Chapter 7
The soft scuff of Ruth's footsteps echoed around the stairwell. She hadn't remembered there being so many stairs, but then again there were a great many things she hadn't remembered correctly. She wound her way upwards and tried to recall the last time she had been on the roof of Thames House. She stopped, a foot poised on the tread. It had been the day Harry had asked her out on a date. Her chest constricted at the divine sweetness of the memory. He had looked younger, away from the fluorescent lights of the Grid. Or perhaps it was because he had been looking at her. He had pantomimed two bread rolls while doing an endearing impression of Charlie Chaplin, and her heart had melted with such completeness that she had glowed in the aftermath. She had been unable to meet his eyes, acting coyly nonchalant, when in reality she had been trembling inside. The sheer delight and unfolding promise of that single moment. Where had it all gone wrong? It had been her; she knew that. She had panicked; gotten cold feet, refused him a second date and then events had pushed together, collapsing their lives like a row of dominoes. She could not possibly talk to him in a place so potent with memory. She half turned around, planning to go back down the stairs. There were so many pockets of memory in the building and she couldn't avoid them all. Surely, it didn't matter. Harry could not be as sentimental as she was. She changed her mind and grabbed onto the steel of the handrail, determined to continue her journey to the top of the stairs.
It would be better, she thought, if he were on the roof, a semi-private place to deliver semi-devastating news. She was always the messenger, the bearer of bad news. She had long ago accepted her role as the one who culled the data, looking for that piece of information that would destroy someone. This time, it was the man with whom she had just had a rather heartfelt conversation and the piece of data, a cell phone number belonging to his girlfriend. That CIA woman, Sarah Caufield. Shit.
They were not supposed to engage in relations with Foreign Operatives. It was a commandment. Harry had been livid with Tom over his relationship with an American agent, so she was puzzled as to why he had not been so strict with Lucas. Ruth felt a moment of unease, as she considered Harry might have some ulterior reason for letting the relationship continue. She was glad she hadn't delved any deeper into Lucas' personal life. It would have been ten times worse to discover that he had finally found love again, only for her to turn around and ruin it. She already felt like she was betraying him, that he had confided in her and this was how she repaid him, by exposing his girlfriend as a possible killer.
The metal door to the outside world loomed before her and she stood inside collecting herself. She smoothed down her skirt, preparing herself for Harry's anger. On numerous occasions, she had stood in the wake of his temper, letting it wash over her, trying not to take his words personally. The vein at his left temple would bulge to such an extent that she had wanted to tell him to calm down, that it was utterly ridiculous to be mad; that anger couldn't change the facts. As she brushed her hair behind her ear, she realised that since her return she had not witnessed Harry's temper. He wasn't as abrasive towards the team, there had been no comments verging on the unseemly, he had remained calm at the briefings. Could he have mellowed in the intervening years? She placed her hand on the door handle. Perhaps he would take this better than she anticipated.
The door creaked open on its metal hinges. The hollow sound of the wind rushed through the adjoining buildings and the distant rumble of traffic filled her ears. She squinted into the sunshine, adjusting her eyes from the dimness of the Grid. A sense of disappointment fell like a stone in her stomach as she realised that the figure leaning against the balustrade was not Harry, but Ros. Ruth stood, not quite sure what to do, the urge, of course, being to walk away. Fast. It was too late, Ros had noticed her.
"Sorry, I was looking for Harry."
"Well, if you don't know where he is, none of us do," Ros said in her usual laconic manner. "Is it about Jack?"
"No. We haven't found a connection between him and the murdered agents."
Ros turned away, leaving Ruth to stand in limbo, swaying slightly as the wind played with her hair. Since her return, Ros had treated her with cool professionalism and polite courtesy. They were colleagues, and Ruth had been happy with the status quo, having remembered the harsh abrasiveness of the earlier Ros. As she stood regarding the Section Chief, she noticed something about the other woman's posture. She wouldn't go so far as to categorise it as fragility, more of a brittleness. It was as though Ros had been broken apart and pieced back together, creating sharp edges and on closer inspection, a few cracks. Ros continued to look down onto the street, the fringe of her white blonde hair hiding her face. What do you do with the monster in your dreams? Ruth walked over to her, careful to maintain a respectful distance.
"Are you all right?"
"As well as can be expected after narrowly escaping a bomb planted by a former mentor."
Ruth nodded. She suspected this fractured reunion with Jack Colville was taking a toll on Ros. But that wasn't what she had meant. Her talk with Lucas had loosened something inside her and she felt the need to press on. "I mean, how are you?"
Ros' shoulders stiffened as she realised what Ruth had meant. She kept her gaze out over the city. "How do you think I am?"
Ruth gave a derisive huff, causing Ros to turn and look at her. "That's what I said when someone asked me the same question," Ruth elaborated. The two women looked at each other, aware that they both stood on a similar plateau of loss.
Ros curled her fingers around the rail, her knuckles becoming white from the pressure. "Are we always destined to eat our own?"
"You did what you had to do." For some reason, Ruth felt compelled to say those words, not knowing if she needed to assure Ros, or alleviate her own sense of grief. She was of course fully aware of her own hypocrisy, in that she could say this to Ros about Jo but she could not bring herself to say it to Harry and his decisions with Mani.
"I don't need your forgiveness," Ros countered.
Ruth narrowed her eyes. Why was this woman so unyielding. "Forgiveness for what?" Ruth asked, her question laced with the subtext they both knew lingered between them. Cotterdam.
"So many transgressions, it must be hard to pick just one," Ros said with an air resignation to her voice.
Ruth placed her hands on the railing, flexing her fingers on the smooth metal and pulled herself forward to look out over the vista. Laid there before her was the city she had lost. When she had last looked out over it, she had only seen bomb threats and terror cells, now she absorbed it in all its blemished beauty.
"Not that you much care, but I think Mace would have found a way to get at Harry, you just accelerated the process. I was his weakness. Sacrifices had to be made."
"Regnum Defende, Ruth, whatever the cost. Tell me, was the price worth it?"
"I had a good life in Cyprus, one I never thought I'd have, Harry was able to carry on, and Mace was exposed. You could say from an operational standpoint it was a success." Ruth hazarded a sidelong glance at Ros and hoped the other woman would understand what was implied. The success of the operation came at a great personal cost.
"At least you got Cyprus. When I died they sent me to Siberia."
"When you died?"
"Yes. Except I wasn't in on the plan, so when I woke up in a coffin it was a bit of a shock."
"What? How?"
Ros' hand rose to her throat, she smoothed her slender fingers over her neck. "Injection. Yalta. Yet another conspiracy to realign the geopolitical map." As she spoke the words, she wondered if this was top-secret information, but then again, she was telling Harry's little confidant, did it really matter? "At least when you returned you had Harry. Adam was ..." Ros trailed off, folding back into herself. She had said too much.
"You and Adam?" Ruth absorbed the information but had no idea how to process it. In her mind, it had always been Adam and Fiona, him carrying on, working through his grief, always true to his wife's memory. The idea of Adam with all his charm and Ros with her haughtiness; Ruth furrowed her brow as she tried to formulate a mental picture.
"There was nothing. There was never time," Ros spoke quickly trying to recover her cool demeanour.
It was too late. Ruth knew she had uncovered a weak spot and with that came a slight thrill of power, which in turn gave her an unsettling glimpse into the workings of Harry's mind. Isn't that what he excelled at; manipulating weakness? Hadn't he done that with her and Angela Welles? Here was a fissure in Ros' armour that she could manipulate, if she was that kind of person. She turned and looked squarely at Ros, the cracks more evident; she had not come away unscarred - the death of Jo, losing Adam, playing a role in Ruth's exile. Adam and Jo were gone, and here she was, back to remind Ros of her father's treachery and the ensuing fallout from her anger over his imprisonment. What did Ros have left, she wondered.
"We all need someone," Ruth spoke into the wind.
"Needing people is a weakness," Ros answered tersely.
Ruth sighed at those words. She should hate this woman, and if asked at this moment, wasn't sure if she would ever be able to forgive her for Jo, but she only felt a deep sadness. What sense of self-preservation or more likely, sense of self-destruction made this woman keep everyone at arm's length.
They stood in silence sifting through their own thoughts. Finally, Ruth broke through it. "I've requested to go back to GCHQ."
"What?" Ros turned to look at her, the shock evident on her face. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
Ruth had not expected that reaction. She had assumed that Ros would be secretly pleased to have the living reminder of her failings out the way.
"We need you. Harry needs you. You're the first one he went to about Basel." Ros wasn't able to conceal her continuing annoyance that she had been left out of Harry's confidence. "You have a brilliant mind. Although what else he sees in you I'll never understand."
Ruth let out a little laugh in spite of herself. "You have this unique way of wrapping and insult inside a compliment."
"It's a gift." A hint of a smile ghosted across Ros' face. "In all seriousness, while you were gone Harry wasn't as... cautious as he should have been."
"Care to elaborate?"
"How about handing himself over to Victor Sarkisiian for starters. Hiring Connie, the business with Kachimov."
Connie. There was that name again.
"You said yourself, needing people is a weakness." Ruth countered. "Someone else may very well use me against Harry again, even though there's nothing between us."
Ros gave Ruth an incredulous look "How can someone so bright be so dense?" Ruth, in turn, stared back at Ros as if she had two heads. "Listen, I'm not playing matchmaker here. Harry needs people he can trust."
"What about us, Ros, what about you and me? Who is looking after our needs?"
"I don't know," said Ros, a note of irritation creeping into her voice, "I don't think about that. It gets in the way of doing the job."
"What's the use of doing this job if there's nothing left of ourselves?"
"If you were truly happy, living your life outside the service, go back and do it. But I doubt that you were happy. Someone with your intellect, with your curiosity, everything you've had been through. People like us can never leave. We've seen the evil others are truly capable of. We don't get to go home at night and close our eyes and have nice dreams."
Ruth recoiled at the harshness of Ros' words, stung by the truth of what the other woman was saying, shaken that she had voiced the same sentiment to Jo. It was true, they knew that events were whitewashed, downplayed, where the bodies were buried and for that reason they would never have the rest of the innocent.
Ros inhaled a shaky breath. "Harry has lost too many people. I've lost too many people. I'm not the same woman I was all those years ago and I would hazard a guess you're not the same either. It may be hard to believe, but I would rather not lose you again."
Ruth had no idea what to say to this completely unexpected admission. She removed her hand from the railing only to have Ros reach out and grab it, holding on to her arm with the grip of a drowning woman.
"Think about it, we were all lost to him, you, myself, Lucas. There was nothing he could do. Don't you think he carried that guilt around? If I can't alleviate my own guilt, I sure as hell am not going to add to Harry's. We're a team, Ruth, this is all we have. No one will ever understand what we've been through."
A gust of wind blew Ruth's hair in front of her eyes, and she swore she could hear a grinding sound as her world stopped and then started up again rotating in opposite direction. She looked at Ros, a woman like herself, stumbling under guilt. She gave weight to Ros' words that the three of them had been taken from Harry and he had been left alone with the guilt. It was true; no one else could understand the life they had chosen.
"You're right," Ruth acquiesced. Ros looked at her, not quite believing that Ruth was agreeing with her. "We're a team. And you're not alone, so if you ever need-"
Ros let go of Ruth's arm as if it was on fire. Ruth felt the loss; Ros had been one of the few people to touch her since her return. She waited, wondering if they could re-establish this strange rapport they had created. Sensing that there was no response in the offing from Ros, Ruth shrugged her shoulders and turned to leave.
"Just so you know," Ros' called after her, "I don't do friends."
Ruth stopped, squinting in Ros' direction, a slight smile playing on her lips. "But if you did?" There it was laid before them, a truce between the broken.
With that, Ruth moved to the door and entered the stairwell. As she closed it behind her, she remembered her original purpose and set off to find Harry. She decides it would also be prudent to warn him that his Section Chief was not as collected as she would have everyone believe. This was her team after all, she needed to look after them. She moved down the stairs, thinking about Ros. Perhaps, if she was capable of having a strangely candid conversation with Ros, she could find a way to talk to Harry.
