Author's Note: All the spooks characters etc… are the property of Kudos and the BBC.

This is my first fanfic so be gentle and constructive please! All reviews welcome! I have the whole story planned out – it will be around 10-12 chapters, so it IS going somewhere…just be patient! I wanted to write a spooks story that featured Harry and Ruth rather than a romantic story centred on them if that makes sense – if the writers won't do it for us….

Join the 'Bring Back Ruth' campaign! Look in the forum 'Best In Show' under the topic 'Postcards'…

Chapter 1

Ruth felt the barge juddering beneath her feet as it pulled away from the dock, into the centre of the Thames. The cold stung her face and she began to shiver despite being inside the small cabin. Looking through the window, she watched as the figure standing there motionless, looking back at her, got smaller and smaller; until his face blurred and his body merged into a black dot in the very distance. She knew that he wouldn't move until every last glimpse of her had disappeared. When at last the distance was too great, Ruth closed her eyes and tried to keep that image of Harry in her mind's eye – to save it forever. But the thought of him looking like that, with the light disappearing from his eyes, filled her with such sadness.

Pulling Ros's black coat tighter around her, she shifted from foot to foot as her breath frosted the window, obscuring the greying London landscape. She knew the Thames was widening as they passed the East India docks and drew closer to the barrier protecting London. The tide was flowing out and the barge picked up speed as they slipped through the fog and between the silver fins of the floodgates. Ruth had always though the barrier striking – like a piece of modern art stretched across the river, but today everything she loved about London's riverline was tainted and cold. Her mind flicked back to watching the police lead Harry out of the Oxford and Cambridge club in handcuffs; Oliver Mace following behind, holding his arm and climbing into an ambulance. Bloody old fool, she thought, what was Harry trying to do? A wry smile played across her face at the thought of the conversation those two must have had. Even then it hadn't seemed irreparable. There still could have been another way to twist and turn, and slip sideways through the closing net. Except maybe they had both been trapped by love after all. The very drive for self-sacrifice, for her to save Harry and for Harry to protect Ruth had made them both so vulnerable. If he'd pretended that it meant no more than Zaf or Adam being framed, then Harry could have thought of a way out. A way to double back and gain the upper hand. Paradoxically it was because he cared so much, he couldn't find a way to do what he was most desperate to.

The riverman shouted an unintelligible cry to a passing barge and jolting Ruth from her thoughts. They had reached the real industrial heart of the Thames now – the unvisited and often disused stretches of mud flats, the sky punctuated by old jagged cranes. For the first time, Ruth's mind turned towards the future, as she wondered where she would go from here. Her fingers closed on the passport pack that Adam had brought down whilst she waited through that terribly cold night. Her new name left a bit to be desired – Helene Peters. She rolled the sound around her mouth, feeling that she'd never get used to it fully. Malcolm, she thought, was probably responsible for that. He always was a bit of a romantic at heart, but no-one would be launching a thousand ships after her. She knew that for sure. It was also so fitting that the last voice she'd heard saying her real name was Harry who had sighed "Ruth…." with such depth as she'd stepped off of the dock onto the moving barge.

In the other pocket was a single white business card with 16 digits written across the centre. It was a Swiss bank account where Malcolm had deposited fifty thousand US dollars, bounced through Lichtenstein and a one-day holding account in the British Cayman Islands. He assured her that it was untraceable without an Interpol level-3 warrant, as tax havens reserved special protective rights, but Ruth planned to cash it in and destroy the trail as soon as she could. Perhaps she'd bury it under a tree in the Alps – the old way of doing things seemed rather appealing suddenly. Swiss bankers had the reputation of being the most secure and secretive in the world, but Ruth knew that if the information trail was there, it could be found. How long it took was just related to how desperate someone was to find it. A trip in that direction wasn't a bad idea though: her German was rusty, but she knew that she had less of a noticeable accent than in French. Having a Bavarian school teacher had added a bit of authenticity, as the class all inherited bayerische colloquialisms that other Germans loved to ridicule. In that sense the name was useful – it could pass for being English, French or German as she needed.

There was a solid bump and the decks of the barge jolted. Ruth had to put out a steadying hand to stop herself from falling and saw they had pulled alongside a small paint-flaked fishing boat. The riverman looked her in the eyes for the first time. Such sad grey eyes, he thought and said brusquely "I en't askin and you en't telling." With a flick of his head, he indicated "That boat there docks at Oostende. There's an old white Renault 5 in the street running west from the port. Keys taped to the wheel arch".

Ruth noticed his vowels were long, with a cockney twang, but not like the East-end. She'd heard of the generations of Thamesmen – apprenticed at an early age and who once on a barge, rarely stepped bankside again - but this was the first time she done more than watch the lonely figures drift up and down from a distance. "Thank you" she said "I don't know who arranged…I mean which one…but thank you".