean Etienne, or his company. There are hundreds of small, high-tech companies like EDC in Pasadena: the California Institute of Technology acts as a magnet for them. Etienne specialises in developing military hardware. They’ve done consultancy work for most of the big weapons manufacturers. Cutting edge stuff: unmanned aircraft, reactive body armour, electromagnetic pulse weapons.’

‘So is it a front for Jane Oxford?’

‘Too early to be sure, Theo. We can’t start any kind of investigation into Etienne right now without creating suspicion and endangering James and Lauren. But we will eventually and if I were a betting man, I’d have my dollars on Oxford and Etienne being in cahoots.’