7: Serious

It didn't take long for the campus gossip machine to start spreading the news like wildfire. George slept through the middle of the day after a precautionary trip to the medical department, which told him he had a mild concussion and whiplash. Poppy's concussion was more severe so they kept her in, but George was allowed to go back to his room on the condition he didn't go to sleep until after eight pm. His annoyance at not being able to sleep was offset by the fact that he had a note to get him out of lessons for two days. By the time he was eating dinner in the evening, everyone knew that Katie had beaten up someone from the yellow team, and her punishment ranged from a prison term to twenty thousand laps depending on who you spoke to. Nobody had much sympathy for her, including George, but she didn't come to the cafeteria for anything to eat and nobody saw her that evening so the rumours continued to circulate.

The following morning he found himself being woken by someone knocking gently on the door, which was a bad sign. His friends would just have burst in or pounded on the door as loud as possible.

"It's open," he said, trying to see what time it was and accidentally knocking his alarm clock onto the floor.

His handler Rose pushed open the door and peered inside. "Feeling okay, George?"

George nodded and sat up in bed, scratching under his t-shirt. "Neck's stiff and my head still aches slightly, but I'll live."

"Well, don't move your head too much for a couple of days," she said with a gentle tone George didn't think he'd ever heard before. "Anyway, I've actually come to ask for a favour."

"Ask away," George said, moving his pillow so he wasn't sitting on it. "I'm not going anywhere."

Rose wrinkled her nose and looked at the pile of dirty washing. "George, is that your swimming kit from this past week?"

George grinned. "Haven't quite got round to washing it, miss."

Rose made a face and opened the windows to let some air in. "Sometimes you boys really disgust me." She made sure the door was closed before sitting at the foot of his bed. "Now, I'm afraid I've got to ask you about what happened on the training exercise."

George opened his mouth but she held up a hand to silence him. "I was a Cherub for eight years, I know how it works and I'm not going to insult you by asking you to grass on anyone. However, obviously this is an extremely serious matter. You mustn't tell anyone this, but it looks as if Katie will be thrown out of CHERUB. There was an emergency meeting with the chairwoman, a member of the ethics committee and the head instructor, although their decision is yet to be finalised. She certainly won't be going on a mission again."

"But miss, she-"

Rose shook her head. "The agent she attacked had two broken legs and multiple internal injuries as a result of being shot point-blank no fewer than twelve times. Do that on the street and you'll be looking at a lengthy stretch behind bars. She gets no sympathy from me, and she shouldn't from you. She should have known better."

George just nodded.

"Now, I need to ask you if there's anything you want to tell me about the incident. Off the record, if you choose to say nothing, then I'm okay with it, but if there's anything you think the authorities should know, say it now."

There was nothing he could say without sounding like a grass, so George kept quiet and fiddled with the corner of his duvet.

"The rules of the exercise have been reviewed so we don't expect a repeat performance of this, you'll be pleased to know."

"Will anyone else be punished?" George asked, anxious to know if his immediate future contained multiple laps of the athletics track.

Rose smiled. "Don't worry, you won't be. We don't know exactly what happened, but Katie told us that neither you nor anyone else on the team were involved, so we're satisfied. However, as part of the investigation, we discovered an unauthorised usage of the compound cameras, so I understand that Kimberley will be cleaning the toilets in the dojo for quite some time. Here's a tip from an ex-Cherub; don't try and outsmart the instructors."

George laughed. "I'll remember that one."

"That's everything I came for. I'm amazed, honestly, that you were involved in this and somehow got away without me having to punish you," Rose said, getting up and heading for the door. "Oh, one more thing."

"Hmm?" George asked, already thinking about breakfast.

"Here," she said, putting a yellow access card to the mission preparation building down on his desk. "Don't forget about it this time."

George grinned. "For real?"

"Yes, for real. I don't think the mission is confirmed just yet, but you're on it if it goes ahead and you want to do it."

The meeting about the mission was scheduled for the middle of the next week, which gave George time to rest his neck and lord it over everyone else that he had been let off lessons. The official announcement was that Katie had been permanently suspended from missions and would be leaving Cherub as soon as she could get a transfer to a school somewhere outside CHERUB. She spent all of her time either shut in her room or going to meetings so George didn't see her, but everyone had adopted a policy of ignoring her anyway, so George was actually glad he didn't have to see her. He felt sorry for her, because even though she was scary, she had been nice to him.

Letty and Ralph were jealous of him getting selected for a mission, but Letty took the opportunity to remind him about how her navy shirt meant she outranked him anyway. He really wished he could have rubbed it in Rex's face a bit more, but he was still away on his missions and it didn't feel the same by e-mail.

When the morning of the meeting finally came, George could already feel the pre-mission nerves starting. Lots of Cherubs said that the second proper mission was always a tough one, and while this one could just be a security check, he was sure that it was something meatier.

George knew about most of the mission controllers at CHERUB, or at least he'd heard stories about them, but when he arrived at the right office he didn't recognise the name on the door. He knocked and waited for a couple of seconds before someone opened the door.

"Ah, hello, you must be George. Come in, my name's Pete Graham," the man said in a strong Australian accent, pointing to the chair opposite the desk and offering a hand for a shake,

"Hi," George said, shaking his hand and stepping over to sit in the chair.

Pete, a sandy-haired man on the verge of middle-age, sat opposite him, behind the kind of desk that looked as if it had come from Ikea and hadn't been put together properly. Everything in the room was in boxes, including a tiny potted plant, with the exception of a pile of files that were sitting on the desk and looked like they'd been used recently.

"So, George, I'm sure you know why you're here," Pete said, sifting through the files. "Do you know who I am?"

George shook his head. "From the look of it, you're either just arriving or just leaving, though."

Pete grinned. "Good guess. Just arrived. Spent the last week acclimatising and sightseeing, and now I'm here for my new job."

"Oh, right," George replied. "And you're already running a mission?"

"Well, that's partly why I'm here. I used to work for the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, or ASIS for short. Over in Australia we don't have our own version of CHERUB, so we often use you guys. Eventually someone at the top decided we should have a permanent liaison, so that's why I'm sat here right now in this tiny little office," Pete laughed. "They chose me because I was working on the plan for a mission using CHERUB, and that's why you're here."

George nodded, realisation slowly dawning that the mission would probably be in Australia. "Sounds good to me."

"If I'm sounding a bit cryptic so far, it's because I'm actually stalling. One of your mission controllers is supposed to be here in a minute but so far no sign. I don't want to introduce the mission until they're here."

"No problem," George said, stretching out in the chair. "If it means a trip Down Under, I can wait."

Pete laughed again. "I think you and I are gonna get along. Ah, here we are."

The door opened and the bald head of John Jones appeared, followed by a wheeled office chair that he pulled in behind him.

"Sorry about that John, only had the two chairs in here," Pete explained, positioning the chair so it was halfway between himself and George.

John smiled. "Don't worry about it. Before long you'll be sending the Cherubs on errands to fetch chairs like it's nothing." He turned to George. "We meet again young man. You'll be pleased to know that our American friends have been asking after you whenever the topic of CHERUB comes up, but the Aussies have first dibs."

George smiled, feeling a little embarrassed. "That's cool."

Pete cleared his throat. "Now that you're here, John, why don't you let George know what it is you're here for."

John nodded. "Well, George, this mission has been in the works for about six months now, which is probably why you feel like you've been sitting around on campus like a lemon. It's actually an internal matter for the Australians and doesn't really concern us in the UK, but we don't mind lending them a hand every now and again. Basically we'll be asking you to go to a school in Australia, befriend the child of a criminal, find out what you can and hope to crack the case. It's more or less routine, but ASIS are really keen that it goes well."

Pete took over. "The guy you'll be trying to catch is basically the biggest criminal in Melbourne and he's been operating without much harassment from the authorities for for than ten years now. We're keen to get rid of him and this is the perfect time."

"The only problem," John continued, "is that it's really a two person mission. We need an older female agent of British descent who is old enough, or looks old enough, to pass for seventeen or eighteen. Unfortunately, CHERUB does not have very many of those. There was one who was perfect, and has worked with ASIS on two previous missions, but she recently did an excellent job of utterly disgracing herself on a training exercise and, as far as I'm aware, is no longer available for mission work."

George caught on. "Oh, you mean Katie."

John nodded. "She's been pencilled in for this one for months, so it's been a huge blow."

"We really need this mission to be started within the next couple of months, maximum," Pete explained. "Any longer and we're running the risk of not being able to penetrate the organisation effectively."

"This is why we need to talk to you, George," John said. "It was no coincidence that you were put on Katie's team for the exercise; we were hoping to see how well you two would work together and see if you'd get on. However following her behaviour, we've had to disclude her, but there's literally nobody else available. The only other possible girl, Lauren Adams, is currently on another mission and so we can't use her as a fall back."

"Why don't you just unsuspend Katie and give her a different kind of punishment?" George suggested. "I mean, if it's crucial for an important mission."

"Well, we need to know if you'd be okay to go on a mission with her. We think that it could last as long as six months or more, so if you're not happy working with her in an operational capacity, we can't let it go ahead."

"I don't mind working with her," George said quickly. "She was a good team leader and she was always nice enough to me."

John nodded. "Do you think you could trust her under pressure?"

"Yeah. The only time she's a bit of a psychopath is when someone's got her angry."

"Well, what if you got her angry?" John suggested. "There's a possibility that at some point on the mission, you could make her snap and be on the receiving end. Are you okay with that?"

George nodded. "I'll just make sure I stay on her good side."

John exchanged a look with Pete, but he didn't sound totally convinced. "Well, that sounds like as good an endorsement as you're likely to get, and I know ASIS have always rated her number one. I can try and use my influence with Zara, but no guarantees."

"ASIS have already lodged a formal request," Pete shrugged. "If you guys are still set on throwing this girl onto the street, then there's not much we can do."

John sighed. "I'm ninety-nine percent sure she'll do an excellent job, but that one percent is just enough to make me worry. However, CHERUB has been angling towards getting her as a training instructor for ages; she's got exactly the right temperament for it, and we always prefer internal candidates because it saves us having to uproot someone. That might be enough to save her."

"Just tell her she can go on the mission so long as she agrees to be an instructor," George suggested.

"Unfortunately she'd probably turn that down. She's got a talent for athletics, especially sprinting, and if there's one thing Cherub can't offer, it's world-class athletics coaching," John replied. "She's certainly the fastest female agent we've ever had here, if not the fastest person."

"Anyway, thanks John. If you could see what you can do, I'd be much obliged," Pete said, standing up and showing John out. "Just let me know."

Once John had departed, Pete sat back down and slid a file over to George. "Have a look at this and see what you think."