Published by Hodder Children’s
Books, October 2005
What is CHERUB?
CHERUB is a branch of British Intelligence.
Its agents are aged between 10 and 17 years. Cherubs are all orphans who have
been taken out of care homes and trained to work undercover. They live on
CHERUB Campus, a secret facility hidden in the English countryside.
What use are kids as intelligence agents?
Quite a lot. Nobody realises kids do undercover
missions, which means they can get away with all kinds of stuff that adults
can’t.
WHO ARE THEY?
About three hundred children live on
CHERUB campus. JAMES ADAMS is our thirteen-year-old hero. He’s a
well-respected CHERUB agent, with three successful missions under his belt.
James’ ten-year-old sister, LAUREN ADAMS, is a less experienced CHERUB
agent. KERRY CHANG is a
Amongst James’ closest
friends on campus are BRUCE NORRIS, GABRIELLE O’BRIEN, SHAKEEL DAJANI and
the twins CALLUM and CONNOR REILLY. His best friend, KYLE BLUEMAN, is fifteen.
CHERUB T-shirts
Cherubs are ranked according to
the colour of the T-shirts they wear on campus.
AUGUST 2004
The two thirteen-year-olds wore nylon
shorts, sleeveless tops and flip-flops. Jane leaned against the concrete wall of
the housing block where she lived, peeling away strands of hair stuck to her
sweaty face. Hannah was sprawled over the paved steps a couple of metres in
front of her.
‘I
dunno,’ Jane huffed.
The
words were meaningless, but Hannah understood. It was the middle of summer
holidays and the hottest day of the year so far. The two best friends were
broke, irritated by the heat and weary of each other’s company.
‘Makes
me sweat just looking at ‘em,’ Hannah said, staring at the pre-teen
boys kicking a football around a tarmac pitch less than twenty metres away.
‘We
used to run around like that,’ Jane said. ‘Not football. I mean,
racing our bikes and stuff.’
Hannah
allowed herself to smile as her brain drifted into the past. ‘Barbie bike
grand prix,’ she nodded, remembering herself on a little pink bike; the
white spokes blurring as she juddered over the gaps between paving slabs.
Jane’s nan always sat out in a deck chair
keeping an eye on them.
‘You
and me had to have everything the exact same,’ Jane nodded, as she curled
her toes, making her sandal clap against her foot.
The
voyage down memory lane was rudely interrupted by a football. It skimmed
Hannah’s hair and stung the wall behind her, missing Jane by centimetres.
‘Jeeeeeesus,’
Hannah gasped.
She dived forward,
wrapping her body over the ball as it bobbled down the steps alongside her. A
boy ran up to the bottom of the staircase. Nine-years-old, with a
‘Give
us,’ the kid panted, putting out his hands to catch.
‘You
nearly whacked me in face,’ Jane yelled furiously. ‘You might at
least say sorry.’
‘We
didn’t mean it.’
The
other lads who’d been playing football were closing in, irritated by the
break in play. Hannah appreciated that the kick was an accident and she’d
been set to give the ball back until one of the kids gave her lip. He was the
biggest lad there, ten-years-old with cropped red hair.
‘Come
on you fat cow, gi’s our ball.’
Hannah barged between a
couple of sweaty torsos and faced the redhead off, squeezing the football
between her palms. ‘You wanna repeat that, Ginger?’
Hannah
was three years older than the kid she was facing off, with height and weight
on her side. All Ginger could do was stare dumbly at
his Nikes, while his mates waited for him to come out with something clever.
‘Cat
got your tongue?’ Hannah glowered; enjoying the way Ginger was squirming.
‘I
just want our ball,’ he said weakly.
‘Go
fetch it then.’
Hannah let the ball drop
and booted it before it hit the ground. It would have been OK in trainers, but
as the ball soared towards the goal posts on the opposite side of the pitch,
her sandal flew after it.
Ginger quickly backed up
and picked the sandal out of the air. Enjoying his newfound power, he smirked
as he held the sandal up to his nose and took a sniff.
‘Your
feet stink, girl. Don’t you wash?’
Hannah
made a grab for her sandal as the young footballers jeered. Ginger ducked out
of the way, before throwing the shoe underarm to one of his mates. Lumps of
gravel dug into Hannah’s sole as she stepped unevenly towards her new
tormentor. She felt like a total Wally for letting this gang of runts get one
over on her.
‘Give
us that shoe or I’m gonna batter you,’ she snarled.
The
shoe changed hands again, as Jane stepped into the fray to help her mate.
‘Give it back,’ she steamed.
The
angrier the girls got, the harder the boys laughed. They were spreading out,
anticipating an extended game of piggy in the middle, when Jane noticed
changing expressions on the young faces.
Hannah sensed something
was wrong too. She turned sharply, catching a fast moving object out the corner
of her eye a second before it smashed into the ground. It hit the staircase in the
exact spot where she’d been sitting a minute earlier.
Hannah froze in shock as
the metal banister crumpled. By the time her brain got up to speed,
the terrified young footballers had abandoned her sandal and were shooting off
in all directions. She found her eyes focused on the well worn tread of a
boy’s trainer. His denim clad bum poked out of the crumpled metal and
dust. The adrenalin hit hard as Hannah recognised the mangled body and screamed
out.
‘Will… No, for god’s sake...’’
He looked dead, but this
couldn’t be for real. She covered her face with her hands and screamed so
hard she felt her tonsils dance in the back of her throat. She tried to tell
herself it was all a dream. Stuff like this didn’t happen in real life.
She’d wake up in a minute and everything would be back to normal…
1. UNIFORM
For the past three years George Stein
has worked as an economics teacher at the exclusive Trinity Boys’ Day
school near
(Excerpt From
CHERUB mission briefing for Callum Reilly and Shakeel ‘Shak’
Dajani.)
JUNE 2005
It was a fine day and this part of
‘I’m
telling you,’ James moaned, ‘Even if you sat down and tried really
hard, I don’t think you could come up with a way to make this uniform
look any dumber.’
‘I
dunno, James. Maybe we could have partridge feathers sticking out of the hats
or something.’
‘And these trousers
were meant for Callum’s skinny butt. They’re killing my
balls.’
Shak
couldn’t help seeing the funny side of James’ discomfort.
‘You can’t blame Callum for pulling out of the mission at the last
minute. It’s that stomach bug that’s going around campus.’
James
nodded. ‘I had it last week. I was barely off the bog for two whole
days.’
Shak
looked at his watch for the millionth time. ‘We need to up the
pace.’
‘What’s
the big deal?’ James asked.
‘This
isn’t some
James
nodded. ‘Gotcha.’
Shak
looked at his watch for the millionth and first time as they cut into a cobbled
alleyway that was barely wide enough for a single car.
‘Come on,
James.’
‘I’m
trying,’ James said. ‘But I’m seriously gonna rip the arse
out of these trousers if I’m not careful.’
Once
they’d cut between two large houses, the alleyway opened out into a run
down park with knee high grass and a set of tangled swings. To the boys’
left stood a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, behind which lay the
grounds of Trinity Day. The main gates were carefully monitored during school
hours, so this was their only way in.
Shak wandered through the
long grass next to the fence, placing his shoe carefully to avoid turds and
litter, as he searched for an entry point made by an MI5 operative the previous
night. He found the flap cut in the wire behind the trunk of a large tree,
allowing the boys to slide into the school grounds without being seen.
Shak
lifted it, doffed his cap and attempted a snooty accent to match his uniform. ‘After you James, my good man.’
James
fed his backpack and hat through the gap, before sliding under. He stood with
his back against the tree and brushed dirt off his uniform, while Shak
followed.
‘All
set?’ James asked, as he slung his backpack over his shoulder. It weighed
a ton and the equipment inside clattered around.
‘Cap,’
Shak reminded him.
James
let out a little gasp as he leaned forward and picked it out of the grass. A
claxon sounded inside the school building a couple of hundred metres away,
indicating a lesson change.
‘OK,
lets shift,’ Shak said.
The
boys broke out from behind the tree and began jogging across a rugby pitch
towards the school building. As they did, they noticed a groundskeeper striding
purposefully towards them from the opposite end of the field.
‘You
two,’ he bellowed.
Because James had been
pulled on to the mission at the last minute to replace Callum, he’d only
had time to skim through the mission briefing. He looked uneasily at Shak for
guidance.
‘Don’t
sweat it,’ Shak whispered. ‘I’ve got it covered.’
The
groundskeeper intercepted the boys near a set of rugby posts. He was a fit
looking fellow with thinning grey hair, dressed in workman’s boots and a
grubby overall.
‘Exactly
what do you think you’re doing out here?’ he demanded
pompously.
‘I
was reading under the tree at lunchtime,’ Shak explained, pointing
backwards with his thumb. ‘I left my cap behind.’
‘You
know the rules of the school, don’t you?’
Shak
and James both looked confused.
‘Don’t
try playing the fool with me, you know as well as I do. If you’re
not attending a lesson, a match, or an official practice, you do not set foot
on the games pitches because it causes unnecessary wear and tear.’
‘Yes,’
Shak nodded. ‘Sorry, sir. I was in a hurry to
get to my lesson, that’s all.’
‘Sorry,’
James added. ‘But it’s not like the pitches are muddy or anything.
We’re not really tearing them up.’
The
groundskeeper took James’ comment as a threat to his authority. He
swooped down and showered James with spit as he spoke. ‘I make the rules
here, young man. You don’t decide when you can and can’t set
foot on my pitches. Got that?’
‘Yes,
sir,’ James said.
‘What’s
your name and house?’
‘Joseph
Mail, King Henry House,’ James lied, recalling one of the few elements of
his background story he’d managed to remember from the mission briefing.
‘Faisal
Asmal, same house.’ Shak said.
‘Right,’
the groundskeeper said, bouncing smugly on the balls of his feet.
‘I’ll be reporting both of you to your housemaster and I expect
your cheek will have earned you both a detention. Now, you’d better get
yourselves to your next lesson.’
‘Why’d you
answer back?’ Shak asked irritably, as the boys walked towards the back
entrance of the school.
‘I
know I shouldn’t have,’ James said, raising his palms defensively.
‘But he was so full of himself.’
They
passed through a set of double doors into the main school building, then up a
short flight of steps and into the busy thoroughfare that ran the length of the
ground floor. There was plenty of noise, but the Trinity boys walked
purposefully and were expected to nod politely to the teachers standing in the
doorways as they entered their classrooms.
‘What
a bunch of geeks,’ James whispered. ‘I bet these dudes don’t
even fart.’
Shak
explained the situation as they headed up the stairs to the second floor.
‘Every kid has to pass special exams and an interview to get into
Trinity. There’s always a humongous waiting list so they can afford to
boot out anyone who doesn’t tow the line.’
‘Bet
I wouldn’t last long,’ James grinned.
By
the time they reached the second floor, most kids had found their way to
lessons and the classroom doors had been pulled shut. Shak pulled a lockgun
from the pocket of his blazer as they passed by a couple of classroom doors. He
stopped at the door of an office with a nameplate on it: Dr George Stein
BSc, PhD, Head of Economics and Politics.
Shak pushed the tip of the
lockgun into the keyhole. James stood close by, blocking the view of a bunch of
kids waiting outside a classroom fifteen metres away.
The
lock had a simple single lever mechanism, meaning Shak only had to give the
lockgun a brief wiggle and pull on the trigger to open the door. The pair
hurriedly stepped into the office and put the latch down so that nobody could
burst in on them, even with a key.
‘Stein should be teaching two
floors up,’ Shak said. ‘We’ve got until the next lesson
change in thirty-six minutes, let’s get to work.’