The Monster At Home, Chapter Four
Just at the moment of Yalta's triumph, everything unravels.
It isn't due to Section D, or the CIA, or Mossad. That would somehow be easier to take. But to be brought down by a single, lone-wolf infiltrator is worse than a defeat, it's an affront. It makes them look like amateurs, like desiccated aristocrats play-acting at espionage to spice up their frivolous and parasitic lives.
How on earth did such a reactionary lout get access to them in the first place? Juliet would kill the idiot responsible for vetting and recruiting him -- except the CIA's already taken care of it for her. Far less brutally than she would have done, more's the pity.
"Glogauer's dead," announces Sholto as he joins her for breakfast in the dining room, but she already knows. The news feed on her laptop ran the story five minutes before; she'd nearly spilled scalding coffee down the front of her blouse in her shock.
The peace accords gutted; Yalta exposed; American air strikes on the verge of being launched against Iran. And now, six members of their London network murdered in less than thirty-six hours. She closes her eyes for a few moments and then opens them with a resigned sigh. They're all done for, almost certainly, but there's no point being histrionic.
"I sent warning to our comrades in France," she says, and she struggles to keep the bitterness from her voice at the thought of all their work so disastrously undone. "They'll pass word to the others to go into hiding."
"Have you packed your bags?"
"Not yet." At his raised eyebrows, she adds, "I won't leave until we've exhausted all our options."
"I'm afraid we have."
"There's still Floodland," she insists. They'd saved it as a last resort, hoping never to use it at all, but surely looming Armageddon must qualify.
"Not without Glogauer," he says. "He's the only one who knows where the activation code is. Knew, that is," he quickly corrects.
"We can search for it. We have nearly twenty-four hours left." She rises to her feet and begins to pace. The movement helps her focus; the worst thing about her injury was being left behind when her thoughts raced out of control. "We can't just let this war happen," she says. "Not while there's anything in our power to do to stop it."
"It's going to be rather difficult for us to do much of anything with this CIA foxhunt going on. The hounds are baying from every direction."
"Then we'll use Ros. She's still under Bob Hogan's radar. She can take advantage of MI5's resources while the rest of us stay out of sight."
She stops pacing and gives him a stern look that makes it clear the matter is no longer open to debate. He's still sceptical, she can see it in his eyes, but he's nothing if not a loyal field marshal.
He takes out his phone and flips it open. "I'll tell Magritte to contact her."
He's right to be doubtful. She has no illusions about their chances. Even if they succeed, the Americans will never rest until they hunt them down. They can flee the country, change their names, get plastic surgery, beg the Iranians or the Chinese for asylum if they're desperate enough, but it's only a matter of time.
It doesn't bother her. It never has. She's always known that daring to remake the world carries a price.
***
Against Juliet's more rational expectations, Ros actually delivers the Floodland code -- suspiciously ahead of schedule, and after having her cover blown to microscopic bits. It's all too good to be true, nigh on miraculous in fact. There's an air swirling around this lucky congruence of events that utterly reeks of Harry Pearce's aftershave, and so Juliet decides to inspect the code -- and its messenger -- for herself.
Her entrance into the room renders the imperturbable Ros Myers wide-eyed and momentarily speechless. It would be a moment to savour at any other time or circumstance; instead, Juliet settles for a few stinging verbal slaps to leave no doubt whatsoever about who's in charge, and then gets down to business.
She seizes the laptop and swings it round on the table to take a look, but the string of numbers and letters appearing there tells her nothing. Is it the genuine code? That's a wild gamble, no matter what glib assurances Ros utters. However, when Ros offers up none other than Harry as a gesture of good faith, the odds start looking distinctly better.
In fact, in a small corner of her mind, Juliet might even call herself optimistic.
***
While the guards retrieve poor Harry from whatever clever hiding place he thinks he's safe in, Juliet escorts Ros to an upstairs bedroom to wait -- and to consider her options.
She leaves her there unsupervised -- aside from Magritte in the operations room a few doors down -- but with the code now in Juliet's possession, there's not much mischief Ros can accomplish. The freedom is more symbolic: it's an offer to join them, really join them, as a volunteer and an equal. As someone committed to something grander and more meaningful than herself: no longer anyone's lackey; no longer the sheltered daughter; no longer the colleague more respected than liked.
Juliet opens the door and ushers Ros inside. Sunlight from the windows pools on the floor. On the bed, Juliet's suitcase lies, neatly packed and ready for a voyage into exile and the pages of history. There's a place for Ros on that journey, a rewarding one in fact, if she cares to accompany her.
"Feel free to leave," Juliet says as she turns to depart downstairs, and whatever Ros may think, she actually means it. "But like you say," she adds, "where have you got to go?"
***
Harry struggles and kicks even as the guards deposit him in the chair. He looks rather badly roughed up, which wasn't Juliet's intent at all, so he must have put up quite the fight. She stifles a smile at the thought: she always has admired his spirit.
Gallant, foolish Harry Pearce. She hopes she won't have to make him suffer.
After his initial open-mouthed double-take at seeing her standing at the far end of the room, he reacts with alternating insults and gallows humour. She recognises it's his way of coping with being so badly outmanoeuvred, so for once she indulges him without responding in kind. He seems to notice the difference in her manner, because he, too, eventually turns serious.
"Juliet, what are you doing?" he pleads.
"We're preventing a catastrophic war."
If only she can explain it to him, surely he'll understand. They're on the same side, the two of them. They always have been, even if he hasn't known it.
"And how many lives do you intend to take in the process?" he asks.
"The point is to save lives."
"Like the lives you risked when you planted toxins in the water supply?"
This catches her by surprise, and she breaks into laughter. "Oh, Harry, you disappoint me."
She gives him a moment to reconsider, but he merely glares at her in indignant silence.
"There wasn't any toxin," she says, finally. "We planted a harmless device and tampered with the monitoring system. When the device was triggered, the system gave a false alarm." At his look of dawning realisation, she continues, "The point was to keep you lot occupied long enough for the plane to travel outside European airspace before you brought it down. Your people got the moral satisfaction of being heroes, and we bought ourselves some time. A win-win, I'd say, wouldn't you?"
His glare softens, maybe wavers, but doesn't entirely vanish. Can he really misjudge her so badly?
"Did you really think I'd poison thousands of British civilians?" she asks. "What kind of a monster do you take me for?"
"I don't know any longer, Juliet," he says, shaking his head with an expression she can't quite decipher. "That's the problem."
***
Inside the Norfolk house, a late afternoon breeze stirs the curtains. Hundreds of kilometres above, Floodland is spreading: America's orbiting death machine begins to transform, piece by vulnerable piece, into mere scrap metal hurtling uselessly through the exosphere.
There won't be an attack on Iran tomorrow, that much at least is certain. Whatever else may come to pass is up to the Americans themselves. The shock to the system may just bring them to their senses, persuade them to forego their bellicose dream of New Rome and rejoin the company of civilised nations.
It's a beautiful prospect. But Harry doesn't seem to appreciate the new world that's emerging. He tries to persuade Juliet to bring it all to a halt: he reasons; he wheedles; he even appeals to her patriotism.
"Like it or not," he says, "the defence of the realm is linked to America. If they're blind, so are we. If they're helpless, so are we."
He doesn't stop to consider that she's weighed these arguments already and found them wanting. He doesn't stop to consider that she's spent years thinking everything through, or that her choices are based on ethical principles just as firmly held as his own. She suspects he's forgotten that anyone else even has principles, he's been the lone voice of integrity in the bureaucratic wilderness for so long. The problem is that in the process, his moral sense has shrunk to the boundaries of the personal; it's stunted, cautious, and, in the end, essentially conservative.
"The iconoclastic Harry Pearce, trotting out all the conventional platitudes," she taunts. "I see that knighthood's gone to your head."
When a voice sounds from the doorway, they both start. It's Ros. She hasn't fled the house, despite every opportunity, which means she's chosen something other than herself.
She's chosen Yalta, as it turns out. Juliet feels a twinge of pity as she watches Harry's face fall.
***
That liar. That poisonous, double-dealing charlatan. Ros set them up, like the treacherous, reptilian thing that she is and always has been -- and now the laptop is gone.
If Juliet catches the creature, she'll destroy her. She'll rid the planet of that odious presence, once and for all.
***
The laptop has disappeared forever. By now, Adam and the rest of Section D must be invoking their technical magic to shut Floodland down. They might even succeed. It doesn't matter so much, in the end: it's the attempt that Juliet's most proud of, not the outcome.
Ros, however, isn't so fortunate in her effort to escape. She and Harry sit bound to their chairs -- impotent, defenceless, and paralysed in place. Much like Juliet herself was, once upon a time, when her vision wasn't as clear or her resolve as unwavering. Her true paralysis wasn't ever physical, she's finally come to understand: what held her back was hesitation, compromise, restraint.
At this point, it's obvious to Juliet that Harry won't join her, but she gives him one last chance for old times' sake. In thanks, he scorns her as a "self-appointed saviour."
"All I've done," she explains, although her patience even for him is wearing thin, "is all we've ever done: put Britain first."
Across the room, Ros snorts indisgust. Juliet grits her teeth. How dare this cold-blooded cynic question her motivations? What would she know about love of country? She couldn't even be loyal to her own father, much less the nation.
Juliet could give Ros a bullet to the head, but the two-faced turncoat doesn't deserve a quick death. No, she deserves to suffer, knowing in her last moments that she brought it all on herself. She could have chosen sides honestly, like a person with principles, or she could simply have left and saved herself. But Ros doesn't believe in causes, so she couldn't choose; she doesn't believe in herself, so she couldn't be saved. She's empty; she's a cipher; she's a vacuum that can't be filled and must therefore be sealed off.
"I gave you the opportunity to walk away and you didn't take it," says Juliet, methodically screwing the vial into the syringe mechanism. "You betrayed this operation and you betrayed Harry's." All she knows how to do is betray people. It's sickening. "You never found your place in the world, did you, Ros? You never found your place, and now...now you don't have one. I'm sorry."
But she's not sorry, not really. When she approaches Ros, Ros cries and cringes; while she tries to be brave, Juliet sees that she's really a coward. The defiant facade is a falsehood, just like everything else.
Juliet gives Ros a sharp yank by the hair to expose her neck, then positions the syringe, finger poised on the plunger. As the needle pricks the surface, Ros grips the arms of the chair and squeals in terror. From a vast distance, maybe from the other side of the universe, Harry's voice faintly echoes. He cries out; he protests; he shouts encouragement, praise, and exhortations to courage. My outstanding officer, he calls Ros, as he commands her not to be afraid. Is he deranged? The woman's a traitor, a compulsive betrayer, an amoral monster who must be annihilated for everyone's good, and-- God, shut up, Harry, with your incessant righteous outrage. You can't stop this. It's already done.
Done.
When Ros finishes gasping and seizing and slumps forward in the chair, Harry stares at Juliet with a volcanic loathing. It should blister. No, it should incinerate. And yet it doesn't; the wave of heat strikes her and freezes on contact as if her body temperature's dropped to absolute zero. She's finally impervious to his judgement, it seems. She's beyond rebuke, beyond shame, beyond guilt, beyond regret, beyond the petty, moralistic small-mindedness that people like Harry choose to indulge in. She's beyond everything now, and she won't look back.
She's beyond it all, and she has the Myers family to thank.
Sir Jocelyn Myers once tried to kill Juliet; Rosalind Myers had saved her life. Between the two of them, they brought her to this.
She'll never forgive either one.
The End
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