Late afternoon – Scotland:
Nicholas Blake checked the time on the grandfather clock in the vast office of his ancestral home, a room where he had watched both his grandfather and his father sitting behind the walnut desk, looking incredibly important and out of reach. At just after 5 pm, not only was the sun well past the yardarm, but it was hurtling at full tilt towards the horizon. He could find no reason at all why he shouldn't pour himself a drink. Cassandra would say that he didn't need that drink, did he, and then suggest (somewhat predictably) he go for a walk. Well, Cassandra was in Rome, and he was on the family estate fifty kilometres north of Dundee, and so for once in his life he would do as he pleased.
He was endeavouring to decide between the Glenfiddich and the Dalmore when he heard the front door chimes. Who would visit him out here? Only a handful of people knew where he was, and most of them were members of his security staff. He carefully placed both bottles on the shining surface of the desk, and hurried into the entry hall. Behind the mottled glass he saw a tall figure, probably male. It could have been anyone. Nicholas opened the door, and had never been more surprised. "Come in," he said. "It's good to see you. What brings you all this way?"
His visitor brandished a full bottle of Macallan single malt. "I was in the area, and thought you could do with a decent drink."
Nicholas, still wondering what this man was doing in Scotland, soon overlooked the improbability of him suddenly turning up to share a drink with him in favour of trying the Macallan. "If you can afford this I must be paying you too much," he said, stepping aside to allow his visitor into his home. Maybe his visitor would once more open up about his time spent serving in Iraq. Nicholas enjoyed stories from the front line, so long as he didn't have to be there in person. Not only was his action foolish, but it would be one of his last conscious decisions on earth.
After what Ruth had shared with him after her phone call from Ros, Harry called a team meeting for 5.30 pm. Lucas and Dimitri were both back on the Grid, Ruth had news from Ros, and Tariq had several financial searches under way, one being a search into the accounts belonging to Terence Gordon Noakes, of 57 Chamberlain House, on the Wandsworth estate.
"Tell us about Noakes," Harry began, looking from Dimitri to Lucas.
Dimitri sat up straight, glancing at Lucas as he did so. "I spent four days on that estate, days I will never get back, only to find that the trouble with the Iranians began and ended with one of the more vocal and opinionated tenants. Oakes. So Lucas and I .. convinced him to keep his opinions to himself."
"I trust you were discreet," Harry said, staring unblinkingly from Dimitri to Lucas.
"We used our legends and left no bruises," Dimitri said, smiling. "Needless to say Noakes was .. eager to please us."
"And?" Harry looked up, lifting one eyebrow.
It was Lucas who filled the others in on the outcome of their `meeting' with Noakes. Being the big bloke he was – and with Noakes being a much smaller bloke - all Lucas had had to do was stand very close to Noakes, peering down at him, while Dimitri circled him, clenching and unclenching his fists. Lucas had to admit that Dimitri's teeth-baring smile had scared even him. They had then done the good-cop-bad-cop routine, with he being the good cop – kind, understanding, conciliatory – while Dimitri had indulged in a bit of shouting in the little shit's face, calling him some rather nasty names. In the end Noakes had crumbled, which had surprised both he and Dimitri. "Just when I was beginning to enjoy myself, too," Dimitri had said once they'd left Noakes' flat.
"Noakes claims to be associated with the BFB – Britain For the British, who are an extreme arm of the BNP which the BNP deny all knowledge of. I'm not so sure," Lucas began.
"Why do you say that?" Ruth asked.
"Noakes is a coward. He stays at home all day while his two female partners work. His neighbours have reported shouting from his flat – all three of them – and Noakes has threatened both woman who live with him, as well as the neighbours either side of him. I suggest his escalating behaviour is a civil matter."
"Perhaps," Harry replied. Feeling Ruth moving slightly from across the corner of the table from him, he turned towards her. "Ruth?"
"It sounds like he is just a .. difficult man, but we still owe it to the safety of his neighbours to check his claims about his affiliation with BFB. With your permission, Harry, I thought I might give Ros the job of doing a background check on him."
Harry nodded. "Anything else, Lucas?" When Lucas shook his head, he turned again to Ruth. "You have a report from Ros."
Ruth nodded, and although before she spoke she consulted the sheets of paper on the table in front of her, she was simply biding time while she organised her thoughts into a logical sequence. "Ros has been keeping me informed on the whereabouts of Leighton Cox, Athol Keating – also known as Matthew Carstairs – and Aaron Zoanetti. Zoanetti hasn't stepped outside his normal routine, so it appears that his role in the attempt on Blake's life was purely one which used his knowledge of current technology. I suspect also that Zoanetti would have discovered rather easily where Nicholas Blake was hiding." She looked meaningfully at Harry, who dipped his head towards her in acknowledgement. She was right, of course, but he still had to let Cox know that he knew what it was he knew. It was, after all, part of the spying game. Same side or not, it would have been remiss of him to have allowed Cox to believe he'd been acting completely under the radar. "Ros discovered that Cox took a flight out of Gatwick for Baghdad, while Keating, flying as Matthew Carstairs, arrived at Dundee earlier this afternoon. He picked up a hire car at the airport, and drove north. That is all she had, but that is enough."
"So Cox is paying Carstairs to off the former HS?" Dimitri said.
"It appears so," Ruth replied. "All we can do now is wait. Ros will let me know when he's on his way back to London."
"And Leighton Cox?" Lucas asked.
"Ros has checked the schedules for meetings in Baghdad," Ruth continued, "and there is nothing – officially, at least – which would draw him there at this time."
"I have someone there who might know what has drawn Cox there." Harry's voice was low and quiet. He had only just remembered Gil Whitford, an aging war correspondent whom he'd first met in Germany over thirty years earlier. "Leave it with me."
When the meeting ended Harry quickly left and headed to his office, where he immediately put in a call to Gil Whitford in Baghdad. The remainder of his team returned to their desks. Once comfortably seated at her desk, Ruth took her mobile phone from her pocket and called Ros.
"Ruth," Ros answered. "I hope you have more work for me, because I can't do any more on the three names you gave me."
"I have. Maintain surveillance on Athol Keating. We need to know when he flies back to London. The next task for you is to find out all you can about a man called Terry Noakes. Once we end this call I'll message his full name, address and date of birth. I need to know anything at all about him, but in particular, any affiliations with groups, political or otherwise."
"You don't mean whether he follows Queen's Park Rangers or Arsenal, do you?"
Ruth smiled to herself, relieved that Ros' sense of humour was returning. "No. In particular, could you check the group calling themselves Britain For the British? It's said they're an extremist offshoot from the British National Party."
"Will do."
Ruth ended her call and then looked up into Harry's office to see he was still on the phone. She wasn't sure whether she should simply go home and wait for him to turn up, or wait until his call had ended. She chose to wait. Besides, it wasn't as though she had nothing to occupy her while she waited. She was behind in her translating, so she opened the program and carefully placed her headphones over her ears, pulling strands of her hair out of the way.
When Harry left his office with his coat over his arm, it was well after 7 o'clock. "You've worked enough for today," he said, leaning down to gain eye contact with Ruth, who was still busily translating. "We should go home."
"Sorry?" she said, removing her headphones, a slight frown puckering her brow.
"Home time."
Ruth stretched, arching her back and pushing her elbows behind her. Harry watched, fascinated, as she stretched her body, pushing her breasts into his line of vision. They were the only senior staff still on the Grid, Tariq having left earlier, mumbling something about having dinner with his parents. "Harry?" she said, when she looked up at him, sitting on the corner of her desk, a smile curving his lips.
"I love it when you do that."
"Do what?"
"That," he said, suddenly embarrassed, "where you stick out your chest."
"I don't do it for you," Ruth replied, suddenly standing, thus ending the `show'.
He knew that, of course. "I thought we might go back to mine," he said, helping Ruth with her coat, and then standing close to her, his hands lightly grasping her upper arms. Ruth nodded, and then reached down to pick up her bag. She needed an early night, but then so did he. She had become accustomed to spending her evenings with Harry. She no longer wanted to spend her nights at home alone. He was a loner, she was a loner, but together they were learning to find contentment in the company of the other.
Much later they were lying together in bed, waiting for sleep. Ruth's mind was tired, but her body wouldn't relax, while Harry's body was exhausted, but his brain refused to switch off.
"I'm worried about Ros," Ruth said, after they'd lain next to one another for ten minutes or so.
"Talk to me," Harry replied, because Ros was a subject which also concerned him. He turned on his side to watch Ruth. She was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling, a frown drawing her eyebrows together. Sensing his scrutiny, she turned her head towards him.
"She's .. enjoying the work I've been giving her. When I sent her Terence Noakes' details, she messaged me back to thank me. Don't you think that's .. odd?"
Harry thought it odd that Ros had messaged thanks to Ruth, but not that she was enjoying the work. Ros enjoyed working just as much as did he. "That doesn't sound like Ros, no," he said. "What is it exactly which worries you?"
Ruth turned on her side to face him, so that they each lay facing the other. Harry smiled as she tucked both hands under her cheek. "She seems on a high - for Ros, that is - and I'm worried about when she returns to work and has to be confined to the Grid. She'll not handle that well."
"I have every intention of her again filling the shoes of Section Chief. She'll not be needed in the field, so she'll not miss it. I'll need her beside me just as much as I need you."
"Careful, Harry. Ros and I may just cut out the middle man."
"Meaning me?"
Ruth nodded, smiling. "She and I could run the section on our own."
"I'm sure you could," he said quietly, wondering how seriously Ruth was taking the subject. He lifted himself onto one elbow and gazed down at her. "You're not serious about taking over the section … are you?"
"Are you worried?"
"Of course not. You enjoy analysis too much. Management would send you bonkers."
"I know. I'm worried what will happen when Ros realises that she'll never again be the spy she once was."
Harry nodded. "Perhaps she'll become a different kind of spy .. a better spy, but even if she does, it's likely she'll experience a crisis .. if not soon, then in the next few years. There will always be the potential for her to come crashing down."
Ruth thought for a moment before turning her body so that her back faced Harry. She didn't want to talk about it any more. She knew that he could well have been talking about her. She still hadn't `come crashing down' from the shock of losing George and Nico and Jo, and perhaps that was equally as inevitable for her as it was for Ros.
"Are you all right, Ruth?"
Ruth nodded. So long as she told herself she was, then she would be. "Curl up against me," she said, and he did, wrapping his arm around her waist. Harry could read her well. The conversation was definitely over.
By the time Ruth and Harry had both entered a state of deep sleep, across town Ros Myers was busy. Athol Keating, travelling as Matthew Carstairs, had boarded a late flight to London, and so she had an open tab on the BBC news website, waiting for confirmation of Nicholas Blake's demise. She had no vision for Baghdad, but she was scanning the news services for any developments in Iraq.
Next morning – 10 am:
Harry had called Ruth and Lucas into his office, since apart from Tariq, they were the only senior members of his staff on the Grid. He was sitting back in his chair, one ankle resting on his other knee, his eyes on the TV monitor, when Ruth and Lucas entered the office together.
"What do you think about this?" Harry said, not taking his eyes from the screen.
The BBC news announcer was part way through a story from Iraq. It was clear there had been a sudden death of a prominent member of the Council of Ministers. "The Prime Minister?" Ruth asked, her eyes on the screen.
Another news story had just begun, so Harry quickly muted the TV. "Nothing quite so dramatic," he said, turning to face both Ruth and Lucas. "Take a seat," he added, pointing to the two chairs on the opposite side of his desk. "The official story is that the Minister of Defence, Avi Shabout, died suddenly in the early hours of this morning from a heart attack."
"And?" Lucas said, not seeing the connection or the relevance.
"Yesterday I spoke to a contact of mine currently stationed in Iraq," Harry continued. "He was predicting that Avi Shabout could meet a sticky end, and soon. The man was a moderate, but he did not support the continued presence of US troops and their allies in Iraq."
"So he upset the CIA. Why didn't they kill him?" asked Lucas. He had only a limited understanding of the political situation in Iraq.
Ruth shook her head just fractionally as she looked across the desk to where Harry was watching her, his lips protruding in concentration. "The CIA will only perform such an act if they can't find someone else to do it," he said.
"What will Cox get out of it?" Lucas asked.
"If he's behind it, and we don't know that for certain," Ruth picked up the story, since she and Harry had discussed the possibility on the way to work that morning. "It just looks that way. We may never know, given the official story being that the man died from a heart attack."
"He probably owes a favour or two," Harry said, not even bothering to hide his disgust. "Leighton has made an art form out of upsetting the Americans. He's sure to owe them for something or other."
The ringtone of a phone had the three of them searching for the offending phone. "It's mine," Ruth said apologetically. "It's Ros."
"I'll leave you to it, then," said Lucas, and he quickly left the office so that Ruth could take her call in relative privacy.
"Yes?" Ruth said into the phone once Lucas had left.
Harry watched her as she listened to her caller. He loved the way her face became animated when all she was doing was listening to Ros. Her eyes sparkled and the fingers of her free hand found their way to the ends of her hair, which she curled round and around one finger. He lost himself in watching her, enthralled by her sharp and incisive and receptive mind, while at the same time her body was performing a slow dance of its own. "Harry?" she said, snapping him out of his reverie. "Are you all right? You look .. strange."
Harry sat up straight. "I'm fine. What's the news?"
"Ros has hacked into the communications system of the Tayside Police."
This time Harry really sat up, and leaned forward, his hands on the arms of his chair. Ros? Hacking? Is anyone in the world safe from her? "Seriously?"
"Seriously. I believe she's been having late night tuition from Tariq via phone. This morning at just after 8 am Blake's housekeeper found his body slumped in a chair at his family home an hour's drive north of Dundee. An autopsy is yet to be performed, but the medical officer on duty suspects he died of a heart attack." Harry sat back in his chair and lifted his eyes to the ceiling. He sighed heavily. "What's wrong?" Ruth asked.
He dropped his eyes to look at her. "I thought the news would make me happy .. that I'd feel vindicated on Ros' behalf," he replied quietly. "All I feel is anger."
"Ros will be all right, Harry. She's found a new niche for herself, and it's all thanks to you."
"And to you," he added.
"At least she's still alive."
Harry nodded. That was the important part of all. Ros was still with them.
A/N: The final chapter of this fic will be posted a couple days after Xmas.
