3 HOURS LATER

"They lost him. Christ."

"Easy on your phone, Ruth. Since parliament cut our budget that's the only one you're getting." It was late. Streets lights swam past their windows as the car slipped through London's streets. "Let's start with what we know."

"Not much," she admitted. "Only that – well Rasmussen might not be your average kook with a microscope. His research has legs in the theoretical sense."

"Don't give me, 'theoretical' Ruth. You know how it tips me toward drink."

Ruth placed her elbow on the window of the car, resting wearily against it. She was tired and it was so late it was about to be early. Their already long night had been extended by a disastrous trip across London. The city was at a standstill with a distant swell of blue and red lights embedded in the muffled hum or sirens. It wasn't only that. Ruth could feel Harry's eyes on her whenever they were alone. He'd been right. Between them there would always be, 'something else'.

"When we tried to dig we came across classified files. Lots of them with great swathes of his research blacked out beyond our clearance. Road blocks everywhere."

"That's not very friendly of them," Harry muttered. "MI6 love to lord their clearance over us. Have a word to your friend."

"And then there's his date of birth. We've had that verified."

"Could be nothing. The man at the dinner might have been someone posing as Rasmussen. Impossible to tell without bringing him in. Who flagged the dinner to you?"

"The Home Secretary. Asked if you could attend as a favour."

"That didn't strike you as odd?"

"Not really – we owe him. Several times over, actually. I assumed he was avoiding it himself."

"Maybe – maybe not." Harry's eyes lingered on Ruth. She was nearly asleep, staring at the traffic outside the window and beyond that the snaking void of the Thames. He argued with himself for a long time before he reached over, placing his hand on her arm as she had done many times to him. She didn't fight back or even stir. "We're watching the tunnel and the airports. See if anyone treads on the threads."

Slowly, Ruth turned her head. First she looked to the hand on her arm, then lifted her gaze to his face. His lies were shallow, layered over his eyes. Ruth could read them easily. Well aware of the others listening in over their wires, she fixed him with a stern look. "We won't find anything, Harry. Whoever snatched Rasmussen was well prepared. They sidestepped around four different security services. You and I both know we're never going to see him again. Rasmussen's gone. Sucked under the waters."

They returned to the grid – paced around monitor screens, fielded phone calls for several hours but Ruth was right as usual. The scientist was gone and no one had the slightest idea who might have been behind it. It wasn't MI6 because they called digging for information. Even the Americans weighed in, admitting that they'd been trailing him as well.

At four am, Ruth and Harry were the last ones left standing, shuffling vast towers of useless paperwork off their respective desks. When Harry was finished he wandered over toward his analyst, watching her for a while before playfully knocking on the pillar beside her desk. She startled, eyes flicking up and down rapidly but her hands never stopped sorting through the folders. There was an orgy of coffee cups scattered beside her laptop, some of them untouched.

"Harry."

"Go home, Ruth," he instructed. "Don't make me turn that into an order. I'll give you a lift."

"No need," she assured him. "I'm in time to catch the first bus."

"Ruth..."

"Harry?" This time she paused. He was giving her that look. The one that threatened to use protocol to override her. Eventually she sighed. "All right... You win. Give me five more minutes."

"Three. I'll be downstairs."

1 WEEK LATER

"It's not that I'm wishing for a crisis," Harry insisted, with a considered glance at his drinks tray, "only that-" His analyst was levelling a significantly sterner glare than normal at him so he stopped before he lost a limb. Wishing a crisis into the world was as ridiculous as Ruth implied with her lofted eyebrow but this endless droll of peace was unsettling. Harry felt like it was all building to something. "What are those?"

"Personnel files," she replied, moving into his office. "That time of year again, I'm afraid."

"You would think, out of a lingering echo of decency, that the government might give us a chance to bury our dead before ordering us to replace them." Reluctantly he accepted the files. They were heavy in his hand but not as solid as the encroaching wall of guilt he'd been attempting to hold back with liquor.

Ruth chewed her lip at his comment. Three funerals in as many weeks had pushed her beyond a bottle of red a night. Accidents. Until they could prove otherwise. "Harry..." She cautioned.

"I know." He set the files on his desk. "I'll look through them." Harry caught her inspecting his decanter, no doubt making a note of the receding scotch-line. The important conversations between them had always remained subtext.

"Oh – there was one more thing," she hesitated on her way to the door. "You've got a dinner – at eight. Thursday."

"Good lord... are we sure that's such a good idea? The last time the Home Secretary forced me to socialise we lost an A-list asset. I'm surprised he's game for round-"

"No. No... Just dinner." Ruth clarified. "With ah – me. Unless of course you..." Stumbling over her words as though they were cobblestones, Ruth began to wonder if she'd entirely misread his change of behaviour toward her lately. "It's okay. Doesn't matter really-"

"Ruth..."

He was staring at her again and Ruth wasn't sure what to do with those piercing eyes of his. "Harry."

"I'll see you at eight."

The rest of the week came and went without waking anything of note. Harry, under continual pestering, whittled down the staff selection lists, no major wars were started, those already in progress contained their carnage behind established battle lines and they even managed to scoot through a diplomacy nightmare involving Russian delegates without anyone mentioning the Cold War. (Harry considered that a personal victory). Late into the afternoon he was genuinely starting to believe that he and Ruth were going to make it to their dinner.

His phone buzzed, vibrating across the desk.

"Harry Pearce. Yes. Of course. I understand. I will." Harry looked through the glass to Ruth. She was packing up her desk for the evening. He lifted his hand, catching her eye – indicating to hold on. "At once."

He hung up and strutted across the office, waving members of the team toward him, attracting them like a magnet. "Red Flash went out a few moments ago – top level clearance only."

Simon was the last to join, attached to his tablet as though he'd grown it straight out of his arm. He was part of the generation that were unable to fathom a world without smart phones and internet access. Heavens forbid the world ever descended into a real war. The greatest causalities would be from technology withdrawal within an entire subclass of humanity.

"Should you be telling us, sir?" Simon was only a few months old. He was yet to learn Harry.

"The Secret Service is the place secrets go to die." Harry caught Ruth smirking in his direction. "We're receiving reports that Zhang Wei, only child of Chinese president Zhang Li has died of pneumonia this morning. The press will bury it for a few weeks and then release the usual human tragedy story. Lot of teary photos. Memorial service. Grieving public."

"That's very sad," Sasha leaned against the desk, "though it doesn't strike me as something to Red Flash." She looked up as members of their team began filtering in.

"One of our agents inside the Chinese government-"

"-an agent that doesn't officially exist-" Ruth quickly interjected.

Harry nodded. "They've confirmed that Wei was indeed ill but not with pneumonia. His death was horrific."

"You think he was murdered?" Simon asked.

"Anything's possible but I don't like the fit. There was no reason to kill off members of the President's family. Politically the Chinese are more stable than they've been for many years – their internal security is, it vexes me to admit, better than ours and usually the family members of diplomats are kidnapped rather than killed. What has anyone got to gain?"

"Fear." It was Ruth who pointed out the darker truth to the group. "This could be a message to the President."

"All right, find out if anyone's been testing the waters around the President. Any threats or suspicious activity on my desk. We'll keep our ear to the floor in regards to chatter and Ruth – I want to know what he really died of. Was he poisoned and if so, what with? We need to understand what's going on before it spreads to any more VIPs ahead of the summit."

That was the end of the evening for all of them. Harry and Ruth's table remained empty amidst the bustling restaurant. They were trapped behind their desks, scrolling through fragments of intelligence, interrupted only by the panicked check-in calls from the Home Secretary who, at one rather low point, begged Harry to imprison a particularly callous reporter who wanted to go to press with the story while the embargo was in place.

"Maybe he just died..." Ruth threw the folder down with more distaste than she'd meant. The others looked like she felt – defeated. "Let's face it, there are a great many unknown diseases it could have simply been poor luck. The son was rather wild. I've been going through his travel logs and in the last couple of months the man visited more ports than a seagull."

The black car lingered opposite the restaurant. With the purple silk curtains pulled back and candles in every window, they had a clear view of the empty table for two.

'Anything?' A voice crackled over the phone.

"Nothing." The man in the car replied. "They're a no show."

A few minutes later the car pulled away, sinking into the night.

"You know, if you stay like that long enough you'll turn into a stone effigy." Ruth had been lurking at Harry's door for a good few minutes unable to catch his attention. Oddly, Harry didn't rise to the quip. Instead he pushed his chair from the desk and put on his jacket. "Going out?"

"Keep an eye on the team."

"What's happened..." Ruth stepped into his path.

He avoided eye contact. "Keep your ears to the ground, Ruth. Try and make contact with or agent in China."

Ruth knew that look. He wasn't ready to share so she let him go, watching indulgently until he'd cleared the pods.

"Where's Harry gone?" Sasha asked, pacing up to Ruth with a fresh cup of coffee.

The young woman reminded her of Jo. Wide-eyed, bold – loyal and dragged from the real world. They'd thieved her from the Metropolitan Police. She'd been eyeing off an appointment to 'detective' when MI5 offered her something more interesting. She was worth the effort. Her nose was in buried in everything and anything that didn't smell right.

"No idea," Ruth replied. "Are those the files on the Chinese President?"

Sasha nodded. "He was here last week, part of an interesting cluster of foreign VIPs attending a dinner in Highgarden Banks." She noted the sudden realisation in Ruth's eyes. "Exactly. He was at the dinner with Rasmussen, a table away from Harry. I remember seeing him there making eyes at the Russians."

"That doesn't necessarily mean anything."

"I know. Half our watch list was at that dinner but what might be of more interest to you is this..."

Ruth glossed over the file in front of her. "Li's son, Wei – is that some kind of camp?"

"Sort of a holiday outing for rich kids who like to go native. Adventure style activities in the privacy of Danqinghe National Forest Park, Heilongjiang Provence. We don't know much except that our operative made the trip with him. Matching travel documents. Guess who else fancied a bit of R&R..."

"No..."

Sasha nodded. "Rasmussen was already waiting for them. I doubled back on the flights in and out. He's made half a dozen trips there in the last few years. I think Wei might have been into something a little more extreme than kayaking."

"Find out what's really in Danqinghe."

Simon roamed over to Ruth once Sasha was safely at her desk.

"Don't look so pleased with yourself, Simon." Ruth cautioned. "I know you recruited her but she's better than you and sooner or later she'll unravel your recreational activities."

Simon tried to smother a laugh. "I'd be disappointed if she didn't. Wasted in the police force. Common criminals wouldn't stand a chance."

"Did you find out where Harry went?"

Simon nodded. "The bridge."

"God-dammit!" Ruth muttered. "What's he found..."

"No idea but he's taking a call on a secure line. He knows very well that we can't see what's going on. That bloody bridge is like the twilight zone. God forbid a bureaucrat ever decides to tear it down. Where would we keep our secrets then?"

"I understand..." Harry lowered his head, staring at the water rushing under the bridge beneath him. It was cold, grey and about as miserable as the mood. "Of course. Call back on this line."

He hung up, slipping the mobile into his jacket. He placed his arms on the rail and leaned on the cool steel. The London skyline was ghostly against the building cloud banks. Sometimes he wondered if this was all just an echo – an impression of civilisation lingering in a fragile moment of peace. Working for MI5 he was often too aware how close to the brink humanity played its cards. A few mistakes and it would all tumble into oblivion. A failed experiment.