"Don't go anywhere," Harry said into the phone before he hung up.
Ruth hadn't asked him to come home, but since he was already on his way, she wasn't about to try to stop him.
She was in the kitchen making a pot of tea when Harry arrived home. He called her name, and she called back to him. His face when he walked through the kitchen door told her that he'd no doubt driven home well above the speed limit, imagining the worst. He stood in the doorway for a moment, staring at Ruth, and then strode across the room, and took her in his arms. They had worked out a way to embrace which allowed her to use her shoulder without unduly stretching her muscles. Harry pulled her against him, so that she could feel the rapid beating of his heart against her chest.
"Did she do anything to you, Ruth? Threaten you …... anything?"
"No, she just wanted to speak to you. She wouldn't tell me who she was, but I knew anyway. After what you'd told me about you and her and Berlin, I …..."
"It was the cold war, Ruth. Everyone was shagging someone who wasn't their usual partner."
"I know, Harry. I can deal with that. After all, you didn't know me back then, and if you had, well …... I was just a child."
"What then? What's wrong, Ruth? I can tell that something is wrong."
"It sounds silly now you're here."
"Silly or not, tell me."
Ruth pulled away from him, but kept her arms around his waist. She felt grounded and safe in his presence. He felt solid under her hands, like the trunk of an oak tree. That was one small detail she planned keeping to herself. She searched his face, and all she saw was love and concern. "It was what she didn't say. She sounded like she knew something I didn't know."
"Given the circumstances, I'm sure that's true."
"And she knew my name."
"What?" Harry pulled away, and with his hands holding hers, he stared at her, all the time with his mind ticking over at breakneck speed. "There's no way she can possibly know your name. Other than those on the Grid, no-one else knows you're here."
"You haven't accidentally let my name drop to anyone?"
"No-one, Ruth. I've mentioned you to no-one. I'm fairly certain even Towers doesn't know we're together." Harry thought for a minute, and then his face changed. His pursed lips told her that something had displeased him. "Unless," he added, "the FSB were tailing me while you were in hospital. Had they done that, it would have been simple enough to discover your name, and to follow us here when you were discharged. I thought I had my eye out for a tail on us, but obviously I wasn't sharp enough."
"I'm so sorry, Harry."
"It's not your fault, Ruth." He again put his arms around her, and held her against him for a few minutes. Ruth noticed that his heart rate had slowed, but it was still faster than it should have been. She momentarily hoped that Harry wasn't going to consider that she was more trouble than she was worth. That would be another thought she'd not share with him.
"I got a strange vibe from her, Harry," Ruth said, pulling out of his embrace to pour them tea. "It was like she came here during the day, knowing you wouldn't be here, but she obviously knew I would be. She came here to show herself to me."
Harry sat down heavily at the table, and accepted the cup of tea Ruth had poured for him. "Sit down, Ruth," he said, indicating the chair opposite. "I can't go back to work. She might come back, and I want to be here when she does."
As much as Ruth wanted to tell him to go back to work, she didn't. She felt safe with him in the kitchen with her. His wide and imposing, familiar presence was comforting, and she didn't want him to leave her alone in the house.
"I think she might want to meet with you, Harry. It's just what I think. She didn't say, but …..."
"Ruth …... Ruth, look at me. I have nothing to say to her. Alec is handling the Russian delegation, and you know very well what he's like. He won't tolerate game-playing."
Ruth looked at him at last, her face showing the beginnings of a smile. "Do you mean that? You won't see her? She's rather beautiful."
"I have you, Ruth. Why would I want her? I have never wanted a woman as much as I want you."
The silence in the room was heavy with words yet to be expressed, and feelings which had not yet been explored between them. Harry reached out and grasped her hand in his own. He caressed her palm with his thumb, while he carefully watched her, trying to convey to her some of his strength and his love.
Ruth looked up at him, and, torn between wanting to lead him upstairs, and wanting some details, she chose the latter. "Harry," she said quietly, "I need …..."
"I need you too, Ruth."
Ruth shook her head, eyes cast downwards, and forged ahead, aware that she was breaking a precious moment between them. They would have more moments such as this in their future. She pulled her hand from his, and looked across the table at him. "I know what you mean, Harry, and I need you in that way too. Not now, though. First, I need to hear about Elena. I know you no longer care for her, but I need to know. I need to know why she'd be here, at your front door, looking for you."
Harry pulled his hand back and sighed, his shoulders heaving under the weight of the sigh. He looked at Ruth, his mind battling to find a starting point. "What is it you need to know, Ruth? She wasn't the only affair I had while I was married. I am not about to be unfaithful to you with her or with anyone else. At the time, I thought I loved her, but in hindsight I believe it was little more than lust. Every agent I knew – ours, the CIA, the Russians – they were all at it with someone. I was a different man in those days." Harry waited, took a few deep breaths, and glanced across at Ruth, who was watching him carefully. "My aim was to turn Elena, but little did I know at the time that she was turning me. We used each other. She had a son, Sasha, who was conceived around the time we first began sleeping together. I assumed she was being careful when we …... and so I thought nothing of it when she announced she was pregnant. She appeared content with Ilya, and to cheat on him put her at great risk. He was a powerful man, even back then. It was only when the boy was five or so that she told me he was mine. I knew she was lying. I knew the boy – Sasha – and he had Ilya's cold eyes …... predatory eyes. Sweet face, but cold eyes. I'm not surprised that he's now with the FSB. I saw him briefly a few days ago. He looks a lot like Ilya as a young man, although not quite as tall."
"Would you like some more tea?" Ruth asked, rising from the table to turn on the electric kettle, and make another pot.
"Yes. Yes, I would, thank you Ruth."
They waited while the kettle boiled, and then Ruth poured boiling water on to the tea leaves in the pot. She carried the pot back to the table, and sat down, her quick glance across the table to Harry an indication for him to continue.
"I had said I'd meet her at a park in Berlin. Our plan was for me to extract her …... to London. I failed to turn up, so she was left there waiting for me. I never really intended bringing her back here. How messy would that have been? A turned Russian agent in a flat somewhere in London, her child attending an English school, while she spreads the word that he is my son. I couldn't have that, although at the time, I wasn't certain that she was using me. I had to cut my ties with her, regardless of any consequences for her."
As Ruth poured them each a fresh cup of tea, he looked up at her. Her face was impassive, stoic, determined. This was harder for him than it was for her, and it was difficult for her.
"I'm not proud of what I did, Ruth. I didn't truly love her, and we used each other. That was the sum total of our relationship. It was the cold war – that is what happened then. I felt guilty for a long time, but she no longer has power over me, not any more."
"So, why would she come to your house during the day, and what does she want with me?"
Harry carefully sipped his tea, not wanting to burn his lips. "I don't know, Ruth, and I can only say that I'm so sorry my actions of 30 years ago have come back and spilled into your life as well as my own. I may have earned an irate visit from her, but you certainly haven't."
"Anything you are, anything you have done, Harry, informs the man you are today. I love the man you are now, and while I no longer feel the need to know everything from your past, I feel that there is more to this than you're telling me."
"There is, Ruth, but it truly belongs in the past, in a different time in history. Look …. if it makes you feel better, I'll have Elena tailed, and I can put a car outside the house to keep an eye on the front door."
"As much as I'd like to say that it's alright, and I'll be fine, I'd appreciate surveillance on the house, and yes, I think you need to find out where Elena goes, and who it is she meets."
Harry stepped out of the kitchen, and took out his phone to ring Dimitri. When he re-entered the kitchen, he again sat down, but this time, he chose the chair beside Ruth's.
"Dimitri is organising both, and so when he calls me again, it will mean that the surveillance car is in place, and I can go back to the Grid." He slid his arm around her shoulders, and pulled her against him. "Ruth, I'm so sorry about this, but I'll get to the bottom of it. The only reason I'm not telling you more, is that I'm not sure myself what's going on."
He bent down and put his lips lightly on hers. She responded greedily, slipping her good arm around his neck and drawing him closer. The kiss soon became a proper kiss, hungry and lust-driven. Harry felt his body reacting rapidly, and when a moan escaped him, he gently pulled away from her.
"Ruth," he said, pulling further from her, his eyes still closed, his body warm from the sensations the kiss had created. "Darling, I have to go. I have so much to do back at work, and then Ilya Gavrik wishes to meet me at the Home Secretary's office at 3." He withdrew his arm from around her, and she sighed, and leaned against him, her body like jelly. "I want this, Ruth. I want it as much as you do, perhaps more, but we can't – I can't – fully relax into this until we know what Elena is up to. I don't trust her. Were we to …... go upstairs …... I'd have one ear on the door, and the other on my phone."
Harry moved to stand up, and Ruth pulled her body upright, and looked up at him dolefully.
"I can't promise I'll make it home by seven, but I'll try. I'd much rather be with you than with bloody Ilya Gavrik, but …..."
"Duty calls."
"It does."
Ruth's eyes were on the front of his trousers, so Harry looked down to see that some adjustment was required. He turned away from her to compose himself, and push everything back into its rightful place.
"I won't kiss you goodbye, then," she said with a smile.
Before he could reply, his phone rang. "Yes?" he said gruffly to the caller. "Good. Thank you, Dimitri. I'll tell her."
As he pocketed his phone, Ruth spoke. "I take it I have my surveillance."
"You do." He picked up his coat from where he'd slung it over a chair, and shrugged it on. "I trust you to not flirt with the surveillance men."
Ruth smiled across at him, where he stood in the doorway to his kitchen. "I'll endeavour to control myself," she said.
"Good," Harry smiled at her.
He blew her a kiss before he left the room. His appointment with Gavrik was in less than three hours, and he had at least five hours of paperwork sitting on his desk.
Ruth heard the front door close, and then she sat back and finished her cup of tea, still wondering what Elena Gavrik had wanted with her.