Harry Pearce shone with a fresh dusting of rain. It rolled off his trench coat onto the desk as he circled, eyeing an array of reports Ruth had arranged in his absence. There was a buzz of commotion beyond the glass walls. Phones. Comms. TV stations picking up the first hints of the story. Impromptu meetings clustered around Ruth's desk. The usual melee that formed the pulse of MI5.
"How long have you been sitting there?" Harry asked the Home Secretary, who was immersed, scrolling through his Twitter account while drinking instant coffee in the corner of Harry's office.
William Towers was formidable when he had to be. The rest of the time he resembled a sleeping lion whose perpetual sipping equated a casual tail flick. "I quite fancied the break," Towers replied. "It's peaceful here. I can see why you hide away in your office for great swathes of the day."
"You should try investing in a lock for yours." Harry countered, draping the damp coat over his chair.
"Would it have made a difference?"
"Not to us but I do find them quite effective against prying civil servants."
"I have a surplus of those." The Home Secretary laughed, setting his coffee and phone aside. He assumed rather than asked if his office was bugged. He lived in a shell of honesty whether he liked it or not. 'Full transparency' was a burden he'd never expected to bear in politics. "The story is breaking. Our Prime Minister offered a short condolence to his Chinese counterpart a few minutes ago. I re-tweeted it, of course. One must keep up with the modern age." He added, when he sensed Harry's distaste. "Who leaked it, Harry?"
"Not us," he assured Towers. "There's no sense of decency among the vultures these days. No accountability."
"I suppose you believe that's our fault, for relaxing licensing freedom on the Press. It might have happened in 1863 but Harry Pearce knows how to hold a grudge..."
"They'll learn the hard way, that's all. Let's hope, for all our sakes, that it doesn't involve a revolution. Those get messy. Especially for politicians." There was a lingering moment of tension broken by a hefty sheet of rain hitting the window. The weather had rolled in. "You're not here about the institutionalised debauchery of the Press."
"No indeed. Not a social call either, lovely as this is." He paused as Harry's senior analyst made a pass by the glass. She kept an eye on them like a hawk trawling the fields for mice. Towers lowered his voice. "Remember that business a week back? The unfortunate-"
"I remember."
"It's been bothering me."
"Distressing as it may appear on the surface, we lose people more often than we'd like to admit. They're snatched away by god knows who into bottomless pits. You think we're shadows? There are entire countries without names in the wilderness."
"No Harry, that's not what I mean. It's Rasmussen – I've run into him before." The Home Secretary reconsidered his coffee, steeling himself with another gulp. "In another life," he began, holding Harry's eye, "I was a GP moonlighting as a middling lecturer for a bit of extra cash, scarce as it was."
Harry's 'resting face' told Towers that the legendary Harry Pearce was intimately aware of everyone's pre-history, particularly politicians responsible for national security.
"Yes well..." he cleared his throat, "it was during my libertine days. Late nineteen-seventies, practically the Dark Ages. Rasmussen gave a guest talk which I encouraged my students to attend. It was definitely him, Harry."
"You mean, you've met our missing scientist before?" Harry shifted forward on his seat, interest piqued.
"'Met' might be a bit strong but I've certainly laid eyes on the man. What I want to know is why you stripped it out of the reports. It's dumb luck that I noticed."
"What?"
"That it's not in the file, Harry. What are you playing at?"
Ruth handed the Home Secretary an enlarged photo of Rasmussen taken at the dinner. He inspected it for several minutes, a crease forming across his forehead.
"God Harry, it's hard to tell. We're delving thirty odd years into my memory. It's been watered down with a fair bit of house rum over the years – you know what I mean?" Another minute of silence. "His hair is different. Certainly he face is thinner and younger. He must sleep in a crypt." Apparently MI5 didn't have a sense of humour so he cleared his throat. "It could be him. The nose. I remember that. Bloody shocker. I'd have sent it back."
"There's no mention of this man lecturing, guest or otherwise, at your university. In fact," Ruth took the photo from him and slipped it protectively into the file with the rest, "there's almost no reference to him outside Denmark, China and a brief period in Australia."
"Australia?" Harry asked.
"Their laws regarding medical research are more relaxed than the US and UK. It's become a haven for top tier researchers who have enough financial backing." Ruth frowned. "If what you say is true, Home Secretary, then our already heavily redacted files are incomplete. I'll come in via the back route, see if the university has any hard copy references that were overlooked by our new light-fingered friends."
"Do you think he really could have done it? All that rubbish about immortality..."
"I hope not," Harry replied firmly. "We've got enough problems without the world's richest criminal class sticking around forever. Highlight of my week when one of them checks out."
"Ever the cynic."
"Can I escort you back to your car, Home Secretary?" Ruth asked, sensing enmity. He nodded and they left Harry alone in his office, watching the rain thicken. "You're lucky," she added, as they approached the Home Secretary's car. They waited while it pulled in and his assistants unfurled comically large umbrellas to escort him to the car. "He was in a good mood today."
"He was distracted," he replied, rather seriously. "As you well know."
EDINBURGH MEDICAL SCHOOL
TEVIOT PLACE, SCOTLAND
Ruth brushed her hand against the grey stone. Age leaked from the porous surface. She could smell it in the air. Edinburgh's Medical School's vaulting arches had been tempered by worn edges. The bases of its plinths were microscopic gardens riddled with flowering moss while the stone floors bore the polish from five hundred years of students washing over the tiles. Against the tide of humanity she felt like a speck of dust caught in a sunbeam, spinning for a moment in the light then lost in the shadows with the rest.
'It should be to your ….eft down ….idor five alpha zero.'
Ruth slid her fingers through her hair to subtlety adjust the wire. "Say again." It made no difference, the metre thick stone walls were interfering with comms so she went old school, literally, by wandering up to a campus map.
Truthfully, the further Ruth allowed herself to sink into the university's ailing buildings the more comfortable she became. The shuffle of people mixed with dried leaves scraping down barren expanses of stone and gaping doorways where the wind howled inexplicably was everything she relished about the world. Give her something imperfect and she'd love it forever. Tortured souls – peeling paint. 'A wild rose climbing up a mould'ring wall...' Matthew Arnold expressed her heart better than a Hallmark card ever could.
'See it?'
"Yeah. I see it." Ruth replied. 'It' was an unassuming door that led straight into a sunken theatre. The Gothic in her briefly romanticised a slab in the centre of the room with a body laid over it in pieces, a full audience of leering scholars leaning over the wooden balustrades. Ruth could almost hear them creak. A scalpel lifted – cut the air.
'At the back of th.. ….tre there's a room. Grey door.'
Her footsteps echoed across the mezzanine structure until she reached the stage at its heart. There were grooves cut into the stone floor beneath, spreading out from the centre before ringing the area and vanishing into pipes. In front of her was another door.
"Keypad."
'Try sliding your pass down the side.'
She did. The light turned green and its lock clicked open. "Well done Simon..."
'It's a school not a fortress.' The rest was a jumbled half-transmission from Sasha that left Ruth smirking. The hostility between those two had been rising ever since Sasha been forced to seek Simon's technical help on what turned out to be a loose cable. Crumbling egos and retaliatory quips ensued.
Ruth was careful to leave the door ajar. A flick of the light switch shuddered the room into a belligerent, neon bath. Her stomach dropped in disappointment. Despite the thematic surrounds she'd once again found herself in a filing room. Ruth eyed the sagging plastic folders.
Business as usual.
"I see you..." Ruth's index finger hovered above the record. That was the thing with paperwork – it slipped through the cracks in a overtly integrated computer empire. Tiered conspiracies could be unravelled in an instant by an innocuous receipt or forgotten file. Ruth fancied herself an archaeologist of sorts, delving through the nation's fine print.
1978, August 5th Mammalian Reproductive Ancestry. M. Rasmussen
She laid the file open on the floor and photographed the attached transcript. No photograph of Rasmussen but this was enough to prove that their files were being meddled with. All she had to do was find out who had their hands dirty. If it turned out to be MI6, Ruth was going to beat Fisher to death with a stapler.
About to finish, Ruth found herself detained by the amusing hand written note clipped to the folder.
"Oh dear, William... How young you were." Ruth lingered, smiling at the schoolboy words before vanishing without a trace.
It was hours later before Sasha made contact.
'Ruth?'
"Jesus!" Ruth hissed, startling hard enough to spill take-away coffee over her hands. Instinctively she lifted it up, licking the lid and her fingers before it dripped onto anything valuable. She'd entirely forgotten that she was wearing a wire.
'You alright?'
"I'm fine, Sasha. What is it?" A train pulled into the platform, blaring its horn. The noise disturbed a pigeon who took flight, rushing dramatically in a flurry of grey. Feathers were shed, fluttering to the concrete. "My train's here."
'Take the third carriage. Someone will meet you there.'
"Who?" Ruth gathered up her things, discarding the coffee as she hurried toward the train.
'You'll know who.'
She heard the line disconnect in her ear. "Great. Thanks..." Ruth hissed to herself.
Stepping into the carriage, Ruth brushed by the usual squash of bodies jostling for seats. Her eyes scanned their faces, hunting for potential spies. Eventually she gave up and took her seat beside a gentleman napping against the window. His soft snores were joined by a screech as the train departed. She retrieved her phone and made a start on the transcript.
"Find what you were looking for?"
Ruth dropped the phone into her lap at the familiar voice. It emerged from one of the locked boxes inside herself where she kept the memory of people who had departed the service and by necessity, her life. There was no denying its owner...
"Malcolm? Bloody hell!" Ruth placed her hand over her heart, feeling it shudder rather violently from the shock.
He lifted his head, turning toward her. His slouch hat hid a heavily receded hairline but the large coat with its collar turned up did a poor job with his unusually dark skin. He'd been aboard. Somewhere that had claim to the sun's warmth.
"Did Harry rope you into this?"
"Oh no, I volunteered." Malcolm assured her, sitting up. The depths of his warm smile made her return in kind. "It is good to see you again."
"I thought you'd gone abroad? A grand tour like the heroes in your books."
He was holding one of them now with a dog-eared pages and a faded cover. "This is abroad," he replied. "I've learned something, Ruth. No matter how far we travel – how many borders we cross, we can't escape the service. We belong to it. Why I am I telling you..." he wondered to himself. "You learned that lesson before me."
They were quiet for a moment. Ruth thought of her lost family and Malcolm of the one he never had until she reached over, placing her hand gently on his. "It is good to see you."
Malcolm nodded, then slid a miniSD card into her hand. The drop was perfect. Moments later it was securely in her bag, unseen.
"Are you coming to London?"
He shook his head. "This is my stop," Malcolm shifted, collecting his things as the train began to slow. "I've a few errands to run but if I decide to visit monuments south of the border... May I borrow your phone?"
Ruth handed it over. Malcolm stripped the memory card out and replaced it before sending a txt – to Harry – she realised later. Alone for the remainder of the trip to London, Ruth stared at the message Malcolm had sent.
S352
Alpha-numeric, it could be anything. Pass-code. Locker number. Whatever it was, Harry had not replied. She wanted to know what they were up to, especially if they were determined to involve her.
Malcolm tugged at his coat, dragging the material around his body. Dunstanburgh Castle loomed ahead with the North Sea on his right and a thin, dying strip of green dividing the ground from the bleak walls. The first wisps of fog had begun to collect on the beach. Soon their barren, pebbled shore would be replaced by an effusive second bank of clouds hiding all but the rise of Dunstanburgh's broken walls. There was another ruin further along the coast. They stood as ghoulish sentries, dragging tourists in with their tragic beauty.
He blended in with the families wandering around the grounds. No one offered a second look in his direction as he peeled away to an abandoned wall. Alone, with the freezing wind rattling in the loose gravel overhead, Malcolm tugged at one of the stones. He shuffled it out of the wall revealing a hide with an old tin box. Inside was a passport, wallet, phone and Beretta 92FS Inox. Malcolm raided the stash, replaced the stone and returned to the beautiful vista.
"Oh Harry..." he muttered to the wind.
THAMES HOUSE, LONDON
MI5 CENTRAL HQ
Harry side-eyed his phone. He'd been waiting for some time to see Ruth's number flash across his screen. If there was something you could rely on from one war to the next, it was the train service. Without opening the message, Harry swiped the device from his desk and crossed the floor, weaving through the MI5 officers. Darkness closed in outside. The earlier rush of interest surrounding the Chinese President's son had died down, as all emergencies did. The 'shine' had worn off and the Press, bless their fickle souls, skulked onto the next headline.
Breathing space.
To his surprise, Harry picked up a tail. A slender man watched from across the street, bathing in the first glow of a street lamp wearily blinking into existence. He wondered what he'd done recently to warrant the attention. Harry gave the tail a rather pointed, lingering look hoping to discourage him. It didn't. The man waited a few minutes before pursuing.
The hard way, then.
Harry cut a few street crossings fine then swung around sharply to the left, vanishing into the London Underground. There he waited, out of sight at the bottom of the stairs for his new friend. It was an old MI5 hunt trick, playfully (and sometimes seriously) referred to as, 'the killing steps'. He was getting too old for this sort of thing. Harry could feel it in his joints as he pressed himself against the cold wall. A shallow river ran at his feet, left there by the passing storm.
Footsteps descended. They slowed as their owner paused, confronted with the sparse tunnel. Suspicion built. Harry knew exactly what was going through the man's mind. He was weighing up the risk. To pursue the a notorious spy into the unknown or risk failure. The tail hovered around indecision. Harry bit his lip, listening to the steady drip of water from the street above. Somewhere, deep below, a train ambled along.
Eventually Harry realised that he was alone.
Harry turned the tables on his new friend. Folding back over his path, he took the fire stairs to the street and hovered at the fountain. He spotted the tail leaning against a black car, deep in conversation with its driver. Making a note of the plates, Harry left the station and crossed the park. Free of prying eyes, he mingled with the crowds. The markets were in town showering the street with colour and song. He watched them impassively as though they belonged to an entirely different world. Odd, Harry couldn't remember when civilians became a separate entity to himself. When he lingered on their faces it wasn't with pity – it was envy.
The library played host to the celebrations. Lit up with a decidedly camp choice of colours, it beckoned people off the street. Harry was just another face, sliding into its warmth. Only now, surrounded by a forest of books, did Harry take out his phone and open Ruth's message. Malcolm's dead drop, prepared before he retired. Harry had made him swear to it before accepting his resignation. Spies. They never truly left. Especially not ones like Malcolm. Complain as he might about the endless progression of time, Malcolm was incapable of letting demons lie. If there was a way to help, he would. If Harry was honest, Malcolm was a better man than him. His deeds came from a selfless flaw in his character that longed for a better world. Harry did it because he was a talented liar with slither of ice running through his heart.
Black gloves on, he trailed his finger along the book spines leaving a streak in their dust coat. The science fiction section, of course, a tribute. The reference took Harry deeper into the shelves. Coloured, sensational covers gave way to bleak editions until the shelf ran dry. Harry stopped. The last number was S351. He checked the immediate area but he was not mistaken. Curious, he cleared part of the shelf and dipped his hand deep into the wood. He felt around, pausing at the slightly raised edge at the bottom corner. He tugged at it, peeling away the veneer covering another book.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. What else... Harry took the book and checked it out, exchanging pleasantries with the front desk.
