"Whadda ya hear! Whadda ya say!"
Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney) - Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

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Part 1 - Angels with Dirty Faces

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2003.
Thames House.
London.

Tom closed the door behind them and turned quickly to Malcolm.

"Another unexpected development." Malcolm stated simply.

Tom nodded in agreement, "Where's Colin?"

"On surveillance. Something particularly uninteresting I'm told." Malcolm paused. "Definitely less interesting than developments here." He added.

Tom could do nothing but nod his head in agreement. "This was covert, even for Harry."

"When did you see her last?" Malcolm asked, curious. "Because all I knew was that she was working for GCHQ again."

"Over a year at least. While Harry was still on leave." Tom paused choosing his next words carefully. "I never thought I'd see them together again."

"Harry knew she was coming." Malcolm pointed out, somewhat unnecessarily.

"He had to approve the secondment." Tom put his hand to his forehead and rubbed.

"What do you want to do?"

"She didn't have to come and he didn't have to take her. But he did, whatever the reasons." Tom let himself smile slightly. "If nothing else we've got one the best analysts around."

Malcolm smiled in return. "She looked well, didn't she?"

"Very." Tom agreed allowing himself a moment to envisage her. He swallowed, shaking the memories from his mind. "When this is over I'll speak to him. Until then we keep quiet."

Malcolm looked slightly concerned. "Do you really think that'll stop them?"

Tom was under no illusions. "No. But it'll make me feel better when they find out the truth."

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1993.
St Cross Rd.
Oxford.

It was at moments like this Harry Pearce wondered just one thing.

Why?

Why was he sat in a cold Oxford bed-sit when he could have been breaking an IRA cell in Northern Ireland? He'd actually have rather been watching daytime television than reading surveillance reports of an above average student.

He did admit, if only to himself, that the recruitment itself was almost certain to be extremely useful, but that didn't mean someone who was so close to becoming section head should be stuck doing said recruitment.

The only thing that stopped the assignment from being a complete bore was that it was fast becoming almost a race between him and Oliver.

The surveillance before him showed that not only was Mace one step ahead (by making contact with the subject) but also that he was still using the old blackmail technique to try and persuade recruits. But Harry suspected that there wasn't much of anything you could bribe Ruth Evershed with, apart from her extreme level of overdue library books.

Which was why Harry had chosen a different tactic. A more direct tactic.

It was time to make things a little more interesting.

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2003.
Thames House.
London.

She was essentially grappling with a lamp as they watched her.

"What do you think happened?" Zoë asked them as Sam leaned over Danny's desk, resting her head on her hand.

"Affair probably. Usually is." Danny replied, looking up from his keyboard.

Zoë shook her head. "If you'd cheated… or been cheated on would you work together? 'Cause I wouldn't."

"Me neither." Sam agreed.

Danny couldn't help but see their point to. "I suppose… but… this is Harry we're talking about, we know almost nothing about his personal life anyway."

"Apart from the fact that he was… or maybe still is married."

"Apart from that." Danny conceded.

"But what about her?" She gestured with her head towards Ruth. "What do you think?"

"Bonkers." Danny told her simply.

"But brilliant." Zoë whispered softly.

Sam leaned in closer to Danny. "Do you think I'll be bonkers when I'm older?"

"Aren't you now?" He replied dryly.

Sam smiled flirtatiously. "Could be."

Zoë had just opened her mouth to interrupt them when Ruth's voice rang out through the grid.

"Oh THING!" She shouted at the object now lying broken in her hands.

"Destructive as always." Tom's wafted across the room and all three of them turned towards the pair.

Ruth dropped the broken lamp to the floor. "Thing! I swear there's a conspiracy against me… stupid inanimate objects are determined to drive me crazy!"

The others watched as Tom started to smile. "Someone should alert MI5." He told her dryly. "But you're settling in okay?"

"Everything's fine. I don't know what I was expecting but the grid isn't quite how I'd imagined." She smiled brightly, looking around with excitement. "But it's just as exciting… actually I've been looking into this Rachid fellow and…"

Ruth went off into a spiel that Danny had trouble keeping up with, instead he looked over at Zoë. "Briefing?"

Zoë nodded. "Briefing."

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1993.
University Parks.
Oxford.

She didn't look up when he sat down beside her. He might have found that slightly suspicious if he hadn't watched her sit on the same bench at the same time everyday and read a book. It was a different book each time. That either meant she was an incredibly quick reader or she had an awful social life.

She didn't notice anything. Or at least she appeared not to. He hadn't had a chance to study her sufficiently to get a complete picture of her, to read her as clearly as she was reading that book.

His tactic had changed as soon as he'd spotted Oliver on the surveillance footage.

He was about to open his mouth and quote a passage of War and Peace when she surprised him.

"There are 32 benches in this park." She told him calmly, not even glancing at him as he looked at her in surprise.

"And what a lovely park it is." He replied simply, resisting the sudden urge he had to grin.

"At least 25 of them are free."

"But obviously this is the best one."

He could tell she was holding back a smile. "You're either a weirdo or the second government agent I've had threaten me today."

He let his lips move upwards slightly. "What's to say I'm not both Miss Evershed?" He turned to face her fully and waited for her to do the same. She didn't immediately and he couldn't help but analyse why.

"The other one tried to get me to sign the official secrets act, aren't you going to bother?"

"I don't think there's any need." He told her simply. "Our biggest asset is that generally people are more likely to believe that someone's lost their marbles than that they've been recruited by the services."

She shut her book. The pages closed heavily but barely sounded. "Personally when someone walks up to you in a public library and tells you that if you sign a form he'll give you a gun and turn you into an agent for Her Majesty's Secret Service I'm inclined to call a doctor." She turned to look at him and he could tell that she wasn't nearly as calm as she was trying to appear. It made him smile. "Especially if they then insinuate that if you don't sign their form they'll destroy your life."

"We don't work for the same people." Harry told her simply.

She shook her head, an ironic smile lighting her pretty face. "Is that supposed to reassure me?"

"Yes."

"It doesn't." She informed him, her head moving endearingly as she tried hard to appear calm.

"Well I apologise for that." Harry told her honestly. "So you turned him down?"

The scared smile grew. "I have no idea what made you people think that I could possibly be a spy but you're very wrong."

"Well that does happen on occasions." Harry admitted.

"When my stepfather tried to get me to shoot a rabbit I cried for an hour." She tried to reason with him.

"I think you've got a have diluted view of us. Probably unduly influenced by a film franchise and an overzealous agent."

"I'm a terrible liar." She tried again.

"You had excellent reviews for your sixth form play."

Her mouth dropped open in shock and her voice shook. "Have you been watching me for that long?"

Harry felt himself smile again at her naivety. "We have excellent information gatherers."

She began to breath deeper. "I think this is ridiculous."

"Most people do." He agreed. "But if you come with me I'll tell you what we want you to do." He leaned over to her side of the bench and looked directly into her eyes to try and reassure her. "Your curious about the why's and the how's, aren't you? You want to know 'why you?'… and I'll tell you anything I can."

"Somewhere public." She insisted, her reluctance wavering.

"Anywhere you want."

"Oh okay." She swallowed heavily. "What's your name?"

"Jerry." He resisted telling her the surname. Somehow he knew she'd get Malcolm's reference and he didn't fancy a Cary Grant movie marathon at that moment. Or any moment.

"I'm Ruth. But you already knew that, didn't you?"

Harry smiled. "Why don't I proposition you somewhere warmer?"

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2003.
Thames House.
London.

Zoë threw her pen across the desk in frustration. "Nest of Angels." She whispered to herself.

For a moment all four of them were silent and still, contemplating how to proceed.

Their reverie was interrupted by a knock to the glass window and Zoë jumped slightly in her seat from the sudden noise. She caught a very vague glimpse of Ruth at the window and maybe a photo or a picture.

Then, a few seconds later Ruth literally burst into the room. Excited didn't even begin to describe it.

She moved quickly towards Harry, handing him the photo. She smiled like a pixie at him. "This happened yesterday. A tramp off the street it seemed, making trouble at New Scotland Yard. I've just twigged."

Harry looked closely at the picture of the unknown man. "Twigged what?" He asked her as she handed the others photo's.

Ruth grinned even more. "At GCHQ, we picked up a signal about an Algerian. I've hacked into the aliens data base of the Secretariat General de La Defense Nationale."

Harry didn't even try to hide the smile from his face. "You're barely here a day and you hacked into the French Security Service?"

Ruth shrugged. "They do it to us we do it to them."

Harry shook his head. "You can hack into government databases and yet you never could change the ring tone on your phone."

Ruth smiled warmly at him. "I liked the original."

Danny looked at his flat mate. No affair. He mouthed to her. Zoë nodded her head in agreement. Tom took note of the silent communication and picked up on of the papers Ruth had dropped onto the desk.

"Muhammad Ibhn Khaldun." Tom read aloud.

Ruth looked away from Harry and her expression changed from happy to sad in a moment. "Oh poor man, what a terrible story."

As Ruth retold the story of Khaldun's misfortune Danny looked back to Zoë.

"Emphasis on the brilliant." He whispered to her simply.

Zoë agreed completely.

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