SPIES LIKE US

This fic was inspired by a recent item on the news regarding the loss of a Blackberry by a senior advisor to Britain's PM in a Shanghai disco. It was alleged that the man was the victim of a honey trap set by the Chinese Secret Service. When I heard that, this story more or less wrote itself. 99 of this fic was written before I watched a single episode of Season 6.

I would like to thank my little cheerleading team – you know who you are - for egging me on. You have been very generous with your comments and encouragement.

The story starts with a crossover with another TV show, "Waking the Dead". (I had to watch something whilst waiting for new Seasons "Spooks".) I have included the job title of some of the characters from this show, for the benefit of readers who are not familiar with this show.

The story line jumps backwards and forwards in places, so please be patient and note the dates sprinkled here and there.

The usual disclaimer applies – I don't own any of the characters in "Spooks", Kudos owns them; I also do not own any of the characters in "Waking the Dead", the mighty BBC owns them. I hope they will not get too offended that I have used these character templates for a bit of fun and fan fic writing.

Chapter 1

Late March 2009, London

DI Spencer Jordan poked his head round the door to Boyd's office.

"Eh, Boyd, there's a Harry Pearce to see you."

Whilst waiting to be admitted into Boyd's office, Harry looked around and was a little surprised to see that Boyd's team lived and worked in surroundings not unlike the Grid – all windowless and grim. Someone once described the Grid as having 'minimalist charms'. Harry thought that compared to this place, the Grid was almost palatial.

"Tell him to go away …" Boyd was busy with the papers before him on his desk. Then Boyd seemed to have second thoughts and looked up. "Who is he? What does he want? Does he have an appointment?"

"No, I don't." This time, it was Harry who appeared in the door frame. Harry is not the sort of person who liked to be kept waiting in reception, regardless of whether or not he had an appointment.

"That's OK, Spence." Boyd gave Spencer a knowing smile, as if to say, that's alright, its not your fault, and then he turned to his visitor. "Mr. Pearce?"

"Actually, its Sir Harry, but please call me Harry."

"Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd. Everyone calls me Boyd."

The two men shook hands and Boyd gestured to Harry to take a seat.

"Yes, Harry. What can I do for you?"

"I am the head of Section D in MI5," Harry began.

Boyd's mouth formed an oh. Ever since Stella told him about the mysterious fingerprints, he had been expecting a visit from the spooks, except that he did not expected such a senior spook to darken his doorway so quickly.

"We have been expecting a visit from someone on your side, given what happened this morning. I just didn't expect you folks to react so quickly."

"I apologise for not having made an appointment, but given the circumstances, this is not the sort of meeting for which a prior appointment can be made."

"Yes, sorry about that little outburst." Boyd was apologetic and smiled, though Harry noticed that his eyes remained cool and calm.

"It has been brought to my attention that a member of your crew has recently tried to access the personnel files in my Section. I would like to know why?"

"Well, that came as a surprise to us as well," said Boyd. Then without warning, he yelled out, "Stella!" Harry grimaced, did he have to shout?

"Bring us a couple of coffees, will you, Stella? Thanks."

"Tea for me, please, milk and no sugar," said Harry. Ever since she left, Harry had changed his beverage of choice from coffee to tea, in memory of her. Every time he had a cup of tea, which was several times a day, he would remember her.

Boyd started to recount the events which had occurred in the last day or so and which culminated in a member of his team, Detective Sergeant Stella Goodman, being blocked for access to the MI5 intranet site.

Mid February 2009, somewhere in the North Sea

The seas had been particularly rough during this storm. Wave after wave crashed against the containers stacked on the ship which was slowly making its way towards Felixstowe. After relentless assault by the winds, the rain and the waves for several hours, many of the metal fasteners which had bound the containers together on board the ship started to buckle and snap. Under normal circumstances, the fasteners might have been able to fulfill their function and hold the containers in place. However, since the ship was seriously overloaded, the bad weather simply aggravated the pressure on these fasteners. Nothing could be done as the crew watched a large number of containers fall into the sea. Given the collective roar of the winds and the waves, nobody could hear the screams and cries which came out of one of the containers.

The captain tried to remain calm in the circumstances. He knew that his ship was overloaded, and that some of the containers had questionable cargo. However, he had agreed the arrangements with his contact and did not ask too many questions. His decision was made much easier by the 5,000 Euros which he had received from that contact. The captain needed the money. He had lost a lot of money gambling at his last port of call. If he went home with less than the usual pay package, there would be hell to pay when his wife started the usual interrogation. The captain had been hoping and praying for good weather for the rest of the journey. Now, he was not sure whether to be happy or sad that some of the containers, especially the ones with questionable cargo, had sunk. The insurers would probably want to investigate why the fasteners had snapped, but as long as they could not recover those containers, they might not have sufficient evidence to bring charges against him.

A week later, a few of the containers washed ashore on the southern coast of England and news of their arrival quickly attracted a small crowd of local residents who hoped that the containers might contain valuable items for pilfering. Most of the containers were quite battered and for some of them, their doors were left half open. The scavengers quickly noticed that a terrible stench came out of one of the containers, so nobody wanted to go near that particular container. One of the more helpful local resident notified the police who arrived fairly soon to investigate and to cordon off the area. When the police opened the door to the container with the bad smell, they found at least 30 to 40 dead bodies inside, all bloated and decomposing; they had all drowned.

All of the dead were Chinese. A large number were men. There were about five women and one teenage boy. It did not take long for the police to conclude that they were all illegal immigrants hiding inside the container in an attempt to sneak into Britain. In a way, the local police were relieved. The fact that illegal immigrants were involved meant that they could turn this container over to the Foreign Office or some other branch of the Government for processing.

The forensics unit of Scotland Yard was not pleased with the prospect of having to process 36 bodies from one of the containers which washed ashore. One team member commented, rather grumpily, that they should not be wasting British taxpayers' money on processing the dead bodies of illegal immigrants. He was overruled, of course, since the Chinese Embassy in London had already lodged a request to have as much information about the dead bodies as possible before they were cremated. These people might have tried to enter Britain in an illegal manner, but now that they were dead, their families in China would have to be informed. The Chinese Embassy did not mention that the exercise might be futile since often times, the families in China would be reluctant to come forward to claim the remains of their loved ones, for fear of reprisal from the Government that their dead relatives had tried to exit the country in an illegal manner.

The forensics unit started with the teenage boy first, as they thought that he might be the simplest one to process. The team hit the jackpot with that first body. The boy's DNA was a close match with the DNA of a person who was suspected of having raped and killed a 16 year old girl on Hampstead Heath five years ago. As soon as the team discovered this, they farmed the case off to the Cold Case Squad. One down, 35 to go.

When Boyd saw the dead body and other paperwork being delivered to the Cold Case Squad, he complained loudly, as usual.

"Why are we now reduced to processing evidence relating to illegal immigrants? Don't they know that we are overstretched as it is?"

"It has something to do with a cold case," Eve explained patiently. Eve Lockhart was the resident forensic pathologist on Boyd's team. "They thought that it might be useful for us to examine the body and compare it to evidence collected on the Hampstead Heath rape case which they couldn't solve five years ago. Apparently, there is a connection with one of the suspects in that case."

"It doesn't take a genius to tell you that it couldn't have been this boy."

"No, but it could have been a close relative, perhaps his father."

"Oh, I see." Actually, Boyd would rather not know. "Well, don't spend too much time on it. If the perp was this boy's father, I don't expect him to come running once we advertise the fact that we have his son's body. We have a few other pending cases to work on. Get Stella to help you. Spence and I have somewhere else to be."

Stella gave Boyd's backside a filthy look. She hated being saddled with these mundane jobs as the junior member of the team.

In her usual meticulous manner, Eve started to process the body. Whilst cutting away the clothes off the dead boy, Eve felt that something had been sewn into the side of the jacket he had worn. After making some more cuts, Eve held a small package wrapped in several layers of plastic sheets. By the time she finished peeling away those layers of plastic wrapping, Eve held a plastic envelope which contained a piece of paper. There was no point in checking the plastic wrapping for prints or other evidence since they had been in the water for too long. But the plastic envelope and its content were waterproofed by the wrapping and could yield some useful prints. So she began to dust those two items for prints and carried out other tests. When she collected some prints, she gave them to Stella and asked her to run those against prints in the database to see if they could be matched to anyone who was already in the system.

As far as Stella was concerned, this was an extremely boring chore. She would feed one set of prints into the scanner, then wait for it to be loaded in the software and wait some more before the system told her that it could not find a match. Except that this time, instead of getting a no match message, one of the prints produced an angry message to the effect that she was trying to access classified information and that she did not have clearance to proceed beyond that screen. The message came from MI5.

"Oh shit!" Stella knew that she had inadvertently tripped an alarm somewhere. She immediately went off to tell Boyd. He will not be pleased!

Shortly after Stella hit the MI5 site, similar alarm bells rang on the screen on Connie's desk over at Thames House. She immediately went to see Harry.

"Harry, we've got a problem."

"Don't we always? Tell me something I don't know," Harry growled. "What it is?"

"The Cold Case Squad in Scotland Yard has just tried to access one of our personnel files. You better sit down."

"Cold Case Squad? Whose file was it?"

"Ruth Evershed's file."

All reviews will be gratefully received.