They have stared at each other across the meeting room table for the last half an hour, and now the briefing, the question and answer, is over; Ros has exited, Lucas is doing something, and she is standing, looking out at the Grid, wondering why she feels so empty.
"Ruth!" The eyes that meet hers have deep dark circles, only accentuated by the copious eyeliner, but the joy in that voice is as real and as true as ever Ruth remembers Jo. Her wide grin, her twinkle, already reaching forward with arms outstretched. "It's so good to see you, even if it is under awful circumstances." Ruth welcomes the hug, returns it warmly, not just to hide the shadow of those circumstances in her heart. "I've missed you. We've all missed you."
Ruth is not stupid, nor is she naive. There is something in Jo's voice that is missing, a change that she felt the moment she stepped on to the Grid again. An absence.
"Can we get some tea?" She meets her eye, flashes a smile, a smile that only feels real if she lives, stays, in exactly this moment. Jo nods and grins, and they walk through the pods.
"Where's Adam, Jo?" In another life, in a previous life, she would not have asked so directly, knowing that there can only be one answer. There is only one answer, in this life. She's not even sure she wants to know. She'd like to say she has never thought about this life, from the moment the barge motored down the Thames, but that would not be true. Mostly, she banished thinking of it, thinking of them, of him... but in the dark hours of the night, when George was peacefully snoring, then they came unbidden. Memories, laughter, pain, jokes and plans. They stood around her bedside, only visible to the gleaming green eyes of one still awake, unable to sleep for the longing.
Jo whitens, if it is possible, and slows. Ruth matches her step, glancing sideways at her friend.
"Dead." Her eyes are glazed, fixed on the end of the corridor. "Car bomb. Remembrance Sunday a year ago. He saved hundreds of people."
"He would. Oh Adam. Always the hero. I'm sorry. Poor Wes." The words are spoken jerkily, unsteadily.
"Harry goes to see Wes, every so often. Takes him to the dogs."
Ruth smiles instinctively, before the pain of that name draws her lips downwards again. It had been bad enough knowing she would never see him again, but that had been a price worth paying, knowing he was still free to keep Section D running the way it should. To think that she should be brought back to this world, and that she still might never see him again, was unbearable. His office had looked so bare. Which was silly, really, because she had seen it empty so many times, when she had worked till the last bus, and he had already gone home.
They have stopped walking, in an unspoken accord.
"Zaf?"
Jo shakes her head, eyes bowed.
"No, Jo... Not Zaf." Not Zaf, ever the joker, ever the gentleman, ever the sweetheart. Not Zaf, who had stayed with her through that long, cold night; her last in London. Not Zaf, who had promised to smile at her, if he should see her in some far away place, because he would smile at any pretty girl.
"He was taken by the Redbacks, they sold him. He...they..." She cannot, and Ruth lays a hand gently on her arm. The slight pressure, the soft warmth, the solidarity of the moment serve to steady Jo's voice. "They were a group who captured intelligence officers, and sold them to the highest bidder. As long as the person survived, they were sold down the line. Zaf's body was found in Pakistan."
"God! Jo!" She doesn't know what else to say. What can she say? And then the dull gnaw of pain hits the bottom of her stomach. "Did you get them? I mean, did Section D get them? Have they been stopped? They haven't anything to do with...this...have they?"
Jo shakes her head.
"No, nothing to do with Harry. The Redbacks are finished. They...I... They were led by a man called Boscard, an American. After we found out about Zaf, they came back to London. Ruth, they captured me. Then they got Adam." Jo can see Ruth's horror written mutely in her evergreen eyes, in the downturn of her slightly open lips, in the pallor of her skin, but she presses on, because if she doesn't say it, she never will. "I was so scared, Ruth. I thought I would betray all I hold dear. I wanted Adam to kill me. I begged him. I knew I couldn't take more of what they'd already done. I figured he owed it to me, to take me away from that intolerable situation. I actually thought he was going to, too. But before he could, Boscard was back in the room, and then the place was stormed..." She pauses, momentarily uncertain. But this is Ruth, solid, steady, good, truly Ruth, even if Jo can't look her in the eye right now. "I killed him, Ruth. Boscard. I turned on him. And I killed him."
"I killed him."
The words echo in the otherwise empty corridor. They echo in Jo's mouth. They echo in Ruth's mind. For a moment that is a lifetime, they stand there, two women, stood at right angles, neither able to meet the other's eyes; time flashing by them, a stillpoint in unseen motion. Then Ruth does the only thing she can, and embraces Jo, warmly, gently, absolutely.
The moment is broken by someone entering on to the corridor, and the two separate, and continue walking, in unspoken accord. They reach the canteen, silently, and only speak the necessary words until both are walking back towards the Grid, nursing cups of tea. Real tea. Something that Cyprus, and indeed, anywhere but here, cannot manage. She has missed her tea.
"What else, then?" Ruth tries to speak lightly.
"Oh, you know, the usual. Ros is also a dead woman walking - she even got as far as the coffin..."
"What?"
"That's a long story. In a nutshell, Juliet Shaw turned out to be a leading operative in a group called Yalta, who wanted to see the American's wings clipped a little too close. She killed Ros, or so she thought, but Adam had switched the drug in the syringe, for one that would simulate death. Ros had to go in to hiding, because that CIA guy Bob Hogan was trying to assassinate anyone with anything to do with Yalta... I had no idea, until the burial... We were standing round the graveside, and I happened to glance over my shoulder, and saw her walking away. Surreal doesn't begin to cover it."
"Mhmm!"
"And then there was your replacement, Connie James..."
"The Connie James?"
"Yup, the Connie James. Harry brought her out of retirement. She turned out to be a double agent, turned by the KGB twenty odd years ago. She killed Ben, when he was on to her."
"Ben?"
"Ben Kaplan... He was a journalist, to start with, and he and I had a bit of a thing... But then he ended up being involved in a few too many cases, and was with us when the Home Office sent an IRA assassin after us... And then Harry offered him a job. He was good, too, in his own way. He didn't deserve to die."
"Very few people do. I'm sorry, Jo. Dare I ask why the Home Office saw fit to try and assassinate Section D?"
"Politics?"
"That old chestnut. Plus ça change. What happened to Connie?"
"We turned her, when the Russians had a nuclear bomb about to go off in Grosvenor Square. She neutralised the bomb, but was killed in doing so."
"So, has anything positive happened, in the last two and a half years?" Ruth grimaces as she asks the question, and, noting their proximity to the pods, adds "to sum up?"
"Well, we've saved London from certain destruction repeatedly, the UK from war, the world from annihilating itself, and numerous individuals from death and fates worse than? How's that?"
"I was thinking on the more personal scale."
"Malcolm got a Tortoise, called Giles."
"Really?" Ruth giggles at the prospect.
"No. But Harry's still single." She's not sure what possesses her to say it, but Jo is pleased to note the swiftest gleam in her friend's eye, before the cloud of why Ruth is even back in the country, husband and all, falls over them again. "We will find him, Ruth. I promise you."
Ruth nods, eyes on the ground. "You do that, Jo. You do that. You find Harry. Because...because I would hate to think I lost everyone, everything here, for no reason at all."
Through the glass of the pods, they can see motion on the Grid, and both know that the time for catching up is over. Ruth's hand is on the cool glass, paused before they enter into the whirlwind. Jo lays a hand on her upper arm, stares at her until the tension is such that Ruth has to meet her eyes.
"I'm not saying I wanted this to happen, to bring you back, but Ruth, I'm so glad you're not lost to us." Jo nods a little, still looking steadily, eagerly almost, into Ruth's drawn face, willing her to admit the positive in such an awful reunion. A pause, and then Ruth acquiesces, the slightest smile on her lips, but it reaches her eyes.
"I'm glad to see you too, Jo."