So this chapter unfortunately gets a bit plotty, but I hope it still works. I've also taken a lot of the script from the episode too.
Harry
What she says about the Home Secretary makes perfect sense, and she's completely correct in that we need more information. I feel a rush of love for this brilliant woman and I can't resist kissing her. "You're right." I feel a prickle on the back of my neck and I know Sasha has been watching us, now knowing that Ruth is more to me than a colleague or an employee. For some reason, this makes me feel tense. I can't explain it. But we don't have the time and I nod in the direction of Elena.
"I want you in here with me." She surprises me buy not following me instantly, and I turn.
"Why?" she asks.
"Because of my history and my personal connection to this… it's making things… cloudy for me, even though I don't want it to," I say. "You can see things clearly. You always do, and as I've told you before, I trust your judgement."
"Okay," she says, smiling at me. And to my relief she follows me to Elena's interrogation room, managing to lose the smile before we enter.
"Have you found him, the go between?" Elena asks, seemingly concerned.
"We have an address, my team are on their way," I say. I know she won't be foiled by avoiding to answer her question. "Elena, we need to know everything. You've been protecting the person behind the attacks on the partnership and I understand why, but it has to stop, now. It wasn't Jim was it?" I'm very well aware that Jim most probably had nothing to do with this, and I have for a while, but I know I was meant to believe he was guilty.
"It was me, Harry. Ilya wants this deal, he always has. I know the details of the attacks because I ordered them."
"How, why?" I ask, and I'm not feigning my surprise. I really thought it was Ilya and she was being loyal to him, lying for him.
"Have you ever told anyone the truth about how you recruited me?" she asks and I feel the dread drown me, very aware that Ruth's listening in. I was not aware that Elena had found out the truth about how I'd disgustingly lied to her all those years ago.
"You know?"
"Yes," she says. "I can see from your face he never told you. Too ashamed." Elena's looking behind me, at Ruth and I hate that.
"Yes." I pull out a chair and sit down, thinking that pacing around the room isn't going to help anyone. I am ashamed, but it's not the reason I never told her the truth. I never told her because I'm not that man any more, and there was never an operational reason to tell her. I realise I'm justifying it to myself, but Elena has little to do with my relationship with Ruth, and I like to keep it that way.
"What has this got to do with the attack, Elena?" I can tell Ruth wants to stop this trip down memory lane, and I know this is uncomfortable for her. I feel so guilty for dragging her into this mess.
"Harry and I were in love, or at least we thought we were. But Harry had to choose between being a good man or a good spy. My parents were killed in a car accident. Harry and Jim forged a KGB case file showing that they had been wrongly arrested, tortured, murdered," her voice fills with emotion and I feel terrible. "He used that lie to turn me. He asked me to spy on my country, my husband, to risk my life every day to risk the safety of his own son." I know Sasha's listening to this, and she must have assumed that too. Has she suddenly given up hiding the truth from him? Or does she no longer care what Sasha knows about his parentage? I can hardly believe either one of her, but she was careless with her words there.
"It was the making of him. Do you see him differently now?" Elena's gaze shifts to Ruth, and it's only when she's no longer looking at me that I realise how intensely her eyes were boring into me.
I don't turn to see Ruth's face at Elena's question. I don't want to see the way she's looking at me. Disdain, disgust, disappointment? She could be looking at me in a thousand ways that would break my heart. I've become used to the loving way she looks at me lately, and I do not want to give that up, so I don't turn and look at her. Instead I bow my head and hope that she'll forgive me this.
"Yes. I see he's given more than I thought possible." I don't know if she really believes this or if she's simply throwing Elena off by her words. It's at this point that I uncomfortably remind myself that Ruth's father died when she was very young, and I'm sure she's wondering if I would lie to her like that. I wouldn't, of course not, but does she know that?
"She loves you far more than you deserve," Elena says. I don't react, but I know this is true, and I intend on telling Ruth that later when we don't have an audience.
We're interrupted by Callum opening the door, and both Ruth and I move to him, leaving Elena seated.
Ilya Gavrik's here," he says.
I'm annoyed, wondering how he found us here when I know we're secure, but I don't argue. "Let him in." Callum looks at me like I've lost my mind and I can feel Ruth's eyes on me in question. I don't look at her. After what Elena just said, I don't know if I want to see the hurt there. I debate leaving the interrogation room to talk to the other two Gavrik's but decide against it. I want to get to the bottom of this and we both return to Elena, Callum closing the door.
"How did you find out I'd lied to you?" I ask. I'd be very interested to know who told her the truth.
"I didn't find out. I always knew. I was a spy before you met me, you were not recruiting me. I was recruiting you." She's speaking slowly as if to spell it out for someone slow and I sigh heavily. If that is true, she's always lied to me and not a thing she's told me in thirty years can possibly be trusted. She's lied from the moment we met, and if I hadn't double checked with DNA, I'd never know whether Sasha was my son or not.
"Poor, sweet Harry," Elena says as she shakes her head with disdain which makes me hate her on the spot. "I was recruited by a group of men within the KGB who handled unofficial operations. They knew that you were planning to turn me, so they asked me to sleep with you, to pretend to be your loyal agent, your lover. That part was not hard. The night you told me the lie about my parents, my handlers had warned me what to expect. I was desperate for you not to tell me, my feelings for you were real. I wanted you to prove everyone wrong. For a moment I wanted to tell you the truth. I tried to call but you weren't there. From that moment on I was a double agent. They were right, they were the only ones I could trust." I don't believe her feelings for me were real, ever. She's been wrapped up in too many lies, been used by too many people for that to be the case.
"That's impossible, you gave me good intelligence for years," I say. She did, most of it was highly useful.
"Some to gain your confidence. The long term plan was to use you to channel disinformation to the west and eventually to turn you. But you were too decent. You burned me. So then I was to pretend to defect, to become a plant, but Jim Coaver stopped you." She shakes her head and does an elegant little shrug which annoys me even further.
"So why tell us about this attack?" Ruth says sharply, maybe she's as annoyed as I am.
"That's it, Ruth. Back to the matter in hand. Your speciality, analysis intelligence but not so good with people," Elena provokes. I flash Ruth a look to tell her that that's not what I think and she closes her eyes for a moment in thanks.
"Tell us everything you know about this attack, who ordered it?" Ruth demands. I enjoy hearing her voice like that and seeing Elena almost twitch under her gaze.
"The group who recruited me have grown over the years, they are not just intelligence officers now. They are business people, politicians united by patriotism, nationalism you would call it. They believe Russia is becoming too weak. They could not allow the partnership between our countries, it humiliates Russia. I agree with them. I have first hand experience of Western hypocrisy. They would rather open conflict than this deal, so they launch an attack so destructive the partnership is irrelevant."
"You've killed people before, why the sudden attack of conscience?" I ask.
"I will not sacrifice innocent lives, I'm not a terrorist. We all have a line we can't cross, don't we Harry? I am at mine."
