Glad to see Harry eliciting a smidgen of sympathy in the last chapter! Thank you for all the reviews and sorry for the delay. RL getting in the way rather.

48 hours later

Harry paused, massaging his fingers while he marshalled his thoughts. Then he began to type.

Towers phoned to let me know that there's going to be an inquiry. Not just into Albany and the Lucas North / John Bateman affair, but into my whole career. 'The buzzards are circling', he said. I 'should prepare for life outside MI5,' he said. None of this was entirely unexpected, but where once I would have been galvanised into preparing a robust defence, my first reaction was 'let them do their worst'. In all my years with the army and then the security service I've seen and heard things that would make most people's blood run cold, but even my thick skin isn't totally impregnable, and the events of this week have rather knocked the stuffing out of me. Lucas's betrayal has been devastating, far more so than Bernard 's or Connie's, and I should have realised something was wrong long before I did. I should certainly have believed Ruth when she first raised her concerns. Did I really learn nothing from the Mik Maudsley affair?

Ruth. Although she now knows - as do the rest of the team - that Albany was a fake, she still hasn't spoken to me. There was a flicker of shock at the sight of my forehead yesterday morning, and that is the most I have elicited from her. She won't look me in the eye, she hasn't been near my office, she says the bare minimum in response to any questions I ask of her. I wondered if her ordeal at the hands of Lucas might have affected her more than she's letting on, but then I saw her in the kitchen with Dimitri this afternoon, laughing at one of his stories. Stupid, deluded old fool that I am, I felt a surge of jealousy so intense that I marched in, put my mug in the sink and marched out again without saying a word. I keep telling myself that she has made her feelings all too clear on more than one occasion, and I need to accept this and move on. Yet these words are as inadequate a salve for a broken heart now as they ever were.

It is likely that when I go to Thames House in the morning I will be refused access. Better that, perhaps, than being frogmarched from the building. No doubt my suspension will be long enough to allow the buzzards time to dig up enough rope to hang me with, although if Albany isn't a smoking gun, to mix my metaphors rather horribly, I have no idea what is. I suspect that dismissal from the service and being stripped of my pension rights is the best I can hope for; that I can cope with. Imprisonment, I'm not so sure. Not anymore.

So all I can do now is protect my team; disassociate myself from them as much as I can until my so-called jury passes judgement and I know that Section D is safe. The stronger their ties to me, the greater the justification the JIC has for taking punitive measures against them too. Yet Albany was my decision. Giving up a state secret, albeit one of no tangible worth, for the woman I love was my decision. Hang me out to dry by all means, but leave my team, and Section D, alone.

He hit save, and leaned back against the headboard with a sigh. That Beth and Dimitri hadn't worked with Five for long would definitely make his job easier. Tariq...well...by the nature of their job the desk spooks never had the same level of loyalty to him as the field officers did, and he was no Malcolm, but...

Rolling onto his hip he reached for the mobile phone on the bedside table and hit speed dial. He thought he was about to be bumped to voicemail when all of a sudden, he heard a rather unamused:

'Yeah?'

'Alec, it's Harry.'

The tone instantly changed. 'Harry? What's wrong?'

'There's going to be an inquiry into my whole career, not just Albany. Towers just told me. Anyway, I'm concerned that some of the more vindictive members of the panel may use the team's loyalty to me as justification for disbanding the section. Whatever punishment they mete out to me, that I can't let happen so I need you to...I need you to sow seeds of doubt in the team, Alec. I need you to ensure that a/ they don't try to sway the outcome in any way and b/ they don't try to convince the inquiry that I'm Pa bloody Walton. Do you get my drift?'

'Harry, this is absurd. We can fight this. You can't just let them throw you to the wolves!'

'You know as well as I do that I committed treason, whatever my justifications were and whether Albany was real or not. And now I've got to take whatever...'

'Yes, but we can ensure that it's just a slapped wrist or something, there's no need to do the cheese eating surrender monkey bit and don a fucking hair shirt!'

'What?'

'Don't be such a bloody sap! Okay, so you're probably still in shock after Lucas and pissed off that they're going to throw the book at you but...'

Harry's head lolled back against the headboard. 'Please, Alec, just do this for me. I thought I'd be leaving Five under my own steam and on my own terms but it's not going to happen so I might as well make the process as painless as possible for everyone.'

Harry was beginning to wonder if they'd been cut off, then, 'Okay. Fair enough.'

'And you mustn't let them know what you're doing and why.'

'Obviously. But they'll never believe me.'

'Make them believe you, Alec.'

'So what happens now?'

'I just wait to hear. But I'd imagine I'll hear tomorrow that I'm suspended, effective immediately. I'm not overfond of being frogmarched out of my own office, so I won't be in. Let the goons try to find me.'

Alec smiled. 'I'll call you tomorrow. Don't worry, I'll make sure it's a secure line and I'll keep Tariq out of the loop.'

'Thank you. Oh, and Alec?'

'Mm?'

'Keep an eye on Ruth for me.'