So, hello again! This plot rather unexpectedly fell into my head during a long bus trip about a month ago (and about two days after declaring myself void of ideas for new Spooks stories). I apologise for the opacity of the opening chapter - it reads as though it should be happening in the middle of a story and not at the start. But these events are merely leading into the main plot. Just as a note: an old story of mine will be referenced multiple times. But it's not necessary to read that one (Touching from a Distance) to understand this one. I'll try and recap where possible.

Chapter One: Safe Zone (Prologue)

"Harry, tell me why does this keep on happening?"

Beneath the Home Secretary's obvious frustration lay a note of genuine regret. His gaze fell on the two photographs that were face up on his desk; stills from a CCTV camera at Heathrow showing a young couple. The woman was obscured by the niqab and veil, but her husband was fully visible as he wheeled their suitcase through terminal five bound, ultimately, for Baghdad. Harry studied them once more, but had long given up trying to answer that ubiquitous 'why' question.

"It's not for me to psychoanalyse these people, Home Secretary," he answered, coldly. "All I'm interested in is getting them back to the UK and wringing them so dry they rattle."

Towers pushed the stills back towards him and sighed heavily. "I understand that, but surely you're interested. What makes a man of Ahmed Ghazal's obvious capabilities want to give it all up and become the next Jihadi John? Not only that, but taking his own wife along for the ride."

"Because they can't build their fundamentalist Utopia here in Britain," Harry replied. "But like I said, it's not for me to second guess what makes them tick-" he cut himself off, wincing against his own poorly chosen phraseology in light of what the Ghazal's had left Britain to do. Instead, he changed tack and spelled out what was happening next. "We were watching them here in Britain but their midnight flit took us all by surprise. I have Ros Myers and Lucas North out in Baghdad, working alongside their MI6 counterparts, to stop the planned suicide attack. We will bring the Ghazal's back alive to face due process."

Then they would be a goldmine of information about other British extremists, there for the mining by both Five and Six. No doubt, the public would rather see them blown to smithereens but they had to play the longer game. Islamic State informants were as rare as rocking horse shit and Harry was anticipating these two with particular relish.

Towers looked faintly gratified. "If catching these two leads to a greater haul, then you and Siviter have my authority to do whatever it is you must. You can count on my support, Harry."

"Thank you, Home Secretary. If that's all, I really must get back to Thames House. As I'm sure you understand, this op is currently ongoing."

Short briefing over, he was about to get to his feet. Then Towers raised his hand, also pushing his chair back.

"Actually, Harry, there's someone waiting outside that I would like you to meet," he said, leading the way to the door. "John Carlton, Managing Director of Securitech."

"Oh, so the negotiations are moving up a gear?" asked Harry, recognising the name.

"We're almost there, Harry. Just a few minor details to iron out and Securitech will be supplying the British Army with some major state of the art equipment."

About to offer his congratulations, he was cut off as Towers led the way outside. In the hallway, Harry found himself shaking hands with an MD in his middling forties. Once strong, he was now running to portliness and his grey hair was beginning to thin. After a brief and easy exchange of pleasantries, Harry was finally able to take his leave. Anything was better than the British Army riding into battle armed with a toothpick and dustbin lid, whoever was supplying it.

Bile hit the back of Lucas' throat, bringing on another painful spasm in his gut. He hunched over the toilet bowl and dry heaved all over again. Stomach already voided, nothing came up but the air in his lungs. Breathless and exhausted, he eventually rocked back on his heels and willed the nausea to abate. But the smell in the gents and the oppressive heat conspired against him; even the flickering overhead lights were making him dizzier. Bracing his hands against the grimy tiles on the cubicle wall, he hauled himself upwards. Every joint in his body aching in protest as he then fumbled with the lock on the door.

Once freed, he stumbled as he approached the sink and only arrested his fall by grabbing its edge. Supported once more, he reluctantly met his own bloodshot gaze in the mirror fixed to the wall. Pale and clammy; his jaw was dark with the scrubby beginnings of a beard. Dark circles lined his eyes; lack of sleep from a night spent becoming intimately acquainted with the u-bend of a toilet. To complete the ensemble, large cracks in the glass distorted his reflection to Picasso esque proportions.

"Hello handsome." Ros' voice was monotone and dry as she spoke from the doorway of the toilets. Her expression flat and wry.

"You're funny," he replied, glancing at her from over his shoulder.

"I have my moments," she added, pushing away from the partition wall she was leaning against. She stopped directly behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. He could feel her face resting between his shoulder blades. "You didn't drink the water, did you?"

"I'm not an idiot."

"Did you brush your teeth in it? Ice cubes in the drinks? It could have come from anywhere," she said. "Not that it really matters. You're out of action and I'm as good as alone out there."

"No; I know all that. Must have been whatever was in that stew last night." At least he thought it was a stew. It was hard to tell, but he'd eaten it anyway. Innocuously tasteless and colourless, he was left gobsmacked by its devastating effects. He'd been chomping at the bit to come out to Baghdad, too. To the point where he almost railroaded his way in. Now he proved worse than useless.

Wearily, he turned around to face her, leaning back against the edge of the sink for support.

"I'm sorry," he sighed. "I know I've let you down."

Despite their surroundings, Ros was still dressed in heels, pencil skirt and crisp white blouse. Her hair was swept up into a tidy bun.

"It's okay; it's hardly your fault," she assured him. "But if you think you can make it back out there, it would be a great help. The only Arabic I know is 'where is the supermarket' and they don't even have a Tesco here."

Their colleagues from Six were out tailing the suspects, leaving them inside without reliable translators. All they could do was watch the screens in the control room and keep directing, hoping for the best. At least Aisha and Addie had been based in Iraq for over a year and knew their way around. That was the one scant advantage they had.

"I guess they don't have Russian as a second language," he said, despondently. "Still, the Ghazal's are almost as new to Baghdad as we are and this is only the dry run."

"Or, so we hope."

Trying his best to ignore the nausea that still gathered, he followed Ros back out into what passed for their control room. A uniformly grey structure, with one wall given up to accommodate several screens showing CCTV images of a busy market area. The local police force patrolled the streets in convoys of armoured vehicles, clinging together in tight units. Roadside IEDs were still commonplace. Just the previous day Lucas had been watching a particularly uninteresting strip of road, when one exploded and took out half a mile of asphalt and a handful of market stalls that were once lining it. It was the suddenness of these detonations that shocked him; their seemingly arbitrary nature. Like the virus currently squirming through his guts, the eruptions were sudden and brutal and utterly unforgiving.

The top screen distorted, ghosts rippling the moving pictures and pixelating the people gathered at a market stall. Lucas squinted, trying to pick out who was who. But even their man, Addie, was currently disguised as a woman in a full niqab and veil. He was lost in a sea of black and white.

"I don't see anything," he said, vaguely. "How are we supposed to know what's going on?"

But Ros wasn't listening. She was over by the telephones, talking to an interpreter who had just come through a side door. Meanwhile, his dizziness hit with full force and Lucas had to grope for a chair. There was a headset nearby, through which they could communicate with their colleagues out in the field, but the explosion happened before he could even reach it.

Each and every screen on the wall in front of him flared a blinding white; the muted sound rendering the scene silent and surreal. The shock made his nausea peak once more and he had to grab a wastepaper bin to throw up in, just as all hell broke loose around them. That wasn't meant to happen, he thought to himself. None of that was meant to happen.

There was something else that was highly odd about that explosion. But he couldn't think what it was while retching into a wastepaper bin.

Ruth hung up the telephone feeling eerily calm. Before deciding what to do next, she looked out over the Grid through Harry's office window and took a moment to gather her thoughts. Beth and Tariq were out there still, attempting to restore the Baghdad live feed. Nathan was some distance away, buried in some files about their suspects. Harry himself still had not returned from briefing the Home Secretary. She suspected that he had informed Towers that everything was under control and the Ghazal's were as good as apprehended already. It made her nerves spasm.

She hated herself for thinking it, but she grateful for the fact that it wasn't any of their own agents they would have to bury. But before she could go too far down that path, the phone rang again and caused her to jump. Before she could even say her name, the person on the other end started talking rapidly. Reaching for a pen, she began jotting down notes that Harry could read later on, in the unlikely event that she forgot any of this.

"It definitely wasn't an IED then?" she asked, still feeling eerily detached. "Two SIS Agents confirmed dead. The bombers as well. How many civilians?"

She noted it all down, names and statistics alike. Already thinking ahead about how to get Ros and Lucas safely out there and back to Thames House so they could all be properly briefed. When the call ended, she once more replaced the receiver and, finding Harry's office suddenly claustrophobic, headed for the door.

"Ruth," said Beth, getting up from behind her terminal. "Are Lucas and Ros safe?"

For a moment, they met each other's gaze. After a moment to process the question, Ruth nodded. "Fine. They were still in the safe zone and not out in the field."

Safe zone. She repeated the phrase in her head, as if there actually was such a thing out in Baghdad. But she didn't have long to stand and chat as the pods whooshed open and Harry emerged, looking flustered and bewildered. He didn't say anything as he approached her, but caught her by the elbow as he passed, signalling for her to follow. Back in that goldfish bowl of an office, he closed the door behind her and shut the blinds.

"You've heard the news, then?" she asked. "Did they tell you what it was?"

He half fell into his chair and buried his face in his hands for a moment. When he looked back up at her, his age was showing.

"Two bloody minutes after me telling the Home Secretary everything was under control!" he griped.

Ruth almost smiled. "Six called me back straight after I'd called them to confirm the explosion."

"And?"

"It was more than just a routine bomb, Harry," she said, finally feeling the effects of the intel. Her skin crawled in gooseflesh. "It contained a nerve agent. Everyone within a five mile radius of that bomb is affected. It could have been worse, but for the calm weather."

The impact of what she said registered on his face; eyes widening in shock.

"So, two British terrorists have let loose some nerve agent in Iraq?" he said, aghast. "This gets better and better. But how did they bloody well get it in the first place?"

That she could not answer. Both Ahmed Ghazal and his wife had been watched closely by Section D, but still they'd managed to give them the slip. Shakily, Ruth pulled up the seat opposite Harry's and sat down. She no longer trusted her legs to support her weight.

"They can't very well have carried that through customs, Harry," she pointed out. "It's not like we could have foreseen it. Have you been in touch with Jools Siviter? Surely someone over at Legoland knows what's going on?"

"I only know because Ros herself called me, never mind Jools Siviter," said Harry. "To cap it all, Lucas is as sick as a dog out there."

Ruth's nerves kicked in once more. "What? You mean he's-"

"Nothing like that," Harry interjected. "No, it's just something he ate. But he's been worse than bloody useless, according to Ros. But they're both safe and that's all that matters now."

"Did you know the MI6 agents who were killed?" she asked, calming herself again. "I'd only heard of them, myself."

Harry shook his head. "They would have been killed instantly. I doubt they even knew what was happening." Then he paled again, leaning back in his seat and groaning audibly. "Now I have to tell the Home Secretary. You know how the press will react if they get wind of this. It'll be a PR nightmare for him."

She couldn't say she envied him. But before Harry could become too despondent at the prospect, she raised her hand. "Before you do that, we need to plan what's happening next. At least that way you can have something positive to put in front of Towers."

"Like what?" he asked.

Ruth shrugged, rather unhelpfully. But then she got to her feet and crossed to the door, calling Nathan into the office. She waited for him to lock the files he'd been reading into his top drawer before joining her.

"Is this about the bombing?" he asked as he ducked under Ruth's arm.

"Well guessed," she said, once more closing the door behind him. "But there's something we need you to do."

She sat back down, leaving Nathan standing by the door as though he were keen to escape.

"The cell that the Ghazal's were attached to," she began. "You're still working on the leader, Sharaf Suleiman, aren't you?"

Nathan frowned in consternation. "Working on it, but he's far from turned."

Harry leaned forwards in his seat, suddenly keen-eyed again. "But you've spoken to him, haven't you? On more than one occasion now."

"He knows rightly who I am," he said. "There's no shitting the guy on that front."

"We're not saying there is," replied Ruth. "But try and get him talking anyway. Meet on neutral ground and see if you can't get just a hint of information from him."

"Er, isn't that what I'm doing already?" he asked, gaze darting from Ruth to Harry.

Ruth drew a deep breath before explaining the situation in full. About the nerve agent and the death toll, and the death toll that would probably keep on tolling for some time to come. Harry listened intently, also, as the embryonic action plan formed.

"It's highly unlikely that he'll just tell me who supplied them with the bomb," he pointed out. "So far, all he's done is call me an infidel whore who deserves to burn in hell."

"That's probably a compliment," Harry pointed out.

Nathan shrugged. "I did say to him that I took it as such."

Ruth rolled her eyes. "Just try and at least then we can have some sort of action plan for Towers. Besides, I'm curious about this myself. Meet him tomorrow, if you can."

"Sure," he agreed. "Am I to take it the nature of the bomb is as yet classified, even to the others?"

"It'll come out eventually," Harry replied. "But for now, yes it is. Say nothing."

With Nathan dismissed, Ruth turned back to Harry. "It's a longshot, but it's better than nothing."

Harry didn't look remotely enthused. "Sometimes, I hate everybody."

"You don't mean that!" she replied, raising a pained smile. "Come on, it's nearly time and you need a drink."

They both knew "time" wouldn't come that day. But they did steal a moment to access the roof space to clear their heads and refresh themselves. By that time, it was almost dusk and the city had quietened. The traffic sounded distant and the air was clearer, free of the ground pollution. Together, they looked out over the darkening rooftops, hand in hand as they leaned against one another.

"Towers introduced me to the MD of that firm who'll be supplying the armed forces," he said.

"Oh really. Securitech?" she asked. "The forces need the equipment and the people need the jobs. Everyone's a winner, by the sounds of it."

"His name's John Carlton," Harry added. "Seems like a decent enough chap. But Towers wants us at some god awful sounding reception to mark the occasion."

Ruth sighed heavily. "Whatever for?" she asked, but didn't hold out for an answer. The day had been long enough, without the added complications of the Government's corporate manoeuvrings thrown in on top.

Thanks for reading. For the international folk reading this, "Legoland" is a pet name for MI6 headquarters (near Vauxhall). Reviews would be lovely, if you have a minute.