20: Wanted
At seven-thirty the following morning, George had just snoozed his alarm and was trying to pretend he didn't need to get up for lessons when someone knocked on his door. It was a fairly gentle knock and as he rolled out of bed, scratching his shoulder, he tried to work out who it could be at this time on a Monday.
"Morning," Lucy Kurian said briskly when he opened the door. "Can I come in or is your room covered in disgusting boy stuff?"
George stepped back sleepily to let her in, and she pushed the door shut behind her. "What's up?" he asked, having visions of a possible training exercise about to be sprung on him. Lucy wasn't dressed in CHERUB uniform; instead of her white shirt and combat trousers, she was wearing black jeans and a baggy orange sweatshirt which advertised 'THE SUNSHINE STATE' in faded blue letters.
"I need your help," Lucy said, double-checking that the door was definitely shut firmly. She glanced at the unmade bed as George rooted around on the floor for the trousers he'd been wearing the previous day. "Did I wake you?"
"I should have been getting up anyway," George shrugged.
Lucy took a seat on his sofa as he pulled his trousers up his legs and grabbed a clean navy CHERUB t-shirt out of a pile of clean laundry he hadn't got around to putting away properly.
"I came to give you this," Lucy finally said when he was dressed, sliding a bright yellow Mission Control building pass out of her jeans pocket.
George stared at it. "I literally only just got back from my last mission," he said, confused. "I mean, I'm definitely not saying no, but-"
Lucy gave him a tight smile. "There's a meeting at ten. Can you come?"
"Yeah, mission meetings always come before lessons, but-"
"Stop saying 'but'", Lucy said, putting the pass down on his desk. "I've got something else to do this morning so I can't hang around. Don't go around mouthing off to your little mates about this one, either."
"Hey," George protested. "Anyway, you're not a Mission Controller, so what has this got to do with you?"
Lucy got up. "That's for me to know and you to find out," she announced. "Just don't be late and like I said, don't go around telling everyone."
"Who am I meeting with?" George asked, picking sleep out of his eyes. "I can't just waltz in there and go around knocking on doors."
Lucy paused in the doorway, her hand on the door handle. "It's with James Adams," she told him. "See you later."
Part of George wanted to tell everyone about his mission just to spite Lucy, but he kept it to himself over breakfast. Bianca sat with her own friends on a different table, but George went over when he was finished eating to say hello. Her crowd were mostly a year or two younger than George and his mates, and whilst the girls chatted with him and asked giggly questions about their date the previous day, the lads stared daggers at him and muttered to each other. George ignored them, especially since he recognised one or two of them from the dojo as martial arts nuts and didn't fancy antagonising them.
"See you later?" he said to Bianca, who nodded.
"I'm planning to try and get a few more laps done after dinner," she told him.
"Perfect, I'll join you," he said, waving as he set off for his first lesson.
His second lesson, at ten, was biology, but instead of walking down to the science classrooms, he cut out of the school block and set off across the long, curved path which led around the perimeter of campus towards the large, banana-shaped Mission Control building. It was cold and dull and the large glass panels reflected the grey sky as he walked, passing a white shirt he didn't recognise who was pushing a large trolley with documents on it, heading for the archives in the basement of the main building.
His yellow swipe card unlocked the electronic door of the building and he stepped inside, glad for the heating. He stopped for a few moments to unzip his jacket and check his watch: it was already ten, so he consulted the big whiteboard near the reception desk to work out which office belonged to James Adams. It was one of the smaller ones on the first floor, and after a final check of his uniform to make sure he looked presentable, he ignored the lift and took the stairs two at a time, then counted rooms off along the wide corridor until he came to the right one, where the door was partly open.
"Come in," James said as George stuck his head around the door. "George, right?"
"Right," George confirmed, and James Adams leant over a stack of documents to shake his hand. Jules Richardson was probably the most popular mission controller amongst the female Cherubs, but if you preferred a bad-boy look, then James Adams was in a close second place. His blonde hair was cropped short like George's, and he was wearing a tatty white t-shirt with 'KAWASAKI' emblazoned across it in lime green lettering, and designer-looking ripped jeans.
"Nice to meet you," James said, sitting back down in his chair, where the faux leather was peeling around the seams. "Take a seat, I was just finishing off some paperwork. Ever since we went fully digital there seems to be more paperwork than ever."
George shifted a pair of dirty coffee cups off the chair in the corner of the room and sat down, feeling slightly nervous like he always did when he was meeting a new mission controller.
"Lucy should be here any minute, she texted me to say she was stuck in traffic getting back to campus," James added, glancing up at George for a second before using a chewed biro to fill in a form.
"Brilliant," George said, before immediately regretting it. It made him sound like a fool: why getting stuck in traffic 'brilliant'? James didn't reply, though, and then someone tapped on the door and looked in.
"Lifesaver," James said as a short woman with dark hair passed him a paper cup with the logo of a local coffee chain on the side. "Ten times better than the swill they serve here. Kerry, this is George."
George exchanged a brief hello with the woman, who looked to be about James's age and he vaguely remembered from the wedding on campus a few years ago.
"He's the one Zara is always moaning on about when we go over for dinner," James added with a smile.
Kerry's eyes flashed with recognition. "Oh, of course," she said, smirking.
George wasn't sure what to say. "I haven't been in trouble for ages," he protested, realising that it made him sound pathetic.
"No birthday parties got out of hand lately, then?" Kerry asked, smiling, and George looked guilty.
"Sorry I'm late," Lucy said when she arrived a second later, her hair pulled into a ponytail. "Hi Kerry."
"See you later, James," Kerry said, stepping aside to let Lucy in. "I won't interrupt your top secret business."
"These routine security missions are an absolute nightmare," James whinged. "Three weeks of planning just to see if a fat bloke earning minimum wage is doing his job properly."
"Bye James," Kerry said, ignoring him. "Nice to finally meet you, George."
As soon as she'd left and shut the door behind her, James finished his form and triumphantly put it on top of a pile of other documents in what looked like an 'out' tray, although in the mess it was hard to work out what the filing system was.
"So, this is a security mission?" George asked, feeling slightly disappointed, but a mission was a mission.
"Officially," James said, putting down his pen and giving George and Lucy his full attention. The other chair in the room was so completely covered in crap, including a dried out potted plant, that Lucy had chosen to stand, leaning against the wall, rather than try to sit in it. "Unofficially… well, I'd better let Lucy explain."
Lucy looked at George. "Before I say anything, remember, this is completely confidential and nothing leaves this room."
George nodded. "Of course," he told her. "What's going on?"
"You remember Michael Jaarsveld rang you last year, asking for help?"
James and Lucy studied George as he recalled it. "Yeah, it was right at the end of my mission," he said.
Lucy nodded. "Right. Ever since that call, I've been in touch with Michael, intermittently at first but more regularly now. I've been helping get him back into Europe and now I need your help. Well, both of you," she admitted, glancing over at James too.
"Why does he need your help?" George asked, slightly confused. "Last I heard, CHERUB was searching for him, so can't he just call campus and get someone to pull a few strings?"
"If only it was that easy," James smiled.
Lucy looked at George and chewed her tongue. "Okay, let me start from the beginning."
"Michael disappeared from his charity program last year. Officially, he's still missing, believed to be in one of the southern African countries. The Foreign Office is supposed to be making enquiries about a missing British national, but with the ISIS situation, nobody is looking very hard at the moment. I've seen the files from CHERUB's own investigation, run by that guy William Shepherd," Lucy said, pausing and glancing at James again.
James took over for a moment. "They're Top Secret, but all CHERUB managed was to track Michael from Ethiopia into Somalia last summer. From there, it's a total blank and they've had zero updates since then. Obviously I shouldn't have seen those files, but what the Chairwoman leaves lying around while I'm babysitting is none of my business."
George cracked a grin. "Okay, so what do we know that CHERUB doesn't?" he asked.
"As I told you last year, Michael needed some money wired and emailed me for it. I confirmed that it had been picked up at the other end, in Mogadishu in Somalia, but never heard any more from him. Then it's a complete blank until he got in touch with you from Morocco, which is four thousand miles away from Somalia. I emailed him and got back into contact, and he's trying to get back to the UK, now," Lucy said.
"But that still doesn't explain why he can't just call campus," George pointed out.
"Unfortunately," Lucy went on, "I don't have a ton of details, but it looks like Michael has spent his time between last summer and now as part of a mercenary army which has been operating across central Africa, mostly fighting insurgencies."
"A lot of governments in Africa don't have funding for big armies of their own, or they know they can't trust the army," James added. "With ISIS openly making it their aim to overthrow governments, quite a few private armies have sprung up. They're mostly just loose organisations willing to support whoever is paying the most cash, but some of them are sponsored by the Russian or Chinese governments, and some of them are religious nutcases who do it just for the love of it."
"Although fighting ISIS is probably a good thing, being a known member of a mercenary army is a crime," Lucy said. "Michael had made it to Rabat, on the coast of Morocco, but he reckoned he was being followed by French authorities."
"CHERUB has access to the Interpol database and Michael's wanted for questioning," James said. "If he's arrested in Morocco, they'll extradite him to a European prison. I'm not saying he's actually committed any crimes, but unless you're part of a state-run army, then killing people is counted as murder, even if you're ultimately being paid by the government."
"And I can't imagine he's spent his time sitting around cooking everyone's dinner instead of fighting," Lucy said. "If he calls CHERUB for help, then there's a risk they'll simply pass him over to the authorities for prosecution."
Both James and Lucy fell silent, looking at George.
"Sounds serious," George said, but his tone was optimistic. "So, how are we going to bail him out?"
Lucy's plan was simple but ambitious. She reckoned that if Michael asked for help from another country, CHERUB would consider it too risky to intervene and would leave him to be picked up by the local police. But if Michael was back in the UK, preferably on campus, then CHERUB wouldn't want to risk the consequences of handing him over to the police and answering awkward questions, so they would be willing to help. The only problem was getting a wanted man across a continent where every border agency would be looking for him and a single slip-up could mean a very long stay in prison.
"We're working on something, but wanted to bring you in at this stage," Lucy explained. "For cover, James has set up a phoney security mission which you've been selected for, and I'm supposed to be giving him a hand as an unpaid assistant."
"I thought you were back at uni?" George asked her.
"They won't miss me for a few weeks, and anyway, I've not exactly been handing in all of my homework assignments lately," Lucy shrugged.
"And, no offence, but what does this have to do with you, James?" George asked, turning to the mission controller. "I can't imagine you're doing this just for kicks."
James grinned. "Too right," he said. "I could do with a lot less stress in my life, not more, but I owe Lucy a favour for helping me out with the Advanced Driving courses way back when and I figure this would make us even. Just don't tell Kerry, she thinks I'm snowed under with real work, not this."
George laughed. "You can trust me."
"Listen, it's nearly eleven and I do have a real meeting to go to," James said, looking slightly alarmed when he looked at his watch.
"Got it," George said, and James scooped up a bundle of documents and his laptop.
"Just before you go," Lucy cut in, "George, we're looking at actually making a move in a week's time, so just act normal and I'll be in touch with more details when we know them."
James nodded. "I know what it's like with the campus rumour mill, someone is guaranteed to have seen you in here, so if anyone asks, we've just had an informal meeting about a potential security mission that you're interested in."