Same disclaimer as before

Chapter 2

Resurrection of the Living Dead

Ruth checked her emails first thing in the morning, the way she had done almost every day of her working life. There was a message from an unfamiliar sender, a "ManGetDag". Must be one of those spams which offered you a variety of ways to enhance a body part or two. I thought that the University email filtering system was quite good at keeping this sort of email out of my mailbox. She was going to send it to the Trashcan when she had second thoughts.

The sender's name was an anagram, and it did not take her long to conclude that it was an email from the GadgetMan, i.e. Malcolm Wynn-Jones. She ran the email through antivirus software and clicked it open. All she saw was a lot of garbled text, at least, to the untrained eye, it looked like garbled text, but not to Ruth. She smiled, its been a while since I have received one of these. She reached for her dog-eared copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets, found the one she wanted, and started to transcribe the email.

"Are you ready to come home? We have a way, but you must act quickly before the passageway is closed again. Send me your contact address and a package with instructions will be sent to you."

Ruth's heart leapt. After all this time. Home. As herself. She composed a response in the same coded language as Malcolm's email and waited.

Of course, Ruth was excited about having her old life back. Life in exile had not been fun. It was very tiring, having to remember every detail about her legend so as not to have any slip ups. Then there was the constant looking over one's shoulders, just to be sure that she had not broken cover, or that enemies, real or imagined, were not on her tail. It was difficult to make friends. She always felt that living this new life, she was lying to potential new friends when they talked about what she did and where she came from. She liked her new job, teaching classics at the local university, but somehow that was not as intellectually stimulating as working on the Grid, analyzing intelligence which had a bearing on national security.

Ruth noticed that the message did not come from Harry. Was Malcolm acting on Harry's instructions? How did Harry feel about her resurrection and return to the Grid? Did he still have feelings for her? If he no longer had those feelings, would she be able to cope with having to work alongside him again on a daily basis, simply as a friend? If the arrangements were not originated by Harry, would he be angry that she had decided to come back and would he tell her what a reckless thing that was to do? Should her desire to claim back her old life be dictated in any way by how Harry still felt about her? These thoughts went round and round in her head until she felt like it was about to explode.

The parcel arrived two days later. When she opened it, Ruth found herself holding a brand new passport in her old name. She was speechless for a moment. It was so strange seeing her own name on a British passport, after all this time.

Malcolm's instructions were that she should simply show up at the nearest airport without delay, approach the British Airways counter and give her old name. An electronic plane ticket would be waiting for her, for the next available flight to London, a flight that would bring her back from oblivion. When she got to London, she should contact the Special Branch officer on duty at the immigration hall and give him her real name, Ruth Evershed. He would then help her clear immigration formalities. No further email communication with Malcolm was necessary.

Ruth made excuses with the University, muttering something about a death in the family, and handed in her notice immediately. It was just as well that the current term had just finished. She left her new life as abruptly as she had exited her old life.

During the long plane ride to London, Ruth had plenty of time to think, and her thoughts centred mainly on Harry.

Nothing ever happened between them. Yet, that day by the dockside when they said goodbye, he clearly wanted to declare his feelings for her, but she did not let him go any further. At the time, she did not think that it was a helpful thing to do. She was leaving. She had to leave. It was better to leave without knowing how Harry felt. It made it easier for her to get on that barge. She was not sure she would have gotten on the barge if she heard what Harry had to say.

Ruth had only ever been interested in men with intelligence, and at GCHQ, there was no shortage of that type of men. The problem was that inevitably, men with good brains liked to play mind games with you. One minute they would be professing undying love and devotion, the next minute you never heard from them again; some would not even return your calls, or physically cowered if they happened to run into you. Ruth always thought that perhaps it was because she was no good in bed, or she did something or did not do certain things which put off these men. It took a long time for her to realize that the problem did not lie with her, it was the men in question who had problems.

Was it fear of commitment, the ability to control your emotions, or something else altogether which motivated their mind games? Ruth had long since ceased to ponder these questions. By the time she arrived on the Grid, she had vowed to give up on romance in general and men in particular. That was why she made that comment about there being too many mathematicians in Cheltenham.

So, falling in love with Harry Pearce was not part of the plan. She wanted desperately to get out of GCHQ and had her heart set on a transfer to MI5. She had heard that Harry Pearce was a difficult man to work for, heard all about his fearsome temper. Ruth figured that she could cope with that. It was possible that Harry Pearce was one of those leaders who did not suffer fools gladly and therefore would only ever lose his temper with subordinates who somehow forgot to bring their brains to work, or who were simply not trying to do the best job they could.

Ruth knew that she was good at her job and as long as she kept her eye on the ball, there was no reason to fear Harry's temper tantrums. And even if Harry were to throw something at her, he would probably only do so because he was under tremendous pressure. Ruth liked to think that she had thick enough skin to weather these storms. She felt that she would find any temper tantrums tolerable as long as it was not something personal directed at her.

But slowly and against her better judgment, she fell for Harry. Initially it was just admiration. Harry had a tough job and often had to make hard decisions which sometimes resulted in the loss of life. She could see that Harry did not enjoy making these decisions. Admiration morphed into friendship and mutual respect, specially when he started to confide in her on occasion in preference to other members of the team. Over time, she noticed Harry's loneliness and vulnerability. That was when her feelings for her boss turned into love. She could not point to a date or specific event, but fall in love she did.

Ruth also felt that over time, Harry had developed feelings towards her. In the beginning, she thought that his affections were more of an avuncular nature. There was, after all, the age difference between them, and the fact that he was her superior. But then Harry complicated things by taking her to dinner. She had heard rumors that it was Juliet Shaw who put him up to this idea. Ruth found it hard to believe that Juliet Shaw had Harry's best interest in mind when she pointed out to him that Ruth was secretly in love with him. How did Juliet find out anyway? Ruth thought that she had covered her feelings quite well. Given what happened subsequently with Oliver Mace, she now wondered whether this was some diabolical scheme on the part of Juliet to put Harry in a vulnerable position so that he could be held to ransom at a later date? If that was true, then boy did she and Harry walk right into this trap.

Part of Ruth was worried that Harry's interest in her was just the usual office romance with a short shelf life. The typical office romance would usually go down like this : for whatever reason, the boss pursued a member of staff, motivated purely by the thrill of the chase. The woman in question did not have to be attractive. In fact, often it would be the rather mousy looking secretary that everybody thought did not have a life outside the office. They would have a few shags, the novelty would soon wear off, and then the man would start retreating to the point where he could carry on as if nothing ever happened between them, leaving the woman heartbroken and feeling as if she had been used. The more aggressive victims might sue for sexual harassment. The less aggressive victims would resign and leave altogether. Ruth would not have been able to live with herself if this was how her relationship turned out. This was one reason why she did not want to take things further with Harry.

Ruth remembered that night at the Havensworth conference, their encounter in the hotel corridor, that look of pure desire in Harry's eyes. Over the years, she vacillated between eternal regret in not taking up Harry's implied offer of companionship that evening, and relief that she was strong enough not to have crossed the line between friends and lovers.

But it was not a run-of-the-mill office romance, no matter how hard Ruth tried to convince herself. During the four years that she spent working with Harry and the team on the Grid, not once did she hear of any romantic dalliance between Harry and whoever was the flavour of the month. They worked so closely together on the Grid that no one's private life was off limits. If one of them had any sort of romantic liaison, inevitably the others would hear about it. If these affairs threatened to become something more serious, the agents in question would have filed the necessary paperwork and arranged for their partners to be vetted by the Service. Everyone would know about these procedures. Nothing like that happened to Harry. There was no shortage of intelligent and beautiful women who paraded past Harry Pearce, but he appeared to have been married to the job. If he was interested in anyone, Ruth would have known.

There was that whole Cotterdam mess. Ruth wondered whether Oliver Mace was still around. Harry not only attacked Oliver Mace, he was prepared to get arrested in order to protect her. That was not the behaviour of a man who was just looking for a good time. Ruth had no choice but to fake her own death in order to save her boss. Memories of her saying goodbye to Harry at the dockside came flooding back. Whenever she got to this point in her thoughts, she would regret not having let Harry speak his mind that cold October morning. Was it better knowing or not knowing? Would she be given a second chance now to find out?

When they announced that the plane had started its descent into London Heathrow airport, Ruth started to hyperventilate. Breathe, come on, deep breaths. The woman passenger who sat next to her noticed that she had grabbed onto the armrests. She gave Ruth a reassuring smile, thinking that she must have a fear of flying or something. If only this woman knew what was going through Ruth's mind!

Malcolm met her outside at the arrivals area. They were overjoyed to see each other again.

"Its good to see you Ruth, welcome home."

"Its good to be back, Malcolm, I hope you have been keeping well."

"I'm fine, nothing's changed, still the same old same old."

"How did you know that I was on this flight?"

"As soon as your flight took off, British Airways emailed me with your arrival details. You didn't think that for such a momentous occasion, we would leave you stranded at the airport?"

Ruth smiled, "I guess not."

"Listen Ruth, after you left, we terminated the lease on your house and on Harry's insistence, we put your things into storage. Harry said that he would deal with your personal effects at a later date, but I don't think he ever did anything about them. He does have your cat though."

Surely that was a good sign, that Harry adopted her cat like she asked, and claimed temporary possession of her belongings. What did he think he was going to do with her stuff? Ruth did not have a lot of material possessions. She assumed that they would have sold the larger pieces of furniture and simply retained the personal effects. It would be good to have her books back.

Malcolm went on. "We can sort out long term accommodations for you in due course. For the time being, I have arranged for you to stay with one of our colleagues, Connie James. Don't worry, its not a problem. Connie knows all about you. She's an old friend of Harry's. We were relieved when Harry managed to persuade her to join our Section, as Senior Analyst. After you left, Harry seemed to have developed a taste for analysts …"

Ruth's heart skipped a beat. What could Malcolm mean? Did Harry start sleeping with her replacements?

In response to the look that was now on Ruth's face, Malcolm continued, "After you left, we had a devil of a problem in recruiting and retaining someone to take your place. Harry invariably ate these poor analysts for breakfast, so nobody lasted very long. We were getting a reputation amongst potential recruits, a bad reputation, I might add."

"I see, still bad tempered as usual. Well, if its not too much of an imposition on Connie ... I think I remember Harry mentioning this woman in the past. Incidentally, does he know that I am coming back?"

"Eh … no … not yet. You see, he has been tied up in one of those inter-departmental conferences in Havensworth for the last week. We have been instructed not to contact our section chiefs unless we have a crisis on our hands. Your resurrection cannot be classified as a crisis, can it? It should be a joyous occasion. In any case, when Jools Siviter authorized me to resurrect you, he made it a condition that we should not tell Harry until you were actually back."

Ruth pondered this. For starters, she was unsure how she felt now that she knew it was not Harry's idea or efforts which resulted in her resurrection. She had always hoped that perhaps one day he would seek her out again. Now she was being told that this was all Jools Siviter's idea. Although she had not dealt with this man in the past, his reputation preceded him and she knew that Jools was not the kind of man who did favours for others unless there was something in it for him. She felt sick when she realized that her return would mean that Harry and Section D might be indebted to Jools Siviter. Maybe it was not such a good idea to come back after all.

"Adam and I decided that we should grab this opportunity and move as quickly as possible, you know, before the powers that be change their mind. Don't worry, I'm sure Harry will be delighted when I tell him. He is due back tomorrow. You just settle in for the night at Connie's. I will arrange for you to be back on the Grid tomorrow to go over the necessary paperwork. Your appearance will be our little surprise for Harry."

Ruth wondered why Jools Siviter would insist on keeping her return a surprise which should not be sprung on Harry until the very last minute. What kind of agenda did that man have up his sleeve? Ruth did not like the sound of that at all, and she was slowly developing a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She was not sure whether Harry liked surprises, especially a surprise of this magnitude. What if he were to scream at Ruth and remove her from the Grid the minute she made an appearance? What if he were to berate her for being stupid in accepting the offer to come back? What if, what if, what if … Ruth wondered, not for the first time, why did life have to be so complicated and filled with so many uncertainties?

When Connie shook hands with Ruth, she immediately understood why Harry had not been able to find a ring that fit. This one was different from all the others. Sure Ruth was intelligent, Harry would not have taken notice if she did not have a first class brain to start with, but Ruth was not flashy like other women who had been associated with Harry, such as Juliet Shaw. In fact, on the surface, Ruth looked like the sort of person who was habitually dismissed offhand by men who assumed that she was some lowly clerk or assistant. Until that brainpower kicked in, that is. Then they would know that they were dealing with someone who was extremely intelligent.

It was Ruth's personality that made her different. She looked you straight in the eye when she was talking to you, taking a genuine interest in what you had to say. Ruth has an interesting face, with a pair of very beautiful eyes. It was the sort of face that grew on you once you got to know her better. Over time, you would conclude that she was beautiful, in a very special way. Yes, this one was a keeper.

Well Harry, now I know why you have been walking around like a bear with a sore head since this woman left you.

Ruth was glad to have finally met Connie. Given her age and experience, Connie would obviously exert a calming influence over the younger members on the Grid. She was glad that Harry was able to have someone of Connie's calibre to help with the analytical work. She wondered how her own skills would match up against those of Connie's? Ruth felt a little rusty and ever so slightly intimidated by the older woman.

"Get some sleep, you have a big day ahead of you." Those were Malcolm's parting word to Ruth.

Sleep? How could Ruth sleep? With all the excitement about finally being able to come home, and the prospect of seeing Harry again, how could anyone in Ruth's position get any sleep?

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