Adam Carter waits while his suggestion sinks in. His eyes are on Harry, who is staring at him, wide-eyed, his jaw jutting stubbornly.
"You are the obvious choice to go undercover, Harry," he'd just announced, "and you'll need a wife to go with you. Many of the dinners these guys hold are attended by their wives. You don't want to stand out as a single man. That might -"
"I know what it might do, Adam. It might point to me being secret service. But I have no wife, and there's no-one in this room who could fill that role."
Adam notices that Harry is looking around the room, but avoiding eye contact with Ruth …... just as she is avoiding eye contact with everyone, her eyes cast down, her fingers nervously twirling her pen around and around.
"There is someone in this room who could fill the role to perfection."
It's clear to everyone in the room to whom Adam is referring, since there are only two women in the room, and one of them is young enough to be Harry's daughter.
All eyes turn to Ruth.
Ruth stands suddenly, her note pad and pen in one hand, and pushes back her chair so abruptly that it tips over. In her hurry to leave the room, Ruth ignores the chair. No-one attempts to stop her. When Adam takes his eyes from the doorway through which Ruth has just disappeared, he looks at Harry to find his section head glaring at him.
"That was nicely handled, Adam. What do you suggest we do now …. tie her up?"
"I could go and find her and speak to her."
"I suggest we all get back to our prospective work stations. I'll deal with Ruth. If she refuses to play ball, there's not a lot we can do, and I'll have to go undercover alone."
"You could always go as a gay man, Harry," Zaf suggests, a cheeky twinkle in his brown eyes.
"Are you offering to be my partner?"
"No, Harry. I thought maybe …..." and Zaf's words fade as he looks in Malcolm's direction.
"Don't look at me," Malcolm says crossly. "I have enough trouble working here where it's safe. I couldn't possibly -"
"You won't be needed, Malcolm," Harry says wearily. "The work you do here is invaluable. We couldn't do without you. Besides, these men are all ex-army. If any of them are gay, they're no doubt in denial about it. I'm not about to come out to a bunch of strangers who, to all intents and purposes, are hell bent on bringing down the government. I'll find Ruth, and have a talk to her. She requires careful handling."
Harry gets up from his chair, and leaves the meeting room, so that it is not until the door has closed behind him that those still sitting inside look around at one another, and smile.
"Careful handling?" Zaf says, keeping his voice low, but allowing a small smirk to colour his features.
"What's going on?" asks Jo, still slightly behind the 8-ball.
"Nothing," Zaf replies, "nothing at all. That's the trouble."
"So …..." Jo says, looking at Adam, "you set this up specifically to get Harry and Ruth together? That's so mean, Adam."
"We need someone to go undercover, and that someone needs to be middle-aged, and preferably to have had a military background. Harry ticks those boxes."
"But a wife? He needs a wife?"
"It's not absolutely necessary, I know," Adam answers, sitting back in his chair. "I just thought …."
"You didn't think, Adam. That's the trouble," and Malcolm gets up and follows Harry out of the room.
"Nice one, Adam," Zaf says, watching Malcolm leave. "Do you plan to alienate us all, or only most of us?"
"Come on," Adam says, evidently bewildered by the strong reactions of his team. "Just think. It might get them together."
Zaf and Jo get up and leave the meeting room without adding to the conversation.
"Jeez," Adam says to himself. "I was only trying to give them a nudge."
Immediately Harry left the meeting room, he went in search of Ruth. Finding her not at her desk, nor on the roof, nor in the tea room, he thought he may as well try the ladies toilets. He stands outside the door and knocks, calling Ruth's name.
"Go away," he hears her say, her voice muffled.
"I need to talk to you, Ruth. I'm coming in."
Expecting the door to be locked from the inside, Harry is surprised that when he leans against the door, it opens easily. Ruth is in one of the four cubicles with the door open, and she is sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, a bunch of tissues in her hand. She looks up in surprise as Harry enters the room, and is even more surprised when he crosses the floor, and leans against the door frame of her cubicle, so that he stands less than a yard from where she sits. She moves back on the seat in an attempt to put more distance between them.
"I thought I told you to go away," she says, giving him the evil eye.
"We need to talk," Harry says gently, so gently that Ruth's face registers surprise.
"There's nothing to talk about."
"Ruth …..." Harry stands straight, and shoves his hands into his trousers' pockets. Were Ruth to attempt to leave the toilet cubicle, she couldn't, as Harry's bulk blocks the doorway. "I knew I'd have to go undercover this time. I'm the only one with military experience, and I'm about the right age. It would look more …... authentic were I to take a wife with me, and I trust you. I …... think that …... we would work well together. We could be …... believable."
"Was it your idea?"
"What?"
"The choice of who should be your wife."
"No, it was Adam's, but I agree with him. I will be less of a threat to the others as a married man."
"Will we have to …...?"
"Live together? Yes, for a few days to a week …... maybe two."
"I was going to ask you will we have to sleep together?"
"You mean biblically, don't you, Ruth?"
Ruth looks up at him, and nods. Harry notices that her eyes are red-rimmed, as though she has spent the previous fifteen minutes crying.
"No. What we do inside the confines of the safe house will be between you and me. Mostly we'll be working, but when we're in public – on the street, or amongst the ex-soldiers and their wives and partners – we'll have to convince everyone that we're really married."
"So …... we'll have to pretend."
"Yes. That's what going undercover means, Ruth. We'll be pretending that we're married, and that we care for one another."
As he's been speaking, Ruth has been looking downwards, and so he can't see her face. What Harry doesn't know is that Ruth is upset that Harry has intimated that they'll have to pretend to care for one another. Ruth knows that she'll not have to pretend.
Harry is feeling sad because he is already pretending. He is pretending to Ruth that he doesn't care for her, and yet he cares for her rather a lot. Perhaps he already cares for her too much.
"You'll do it?" he asks after a while.
Ruth ignores his question, but gets up, and looks beyond him to the door to the corridor. Harry realises he has lost, so he steps aside, and watches as Ruth leaves, the door wheezing shut ever so slowly, leaving him on his own inside the women's loos. He can handle this operation alone, but given that it's not expected to be dangerous, he'd rather have had company, and as he sees it, Ruth's company would be the best company of all.
Back in his office, Harry takes a call from a section head at MI6, and then makes two calls – one to the DG, and the other to the Home Secretary. They will need to know he'll not be available for up to fourteen days. When he puts the phone back after he's finished his calls, he sees Ruth standing just inside his office door, looking much less distressed than she had forty minutes earlier. He smiles at her, and she returns his smile.
"I'll do it," she says.
Harry nods, and points to the chair opposite his. Ruth sits on the edge of the chair, comfortable, but not exactly relaxed.
"I'm glad," he says, and he means it. "I believe we work well together, Ruth, and this will be work."
"I …... I realised that the experience could be valuable. I think I need to occasionally venture out from behind my desk."
Harry nods, pressing the tips his fingers together in front of him, his eyes on Ruth. "We need to have a trial run. Colin is creating our legends as we speak, and once they're done, I thought we could hit the streets and practise."
"Practise being married? On the streets?"
"Yes. I thought it might be fun."
Ruth shrugs, and her lack of enthusiasm worries Harry, but he's confident that once they're in role, she might even enjoy being his pretend wife. Surely the prospect of being his pretend wife for a week - maybe two - can't be that bad.
Can it?