CHERUB: The Syndicate

20: Bangkok

For the nine-hour duration of the flight to Bangkok Katie had become Olivia Staley, a nineteen-year-old student at the University of Melbourne who was flying to Thailand to meet up with two other students for a spontaneous mid-term long weekend. She'd spotted Zach sitting in the departure lounge and had stayed as far away as possible so he couldn't spot her. Business class boarded first, so she watched him show his boarding pass and walk down the tunnel before she approached the queue herself. She was in economy, stuck somewhere near the tail, which meant it was unlikely that Zach would have any reason to see her. She'd had to pass him to get to her seat, but he'd been engrossed in getting something out of the overhead locker and hadn't given her a second look.

The main problem was that nine hours was a long time to be stuck on an aeroplane and Katie had left in a hurry, so all she had to entertain herself were three fashion magazines she'd picked up in the departure lounge and her iPod. The in-flight entertainment system had a variety of films to watch, but most of them were dubbed into Thai with terrible English subtitles that she couldn't be bothered reading. Getting fed up of reading while the overweight man next to her shifted around and absorbed more of her seat, she rested her head on the seatback and wondered why undercover work was always so boring.

The flight left at four, which meant it landed in Bangkok at one in the morning, Australian time. George knew that whatever happened, Katie would contact ASIS first and not him, but he still couldn't sleep and spent a restless couple of hours using an online flight tracker to see where she was. Alice came in, looking exhausted, when she realised he was still up.

"I managed to speak to the travel agency today and told them Katie's off sick tomorrow, which should give us time to dye her hair back to its original colour."

"Sounds good."

"Anyway, I'm going to get to bed. I've been at work all day and the tiredness is catching up with me. Wake me if you need me."

As one o'clock came and went there was no word from Katie and George began to wonder if something had gone wrong. He had the CHERUB emergency number open in case he heard the worst, but he hoped he wouldn't have to ring it.

The flight landed in Bangkok without much ceremony and Katie was quick off the mark, grabbing her backpack from the overhead locker and dashing towards the front of the plane. It would be easy to lose Zach in the maze of the airport so she wanted to be somewhere she could keep an eye on him.

She kept her distance as they walked through the airport, staying behind him with her hair partially covering her face. If he was catching a connecting flight he wouldn't have to clear immigration, which would make her life easier since she wouldn't have to try and stick to a dodgy Australian accent during questioning by the Thai border force. To her relief he followed the signs to the departure lounge instead of going towards immigration, so she joined the small group of fellow passengers going in that direction and wished her backpack had wheels so she wouldn't have to carry it everywhere.

Zach stopped to buy a newspaper and browse some of the shops, which gave her the opportunity to grab a giant coffee from a stand and drink half of it as soon as it was cool enough. She'd been up early to go to work and wished Zach would get on with boarding his next flight. The only problem was, he could be stopping over for anything from an hour to thirteen.

George fell asleep once there was nothing to watch on the screen, so when he woke up to is phone ringing at half five in the morning he was still fully dressed and his mouth tasted extremely weird.

"Hello?" he said without reading the display through his half-closed eyes that were still getting used to the light.

"Brian?"