Shades of Difference

Author: Brightbear

Disclaimer: Spooks/MI5 does not belong to me. It belongs to Kudos, the BBC and many other people who are not me. Unfortunately.

Rating: General

Spoilers: Season 2, Episode 8 (Army Tom).

Summary: After the death of Major Curtis, Sergeant-Major Baker thinks about the MI5 officers involved (Danny and Tom).

Author's notes: This story was written mostly to prove that not everything I write has to be about Tom but he ended up being a minor character anyway...

I've been in the army all my working life. I've never done any other kind of work, unless you count the paper rounds I did as a kid. I saw active service in the first Gulf War. Active Service. A blunt phrase, that tells you nothing about real war and death and violence. When I returned to England, it felt like stepping into another world. It took me a while to understand that England was no different than it had ever been - I was the one who changed.

There's a distance between me and people on the street that wasn't there before. They don't understand war; don't understand how close alive and dead can be. Even the family and friends you've always confided in don't understand and you don't want to terrify them so you don't try explaining. After that, the distance grows.

Even fellow servicemen don't understand what war is until they've been in one. The only ones who know, the only ones that aren't separated by this distance, are the ones who have been there too.

It's the men who fought right beside you, in the same unit, who understand more than anybody else can. You all shake your heads and share looks as you overhear the rookies carrying on like children. There is a distance between you and the younger men but there is no distance between you and your fellow veterans.

This strange closeness, this absence of distance, is not always confined to your peers. For me, at least, I always had a strong if respectful connection with my commanding officer, Major Sam Curtis. He was probably amongst the best friends I've ever had and his death was one of the worst experiences of my life.

I find that some traumatic experiences seem to drain away from my memory like sand. The harder I try to think about the details, the quicker it slips away from me. Then again, I rarely try to think about them, just in case I actually manage to remember.

The clearest thing I remember from Sam's death was the young security service officer. I don't mean the officer who infiltrated our company, a man going by the name of Lieutenant David Getty. Lieutenant Getty always struck me as a professional and I respected him for that, even if I am disgusted with the organisation he works for.

Still, I can only hazily remember Getty's face during the siege that led to Sam's death. What I remember clearly is the Getty's colleague. A young, black man from the MI5 who was posing as a Corporal. He'd turned up to the barracks with transfer orders for Lieutenant Getty. He was as normal and official as you please.

Then we watched him talking to Getty, outside the barracks where they wouldn't be overheard. We knew that Getty was a mole by then, so we detained the Corporal as well. It was ridiculously easy but then, I guess they really didn't know that their cover had been blown.

The Corporal pretended polite confusion at first, becoming gradually more vocal when he realised we weren't going to release him. After a few minutes, he just gave up the act altogether. Instead, he had a resigned, almost bored look that he maintained for the rest of the morning.

I sat beside him for the truck journey. There was a distance between us. We were real soldiers and he was only pretending. We were armed with rifles and participating in decisive action while he was forced to come along with his hands tied behind his back.

We reunited him with Getty and I didn't miss the look the two of them exchanged. It was the look exchanged by an experienced senior officer and a junior officer who doesn't know what's happening. I've only ever seen that particular look in battle so it caught my attention.

I think about the Corporal sometimes now. I wonder if MI5 have ranks of some kind. I like to think that they do. I like to think that he is a Corporal of the Security Services. I find it comforting to think of him as no different than any of my own junior officers in the army.

I remember the way you could hear the panic in his voice when Sam pointed a gun at his head. The young Corporal was clearly trained and he tried to talk Sam down. The fear in his voice overwhelmed him until he choked on it and couldn't speak.

Lieutenant Getty took over at that point and Sam listened. I know that given a few more seconds, Sam would have calmed down. I think Getty knew that too. I like to think that the Corporal knew but I don't think he did. I think that all he knew was that somebody was pointing a gun at his head.

The Corporal's face reminded me of any young man in war. It wasn't the look that you see during a unit's first taste of action. I'm sure this Corporal had seen violence before.

It was more like the look that a soldier gets during a second or third action. By then, they know what violence is and what it can do. That knowledge can make it worse than the first time, where you go into battle with nothing except what others have told you. After the second or third time, soldiers have seen death and they know the consequences of failure. It's the fear of what they know that threatens them, not the fear of what they don't know.

The sobering relief on the Corporal's face when Sam went down was painful. Counter-terrorism units were swarming in, arresting me and the rest of Sam's supporters. While we were disarmed and restrained, I had a few minutes to watch Getty and the Corporal.

The two of them remained kneeling, side-by-side, with their hands still tied. They didn't try to stand even though I'm sure none of us would have tried to stop them if they had. They talked quietly to each other as they waited to be released.

From watching their faces, I know that at first Getty was pretty devastated by what had happened to Sam. I can't say that I'm surprised that the traitor in our midst seemed to take it almost as badly as we did. In the two weeks that Getty was with us, I watched him being drawn in by Sam's charisma like so many others over the years. The hold was so strong that even when Getty was taken hostage, he couldn't be anything but civil with Sam.

Then he pulled himself together and, like any good officer, set about reassuring the junior officer beside him. The Corporal was relieved but there was something in his eyes whenever he looked at me or the other soldiers. There was a distance there.

Now, for the first time in my life, I am not in the army. I have been discharged and I am serving time in prison for my part in the whole affair. I have a lot of spare time on my hands and sometimes I use it to think about the Corporal. I think about him and wonder if he feels always feels a distance now. If he sees it in his family, his friends and in ordinary people in the street. I wonder if he knows that there is no distance between him and his colleagues. And I wonder if he shakes his head at the rookies of the security service and laughs about it with his friends.

THE END