3: Fireplace
When Letty woke up she saw that George had texted her early.
CAN'T BELIEVE U GET TO CAUSE MAYHEM WHEN I'M SCHOOL
Kimberley was already up and was brushing her hair in front of the room's mirror.
"Better hurry up, Jules will get anxious if we're not ten minutes early," she reminded Letty as the older girl fired off a text in return.
SUCKS 2 BE U LOL
She still felt a bit jet-lagged and hadn't slept well in the unfamiliar hotel bed, but they were supposed to be playing the teenage rebels and after she'd let Kimberley loose with the dark eyeshadow and punky lipstick she thought she looked okay. The bags under her eyes actually enhanced her goth look.
"Now, don't you two look like a pair of hell-raisers?" Jules grinned when they met him downstairs in the hotel's restaurant for breakfast.
"Did we overdo it?" Kimberley asked, suddenly unsure. She'd gone for denim dungarees over a black t-shirt and Letty was wearing ripped tights, a skirt held together with safety pins and a metal band t-shirt that Jemima had given her ages ago.
"No, you look like normal teenagers," Jules said, dismissively.
"Ooh, they do French toast," Letty said, eyeing the breakfast menu. "Or waffles, tough choice."
"Waffles sound amazing," Kimberley said. "We can go half and half if you want."
"I'm glad you two are hungry," Jules said, looking glum. "I barely slept last night and ended up eating a giant bag of crisps at three a.m."
Despite this, after drinking a double espresso Jules found the room for a couple of pieces of toast, a giant lump of marmalade sliding off one and landing on his lap.
"No-one will notice," Letty assured him as he rubbed at it with a paper napkin.
"I'd better change," Jules said, shaking his head. "I won't be too long, just wait here for me."
It had rained in the night and temperatures were barely above freezing, so Letty and Kimberley admired the frosty patterns on the trees in the park as they rode in a taxi to the Embassy.
"That's the Imperial Palace," the driver said to them in accented English, pointing out of the window at a mass of trees. "The Emperor lives there. Like your Queen and Buckham Palace."
"Buckingham Palace," Kimberley said, exchanging a smile with Letty.
"Yes of course, my mistake," the driver said cheerfully.
They pulled up outside the Embassy and Jules handed over a wad of notes. The driver carefully counted out his change and wrote a tiny receipt, while Letty and Kimberley stamped their feet and shivered on the pavement.
"Thank you very much!" the driver said as he got back into the car. "Have a great vacation!"
"You, too," Letty said, waving, and Kimberley dissolved into giggles.
"What?" Letty asked, mystified.
"I don't think he's on vacation," Jules said, hitting Kimberley gently with his briefcase. "You can stop laughing anyway, you're supposed to be in a bad mood."
"Of course," Kimberley said, pretending to wipe tears from her eyes. "Moody teenager time."
Security at the Embassy looked impressive, with tall black railings and automatic gates to block cars from going up the driveway, but on foot they were just waved through by a friendly-looking policeman and nobody stopped them until they were inside the front door, pleased to find that the place was well-heated.
"This way," a uniformed man said, guiding them over to the metal detector. Jules handed him his briefcase which was scanned separately, and as expected none of the three of them activated the detector, not even Letty's safety pins.
"Jules Everett to see the business consul," Jules announced to the lady sitting at the reception desk, who sat up straighter and beamed at Jules as he walked up.
"Of course, please take a seat while you wait," she replied with a big smile, typing something into her computer.
"My childcare arrangements fell through so I was wondering if there was somewhere these two could stay during the meeting? I'm so sorry to put you to the trouble," Jules went on, leaning on the desk slightly and meeting the receptionist's gaze. She blushed slightly.
"Not a problem Mr. Everett, your daughters can wait in our reception room this morning," she said.
"Oh, sorry, they're not my daughters. They're my two nieces. I'm single, actually, my brother was always the family man," Jules said, sounding casual. "I'm just on babysitting duty while he meets our early investors."
The receptionist blushed again. "Maybe you could tell me your business plan sometime?" she giggled.
Letty made a face at Kimberley. "Adults are gross," she said, but a few moments later a short, bald man with thin-framed glasses bustled in and shook Jules's hand.
"Good morning, Mr. Everett, I'm Keith Parkinson, business consul," he said brightly. "Let's go straight in, shall we?"
Jules gave the Cherubs a slight wave as he left with Keith, and the receptionist pointed to another door.
"Just go through there, you two. I'm sure the meeting won't take too long," she said, trying to be friendly, but both girls gave her a scowl and stomped over to the reception room.
The room itself was like a glorified waiting room, with chairs around two sides and some glossy brochures advertising British industrial products and Anglo-Japanese trade initiatives. There was a potted shrub in another corner next to an ornate marble fireplace, and a small table with teacups, an out-of-order coffee machine and a kettle next to another door which was closed.
"Talk about boring," Kimberley said, half-heartedly thumping her boot against the leg of a chair.
Letty sat herself down on the nearest chair and stared at her phone. The room was silent except for a clock ticking, and when Kimberley pushed the door shut behind them, it closed with a click.
"Where does this door lead?" Kimberley asked, pointing to the other door and keeping her voice down.
"According to the diagram Ewart drew, it should lead into the main corridor," Letty told her. They hadn't risked bringing any copies of the diagram in with them, in case their phones were searched, but Letty had memorised as much of it as she could.
"So, we could sneak through there?" Kimberley said, walking over to it. She tried the handle gently and it was locked.
"I've got that tiny lock pick kit," Letty replied. "Once we're through, it's a left, then left again to get to the consul's office."
"How are we going to explain getting through a locked door, though?" Kimberley pointed out. "Two bored teenagers are hardly going to be able to do that normally."
"Pretend it was unlocked," Letty shrugged. "They won't be able to prove it was locked afterwards."
They'd promised Jules a fifteen-minute head start to get the documents handed over, and while Letty nervously stared at an app on her phone, Kimberley wandered around the room, messing up the arrangement of the chairs and pulling leaves off the shrub and putting them in the fireplace.
"Alright, I think we're safe," Letty finally said, and Kimberley nodded. Letty had pulled her micro lock pick out of her phone case and was heading for the door when the other door flew open and the receptionist poked her head in.
"What's going on?" she asked, confused, as Letty hastily shoved the lock pick into her phone case again and turned around.
"Just bored," Kimberley tried to cover up, but they were standing in a weird position and the receptionist didn't seem convinced.
"Where does this door go?" Letty asked, trying to sound sweet, but the receptionist wasn't buying it.
"Nowhere. If you want some water I've got some on my desk, or there's hot drinks on the table," she said, looking stern.
"Thanks," Kimberley said, and the receptionist left again, leaving the main door open this time
"You should've been watching the door," Letty hissed, grabbing the lock pick again.
"Me? I was waiting for you," Kimberley replied, annoyed, but the girls let it drop as Letty used the pick to spring open the lock and then tested the handle. It opened a fraction.
"Okay, I say we just go," Letty said. "No point being subtle; if the receptionist comes back we're busted anyway."
Ewart's diagram had made it look as if it was a short corridor, but it was much longer than they thought and both girls looked around nervously as they hurried along, trying not to make any noise. The polished wooden floor clicked under their shoes, so Letty was relieved to turn the corner onto carpet.
"This one," she said quietly, pointing to the door Ewart had circled on the diagram as Keith's office.
"What if there's a secretary or something?" Kimberley asked.
"Ewart said his secretary always goes to the meetings, remember?" Letty reminded her.
"Oh, yeah," Kimberley said. "Sorry, I forgot."
Letty grabbed the door handle and threw open the door, pleased to see that there was no-one inside. Despite the grand corridor, the room itself looked like a normal office, with carpet squares and cheap furniture. Letty honed in on two solid-looking filing cabinets while Kimberley shut the door behind them.
"Stay by the door," Letty said as she pushed her lock pick into the first filing cabinet. "Let me get a decent look at the files first and then you can go crazy."
When the drawer opened, Letty's heart sank. It was stuffed full of hundreds of brown folders, each one individually labelled and it would take hours to go through them all. She flicked through and none of the labels meant anything to her: EXPO 2012 and RUTHERFORD OCT 09 didn't sound like they contained secret files, but anyone stealing documents would hide them somewhere innocuous anyway.
"No luck here," Letty said, pushing the drawer closed. "Give me a hand searching the rest of the room."
Both Cherubs had been trained to look for the subtle clues that were left behind by a secret hiding-place: a carpet square that came up easily; a loose-bottomed drawer in a desk; an ornament which looked like it had been moved recently. But as they moved around, nothing jumped out at them, and the office wasn't that big to begin with.
"Forget it," Kimberley finally said after running her hands around the edge of the carpet. "Unless it's in those filing cabinets then we're not gonna find anything."
Letty smiled. "Get trashing, I guess," she told Kimberley as she pulled open the drawers of the filing cabinet, pulling out piles of brown folders and tossing them up in the air. Kimberley started by upturning a desk, sending the computer monitor crashing onto the floor, then she booted a hole in the plaster wall with her heavy shoes. Letty was keeping an eye out for anything that looked interesting as she pulled out the folders, going from drawer to drawer, but nothing did. She took a few snaps of some folders just so she'd have something to show for it, but Kimberley's wrecking job was very efficient and after she hurled a picture frame into a metal blind, demolishing it completely with a horrendous crash, someone pushed open the door.
"What on earth is going on in here?" the man said, but Letty and Kimberley just rushed towards him. He made a half-hearted effort to shut the door to stop them from escaping, but Letty yanked it out of his grip and Kimberley shoved him out of the way. He stumbled into the door frame and shouted something, but the two girls were sprinting down the corridor back the way they came. Kimberley slowed to pull a framed picture off the wall and threw it behind them with a crash, then followed Letty back into the reception room. Letty's priority was getting to the door and out, but Kimberley couldn't resist picking up the broken coffee machine and throwing it at the fireplace. She'd expected the stone fireplace to destroy the machine, but to her surprise the fireplace itself cracked and a lump of marble skittered across the floor. She stooped to pick it up and flung it at random, embedding it in a painting before she went after Letty.
Security didn't stop them and the policeman outside was speaking to someone in a car, so Letty and Kimberley were able to run past and straight into the park opposite. They kept going for a couple of minutes before slowing down, changing direction and strolling along as if they'd never been anywhere near the Embassy, blending in with a small tourist group who had paused to take photos of the Imperial Palace moat.
"That was awesome," Kimberley said, giggling a little.
"Shame we didn't find anything," Letty added. "But hopefully Jules's side of the operation went better."