20: Buy
The digital alarm clock beside George's bed read 04.16 when his door was unlocked from the outside and the light flicked on.
George let out a groan and covered his eyes, squinting over to see who was disturbing him.
"George, man, get up," Michael said, whipping away the duvet. "I'm in a hurry."
George sat up and scratched his belly, his eyes finally adjusted to the light. "Why are you here at… quarter past four?" he asked, checking the clock.
"Blame your idiot friend Rex," Michael said, shaking his head derisively. "That little prick told me he'd be up for coming with me today and picking up the drink, but he landed himself detention and laps so he's stuck on campus."
"Yeah, he got way behind on homework," George said, pulling on the same grey t-shirt he'd worn the previous day. "What do you need me for?"
"You're coming with instead. You'll get ten bucks if you give me a hand today," Michael told him. "All I need is help with carrying and navigation. Lose the t-shirt though, nothing with the logo on it for outside operations."
George rolled out of bed and swapped his t-shirt for his QPR shirt which wasn't much cleaner. "Sounds good."
"Get a move on, I'm ten minutes behind schedule already because of that bottler next door."
There wasn't time for a shower or teeth cleaning, so George just blasted himself with deodorant and pulled on his boots.
George had a feeling of adventure as he rode the lift down to the ground floor with Michael and they walked through the darkness towards the vehicle park. There was nobody around and being with the powerfully-built older agent made George feel pretty cool. He wished that Rex could see him.
"Alright, I've already prepared one of the unmarked white vans. You're gonna ride up front and use my phone to work out the route," Michael said, strolling through the reception area and finding the keys to a battered Transit. He passed George his phone and a sheet of paper with the address on it, and the two boys headed for the nondescript van parked up with six others.
"We should be back on campus in three hours before anyone realises we're gone. The desk isn't staffed until eight so that's our deadline, although if we get delayed we can always bluff," Michael said as they climbed into the front seats. "The bit that's gonna take the time is unloading."
"How are we gonna get it all up to Rex's room?" George asked as Michael adjusted the seat and pulled away from the parking space.
"I've got an equipment trolley hidden in one of the maintenance cupboards. We'll load it up and take it up in the lift. It'll look red-hot suspicious, but it's safer to do it in one go and keep our fingers crossed than to do multiple trips," Michael said, pulling the big steering wheel around as he left the car park and headed for the front gate. "Now let's have those directions, I don't wanna make a wrong turning and have to reverse this thing."
The wholesalers was about thirty miles away, but CHERUB campus is surrounded by country roads and villages with 30mph limits, so the route took them nearly fifty minutes. Michael pulled the van into a goods entrance and donned a baseball cap with a weird logo. The sun was rising so he'd slipped on sunglasses to further change his appearance.
"Yo," Michael said as he pulled up next to a twenty-something who had a nasty spray of zits on his forehead and a clipboard in his hands. "Here to pick up the delivery, I phoned yesterday?"
"Yeah, we're expecting you," the guy said, pointing to an entranceway with stacks of boxes inside it. "That lot's yours. Just need a signature."
As Michael scrawled an illegible mess onto the form, the employee peered into the van and across as George.
"Boss's son," Michael grunted, acting like he wasn't too pleased. "The big cheese has too much to drink and I end up babysitting at who-knows-when in the morning."
The guy laughed. "Sucks to be you," he grinned, taking the clipboard and waving them through after handing Michael his copy of the receipt.
George marvelled at Michael. He'd done all of the espionage training same as everyone during basic, but there was a world of difference between an untested ten-year-old like him and an older agent who could bluff his way into a wholesalers at five in the morning without missing a beat.
"Right squirt, I'm gonna pull the back of the van up to the door. You give me a hand shifting everything into it, and then set the GPS into reverse or whatever. You're riding in the back for the next stretch."
George was mystified and wondered why until he hopped out and pulled open the rear doors. Half of the van was stacked full of shoe boxes of varying sizes, and judging by the length of the van, they were five or six rows deep.
"Good, ya?" Michael asked, looking at his handiwork.
"That's genius," George grinned, working it out. "Every girl on campus must have been buying new shoes in the past couple of weeks."
"Ya. I just knocked on doors and offered to take them away, no charge. While I drive back, you're gonna load up all the booze into these so we can get them inside. Pack them with tissue paper so nothing clinks," Michael smiled, turning to the boxes and checking his receipt. "If i do the heavy stuff, you check everything off the list."
It took twenty minutes to transfer everything from the boxes into the van. George's mum usually had two or three bottles of vodka in the house and he'd sneaked some once just to see what it tasted like, but he'd never seen such a huge haul. There were more than a hundred bottles of beer, and that didn't include the cans or the bigger bottles of spirits that only just fitted into the boxes.
"That's everything," Michael said, checking the list once more. "You get in the back and I'll shut you in. It'll be bumpy but try to hold onto something at all times."
Unpacking all of the alcohol and repacking it into boxes was time consuming and George realised that Michael had thought through the plan perfectly; if he'd been working alone, he would never have had time to do all of this and still make it back to campus. The only scary thing was that when the boxes were stacked, a heavy bump would cause them to topple over and smash, so George reorganised everything into smaller piles before disaster struck.
He finished packing everything with ten minutes to spare, according to his watch, so he spent the remainder of the journey sitting in the windowless space trying to guess where they were driving based on the stops and starts and which direction they were turning. The gravel on campus was distinctive and his watch said they were fifteen minutes ahead of the three hour guess.
"Out ya come," Michael said, opening the rear doors again. The sunlight was bright and George blinked as he jumped out and ran to the bushes at the edge of the car park for a much-needed piss.
"Done?" Michael asked when he returned. It was turning into a beautiful warm day and George just grinned.
"Right. I'll get the trolley, you start moving the boxes out. I need to put the van back where I got it from before we go into the main building, so don't leave anything behind," Michael said before jogging off to find the trolley. George didn't fancy heavy lifting but he was getting paid, so he started with the boxes containing the lighter cans and hoped that Michael would be back to do the heavy stuff.
The only oversight in the plan was that there was so much booze that it didn't all fit on the trolley. Michael had to make two trips while George waited nervously by the pile that remained, but nobody was around and they walked the second trolley-load into the main building without missing a beat. Rex was out at his detention, so Michael had unlocked his door with the lock gun and had piled all of the shoeboxes in his en suite.
"He'll probably have to share a shower with you for the rest of the week," Michael laughed as he put six more boxes in the bath. "You don't mind, right?"
George shrugged. "When do we get paid?"
"After the party," Michael said. "I'll probably need a hand distributing all of this lot, so if you're after another tenner then I'd appreciate some help."
"Why not Rex?"
"I'm not working with that guy again. Getting a detention when he was supposed to be helping me?" Michael sneered, shaking his head.
George felt awkward. Rex was his best friend, but Michael was cool and he knew that Rex could be really immature sometimes. It was hard enough hanging out with Letty and Jemima when Rex hated them, but if Rex got a grudge against his older friend… George didn't want to think about it.
Half of George wanted to go back to bed once Michael disappeared back down the corridor to his own room, but the other half was aware that he was awake and that it was a beautiful day. He had no lessons and sitting indoors on his only day off didn't sound particularly appetising, but he didn't have anyone to go outside with and it would be the afternoon before any spontaneous kickabouts broke out. He hung around outside his room for a while, toying with the idea of taking homework outside and sitting on the grass, but then the lift came up and he spotted Jemima walking his way, her hair dripping and a bag of running kit in her hand.
"What're you doing up so early?" George asked, leaning against his door.
"What does it look like?" Jemima replied in a mocking tone. "Trying to get those laps out of the way. The track is quieter in the morning and it's not as hot as during the day."
"Makes sense," George nodded, glad he wasn't running laps in the early summer sun.
"Why are you up? You're usually the type to sleep until eleven or stay in bed watching TV," Jemima asked, ditching her kit in a soggy heap as she unlocked the door to her room.
George shrugged. "Couldn't sleep for some reason. Probably the heat."
Jemima seemed to accept this and she pushed open her door. "Have you eaten breakfast yet?"
"Not yet," George shook his head. "It's only just opened, anyway."
"Fancy beating the rush?" Jemima asked, unceremoniously booting her kit bag into the room. "It's never that busy on Sundays but people take forever and read the papers."
"Why not?" George smiled. "Rex is off at his detention but if you wanna wake Letty, I'll give you a hand."
"She sleeps like the dead," Jemima giggled. "Didn't you work that out on basic training?"
"Uh," George hesitated. "She was usually the one waking me, actually."
Jemima shook her head. "You're such an idiot."
"Are we waking her or not?"
"Leave her. We'll come and get her after breakfast so she doesn't miss such a nice day."
"Fair enough. Maybe later we can go and find out where Rex is so we can laugh at him through the window," George grinned as they made their way down the corridor.
"Don't," Jemima said, stifling a laugh. "I'm supposed to be on my best behaviour around him or I'll get punished more. A hundred laps hang in the balance."
"Harsh," George said sympathetically. "Do you still get to go to the summer hostel?"
"Oh, yeah. Unless I accidentally kick his head in or something, then probably not," Jemima replied. watching the lift doors slide open.
"You should be careful. Ever since we finished training he's been doing extra karate every single day and he's got these muscles now. I don't think I could take him."
"We'll see. These laps have been bulking me up too, although I wish they weren't," Jemima sighed. "I'm starting to look like a tiny version of Miss Takada."
George snorted. "I can see the family resemblance."
Jemima gave him a hard punch in the ribs.