Free CHERUB: The General by Robert Muchamore Page B

closed and kicked one of the damp towels on the floor against it so it would be difficult to open quickly. The shower cubicle was a mess and he was delighted to see Rich’s toiletries spread out over the cabinets.
    He lifted the toilet seat and studied Davis’ stuff as he started to pee. After zipping up he turned on the tap, but rather than washing his hands he glanced back over his shoulder to make sure Rich’s bodyguard wasn’t peeking before taking a tiny tracking device out of his jeans.
    The three-centimetre disc was roughly the thickness of a CD. Although it wasn’t particularly large, the tracking device didn’t look like anything else and needed to be hidden somewhere out of sight, like the lining of a suitcase or the battery compartment of an electrical device.
    Rich had a roll-open toiletry bag hooked on to the shaving mirror, but James was disappointed to discover that all the compartments were made from loose nylon mesh which made it impossible to hide anything.
    The longer James took the greater the chance of the bodyguard getting suspicious and sticking his head around the door. He had half a mind to cut his losses when he eyed Rich’s shaving kit.
    Rich used a Mach-3 razor, with a traditional bristle shaving brush and an upmarket brand of hard shaving soap in its own plastic tub. James grabbed the tub and twisted off the lid as he backed up to the door. The bodyguard couldn’t see James in this position and if he did push the door, it would hit James in the back giving him two or three seconds to disguise what he was up to.
    With the tap running it was hard to follow the conversation at the table, but James’ nerves worsened as he caught a half a sentence from Bradford and realised that his voice was high and tense.
    James moved fretfully, squeezing the circular tub so that the almost new bar of white shaving soap popped out. He took the sticky backing off both sides of the tracking device and pressed it against the bottom of the plastic tub, before squeezing the lump of soap down on top of it.
    This was close to ideal from a disguise standpoint: Rich probably wouldn’t use the soap down to the last dregs where the tracking device would be revealed, and even if he did he’d hopefully assume that the disc was a part of the packaging designed to hold the soap in place.
    James stepped back into the main room but nobody paid attention. The bodyguard sat on the end of the bed clutching his thumb while Rich Davis and Chris Bradford scowled at each other across the table.
    ‘Listen to me,’ Rich said angrily. ‘You’re living in cloud-cuckoo land. If you want expensive toys you need money. I want to work with you, Bradford, but every successful terrorist organisation has to have two arms: one to raise money and one to spend it.’
    ‘I’m not a bank robber,’ Bradford said incredulously. ‘Or a con-artist. And I certainly don’t go around extorting money from stallholders and shopkeepers.’
    ‘Then how do you make it work?’ Rich bawled. ‘I hate the British establishment as much as I ever did. I can bankroll enough weapons to get you started, but I’m no billionaire. We can’t turn SAG into a serious threat unless there’s money coming into the kitty.
    ‘You’ve got enthusiastic young supporters like James over there. I’ve got thirty years’ expertise in raising money for terrorist groups, plus contacts in the defence industry that can bring in everything you need to get the job done.’
    ‘I didn’t come here looking for a partner,’ Bradford said firmly.
    ‘Well what did you come here for?’ Rich said angrily. ‘A handout?’
    Bradford shrugged. ‘I guess I hoped you supported our cause.’
    ‘You expected me to hand you a bunch of weapons and tell you to go off and do whatever you liked with them?’
    Bradford lowered his head and ground his palms against his temples. ‘I don’t know what I was expecting from you, Rich,’ he said. ‘But I’m not looking to rob banks and