Chapter 9

Ruth never thought of it as multitasking, it was more a stream of consciousness, a current of ideas, each pushing into the next. She was at her desk fluidly moving between filing a report on the death of her asset, monitoring the chatter from GCHQ, and delving into the money trail of Nightingale. She paused for a moment when she felt a presence beside her chair. She did not look up, fearing she may lose the precious threads of her thoughts, formulating in her mind a response to whatever question he might have on Nightingale. She felt him lean down towards her, his breath on her neck, his voice in her ear.

"Is it time for that drink?"

Ruth raised her head sharply, the unexpected nature of the question catching her completely off guard. She turned to find Harry's face startlingly close to hers. She frowned trying to recall what drink he would be talking about and then remembered the offer she had made two weeks past.

"Oh...well, I..." She gestured towards her screen. "Aren't we-?"

"Aren't we always in the middle of an operation?" Harry finished her sentence, parroting her words from their previous conversation back to her. The corner of Ruth's mouth rose in a half smile. "Besides," he continued, "I believe there is a certain request we need to discuss."

The smile fell from Ruth's face. In all the chaos of the past few weeks, she had relegated the whole notion of GCHQ to the back of her mind, only taking it out at three o'clock in the morning to fret and brood over along with her other worries. She looked over at Tariq wondering if he would once again interrupt their plans with a declaration of urgent news, but he sat his terminal intently hacking hotel registries for guests with the last names of American Presidents. She nodded at Harry and closed down her system, as he stood waiting patiently.

...

From the habit of days long past, Ruth stepped out of the Thames House door and headed in the direction of the George. Harry stopped her with a touch to her elbow and shook his head, gesturing in the opposite direction. Ruth creased her brow in puzzlement to which Harry responded with a levelled look. Ruth nodded, understanding his meaning - they would find no privacy at the George. Their entire conversation had been conducted with looks, a skill that they had mastered years before and had apparently never lost.

Darkness had fallen early, the days of autumn now cut short by the nip of winter. Ruth pulled her coat tighter, glad that she had finally relented at bought herself a pair of gloves. Black leather, just like Harry's she noticed. They walked along through the streets, made bright from the lights of neon signs and shop windows. Their shoulders inadvertently brushed up against one another, as they navigated the bustle of people leaving work, going to work, leading ordinary lives.

Through the hum and whirr of traffic, Ruth heard the insistent chime of Harry's phone. Funny, Ruth thought, that even through the din they could still detect the ring of a phone. He pulled out his mobile and quickly became absorbed in a monosyllabic conversation, leaving Ruth to her own thoughts. She looked around, reacquainting herself with the city, feeling at once a sense of nostalgia and a sense of seeing this world for the first time. Harry closed up his phone and gave Ruth an exasperated look.

"Anything important?" she asked.

"Isn't it always?" Harry responded, dryly.

He steered her towards a staircase that led down from street level to an innocuous little pub. Holding the door open for her, his free hand came up to rest on the small of back as he ushered her inside. Ruth stopped, letting her eyes adjust the semi-darkness, feeling the increased pressure of Harry's hand firmly on her waist, the possessiveness of the gesture sending a shiver up her spine. She quickly stepped away from him.

The bartender looked up giving Harry a nod in recognition. Harry guided her through a scattering of tables where patrons sat, talking in hushed murmurs. The room was warm, the lights giving off an orange glow, reflecting against the dark wood of the walls. Ruth detected the faint scent of stale smoke, lingering in the upholstery from a time when cigarettes went in hand with a drink.

"Is this all right?" Harry asked, gesturing towards a booth.

"Yes. I like booths, there more..." she trailed off as if searching for the word. She wanted to say intimate, but somehow the word itself seemed too fraught with meaning.

"Private," Harry finished for her.

She nodded and reached to remove her coat before taking a seat. Harry stepped behind her, offering assistance, his fingers pausing for a moment on her collar. Ruth turned her head towards his hand and noticed an irregular crimson circle. Blood.

She had stood in the Ladies earlier that day, sponging the flecks of blood off her coat, mementos from a meet gone horribly wrong. There had been no sound of a gunshot that time, only a man collapsing on her lap. She had washed the blood out of her coat, feeling with each movement that she was scrubbing out the memory of what had happened, trying with all her effort to access what she and Tariq had talked about - that unnerving quality that field agents possessed, the ability to push through the horror of it all.

"I never liked this coat anyway," she joked weakly. It was true. She had hastily purchased it after disembarking from Cyprus, realising that her Mediterranean wardrobe was poor armour against English weather. She could remove the blood stains, but memories still clung to it, lingering like stale smoke. Memories of George and Nico and what she had done to their lives.

Harry looked into her eyes a concerned expression on his face. He opened his mouth as if to speak and then thought the better of it. He hung their coats up on the pegs beside the booth. "What will you have?"

"Wine. White, please."

Ruth sat down, her eyes following Harry as he crossed to the bar. He leaned against the rail as any ordinary man would, bantering with the bartender, laughing in turn as the man responded. Ruth looked on in fascination, having so rarely seen this part of Harry, wondering when she had last heard him laugh. She quickly looked away as he headed back towards the booth. He placed a glass of wine before her and sat down with a pint of his own.

"No whisky?" Ruth asked, surprised.

"I have been known to enjoy a good stout on occasion."

He lifted his glass in the silent gesture of a toast. Ruth raised her own glass, noticing the transparency of her wine in contrast with the opaque nature of his lager.

"You're a regular here," she said, more of an observation than a question.

"I frequent this establishment, but I wouldn't say I'm regular," he replied, an ever so subtle hint of teasing creeping into his voice.

"Is this where you bring all your girls?" she asked, echoing his teasing tone. She quickly glanced away from him, having no idea what had come over her to say such a flirtatious line. And not even a glass of wine in her. It was the dimness of the pub, the privacy of the booth, the warmth of the room. She would have to be careful; she had made a promise to herself to keep things strictly professional.

"I wasn't aware this was a date, Ruth." He punctuated the sentence by using her name, owning it as if by saying it he would always be able to draw her closer.

"It's two colleagues having a drink," she responded, not wanting the conversation to stray into dangerous territory.

"Because if it was a date," he continued, "I would have taken you out to dinner."

He took a sip of his drink, looking at her over the rim, letting his words hang in the air between them. He held her with his eyes even as he put down his drink, his fingers flexing on the glass. She sat perfectly still as if suspended, unable to break the lock of his gaze. Time collapsed and stretched between them, the memory of their dinner date rising as if it had only a happened yesterday. Her mouth felt dry and she realised she had had forgotten to breathe. She swallowed and looked down at her drink, her fingers sliding along the smooth stem of the glass. She took a long sip of her wine, glancing around the room, reminding herself that she needed to keep the conversation on track.

"I thought we were her to discuss my ..." she cleared her throat before saying the word, "request."

"And what have you decided, re your request."

She bit her bottom lip, taking her time, wondering if it was at all possible to unnerve this man - if delaying her response would make him doubt her decision. She stalled by taking another drink. "You can tear it up."

"I already did."

Ruth pursed her lips together, her eyes glaring at him. He had probably never taken the whole incident seriously. He had made up his mind she was going to stay and that would be the outcome. He had not done anything overt to dissuade her; in fact, he had kept his distance, letting her become entangled by her own curiosity and compassion.

He was studying her, his eyes moving over her face as if a ticker tape of thought ran across her forehead. Was she so easy to read?

"What changed your mind?" he asked.

Ruth knew that the question was only a concession to make her think she had exercised some free will in the matter. She would not give him the satisfaction of thinking that he had any bearing on her decision. "Ros." Harry's brow shot up. Ruth smiled inwardly. He hadn't seen that one coming had he.

"And what did she do to persuade you?"

"She said she wasn't the same woman she was three years ago," Ruth looked pointedly at Harry, "that we're a team and we need to be there for each other.

Ruth felt strangely light, whether from imparting the weight of her thoughts to Harry or from the dwindling wine in her glass; she wasn't sure.

Harry leaned back in his seat. "That's good because it's hell trying to find a decent analyst."

Ruth let her gaze travel over the room. "Yes, well, we wouldn't want you to go to all that bother now, would we?" a sliver of sarcasm lacing her voice as her eyes finally settled on Harry.

Harry narrowed his eyes, sizing her up, calculating his next words. This time Ruth did not look away, her own mind running through scenarios, questions, looking for what to say until she finally alighted on a realisation. She had been swinging back and forth, away from Harry, towards Harry, past him to the other side and what kept the pendulum in motion, besides her overarching guilt at the death of George was the fact that she was never quite sure if Harry was manipulating her. She wanted to ask him if he had followed her that day she had met Malcolm, but was afraid of the answer. She was not afraid, however, to ask her other gnawing question.

"Who was Connie?"

Harry took a drink and tilted his head towards her. "Your replacement."

She looked down, a slight smile on her lips. "Here I thought I was irreplaceable."

"You are," he stated simply, without conceit or guile, causing Ruth's heart to drop into her stomach. She took a steadying breath to bring it back up to its rightful place. This was what he did so well, constantly shifting the ground from beneath her.

"And Sugarhorse?" she asked, trying to regain control of her thoughts.

"The walls have ears, Ruth," he countered, saying her name again, possessing it. He motioned to her now empty glass. "Can I get you another?" Before she had time to reply he had risen and strode off to the bar, leaving Ruth to contemplate the crumbs of their conversation.

She hadn't really thought this through, had she, this whole "drinks" business. It had been naive of her to think their conversation would not have strayed towards personal territory.

But she was not naive.

She knew that asking him out for a drink would stir the embers of a flame best left dormant. Just as he had done when they had sat on that bench under the pretext of talking about Jo.

In the intangible ether that was the universe, three words still hung between them - words that were never said. Her curiosity, her ego, wondered if he still held onto those words - if he would dare cross the line and say them. A line that she had moved after her conversation with Tariq, when she had stood in Harry's office and brushed her fingers across his hand. It had been a gesture of support, to show that she understood the difficult decisions he had to make - or so she had told herself. In moments of reflection, she knew that she had touched him so she could feel that familiar thrill, a taste of the connection they once had, that element that had been missing from their interactions.

She sighed at the riddle of her own mind. She was playing at something she had no right to. It would be folly to let things go further. Her feelings for Harry were like the stairs in an Escher painting, winding into each other and going nowhere.

Harry returned, carrying a half-pint for him and a full glass for her.

Ruth raised her brows. "Are you trying to get me drunk, Harry?"

Ignoring her question, he placed the drinks on the table and slid into the booth, taking the seat beside her. Ruth blinked in surprise, overwhelmed by the unexpectedness of the move. Her breath became shallow, as his presence consumed the oxygen from around her. He turned towards her, his thigh brushing against hers as he placed one arm on the table, the other on the seat behind her. She didn't dare turn to face him, her heart erratically beating as she swung between feeling trapped and deliciously heady.

Harry leaned in, his mouth close to her ear, his voice a low whisper. "Connie was a traitor. Sugarhorse was the code name for agents embedded in the Soviet ranks. Tiresias was their counter move - agents in our Service. Connie was part of it. She had been my friend for many years and I trusted her. She wore her mask exceedingly well."

Ruth turned her head, her eyes resting on his lapel as she contemplated what to say. She had not expected this information. She had dug into Connie and Sugarhorse only to come up against redaction and Eyes Only.

"Just so you know," Harry continued, "You managed to get information out of me that not even Blake and sodium pentothal could extract.

She took a large mouthful of her wine. His scent was enveloping her, pushing away everything else, the masculinity of it reminding her of George. She took another sip of wine. No, she mentally crossed that out; this was all Harry.

"Any other secrets you wish to pry from me?"

It was a leading question. She was well aware the he wanted her to take the conversation to something more personal. She cast about in her analyst mind for questions, a means to keep him at a distance.

" Yalta?"

"Ah, that was Juliet, the treacherous-" Harry stopped himself before completing the epithet.

"Wasn't she in a wheelchair?"

"Apparently, she picked up her mat and walked. They held Ros and myself prisoner in a house. Juliet injected Ros with a nerve agent while I watched.

"The fake death."

"Of which I was unaware. We didn't know that Adam had switched the serum. They executed her in front of me, she called to me for help and there was nothing I could do; a horror I'd rather not go through again."

There was a catch in his voice, exposing the naked vulnerability of the confession, causing even more of Ruth's defenses to give way. Was it age that had made him more open or was it her?

"Do you want to know about Adam?" Harry asked.

"Lucas told me," she said quietly, a sense of unease beginning to grow as she felt Harry taking command of the conversation, pushing it in a direction she wasn't ready to take.

"What about Zaf?"

"You don't need to-"

"He was captured by a group of mercenaries called the Redbacks. They tortured him for information and then sold him on. We found his remains or at least what we think were his remains in Pakistan."

She let out a small whimper, distraught that the vibrant young man that was Zaf had been condemned to such a horrible ending.

"Do you want to about Jo?"

"No, I-"

"What they did to her?"

"Harry, please," her voice was soft and ragged, " Why are you doing this?" Tears welled in her eyes, the damn threatening to break and spill over. Her hand rose in protest to stop his words, coming down to rest against the lapel of his jacket. She held it there not knowing whether to push him away or draw him in.

"The man you met today was assassinated. It could have been you."

She inhaled a shaky breath at the memory, her fingers moving fretfully over his lapel. Harry's hand rose to capture hers, pressing it to his chest. He moved in closer, surrounding her, the rest of the pub fading away into darkness, leaving the two of them in a world of their own.

"I have lost too many people, Ruth." There was a raw urgency to his voice. " If Fate, or whatever Gods there are, deign to bring them back into my life, I'm going to hold onto them no matter what. I will protect them at all costs. I want to be able to look up from my desk and see you sitting across the Grid and know that you're safe. If you can't give me anything else, at least give me that."

"Oh, Harry," she could only let his name out on a sigh not trusting herself to say more, afraid that the feelings she had kept locked away for so long would suddenly come rushing out and sweep her away.

They were so close, her temple brushing against his cheek, the arm that had rested behind her now drawing her in, his thumb stroking the base of her neck. She could feel the beating of his heart beneath her hand. She could curl her fingers around it and crush it, just as she knew he could to the same to hers. Through all the games and manipulation, she was the only one he trusted. After everything she had been through, she only trusted him. She closed her eyes, leaning into the moment, savouring it even though she didn't deserve it.

She tilted her head back to look up at him. His eyes were dark and hooded, darting down to her lips then back to her eyes, looking at her with the same intensity she had known those many years before. She sensed he was trying to control his breathing. She was losing control of the situation. She had stepped into a stream and now found herself pulled along with the current, the shore of her previous life receding into the distance. He was the only one who could protect her. She curled her fingers around his lapel and pulled him closer, her lips hovering at his ear.

"Take me home," she whispered.

Harry nodded.