November 3rd 2011:

The woman on the street is slim and elegant, dressed in a black woollen coat which reaches mid calf. She moves briskly and fluidly along the pavement, her back straight, her shape intermittently lost in the shadows of the stark and leafless plane trees which line the suburban street, the custodians of the night. The air is surprisingly cold, especially given the warming benefits conferred upon this island by the Gulf Stream. Despite its latitude, London rarely suffers the inconvenience of snow falls, unlike the woman's home city. According to her husband, London is a city of great beauty, surrounded by a vast oozing sore of clamouring humanity. He only ever shares this opinion while in the company of English people he does not like, which is most of them. Mostly he is a polite and prudent man, given to expressions of grace and goodwill, with rare outbursts of invective when he suspects others of deceit or betrayal. Her husband believes her to be staying in for the evening, perhaps reading, perhaps visiting the hotel's gym before retiring for the night. He is attending a meeting with English politicians, and he is not expected back until late. She is sure she'll have time to return before he does, and so her mission will have passed under his radar.

She pulls her coat around her, lifting the furred collar to protect her face, and then pushes her gloveless hands deep into her pockets to protect them from the wind. It is early November, and despite her having visited most of the great cities of the world, this is her first visit to London. Turning the corner, she glances behind her to ensure she is not being followed. There are shadows within shadows, but none of them move the way a tail moves - with studied indifference. She is skilled at spotting them, their attention on anything but her. The taxi which had dropped her off has long gone. She has no expectation that she'll be followed, but she needs to be sure. What she is doing, where she is going is risky, perhaps even dangerous.

Four houses from the corner is number 17 – an unremarkable, narrow two-storied Georgian home set back from the street. This could have been my home, she thinks, lifting one hand from her coat pocket to push a stray strand of hair from her cheek. This should have been my home .. the two of us together under the same roof, our children asleep upstairs. The gate stands open and she slips through quietly, her footsteps soundless as she glides along the path to the front door, which is where she stops and hesitates, questioning her actions and her motives. It has been three decades since she last saw him, and although she is sure he will recognise her, she is not confident that she will know him. She has to do this. She must do it. The books need to be balanced, and the best time for this is now, before the talks get under way, before everything between their two nations becomes complicated.

The records state he drives a black Range Rover. The door to the garage is closed, so if he is home, his car is locked away. There are none of the usual signs of occupation. No shoes by the door, no gardening equipment or those awful garden gnomes which the English seem to like. There is light coming from the front room, and it casts a dull, atmospheric glow – enough to watch TV by, but not enough for reading. Perhaps he has pets who require a light for company. Perhaps he is watching TV, although she can hear no sound from inside the house. All is quiet. She stills herself and leans closer to the wall of the house, blocking any sounds from the surrounding homes and streets. She is sure she can hear the murmur of voices from inside the house, but that may be a re-running in her mind of a conversation she and this man had shared three decades ago. "Just be there," he'd said, and so she had – she and her child – but he never came. Yes, there is definitely book-balancing to be done.

She experiences a moment of hesitation, a brief tick of the clock during which she doubts her own sharp mind, her ability to have made a decision which will ensure the desired outcome, the right outcome. She is no longer a young woman, but she is still a formidable spy - intimidating, calculating, relentless in pursuit of her prey. She has not planned what she will say. Perhaps she'll say nothing. She'll just stare at him, reminding him of what he left behind, what he has lost, and what he can never have again.

In one swift move the woman presses the door bell, not once, but three times in succession, and then she waits, her eyes on the door. Nothing happens, although she can hear sounds from inside the house – voices, accompanied by movement. Perhaps he has turned up the volume on the TV, hoping she'll go away. Again she presses the door bell, but this time she presses for a longer time. I'm not going away, she thinks. I'll stand here ringing your doorbell until dawn if need be. She pushes both her hands into the pockets of her coat, and she waits.

At least two minutes pass before the door opens. She squints in the glare of the porch light as it is turned on, watching as the door opens to reveal her former lover, Harry Pearce. "Yes?" he says curtly, and against her will, against all her prior planning and decision-making to the contrary, she smiles into those eyes, before dropping her gaze to the triangle of bare skin revealed above the opening of his bathrobe, and then down his robed body to his bare legs and feet. His hands are quickly tying the ties of the garment, perhaps the only garment he is wearing. Had he been in bed? It had barely gone 9 o'clock.

"Hello, Harry," she says, lifting her eyes to his once more. His face and neck speaks of aging and excess. He is heavier, his face lined, his once thick and unruly hair receding and cut close to his scalp. He is no longer the beautiful, effete young man who could set her body thrumming with a light touch of his fingers. He has become an old man. His eyes are still his best feature, and she briefly ponders her memories of his tongue. Does he still find opportunities to use it as he had on her?

He is staring at her, his expression giving little away. "What are you doing here?" he asks coldly, his voice quiet, but harsh. It is then that her eyes catch the glint of gold on one finger of his left hand as he holds his bathrobe ties together. Perhaps the ring on his finger is an heirloom; he is not the kind of man to marry more than once. He had once told her he wished he had met her first, before he'd met his wife, and she had wanted to believe him.

"Surely you remember me," she says, lowering her voice to its most seductive register.

"I said .. what are you doing here? You have no business coming to our house unannounced, and I'd like you to leave."

Our house? The woman on the porch takes a small step forward, closing the distance between them, but he doesn't step back. He is not the same man she'd known in Berlin. He is not to be molded and manipulated, coached and cajoled. There is a sound from inside the house, and out of the darkened hallway behind him appears a woman, also pulling a robe around her body. She catches a brief glimpse of one bare breast before the bathrobe is drawn across her and quickly tied. The woman is younger than he, her brown hair messy – bedroom messy, the woman thinks, realising that her quest is already lost, but it is not in her nature to give up.

"Harry," the young woman says, standing close to his side, looking from him to the woman on the doorstep, and then back to him. "Who is this woman?" she asks him. For a young woman, her voice is deceptively deep and rich.

Harry glances quickly at his companion, and in that moment the woman can see his face softening, the way his face had once softened for her. "It's no-one," he says quietly. "Just someone I once knew, and she's about to leave. Go back inside. It's cold out here." He reaches towards her with his free hand, and with his knuckles he tenderly strokes her cheek. The woman on the porch witnesses a moment of unspoken communication – an understanding of intimacy - before his companion turns from him, and is quickly swallowed by the darkened hallway.

The woman waits until Harry's companion is out of ear shot. "A bit young for you, isn't she, Harry? You need a real woman, someone who knows you, someone who can -"

"Please leave, before I call your husband. I know he is meeting with the Home Secretary and our international trade delegation. I have his number on speed dial. I can be speaking to him within a minute."

"And I'll tell him you raped me."

She stares at him, waiting for his expression to change, but he throws his head back and laughs. He quickly stops laughing and he looks at her with contempt in his eyes. "Why would I want you, Elena? You saw Ruth. Why would I choose you over her?"

Harry moves as if to close the door. She knows she has only seconds to change his mind. "I'll tell Ilya that Sasha is your son."

Harry is shocked for only a second, and then she sees how quickly he composes himself. "Please do, but first have Sasha's DNA tested. Now, go," and in one swift move he steps back and closes the door before she has a chance to say any more. With his withdrawal, her chance is gone.

Elena Gavrik stands on the porch of Harry Pearce's home. The porch light has been turned off, and she is standing in the cold and dark, her mission thwarted, her humiliation complete. She is hurt and she is angry, but she still has her dignity, so she slowly turns and leaves the way she came.

Harry enters the living room to find it empty, the signs of their earlier activity evident by the champagne glasses and the empty bottle, clothes strewn across the floor, Ruth's bra hooked over the small lamp beside the sofa, and the pillows piled up at one end of the sofa. He had been hovering over her, about to slide into her when the doorbell had rung. They'd stopped mid-movement, and he had frowned. "Ignore it", he'd said, but Ruth had suggested that perhaps it might be important, and he should answer the door. Of course, he had to wait until he was in a fit state to speak to their unexpected visitor. Had he known it to be Elena, he would have ignored her.

He hears the upstairs toilet flush and then Ruth's quiet footsteps on the stairs. When she enters the living room she is smiling. "I take it you didn't invite her around tonight, Harry."

He reaches for her and she slides into his arms, her palms against his chest. "How many men do you know invite a former lover around on their wedding night?"

"None so far, but there's always a first time."

"Not with me there's not, and definitely not with her." He looks down at her. "I'd rather you hadn't .. seen her."

"I heard her voice and recognised the accent, then I thought I might like to .. play with her a little .. let her know .. about me, because it was clear she didn't know I exist. I exposed one breast -" Harry stares at her, and Ruth detects a brief moment of shock in his eyes. "I believe it did the trick. I thought I'd show mine before she showed you hers." Harry shakes his head slowly, his lips curling in a slow smile. "I'm glad you'd already told me about her, Harry. She seems like a nutter. What did she want?"

He runs his fingers through his hair and shakes his head. "I can't be sure, but I believe she may have been after my body."

Ruth's eyes widen, and she suppresses a smile. "Then she needs to get in line. I believe I have first dibs."

"Can we not talk about her any more?" he asks, leaning back a little so that she can see how tired he is. He then reaches down to place a soft kiss on her lips, just in case Ruth has any doubts about who it is he loves.

"I suspect she thought you'd be home alone, thinking about the old days, waiting for her to call."

Harry smiles into his wife's eyes. "We only have a three day honeymoon, Ruth, and so far we've wasted twenty minutes of it on Elena."

"I don't think she'll be bothering you again. She took one look at me and simply gave up." Ruth's eyes dance with devilry as she pulls away from him and then grasps his hand in hers. "Upstairs?"

Harry nods, and follows his wife of less than seven hours to their bedroom. "Just show me the way, Mrs Pearce."

Fifteen minutes later they are lying together naked under the duvet, both staring at the ceiling. They are not touching. "I'm sorry," Ruth says at last, turning towards her husband, "the shine has gone out of the wedding night for me."

They had exchanged kisses and some intimate caresses, none of which had served to return them to their earlier passion and urgency. "Me, too," Harry said. "I don't normally .. have this problem."

"I know. I blame Elena."

"Her timing is ..."

"- worse than your own."

He laughs, a chuckle from deep in his throat. "We should have taken that hotel room after all."

"It would have been a waste of money, Harry. Besides, this is my favourite bed in the world."

"Had we, then Elena wouldn't have found me."

"Don't bet on it. She has a nose on her like a .. what are those dogs called?"

"Like a beagle."

They both laugh at the image of Elena Gavrik, nose to the ground, following a scent until she finds the stinking carcass. "There's always tomorrow night, Harry."

"Or the morning."

"Yes. Mornings are always good .. for us."

He sighs, imagining them in a small rental cottage somewhere a long way from London. He sighs again. "We should have gone somewhere, Ruth. Perhaps the Midlands, or the Lake District. We still could." He turns to her, but her eyes are closed, her breathing steady. He's put her to sleep .. again. He leans across and kisses her cheek, and then rolls on to his side, close enough to her to slide his hand around her waist, and then he closes his own eyes.

Next morning:

"You were sleeping when I got in," Elena's husband says, his cup not quite reaching his lips. With one eyebrow raised he watches her closely, his unspoken words clear to them both. Did you go out? If so, who did you see? Can I still trust you?

"I was tired, Ilya. Flying always tires me, and this city is so .."

"Tiring?" He places his coffee cup in its saucer, the coffee still untouched, and sits back in his chair, a fond smile softening his face. It is clear he adores her. She nods, returning his smile. Ilya occupies himself pouring a cup of black coffee for her. "I trust this is better than that American swill," he mumbles, and again Elena smiles, glancing up at him with practised affection. She has picked at her toast, but will eat very little. She has to maintain her weight, as well as her allure - the illusion of beauty - because inside herself she no longer feels beautiful. The previous evening's failure has hit her hard, denting her confidence.

"I heard something interesting last night," her husband says.

"Oh?"

"Harry Pearce got married yesterday. He married his chief analyst, who is now coordinating intelligence for the Home Secretary. Didn't you once know him?"

"Harry Pearce? The name is .. familiar. I've known so many people, Ilya. I can't remember them all." She is shocked, of course, but this news explains the woman with Harry, and the ring on his finger. Stupid man. Why would he settle for one woman when there are so many he could choose from? She hides her truth behind a smile which doesn't quite reach her eyes. Ilya knows this, and he files away the information. Who knows when it may come in useful. The next few days will be busy, but Ilya will have someone following his wife .. just in case. Perhaps the job can be given to their son. He will get Sasha to follow her, but in plain sight. It will drive her mad, of course, but that is what he wants.

"Drink your coffee, sweetheart. You're looking pale."

"I am? Perhaps I'm coming down with something. What do you think?"

Ilya thinks she's an excellent spy … a brilliant spy, but a terrible wife. A wife should be open and honest, and true to her husband, and Elena is none of these. Despite this, he still loves her. Yes, Sasha must follow her. It will be a harsh lesson for their son, but it is high time he learned the truth about his mother.

"Would you like to go shopping today?" he suggests warmly. He is also an excellent spy, able to display warmth and empathy on cue.

Elena brightens and smiles. This time her eyes are smiling. She is predictable, his Elena. She will go shopping and their son will follow her. She will know she is being followed, but not who has ordered it. If she knows what is good for her she will draw in her claws. She belongs to him. She must respect his wishes. She must understand that he is still the one in charge.

Ilya Gavrik smiles warmly at his wife. She is his, and he is proud.

Fin