CHERUB: The General
Robert Muchamore
was born in 1972 and spent thirteen years working as a private investigator.
CHERUB: The General
is his tenth novel in the series.
The CHERUB series has won numerous awards, including the 2005 Red House Children’s Book Award. For more information on Robert and his work, visit
www.muchamore.com
.
Praise for the CHERUB series:
‘If you can’t bear to read another story about elves, princesses or spoiled rich kids who never go to the toilet, try this. You won’t regret it.’
The Ultimate Teen Book Guide
‘My sixteen-year-old son read
The Recruit
in one sitting, then went out the next day and got the sequel.’ Sophie Smiley, teacher and children’s author
‘So good I forced my friends to read it, and they’re glad I did!’ Helen, age 14
‘CHERUB is the first book I ever read cover to cover. It was amazing.’ Scott, age 13
‘The best book ever.’ Madeline, age 12
‘CHERUB is a must for Alex Rider lovers.’ Travis, age 14
The Henderson’s Boys series:
1.
The Escape
2.
Eagle Day
3.
Secret Army
4.
Grey Wolves
5.
The Prisoner
... and coming soon:
6.
One Shot Kill
The CHERUB series:
1.
The Recruit
2.
Class A
3.
Maximum Security
4.
The Killing
5.
Divine Madness
6.
Man vs Beast
7.
The Fall
8.
Mad Dogs
9.
The Sleepwalker
10.
The General
11.
Brigands M.C.
12.
Shadow Wave
CHERUB series 2:
1.
People’s Republic
... and coming soon:
2.
Guardian Angel
Copyright © 2008 Robert Muchamore
First published in Great Britain in 2008
by Hodder Children’s Books
This eBook edition published in 2012
The right of Robert Muchamore to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form, or by any means with prior permission in writing from the publishers or in the case of reprographic production in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency and may not be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 444 91053 7
Hodder Children’s Books
A Division of Hachette Children’s Books
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
An Hachette UK company
CHERUB is a branch of British Intelligence. Its agents are aged between ten and seventeen years. Cherubs are mainly 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.
Quite a lot. Nobody realises kids do undercover missions, which means they can get away with all kinds of stuff that adults can’t.
About three hundred children live on CHERUB campus. JAMES ADAMS is our sixteen-year-old hero. He’s a well-respected CHERUB agent with several successful missions under his belt. Australian-born Dana Smith is James’ girlfriend. His other close friends include BRUCE NORRIS, KERRY CHANG and SHAKEEL DAJANI.
James’ sister, LAUREN ADAMS, is thirteen and already regarded as an outstanding CHERUB agent. Her best friends are BETHANY PARKER and GREG ‘RAT’ RATHBONE.
With its large grounds, specialist training facilities and combined role as a boarding school and intelligence operation, CHERUB actually has more staff than pupils. They range from cooks and gardeners to teachers, training instructors, nurses, psychiatrists and mission specialists. CHERUB is run by its chairwoman, ZARA ASKER.
Cherubs are ranked according to the colour of the T-shirts they wear on campus. ORANGE is for visitors. RED is for kids who live on CHERUB campus but are too young to qualify as agents (the minimum age is ten). BLUE is for kids undergoing CHERUB’s tough one-hundred-day basic training regime. A GREY T-shirt means you’re qualified for missions. NAVY is a reward for outstanding performance on a single mission. Lauren and James wear the BLACK T-shirt, the ultimate recognition for outstanding achievement over a number of missions. When you retire, you get the WHITE T-shirt, which is also worn by some staff.
The anarchist organisation known as Street Action Group (SAG) first came to light in summer 2003 when its leader Chris Bradford hijacked the rostrum at an anti-Iraq-war demonstration in London’s Hyde Park. Bradford urged a peaceful crowd to attack police officers, before setting light to straw-filled effigies of Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush.
By 2006 SAG had built a cult following and was strong enough to begin staging its own anti-government protests. These culminated in July with the
Summer Mayhem March
through central Birmingham. Dozens of cars were vandalised, windows were broken, more than thirty protestors were arrested and a police officer was stabbed.
In the months that followed, prison sentences were handed down to several senior SAG members involved in the rioting. Heavy police presence wherever SAG planned to appear made staging violent protests increasingly difficult.
Chris Bradford became bitter at what he called ‘state oppression’ and an MI5 agent sent to infiltrate SAG made a shocking discovery: Bradford was trying to acquire guns and bomb-making equipment in order to transform
SAG
into a terrorist organisation.
(Excerpt from a CHERUB mission briefing for James Adams, October 2007)
It was December 21st, the last Friday before Christmas. The sky was purple and strings of lights dangled between Victorian lampposts on the pedestrianised London street. The pubs around Covent Garden tube station were crammed and office workers huddled in doorways smoking cigarettes. Teens gawped into shops well out of their price range and The Body Shop was full of miserable-looking men buying last-minute gifts.
Shoppers and drinkers ignored a rectangular pen made from metal crowd barriers as they shuffled past, though some noted the irony that two dozen police officers in fluorescent jackets lined up to face thirteen protestors inside the barriers.
James Adams was one of the thirteen. Sixteen years old, he was dressed in a bulky army surplus jacket and twenty-four-hole Doc Marten boots. His hair was shaved down to a number one on the sides and a shaggy, green-tinted Mohican ran from his forehead down to the collar of his jacket. He banged his gloved hands together to fight the cold as cops gave him stern looks.
Chris Bradford stood three metres away. Well built, Bradford had scruffy ginger hair, a baggy hoodie worn with the fluffy lining on the outside and two cameras filming him. One was held by a cop, who walked the perimeter with a titchy camcorder. The other was a more impressive beast. It sat on the shoulder of a BBC cameraman and a lamp mounted on top shone its light in Bradford’s face.