CHERUB: The Syndicate

15: Search

Linda's daughter was sick so she missed the briefing, leaving Dawn to conduct it by herself. She seemed happy, however, since the quality of information coming from Katie was top-grade.

"ASIS have drafted about ten more staff in from other departments and regions for this," she explained, sipping at a mug of coffee while George demolished the chocolate cake she'd brought. "We've even had a couple of financial specialists fly down from Sydney. Biggest breakthrough we've had in a decade."

Katie blushed slightly. "Well, it's just a matter of remembering everything people say. No difficult undercover work at all."

"Well it's all good work, however you do it. We've already got sufficient evidence to lock up about fifteen of Melbourne's career criminals, but we want to wait until we've got Zach in our net."

"Do you think you can arrest him from the evidence Katie's getting?" George asked, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

Dawn shook her head. "He's more careful than that. Some of the evidence could certainly be used against him, but a court wouldn't consider it enough for any convictions."

"Unless there's some sort of major event about to happen, I don't think I'm going to get anything more spectacular from the agency," Katie said, brushing her fingers through her hair. "It's good for rumours and gossip, but they won't stand up in court."

Waggling a finger, Dawn stopped her. "The rumours and gossip are exactly what we need at ASIS. The only way we're going to get Zach behind bars is to catch him red-handed in the middle of a deal, which means we need to know when and where it's happening. A rumour of a major drug deal or a large amount of cash being moved could be the crack in his armour."

Katie nodded. "Well, I'll keep up what I'm doing. Writing up the reports is the hardest part, though."

"That's what we thought, so we've taken the liberty of ordering you a state-of-the-art copier machine which should arrive tomorrow. We've got the expertise on this case now which can deal with the raw documents, so just scan them over to us. The only things you need to keep sending are the details of everything you hear."

Katie breathed a sigh of relief. "That makes a huge difference."

"I thought it might," Dawn replied, giving her a double thumbs-up. "Now, George, how're things going with you and Riley?"

"I put it in my latest report, didn't you get it?" George asked, brushing crumbs off his lap.

"I know, but I wanted to hear the latest from you."

"We're pretty tight. He totally trusts me and I think Zach also thinks I'm harmless, although he's never going to let his guard down completely. I can basically go to Riley's house whenever I want, but his mum doesn't like me and likes to keep an eye on us whenever we're not in his bedroom," George explained. "It's not a big problem, nothing I can't handle."

"That's good. Do you think you can get into Zach's office?"

George considered it for a moment. "Probably. It'd be hard to explain if I got caught, but so long as his mum's distracted by something, I could get five minutes in there."

"We don't have the resources to plant bugs or anything," Linda said, finishing the dregs of her coffee. "What we need right now is for you to get inside and see if you can find a couple of key documents, maybe have a poke around. I'll send you the details, but do you think it would be possible?"

Katie butted in. "George hasn't been on a computer hacking course, so he probably won't be able to break into Zach's PC unless it's left running or something."