Chapter 9

Hunters Hunted.

A grim silence had descended over the table broken by Ros,

"So it we want to find Salko, where do we start?"

"Mexico." Lucas said flatly, "There's no way he's still here, if it was me I would have left as soon as I had what I wanted."

"But he doesn't have what he wants." Ruth said quietly, everyone turned to look at her and she added defensively to Sofia, "Does he?"

"No." She agreed softly, "He still wants the truth about Nicole."

"Which is what exactly?" Ros asked, impatiently.

"I don't know either...I've spent the last three years trying to find out, nothing. I was just a piece in a much bigger puzzle; I barely understood my part never mind anyone else's. At the time I didn't care...I guess you could say he made me curious." She murmured, "Still, this is just another way of playing us."

"Sofia's right, this is just another way of manipulating us. If he's in this country I want him found." Harry said, firmly.

"Any ideas?" Ros asked no-one in particular.

"He's intelligent, he'll know we'll be looking for him, we won't just be able to knock on the door of his hotel room." Sofia began with touches of Ros' signature optimism.

"SO what do you suggest?" Harry asked, definitely not needing two Ros' in his life.

"We need to offer him something he can't say no to, something that will draw him out into the open." Lucas said quietly.

"Alright, so what do you want to use for bait?" Harry asked, eyes narrowed.

"Simple, we dangle Sofia from the roof and wait for him to come running." Ros smirked.

"Let's call that plan B." Lucas retorted, "He wants information about his sister, I'd say that's a good place to start."

"Unfortunately, we don't have the information ourselves to give him." Harry said dejectedly.

"What?"

"I checked, all files relating to that operation have been removed from the system."

"That's convenient." Sofia muttered under her breath.

"What do you mean by that?" Harry demanded sharply.

"Sounds like a cover up to me, somebody's hiding something." She said softly, staring intently at him.

"Be that as it may, we don't have time to play hide and seek." Ros said, intervening to play peacemaker for once, "We'll deal with that later if we have to, right now, we need information on this attack, preferably before it takes place."

"Provided there is an attack to get information on." Harry said grimly.

"What are you-"Sofia began

"All we have to base this on is the vague theory of an attack on the American President that anyone could have invented, from an ex-FSB guard who has already proven to be fixated on one thing and one thing alone. If this was any other informant in any other situation we would have serious doubts."

"But it's not any other informant, or any other situation it's the here and now, Salko isn't some over-enthusiastic extremist he's a highly skilled manipulator who knows exactly what he wants and how he's going to get it."

"And so far he seems to have exactly what he wants and we haven't got anything in return." Harry retorted. He was rapidly losing patience with playing cat and mouse with Artem Salko.

"He has more to give us, and we will get it."

"Oh and you're sure about that are you?"

"You think I slept with him on a hunch?" she spat, she had been attempting to avoid bringing this up, but Harry had backed her into a corner and her rational thought was making a rapid exit, along with his temper.

"I don't think that the methods used to obtain this information, extreme or otherwise, should have any influence over the actual information itself, which is, if we're being brutally honest here, useless." She snapped irritably.

"The methods shouldn't and don't matter, the character of the informant should." She replied, quietly, the more irate he became, the calmer she remained, "It didn't matter what he asked for it mattered that he asked. I-"

"Exactly. You are too close to this." He snapped, "It's clouding your judgement."

"My judgement is just fine." She breathed, her eyes narrowed dangerously, "And I don't remember your judgement, or mine, coming in to question when you were telling me to jump into bed with Salko and get us information." She hissed coldly, causing the others to stare at Harry.

"I did not ask you to do that." Harry said, throat dry.

"Not in as many words...You didn't have to. I didn't need told; I knew full well I had to do it. Salko's not stupid, and he knows better than to lie to me. He knows, exactly what's going on, he knows that there needs to be a threat to give himself something to hold over us. He needs control. No attack, no bargaining chip, no bargaining chip no control, no control no Salko."

"If he wants to keep his precious control over us, then he needs us to believe that he has something to control us with and at the moment I'm not so sure that I do."

"He's given us just enough. A target, a fairly obvious one but then there are plenty of them to choose from in that room. He in turn feels the same way about us; we haven't given him enough to relinquish his hold on his information. He got what he asked for, but not what he wanted."

"OK. So what do we do about him?" Ros asked quietly; keen to move the conversation on and intervening again before Harry could protest any further. She for one trusted her younger colleague's judgement on this matter, and trusted her own judgement of Salko to know that he knew far more than he had told them and that he knew the value of his knowledge.

There was silence until Ruth said, cautiously, "There might be something in Lucas' honey trap theory."

"Except for the slight technical hitch that is we don't have any honey to set it with." Ros said coolly."In case we all needed reminding why we moved on from that."

"Maybe we should have, maybe we shouldn't." Ruth continued stubbornly, "All we need him to do is reveal himself, we don't actually need him to walk through the doors of MI-5 and into one of our interview rooms, we just need him to show himself for long enough to let us find him and give him a shove in that direction..."

"All we need is a way to communicate with him, force him out into the open." Lucas supplied helpfully, cottoning on to what she was getting at, "If we can get him to make a call or an e-mail, some form of contact we can trace him yes?"

"No problem." Tariq shrugged, "But we can't rely on him spontaneously calling or e-mailing us, I need to know its him, I can't just track every phone and e-mail account in this country."

"How did he make contact initially?" Harry asked.

"Phone call." Tariq said, "Disposable, pay-as-you-go, untraceable." He added hastily, seeing several people around the table sit up in interest.

"OK so how do we tell him we want to talk? Smoke signals?" Ros said sarcastically.

"That might not be a bad idea." Lucas muttered, a faraway look in his eyes,

"Speaking of smoking..." Ros said, looking at him in mild concern.

"To tell him, we tell everyone." He said, cryptically.

"What?" Ros asked, not in the mood to start playing mind-readers.

"A generalised news broadcast, something like that. A missing persons, it looks like the news to everyone else but there's something specific that draws him in. We set up a secure phone line and put out a number, you know the type, a hotline appealing to information from the public. Even if he uses a disposable phone again, we can still trace it while it's active right?"

"Right, but he has to call in first and someone would have to keep him on the line for a decent amount of time."

"Do you think he'll bite?" Ros asked, turning to Sofia.

"I don't think he'll be able to resist. I've refused to give him this information for over a decade; he'll think this is his doing, that he's left us with no choice but this. He won't be able to say no, even if the rational part of him says it's a trap, the crazy part will win out."

"Alright...What can we put in this broadcast to lure him in, it needs to be subtle, no neon signs or people will start questioning it, the last thing I want is news of this getting to the press." Harry said.

Sofia hesitated and scribbled on a sheet of paper, "Our missing person now has a name." She said, pushing the scrap of paper into the middle of the table for them all to read, Alice Lokson.

"You think that will be enough?" Harry asked, doubtfully.

"I think that will be a neon sign." She said, firmly, "He sees her in places she's not, that will stick out like a goth at a tea party."

Harry paused, glanced around at his team and then said, "Do it."

They had a segment prepared about Alice Lockson's disappearance and ready to air by the lunch time news. It was fairly routine; they announced that the young woman had been missing for three days and that the police were appealing for information. A touch that Sofia added to the description was that of an intricate tattoo, cruelly referencing one that Nicole had had on the small of her back. She said it was to draw Salko's attention, Ros was sure it was the beginnings of her revenge against him. Whatever the reason she let it stand. At the end of the report were the details of a number the public could call if they had any information on the case.

Any calls that came through, of which, as Tariq pointed out, there were a large number considering the fact that she was a photshopped woman, were directed to MI-5 where Tariq then ran through them through voice recognition software based on a recording taken from Salko's initial contact.

In less than an hour they got a hit.

"Harry! I've got him!"

Tariq may only have called for Harry but every member of the team still on The Grid flocked to him. Ros and Lucas had headed out for the hotel room that Salko had met Sofia in, they had no intention of finding him there but hoped that they would find something of use, as neither of them able to stomach sitting aimlessly pushing paper, and both of them were getting jumpy, Harry had allowed them to go. Ruth, Sofia and Harry however had remained on The Grid and were now gathered around the computer.

As Tariq prepared to put the call through he told Sofia, "You need to keep him talking until the trace is complete. It should only take about two minutes but don't hold me to that; the software's a bit temperamental."

Sofia nodded, she already knew this but she also appreciated that Tariq was on edge and needed to do something to rid him of his built up energy. With a nod in her direction, Tariq connected her to and the voice on the other end of the line said, softly,

"Babochka." The Russian word for butterfly, referencing Nicole's tattoo.

"I know what you want." She told him, softly as Tariq started the trace.

"No, I know what you want. I cannot know that you know what I want."

"You and I both know that's bullshit." She said flatly, "You know I've had this information for years, you wouldn't have called otherwise, and we could go round in circles all day with me pointing out that I have no reason to believe you either, and given your recent actions I should just say fuck you and hang up now." She said, so convincingly that Tariq widened his eyes in her direction and nodded towards the computer screen.

"But you won't."

"No...We need each other. I trust you Artem and you have to trust me too."

"Unfortunately I don't." He hissed, "How do I know for example, that you aren't tracing this call?"

Sofia glanced at Tariq before answering and he shook his head, the programme had barely begun working, "You don't. But your reason should tell you something, although, no, wait yes now I remember, I'm tracing this call and there are MI-5 officers standing outside right now, patiently waiting for us to finish this conversation before they arrest you so let's not keep them waiting any longer." She spat sarcastically, "I've been crediting you with far too much intelligence in this Artem, if I wanted you, I wouldn't have let you go when I had you."

They waited in silence holding their breaths collectively as the tracing software mocked them by stalling at that particular moment.

"What do you want?" he said, tonelessly.

"To meet." She said, calmly.

"Why?"

"Because I can't pass up another opportunity to see your beautiful face." She snapped, his voice, combined with the words she had just spoken were making her skin crawl, but she would never give him the satisfaction of knowing that, or Harry for that matter, "Why do you think? I need proof and I don't want MI-5 involved just yet."

She was taking a huge risk with this last, impulsive, statement. If he saw through her, he would cut the call, but Tariq was still frantically trying to force the trace to resume and she needed some way to play for time if nothing else.

He swore in Russian, "I too have credited you with too much intelligence, and you have not given me enough, what do you take me for? You are working with them, you always have been." He spat. She could hear him removing the phone from his ear and she tried desperately not to let her panic show through as Harry Ruth and Tariq blanched,

"You think MI-5 was the reason for last night? You think I would have let you rape me because some officious bastard in a suit told me to? You think I would go through that for MI-5?" it was the first time she had alluded to Salko's assault as full out rape, previously having skirted around it, he too seemed to grasp the weight of this as he paused while she continued, "I said I needed information, not we. Devil's in the details Artem, and you're missing them."

It was enough, whether or not he fully believed her, her argument was intriguing enough to keep him on the line, which was all they really cared about as the trace proceeded at a snail's pace, "And why do you need it?"

"Because MI-5 need it." She said flatly. He swore again and she hastily cut him off, "Really Artem? What the Hell is wrong with you? Think! I don't give a damn if someone shoots the American President between the eyes, probably won't do the brainless bastard any harm, and I know you don't give a damn either. But MI-5 care, and therefore I want the thing that they'll do more to get their hands on than they will a hundred nuclear warheads, information. Money can't buy me my secrets. But they won't be able to refuse m information."

"If I give you any."

"Don't play games with me Artem. There's more than one way to skin a cat as they say, we can both get access to our information in other ways but, under sufferance or not, we've started down this path now. We both know what our information means to the other, and we both know each other to well to screw them."

"Very well...We can meet. Whether or not you feel the same about me, I would like to see your beautiful face one more time." She could see the smirk that accompanied this last and forced it out of her head.

Tariq, who sensed the conversation to be winding up gesticulated furiously towards the computer screen causing Sofia to wonder if he was having a stroke until she saw that the trace had still not finished, she had to keep him talking.

"Alright. Since you seem keen on visiting London's tourist attractions, why don't we go for Big Ben this time?" she suggested quickly.

"No." He said flatly, out of the corner of her eye she saw Tariq's shoulders slump in relief and knew that the trace had completed, something that Salko seemed to know to as he said, "You can come to the address you've traced this phone call to. And now I am paying attention to details, you come, and you come alone."

He hung up and Sofia smiled ruefully as harry Ruth and Tariq gaped at the phone.

"He's good." Tariq muttered, running a hand through his hair.

"Too good." Ruth murmured.

"Yes, you did well Sofia." Said Harry, distractedly.

"Why would he do that?" Ruth demanded, "Stay on the line and allow us to track a cal that he knew was being traced? Could he be faking Tariq, making it look as though he was somewhere he wasn't fool us into walking into a trap?"

"No, not without letting me know that he was messing with the trace." Tariq said, shaking his head.

"Then why-"

"Because it does this. Makes us doubt ourselves, makes us panic. It makes him feel like he's got the upper hand, he thinks if he can make us believe that he knows everything about our operation that he can manipulate us based on lucky guesses, that that lets him dictate what he wants to be done. What he doesn't know is that Ros and Lucas will be with him in about ten minutes, they're not that far away, and he doesn't know we know that he's bluffing."

"Do we though?" Ruth murmured, softly. "If not, then Ros and Lucas..."

"Can take care of themselves." Sofia said firmly.

"You can't take that chance; you can't just let them walk into a trap." Ruth protested.

"There is no trap, there can't be one, he hasn't had the time."

"He has if he's known, or guessed the purpose of this entire scam, from the beginning, he didn't have much trouble figuring it out."

"It's your call Harry. Do you think the hunters have become the hunted?" Sofia asked, turning to him, knowing that they needed a decision now.

"We're about to find out." He muttered grimly calling Ros.

He gave them the address the trace on Salko's phone had given them before adding, "Be careful, both of you, Salko knows we traced the call, stay alert, no heroics, either of you. Good Luck."

With that he hung up, sealing their fate.

"What have you done Harry?" Ruth breathed, unable to stop herself.

"We'll soon find out." He replied darkly.

A/N: I don't know why but when I was writing this I felt as though it was coming across as 'they did this, then she said that and so they did this' I really hope that's not the case but if it is please let me know! Thank you all for your reviews so far, as ever, looking forward to your thoughts on this latest instalment.

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