Author's Note: thank you to everyone who has read this story, and especially to those who have taken the time to review. Thank you!

Chapter Seven: The Interrogation

"False face must hide what the false heart doth know"

- Shakespeare, MacBeth

After a long, broken night in the cells, they came for Lucas at nine the following morning. He'd fallen into a fitful nap not long before, only to find himself being roughly shaken back into consciousness by the hands of one of the Thames House security guards. Contrary to expectations, he was led to Section D's meeting room, rather than being interrogated in the interview room – some small concession to the fact he had provided MI5 with years of dedicated service.

Harry, Ruth, Ros and Tom Quinn were already in there, waiting for him when he arrived. They were all grouped at the far end of the table, sticking close together and keeping him at a distance, where he sat in the place normally occupied by Harry. As he sat down, Lucas briefly glanced at each in turn: Harry hid his feelings behind a carefully constructed look of indifference; Tom and Ros had their heads together as they whispered over some document sat between them. But Ruth managed a small smile as he settled down. He couldn't help but be curious about how Tom Quinn had become roped into this.

Amidst all the panic and chaos of the last week, Lucas hadn't really considered how he would feel to be the one on the outside. The subject of a case; rather than the one to pursue it. He felt like he was populating a parallel universe where everything was upside down. However, now that the moment arrived, he wanted only to purge himself of the burden he had been carrying since the day that bomb went off. That old adage – the truth will set you free – had been playing in his head in all night. And it would bring freedom, of sorts. But, under the circumstances, he considered it wise to let Harry speak first, rather than plunging straight in.

Facing Lucas directly, Harry fixed him with a hard, blank-eyed look as he reclined in his seat. The two key women in his life – Ruth and Ros – on either side of him, followed suit as the latter's private conference with Tom Quinn came to a sudden halt. Under scrutiny from all four of them at once, Lucas inwardly quailed. But, overnight in the solitude of his cell, he had abandoned himself to his fate and resolved to salvage as much of his honour as he could by making a full and frank confession.

"First things first, tell us who you are," said Harry, ending the terrible silence that descended over the room.

Lucas let his gaze drop to where he his hands were splayed out on the table in front of him.

"My real name is John Bateman," he replied, keeping his head down.

He had agonised over the reactions he would get from his colleagues, preparing himself for the anger and disgust. But the reality was even worse – they did nothing.

"Now tell us how you came to be using the name Lucas North," said Harry, without much hesitation. "We know that you were in Dakar, so you might care to explain that, while you're at it."

To begin at the beginning was harder than it sounded, but Lucas went back there anyway. He reached far back, to when he dropped out of University and travelled with a friend who intended on making his millions as a small time drug smuggler and the arrest that followed. Reaching the point where he landed a job as a casino croupier in Dakar, he paused for breath and gathered his thoughts before continuing to the most important part of his story.

"There was another Brit working there, and we became friends," he continued. "His name was Lucas North-"

"So this is more than an empty legend, he was a real person?" Ros interjected.

Briefly, Lucas glanced up at her and replied with a small nod. He had never felt the full force of her silent disdain, until that moment.

"He introduced me to Vaughan Edwards – another Brit who was a regular at the casino. But he warned me off him afterwards; said he was nothing but trouble-"

"Which only made you even more eager to get to know that man," Harry sighed.

Again, Lucas nodded before explaining how he came to work for Vaughan, relaying messages and delivering packages. No questions asked and the soul of discretion. He had been desperate for the money; far from home with no passport and no way out. Then, he reached the heart of the story:

"I made enough money to buy a new passport and a ticket home," Lucas explained. "But Vaughan had one more job he needed doing and it paid more than the others combined. He needed me to collect a briefcase from the reception of the Somali Embassy and deliver it to the British Embassy, nearby. To leave it outside the Ambassador's office, where it would be collected when the Ambassador left a meeting that afternoon-"

"Please, don't tell me this is going where I think it's going?" Harry asked, visibly recoiling from the inevitable.

For the first time since the conversation began, Lucas stalled as he struggled to find the right words to say. However, Tom Quinn interjected before Lucas could resume recounting his story.

"I've already seen what's on that VHS tape," he said. "It was CCTV footage from inside the Embassy."

Harry looked round at Tom as though about to ask something. However, he changed his mind and looked back at Lucas. "Carry on," he said, flatly.

"I left the Embassy as Vaughan instructed," he explained. "And I called him on a mobile he'd given me. They were new, back then, and it took me a minute to get it right. I let it ring three times and then hung up. Just as I hung up, the bomb detonated. I can't remember anything after that. It's a blur. I just remember panicking – I had no idea that it was a bomb…"

His words broke off as he lost the power of speech. He could still hear the explosion in his head, could still see the victims emerging from the dust cloud that swelled over the scene, blotting out the sun.

"Senegal still had the death penalty back then," Lucas explained, giving up on articulating his own horror at what had happened. "I would have been hanged-"

"Some might say you'd have deserved it," Ros cut in, her tone flat.

"But not us, Rosalynd," Harry remarked, pointedly. He turned back to Lucas and told him, again, to continue.

"I needed to get out of the country, fast," he explained. "Vaughan said there was a boat leaving that night and we would be on it, if only I could get a passport. I asked Lucas if I could borrow his, but he refused. He was joining MI5 and couldn't afford to get mixed up in anything like that. So-"

"So, you killed him for his passport and joined MI5 in his place," Ros finished for him, a look of sheer incredulity on her face.

Once again, Lucas could only nod. Ros looked as though she wanted to vomit; Harry had retreated completely within himself, but Ruth was leaning forwards in her seat, pointing her pen at him.

"So, all these years you have been in MI5 using a dead man's identity and no one has noticed?" she asked. "The real Lucas North didn't have a single relative or friend who noticed his absence?"

Lucas shrugged, but Ruth didn't see it as she reached into her file and withdrew a photograph. She slid it down the table, to where Lucas was sitting. He looked at the three of them: Vaughan, Lucas and himself.

"Is that him in the middle?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied.

Ruth gestured for him to hand it back, which he did. Then, she leaned over to Harry and whispered something Lucas couldn't hear in his ear. Harry nodded in agreement, prompting Ruth to look back at Lucas.

"And Vaughan is blackmailing you, hence the desperate attempts to get hold of Albany," she said, grimly filling in the last blank.

"God knows, it's not like he's lacking leverage over you," Harry interjected.

"Harry, I can bring him in," Lucas said, eager for the opportunity to help. "Let me do this."

However, Harry actually laughed aloud.

"You must be bloody joking," he retorted, rising to his feet and letting his anger show for the first time. "You will be returned to your cell where you will await the outcome of our investigations. Then, in all likelihood, you will be handed over to the correct authorities to face justice for the deaths of seventeen men, women and children. Oh, and Lucas North, too. Is there anyone else we need to know about? Anymore bodies buried under the Lucas North legend?"

Ros also got to her feet and fixed Lucas in an icy glare. "Since Senegal no longer has the death penalty, I'm pretty sure extradition proceedings will be forthcoming very soon."

The meeting had reached its end as the others got up to leave and the Security Guard reappeared to return Lucas to his new home. He made no fuss, put up no resistance as he let himself be led away.

They gave themselves an hour to take stock, but Ruth couldn't wait that long. She tracked Tom down as he was about to leave the Grid for lunch with Christine and fell into step alongside him. They had not yet had a chance to catch up on a personal level, but as he went to congratulate her on the wedding, she cut him off.

"This isn't right," she said, craning her neck to look up at him; frantic to impress her point on someone. "I'm not just saying this out of affection for Lucas, honestly. You know me, Tom: I'm not like that. I'm not naïve and I'm not foolish, so hear me out. Harry and Ros aren't ready to listen, so you're my last hope. Please Tom," she kept cutting off his efforts to interject, until he had to shout. "I know this sounds insane, but-"

"Ruth!" he stopped her and turned to face her. "Ruth, slow down. I know; I agree. There's something I need you to see and it's on that tape."

Relief washed over her. Relief and curiosity. She had been referring to the mysterious Lucas North who hadn't a friend or relative in the world; she'd quite forgotten the old VHS tape they discovered in the suitcase. However, her request for further information was met with silence as they headed outside and toward Tom's car. Before they set off, he called Christine to cancel the lunch date.

Half an hour crawling through the London traffic, and they made it. They bought sandwiches from the nearby deli and the receptionist had tea waiting for them when they arrived. But, without preamble, Tom led Ruth over to where an old VHS player had been set up in his office. He switched the TV on and played the video, cursing as he struggled to rewind it. Ruth had almost forgotten the hassle of video tapes, since they had become obsolete many moons ago. When he pressed 'play' again, the ticker information informed them that there were looking at the lobby of the British Embassy, Dakar and the time was 2:55pm.

"So you already knew about the bomb?" she asked.

"Not exactly, no," he replied. "But I did see Lucas enter the building, just about here…" he pointed to the screen, at a young man in an ill-fitting, cream linen suit – unmistakably a much younger Lucas. "There he is, leaving a briefcase beside that bench. Now watch what happens."

Ruth watched as the Lucas on the screen deposited the briefcase, then the picture broke up and the screen went dark. She waited to see if the images came back on, but the screen remained completely blank.

"What happened?" she asked. "Is that the bomb?"

Tom smiled. "Ros gave me this yesterday and I was studying this footage all night, but it didn't make sense until Lucas confessed this morning," he said. "I didn't know what it was, just that it came from the British Embassy in Dakar in 1995. But look, watch it again with Lucas' information in mind."

He rewound the tape to a few minutes previously, when Lucas first walked into the frame carrying the briefcase. She watched again, even more carefully, he mounted the steps, up to the first floor and left the briefcase beside the bench. Then, as with before, the picture suddenly distorted, broke up and went dark. Ruth smiled.

"Someone deliberately knocked the cameras out as soon as Lucas left the briefcase outside the Ambassador's office," she said, eyes still fixed on the blank screen. "Whoever it was, it wasn't Lucas himself because he's clearly still in shot when it happens. It's as if whoever did it was waiting for him to deliver the briefcase first."

Tom leaned back in his seat and rubbed the stubble at his chin. "That's not all," he said. "You can detonate a bomb with a mobile phone. But, it has to be a unique code. Lucas called another phone number, let it ring three times and then hung up. I think the bomb was remotely detonated by someone else altogether. Whoever it was he called-"

"Vaughan Edwards," Ruth put in. Tom nodded. "But surely Lucas knows this, so why is he still saying that he detonated the bomb?"

Tom shrugged. "My guess is he didn't know how these things worked at the time," he explained. "Blamed himself immediately and it's taken root. Maybe he still doesn't fully understand it. It's not like he's thinking clearly at the moment."

He ejected the tape and, leaving the sandwiches abandoned, got up to leave. The decision was made to get the tape to Harry as soon as possible.

Ros sat alone at her desk as she leafed through the files on the Dakar bombing. Jo had taken the day off, since she had talked Lucas out of shooting himself, it was thought she needed it. Tariq was silent, unusually subdued as he toyed with his computer – running a facial recognition on the real Lucas North. Even Beth didn't dare speak, and taken herself off for lunch as soon as Ros reappeared on the Grid. So, there she sat with the files to herself, free from awkward questions.

The bomb detonated at 3:15pm, killing seventeen people. A photograph showed a vast crater in the ground, surrounded by the debris of the shattered Embassy, which had only partially been cleared away. She frowned and turned another page, where there was a better picture, showing the site fully cleared, revealing the bomb crater in its entirety. She looked again at the layout of the Embassy, her frown deepening. The Ambassador's Offices were on the first floor, well clear of the ground.

"Harry!" she called out, hoping he could hear from inside his office.

He could not. She rose and swept the file off the desk, marching rapidly into Harry's office without knocking. He was too subdued to notice. Instead, he lifted his forlorn visage up to where she stood and gestured to the empty seat before his desk.

"Look at the bomb site," she said, pointing to the aerial picture of the bombed out Embassy, affording a clear view of the crater. "If Lucas left the bomb on the first floor, then would there really be a crater of that size in the ground?"

Harry studied the picture carefully. Usually, bombs left craters if they were dropped from the skies, or left in either the ground floor or basement of a building. Otherwise, there was a buffer zone that left blast damage, but not a full crater. However, Harry did not look enthused.

"Bateman's probably just lied about where he left the bomb, that's all," he replied, sounding despondent. "Something Ruth said to me during the meeting got me thinking: the Somali connection. It wasn't too long after the Somali's shot down two Black Hawks in Mogadishu. A great coup for the local warlords. It seems that the Embassy in Dakar was another one – an opportunity for them to strike against the other great Western Satan. The UK."

"You were still at Six, weren't you? This was on your watch?" she asked, not intending to pick open an old wound. Just curious.

"I was," Harry nodded, thumbing through some of the other pages in the Dakar file. "I still can't believe that our Lucas is capable. Not after everything he's done for this country. None of it makes sense, Ros. None of it."

The back pages of the file contained images of the dead. Bodies had been clumsily stitched back together, like Frankenstein's monsters all bloated with death, a patchwork of limbs and torsos. His gallows humour kicked in as he couldn't help but grin at the analogy. Still, Ros could see the pain in his eyes. He looked so tired, and older than she had ever noticed before.

"Harry," she said, softly.

The rest of her sentence was cut off by his phone ringing. He picked it up and glanced at the caller display. "Ruth," he mouthed at her as he answered. Ros sat back and pretended she did not have ears as the private call commenced. But still, she could just pick up Ruth's voice chattering away.

"Wait, Ruth," Harry said, waving a hand to get Ros' attention. "In the footage, does Lucas leave the briefcase on the first floor?"

Ros sat up abruptly, listening in unashamedly but could make nothing out.

"He did?" Harry confirmed. "Right, bring it in immediately. We'll be in the meeting room with a VHS player salvaged from somewhere."

The call ended and Harry got up immediately, beckoning Ros to follow him to the meeting room.

"Well, this gets curiouser and curiouser," he remarked as he led the way across the Grid. "He did leave the bomb on the first floor, and someone else entirely cut out the CCTV ten minutes before the explosion happened."

Ros didn't see the relevance of that, but assumed all would be revealed when Ruth and Tom returned. Harry, for his part, didn't look hopeful as she wished he would. But he looked puzzled. Like her, he was coming to the conclusion that something was deeply amiss. Then, just as they were about to query Tariq about the possibility of procuring a VHS player, the man himself appeared at the door of the meeting room, brandishing some print outs. He held them aloft.

"You guys really need to see this," he said, sounding mildly hyperactive. Without waiting for a reply, he ploughed on. "I ran the facial recognition on the real Lucas North hoping that it would lead me to some living relatives. But, actually, it led me back to him. Our dead man was arrested in Sierra Leone in 1998 for supplying paramilitaries with AK-47s. And look who was arrested alongside him."

He held out the print outs to Ros who snatched them up and glared at the images, dumbfounded. "Vaughan Edwards," she whispered, a smile breaking out on her face. "Great work, Tariq. Harry, just look at this."

The first printout was the real Lucas North's mug shot. The second showed Vaughan Edwards. It was unmistakable. The names were different: Dylan Hughes was under North's image. Michael Smith was under Vaughan's.

"We need to bring Vaughan in, right now," Harry said, suddenly back and firing on all cylinders. "Tariq, excellent work, but can you try and track this Dylan Hughes down. Oh, and we need a VHS player. And get Jo and Beth back in here, ASAP!"

Tariq grinned like a child being offered a sweetshop full of chocolate. "Right away!"

Once they were alone again, Harry and Ros got settled at the table and took a minute to gather their thoughts. Whatever was happening, it was still far from clear and their Lucas North was far from out of the woods. But what was clear was that someone, somewhere had been set up on a grand scale. For the time being, they resolved to leave their Lucas where he was. He was mentally unfit for the job and they needed clear heads like never before. It was only with regret that Ros realised they would need Maya again, through her they could get to Vaughan.