'Come on Malcolm you can do this or you'll never forgive yourself and nor will Ruth if she hasn't been given the chance,' had been Jo's response to Malcolm's last minute doubts about dragging Ruth back into their murky little world. She'd been standing with him in the departure lounge with his previous bravado waning, until finally with a huge sigh of relief, she'd watched his departing back as he followed his fellow passengers.

She'd been wonderfully supportive and had helped him plan his itinerary, which if everything went to plan, would see him flying back with Ruth in three days. Ros's insistence that time was of the essence had seen them deciding to making last minute changes, all of which had been arranged whilst he'd gone home to pack. What they'd first planned to be a week's visit had been cut by half, which meant that he had to be decisive rather than waffle when he explained the situation to Ruth. There was nothing about this trip that constituted a holiday he kept telling himself, it could mean life or death for Harry.

During the course of the flight he spent a good deal of time trying to catch up on sleep, whilst imagining how alone and quite probably frightened Ruth must have felt, when for what he still believed had been more a sacrifice to save Harry than section D, she'd forced herself to make this self -same trip alone. He'd been fond of her then and he still was and he was so looking forward to seeing her again. He just wished that it could have been under different circumstances. Now though with less than an hour to go before they were due to land, he was considering not for the first time which was the best way to approach her.

'Only another hour sir, I expect you're starting to get excited,' said the passing stewardess, to the still pensive passenger that she'd kept a careful eye on from the moment that they'd taken off. There was clearly something that was troubling him and this was another attempt to settle what she presumed to be a fit of nerves at the prospect of seeing his sister again after such a long time. Either that or he was worried about the landing that was so often the case with first time flyers, although it seemed unlikely that a man of his years hadn't flown before.

All things considered Ruth had settled well into her new life. She enjoyed her job tremendously, had developed a good relationship with her students most of whom were in their thirties or forties and in some cases older, and her small flat close to the campus where she worked had eventually begun to feel like home. Now though with the end of the current semester due in a couple of weeks and the long summer recess ahead, the usual dread at the prospect hours without company rose up to greet her. It wasn't as though she hadn't had offers because she had. One particularly persistent student had chatted her up relentless apparently enthralled as he'd put it by her accent, but she'd dismissed him the same way as the others, by telling him that she had someone waiting for her at home.

Over the last couple of years she'd lost count of the number of times that she'd told herself to pull herself together, to bury the memories and the longing. He was never going to come for her, not now, although the want had never got any easier. He must have known where she was, surely he'd have been able to bully Adam into telling him, but seemingly not. What would it take to make her stop loving him and god knows she'd tried, it was hopeless.

'Hello love, your brother arrived earlier, I hope it was alright to let him in?' the janitor asked her, as she staggered through the door with a huge bag of books to mark and a takeout for her supper, offering to give her a hand with what she was carrying.

'That's kind of you but I'll manage, thank you George,' went against everything that had been drummed into her, as the instinct to be cautious that she'd worn like a protective skin completely deserted her. It was him it had to be. But as she opened her door and the euphoria was replaced by terror, quite how she managed to bluff her way through their happy reunion she had no idea. As soon as she saw him she knew without a single doubt, that the only reason that Malcolm would have flown all this way to see her, was to tell her that Harry was dead.

'Tell me how it happened?' she asked him, as the room swum violently and her legs gave way beneath her, books cascading from her arms in a paper waterfall.

'Idiot,' was directed at himself and his opening salvo of 'Hello Ruth I have something that I need to tell you,' that wasn't at all what he'd planned to say.

'Read this,' he eventually told her after he'd helped her into a chair, praying that she hadn't hurt herself when she'd sunk to the floor in front of him. He was searching desperately for the kettle having handed her Adam's letter and explaining that even now, Harry didn't know where she was.

Ruth felt far from fine, although it had nothing to do with the fact that she'd bashed her knee against the table when she'd disintegrated like a pack of tumbling cards. So if he wasn't dead that meant only one of two things, otherwise Harry would have been standing there himself not Malcolm. Harry was hurt or missing or what? She'd run out of ideas.

'So why are you here Malcolm?' she asked him, snapping and then apologising, when she realised how tired he looked.

It wasn't often that Ruth let her emotions get the better of her and on reflection Malcolm realised for a second time that he could have worded it better, but there really wasn't an easy way to dress up the word treason.

'We all believe he's innocent Ruth I promise you and I hate to drag you into this, but we need your help to prove it, so I'm here to take you back to London.'

'I'm dead Malcolm, I can't go back,' said a now totally shell shocked and disbelieving Ruth, her world seemingly shattered and with tears streaming down her face, with Malcolm at a loss as to how to make it better, but knowing that he still had to find a way to persuade her.

An hour later, by which time Malcolm had unpacked and a somewhat calmer Ruth had phoned for another take out, this time for two, they were sitting either side of her small kitchen table, with him now ready with a full and what he'd promised her, would be a better explanation.

'It's a large country house where they do what Malcolm?' was her question in response to him telling her that their research pointed to the fact that Harry was being detained at somewhere called Kettlemere, which she'd never heard of.

'It's where they keep high profile prisoners that they don't know what to do with. It gives them breathing space before they to come to a decision.'

'And who exactly are they?' she asked him, as visions of Harry at best being tortured,' seemed to be what Malcolm was inferring.

'It's a security service run institution where the Home Secretary has the ultimate say as to what happens.'

'But that's good isn't it, Blake likes Harry doesn't he, so there shouldn't be a problem should there?' wasn't a question that Malcolm felt that he was able to answer, based on Blake's previous involvement in the Davey King affair.

'Ros is going to talk to him,' said an increasingly weary Malcolm who was already struggling with the time difference, but still trying valiantly to persuade Ruth that for reasons that he had yet to explain, that he needed her to come back with him. This wasn't just about Harry although in his and he knew Ruth's mind it was. It was a twofold plea with Ros's agreement, that they needed Ruth's help in exposing the real traitor.

'Ros?' questioned Ruth, in a voice that he recognised and with a look on her face that he couldn't ignore, as he went on to explain to her, how since Adam's death she'd changed and how Harry had come to rely on her.

If Malcolm had harboured any doubts as to whether or not Ruth would come back to London with him, they were dispelled in that instant. Without even planning it, he had finally found the right words that had metaphorically poked her with a big stick. She was the one that Harry had always relied on not Ros, who'd been a snake in the grass in all their eyes until Adam had died.

'I need to pack Malcolm,' she told him, the Ruth Evershed that had been lost until now was back. Terrified as to what she might have to face maybe, but there was that same steeliness in her eyes that he'd always seen there, he needed to call Jo and get her to speak to Ros.

Forty eight hours later when they were once again sitting either side of a table, but this time in a quiet restaurant on the edge of a very large lake, Malcolm took a moment to sum up the last couple of days.

The speed and the efficiency with which she'd organised herself shouldn't have surprised him, but it had. She'd stepped out of what now amounted to normal and back into their world where lying or bending the truth for the Greater Good as Harry preferred to call it to it, came as naturally as breathing. Motivated he knew by her desperate need to see Harry again, but even so, her razor sharp mind and quick thinking had astounded him. For the first time since he'd known her, he recognised the complete package that had drawn her and Harry together. Yes if he really delved into the depths of this mind and tried to imagine them in a bed scenario, then he was sure that it would have been lovely, but it went so much deeper than that. He'd been right all those years ago, they were meant to be together in every sense.

She'd spoken to her landlord and confirmed that she was going on an extended holiday, although with a year's lease she hadn't needed to empty her flat. The university principal had been persuaded to offer her indefinite compassionate leave to deal with what she had described as family crisis involving her parents and she'd left a message for her students, apologising for disappearing without warning and wishing them the best of luck with their continuing studies. Awesome was a word that Malcolm tended not to use, but she was.

Back in the UK, Jo had just finished cleaning and tidying her flat in preparation for Ruth arriving when her doorbell rang.

'Ros,' she said, hoping that she didn't look as surprised as she felt, having found her now boss standing on her doorstep and proffering a bottle of wine. 'It's nice to see you,' seemed to do the trick, as Ros suggested that if she hadn't already eaten, then maybe they should order a takeaway. As she followed her into the kitchen, she imagined Ros casting an eye around her small and good enough for her abode, that was nothing like the very minimalist and high class flat that Ros lived in, which if the rumours were correct her father had coughed up for. Business or pleasure, she wondered as she reached for the plates and laid the table, inviting Ros to sit down and handing her the corkscrew.

'We need to firm up on how we're going to play this,' came at the end of their first bottle of wine and part way through the takeaway that Ros had insisted she pay for. Up until then their conversation had been pretty much non work related, but as two of section D's less likely bedfellows, they'd struggled to find anything to talk about other than work.

'As far as our colleagues are concerned,' Ros told Jo, 'it needs to be seen as business as usual, which for me it will be, up until such a time that we get Harry out of there.'

'There being Kettlemere, it's been confirmed?'

'Yes, Tariq's done some more digging.'

'What then?'

'Crucially, Harry cannot come back onto the grid and he can't go home either until we find out what's going on and whose behind whatever this is. Whoever they are, they have to be made to believe that Harry's still incarcerated or worse, and that they're free to continue as before.'

'So where's Harry going to stay, not here surely?' Jo asked her, struggling to imagine not only Ruth but Harry living under her roof.

'Use your imagination Jo, Harry and Ruth working together, you couldn't ask for a more effective partnership.'

Jo agreed, but she wasn't sure what Ros meant by partnership and she wasn't about to ask. It was Ros's job to elaborate, not hers to dig into what amounted to personal. She'd done that once before, with what she still considered to be catastrophic consequences.

'What, so a safe house, is that what you're suggesting?'

'Tariq's proving a real asset, he's apparently got some distant relative, with an empty flat that's not far from here.'

'So why not use a safe house?'

Do I have to spell it out thought Ros, her eyebrows stratospheric, well obviously she did.

'Because whoever's behind this has influence and we have no guarantees that they don't know the location of all our safe houses, as I do or Connie for instance.'

One step at a time she went on to tell her, she was going to see the Home Secretary first thing tomorrow morning. Blake's bollocks wouldn't be the first ones that she twisted and she could guarantee that within a couple of weeks that Ruth Evershed would be alive and kicking. Jo didn't doubt it about the bollocks that was, but before that Ruth's main priority had to be to get to see Harry and that little gem as Ros put it, was already in place.

Tariq has been busy thought Jo, as Ros handed her the documents that he'd produced. Harry had acquired a wife, namely Ruth, who nobody other than them, Malcolm and of course Harry would recognise. And after that thought Jo, it would be a case of watch this space, although this time without the prying.

'We have to find the traitor,' Ros said emphatically, bringing her back from the realms of fantasy, 'because until we do, none of us are safe.

Having Ros telling her her that she needed to love her and leave her because she needed to go back to the grid, even though it was close to midnight, Jo closed the door with a sigh of relief. Ruth was due in a couple of hours, she'd be knackered and would need to sleep, but after that Jo was looking forward to the new responsibility that Ros had given her. As a field agent she'd be able to come and go without question and Ros had just told her that she was to be her liaison between Ruth and the grid. She was finally getting her teeth into something that really mattered and would be able to make a difference.

Had Harry known the full extent of the effort that his colleagues were pouring into getting him released, he would have slept more peacefully. Had he known that he was now a married man and that Ruth was his wife and would be coming to see him the following morning, he quite probably wouldn't have slept at all. But as it was with the same cocktail inside him that he'd been given each and every night, he was restless and fighting his way through a maze of confusion with no end in sight. Bouncing between memories of his time on the grid and the endless missions and losses, the greatest of all he still believed with an unbearable pain was his failure to protect Ruth, he was awash with grief. She'd filled his dreams for years, sad and burnt out though he believed himself to be. He'd been captivated by her almost from the beginning and had let her go when he should have moved heaven and earth to keep her. Well it was too late now, she was lost to him, he was watching her sail away.

Now sleeping peacefully, with no such doubts in their minds, Connie's associates had had a very productive evening.

Central London brought to a standstill and the far reaching consequences was a delicious prospect and their counterparts in section D having been side tracked and apparently accepting Harry's guilt without question, was a bonus. Another couple of weeks and they could fly home and Connie with them, but before that they had work to do and it started tomorrow.