A/N: This fic was written some time in 2012, but I'd shelved it once I read oldmule's fic, "Serving Time", and noticed the similarity in plot. Time has passed, and I recognise the differences in the two stories, rather than the similarities, so here it is.

This story opens 5 months after Ruth's death. Tariq did not die. The story needed his techie expertise, so I decided to grant him a stay of execution. Kudos owns the characters – I just like to mess with them a little.

And please bear with my plot inadequacies. I love reading plots, but don't much enjoy writing them.

And another thing …... I have messed a little with the time frame, (for reasons I can no longer remember.)

Harry's house, London – January 27th 2012:

Harry has stopped breathing. He only knows that because he's beginning to feel dizzy, the room around him is spinning, tipping, and Malcolm is asking him if he is alright. Once again his eyes gain focus, and Malcolm's face emerges from a mirage of blurring, whirling objects and images.

"Harry -" Malcolm says, louder now. "Breathe!"

Harry takes a breath, and the thudding in his ears slowly fades. "What was that again?"

"We've found her, Harry. She's alive."

"That's what I thought you said," Harry says quietly.

"Are you alright?" Malcolm asks him again. "Is there something I can get you?"

Harry shakes his head, in part as a no to Malcolm, and also to ensure he is awake and hearing this.

"I suppose you want to know how ….. where, and other details."

Harry nods his head slightly. He still hasn't fully caught up with Malcolm's words: `Ruth has been found, Harry. She's alive.' After that, the room around him had begun spinning, and what Malcolm said next was lost as he began to hyperventilate at the same time as he fought back tears, tears he'd not been brave enough to shed in the five months since Ruth had died.

From the moment Ruth's body had been airlifted to hospital, he had begun the steady process of shutting down, and shutting down is something he does well. In the days following her death, Harry had visited the cottage she'd been planning to buy, but had walked out soon after he'd walked in. His throat had begun to close over, and he'd badly needed air. He couldn't buy it as a reminder of her, or even as a gift to her departed soul. He was too raw back then, and he had a need to cover his emotions with a heavy layer of steely indifference. For the most part he carried it off well, but there were times when his pain could be detected through the veneer, a veneer which was only of molecular thickness. His eyes gave it all away; his eyes could not hide the sadness and hurt he felt. The Home Secretary had noticed, as had those he worked with every day. They all recognised that it would only take a wrong word, a laugh when he was feeling especially fragile, or an outburst of hilarity to crack that veneer, and then surely the tears would follow, and who knew how long it would be before he could again bring himself back under control?

In the end, six weeks after Ruth had died, he'd purchased the cottage in Suffolk. He couldn't bear not to. He thought of the purchase as a tribute to her, a way of keeping a part of her with him forever. He thought of it as Ruth's cottage, although he knew as soon as he'd assigned her name to it that it was a mistake to associate the cottage with his dead never-to-be lover. Being Ruth's cottage, it would remain forever deprived of her presence. He'd stayed in it only a handful of nights, sleeping alone in the double bed in the larger of the two bedrooms. He'd woken in the small hours, wondering where she was, and why she was not lying asleep beside him, her legs entangled with his, her hair spread over the pillow, as he'd so often imagined she one day would. One weekend, four and a half months after her death, he'd invited Malcolm to stay there with him. He'd bought a sofa bed and set it up for Malcolm in the smaller of the two bedrooms, the one Ruth had imagined would be his office. He'd hoped that the company of a man who understood the loss of a love never truly gained, plus a bottle or three of good quality single malt would help ease his pain. Malcolm had managed to get partly drunk, and had talked of Sarah, the woman he had lost, chiefly due to his loyalty to the service.

"There's something we have in common, Harry."

"Yes it is, but Sarah is still alive somewhere."

"Yes, I'd rather forgotten that. It's so hard to imagine this battered old world without Ruth in it, analysing the crap out of everything," Malcolm had mused.

Harry had smiled at Malcolm's words, but had needed to swallow the lump which had risen in his throat. Despite a need to not cry, he spoke from his heart when he said, "I miss her, Malcolm."

"I can't imagine what it must be like for you, knowing you'll never …... at least I know Sarah is alive and well and living in …... well, let's just say I know where she lives, and that she is alive and well." Malcolm privately berated himself for using the phrase `alive and well' twice in Harry's presence. From where he was sitting, in an armchair in front of the open fire in the living room of Ruth's cottage, Harry seemed barely alive. He was a shell of a man, going through the motions of living, but never connecting in any meaningful way with his life or the people in it. He had lost weight, and his skin colour was unhealthy from too little sleep, too much whiskey, too little food, and spending too much time indoors under artificial light.

"Does Catherine know?"

"Know what?"

"About Ruth. Does she know who Ruth was, and what she was to you?"

Harry had shifted uncomfortably in his chair, as he remembered Christmas Day with Catherine and her partner, Mark. Catherine could read him almost as well as Ruth had.

"She …... she guessed something had happened."

Catherine had guessed almost immediately.

"What's wrong, Dad?" she'd asked him when she joined him in the kitchen while Mark had been taking Scarlet for a walk, his concession to Catherine's need for private time with her father. "You look so sad. Did you lose another one of your spooks?"

Harry had looked up at her, his eyes startled by her insight.

"This one was different, wasn't it?"

He'd nodded, feeling his eyes fill with tears.

"What was her name?"

Harry knew he needed to say her name, to speak it aloud to another living person, rather than murmuring it in the dark while he tried to sleep, hoping that by some miracle she'd return to him.

"Her name was Ruth. Ruth Evershed. She was …..."

Catherine waited, her hand on Harry's back, where she could feel his distress, his gulping of air into his lungs as he tried to hold himself together.

"I was …... I loved her. I still do. There will never be …... she was the one."

"How did she die?"

And so Harry, for the first time in four months, recounted the story of how Ruth had died. He had kept his eyes downcast, and his voice steady, seeing it all happening again inside his head. Catherine had put her arms around him and held him for a long time. He had not cried then, but he had held on to his daughter and closed his eyes, trying to be thankful for the people in his life who still loved him, despite him being so surly, remote and disconnected. The trouble is, he could have had a thousand people in his life who loved him as Catherine did, and he'd have traded every one of them if it meant he could have Ruth back in his life.

Catherine had asked to see a picture of Ruth, and so he'd opened his wallet and taken out the photograph he carried with him everywhere, the one he'd removed from her personnel file, before it had been archived in the basement of Thames House.

"She …... she looks lovely, Dad, and a bit young for you, I'd say."

"That photo is old. It was taken nine years ago, but she hadn't changed much since then."

He'd taken back the photo, and without looking at it, for fear he'd lose his composure, he'd slipped it back into his wallet, and tucked his wallet into his back pocket. He smiled at the idea of Ruth spending the rest of his life sitting on his backside. She'd done that even in life.

Malcolm is still speaking, and Harry has only caught part of the story. The Russians had taken her. She'd not died at all. (Harry makes a mental note-to-self to see that Erin and Dimitri do a refresher course in emergency medical aid.) They'd been after him, of course, but Ruth had taken the glass in her own abdomen, when it was meant for him. Harry is relieved that Malcolm has glossed over the medical details. He is in need of bald facts, not background details.

"Where did they take her?"

"To Serbia. Tariq traced the flight to Serbia, and she probably remained there until the FSB realised that they had no reason to hold her over you. They saw how …..."

"Ineffective?"

"No …... they saw how hollow you were. You'd lost your capacity to fight."

"So even the DG and the Home Secretary didn't know the truth."

"No-one did, but now they know to what degree the FSB had infiltrated the public service, and the public health service. Heads will roll."

Harry again looks at the grainy photograph of Ruth and two unknown men in an enclosed yard on a farm forty miles north-east of Cape Town. It is from a satellite feed, and is at maximum zoom, but it is definitely Ruth. She's wearing a brightly coloured skirt with a pale yellow shirt. The wind is blowing her hair in her eyes, and she is holding it away from her face with her fingers while she looks at something to her left, out of range of the satellite camera. The photo clearly shows her profile, and there is no doubt that it is she. Each of the men are carrying rifles. Tariq has identified them as those used by the US military, although that need not mean that the US have a hand in Ruth's kidnapping.

"She's obviously been sold on," Malcolm is saying.

The words `sold on' leave Harry feeling sick with fear for Ruth. This means she was not deemed valuable enough to the Russians, so she was sold to the highest bidder, and the highest bidder could be some sexually perverted psychopath who simply wanted to abuse her body until she was no longer of value to him. He feels a wave of nausea, and he swallows it, bringing his emotions under control, and takes a deep breath.

"How long ago?" Harry asks.

"Only last week. But here's the good news. She and several others who are being held where she is, are again up for sale."

"How do you know this?"

"Young Tariq has been following this. I told you he was the one who first found this footage of her, didn't I?"

Harry nods. "But he didn't say a word to me. Why would he have done that? He knows that Ruth and I …..."

"That was the very reason he didn't tell you. He rang me out of the blue."

"How long ago?"

"Five days ago."

"And it's taken you this long to tell me?"

"Tariq and I had to be sure, firstly that it is Ruth, secondly that she is still alive, and thirdly that she can be extracted safely. Tariq has devised a genius plan. Do you want to hear it?"

"Not really. Not now, at least. It had better be foolproof. I don't want Ruth being put in further danger."

"Oh, it's foolproof, and no gunfire need be exchanged."

"Who will …...?"

"We're borrowing Dimitri. He looks just the part in a suit. He'll handle the negotiations, and Patrick Grimaldi from six, and Ed Fairweather – my cousin's son – will be there for the handing over. Six has considerable presence in Cape Town, so there will be operatives on standby, and a plane ready nearby. There is an airfield five miles south of the farm."

"I'm curious, of course, but if I ever ask you what the plan is, remind me that I don't want to know. It's best I don't know."

"Do you trust me, Harry?"

"I have to, don't I?" The truth is, he doesn't even trust himself where Ruth is concerned. He is now more fearful about what could go wrong in this attempt to extract Ruth than he was grief-stricken by her death. Were he to be directly involved, he'd probably destroy any chance of success with his nervousness over her safety. In a way, he wishes he hadn't known Ruth had been kidnapped. He would have been happy to learn of her freedom after she'd been brought home, but it was the waiting for the operation to take place which is sending his nervous system into overdrive.

Cape Town, South Africa – January 30th 2012:

Dimitri Levendis resists the urge to pull at his collar in an effort to allow some air to flow. He is not normally a collar and tie man, but he knows his tall frame is suited to more formal attire, and he looks the part. The room in which he is meeting Ruth's captors is not air-conditioned, and he feels the sweat pouring down his back, under his shirt and jacket.

"Do you have the money?" Djuracic says.

"It's ready to be transferred into the account you requested. I need to hear from my men that you are ready to hand her over to them. Until she leaves the compound, no transfer will occur."

"And if you take the woman, and we receive no money within two minutes, Branko here will empty his gun into you. Branko enjoys killing people. We've had to keep him away from that woman. There are other things he enjoys."

Dimitri's mobile rings. He smiles as the ringtone – the chimes of Big Ben – fills the room. "Yes?" he answers. "Okay. I'll let the money man know." He ends the call, and then rings Tariq's mobile in London. "It's a go," he says. "The transfer can go ahead. How long will it take? Yeah? Good." He ends the call, and looks up at Dragan Djuracic, a young Serbian not much older than himself. "The money should be there now. It's been transferred."

Djuracic speaks into his comms. "Pieter? The money has been …... It has? Excellent. Goran, Tomas …... let the woman go, and no messing it up this time." And to Dimitri. "We have little use for her. She refuses to speak. Perhaps she is deaf, perhaps she is mentally …... you know?" He twirls his finger in a circle next to his head as he rolls his eyes. "Who knows? I no longer care. Good riddance to her. No-one else was prepared to pay for her. Good to do business with you, Mr Constantin. You have my card. Call me if you need anything."

They shake hands, and Dimitri leaves the room, hoping that Djuracic's henchmen do not try to transfer the money to other accounts. Should they attempt that before he and the others leave the vicinity, things could get nasty. He'll need to reach the airfield in thirty minutes, and to do that, his African driver will have to drive like the wind.