A/N: Happy Christmas everyone! We are now approaching the pointy end of the story. Not long to go now!
Will the team shut down Britain Unite?
Will Lucas and Jo ruthlessly use Anneke again?
Will Anneke ever switch to decaf?
All these and more will be answered...
Chapter Nine
"I canna! No! Don't make me!"
"This is a bit much, McInnes! You're done!"
"They're not! They're not done!"
"Then tell us! Come on, McInnes. You tell us and then we'll have them. You'll be safe."
"You're never safe. Not from them. No one is, no one safe..."
Ros burst out of the interrogation room, door slamming against the wall before swinging shut again. McInnes sat handcuffed to a chair, quietly sobbing, the sound cut off as the guard locked it behind the frustrated Section Chief. Lucas caught up with her as she headed back to the lifts. He had watched the interrogation over the video monitors and was growing as irritated as Ros over McInnes' fear of giving up Snow Whites' intentions and locations.
"It looks as though Britain Unite was recruited by Snow White several months ago with funding coming from other various groups including the Puritans, but now, it seems, they're in over their heads and whoever is running this little operation has put the fear of God into them," Ros spat in one breath as the lift rose.
"We'll get them, Ros," Lucas spoke calmly. "Everyone has a breaking point."
She looked sharply at her Senior Case Officer. He met her eyes briefly before turning them back towards the doors. They travelled to Section D's level in silence.
The late night interrogation saw a bleary eyed Lucas stumble early Saturday morning onto the Grid. He didn't get to keep his date with Sarah the night before. When he rang to explain, Sarah had just laughed softly at the situation she had caused herself by being far too efficient with information.
Tariq and Ruth were already at Ruth's desk, poring over papers and pointing things out on the monitors.
"Did you two make it home last night?" Lucas asked, surprised.
Ruth dismissed his question with a wave of the hand and glanced over at him, her eyes bright. "Something's happening, Lucas. Something big. And soon."
He leaned over her desk, brows knitted together. "Any idea what?"
"If we're looking for a Snow White-style attack, there's plenty of potential targets," Tariq spoke up. "In the next week, there's four multicultural festivals, a march for marriage equality, an Islamic holiday and countless public bilingual story times held in parks all over the city. But Ruth reckons the march will be the target."
"Tariq recovered partial emails sent to Ross and McInnes in the last week," Ruth nodded at the young tech, who beamed in response. Lucas raised his eyebrows, impressed. The elusive emails had put Tariq in the touchiest mood Lucas had ever seen the man in. "The emails elude to a prince asking another prince to dance, or some such nonsense. But," the analyst raised a finger, "Chatter and monitoring message boards, social networking sites and private messaging also point to the march, to Monday. There's been nothing pointing to anything else. Not on the same scale." Ruth held Lucas' gaze. "It's no coincidence, Lucas. Something will happen at that march."
"What do we know about the possible nature of the attack?"
Ruth pulled a file out from beneath several pages and began leafing through it. "These type of groups are a different kettle of fish than other, more religious based extremist groups. They trade in fear and words, such as the IRA in the 70s and 80s. They do not send in suicide bombers. Drive by shootings, bombs in packages left behind in buildings and guerrilla style attacks where the perpetrators can get away are more their style. We'll need to have eyes on that march. Lots of eyes."
"There's something else too," Tariq added. "As I've managed to partially break the code that was bouncing the IP addresses all over the place, I can confirm that for the last month, at least, the emails sent to our three ringleaders have been coming from here."
"Here?" Lucas asked, "As in the UK?"
"Here, as in London."
Lucas sucked in a sharp breath, and looked down at Tariq again. "Any chance of narrowing the location down?"
"I'm trying, I really am. But the code is a tough one." Tariq looked thoughtful. "Is McInnes talking? Would you be able to get it out of him?"
Lucas grimaced. "Ros and Harry are down there again. For a guy with an arrest record smaller than my tie collection, he's surprisingly close-mouthed about the whole thing. Snow White scares the shit out this man."
Ruth touched Lucas' arm, gaining his attention, "Since we know the emails are being sent from here, maybe Anneke could find out?"
"Maybe."
"If I could get my hands on Dijkstra's laptop, just for a minute or two," Tariq looked again at Lucas, "I might be able to narrow it down a whole lot faster."
It took a second for Lucas to make his decision.
"I'll call Anneke."
Anneke must have looked suitably surprised when Hannah told her about Bill's arrest. Hannah herself looked quietly thrilled.
"The police must have found something against him, Ani!" She whispered excitedly. "Now he's finally away from Pete!"
"Let's hope there's some evidence to keep him locked up for now," Anneke replied cautiously.
"Of course there would be!" Hannah retorted.
The jangling of Anneke's ringtone from the depths of her bag in the hall interrupted the pair.
"Sorry, Han," Anneke leaped up from the couch.
The smiles were already returning to her cousin's face. "Ooo!" She teased, "Is it sexy Mark?"
The Dutch woman snorted and fished her phone out. Seeing that it was, indeed, Mark, she answered as she quickly headed to her room.
"Yes?"
"Anneke, are you alone?"
She closed her bedroom door behind her. "Now I am."
"There's something going down very soon," he said in a low voice. "Our tech staff are trying their best but there's something you could do that would help greatly."
"What?"
"We need Pete's laptop."
Anneke's stomach dipped. "How am I supposed to get that? He takes it everywhere."
"Just - try. Please Anneke."
"Why do you need it? I thought everything was online?" Surely they didn't need the actual physical laptop?
"It's something to do with sourcing the emails," he sighed.
"What emails?"
"I can't - Look, I can't talk about it over the phone. Can I explain it later?"
Anneke was becoming familiar with the twisting in her gut. The hot and cold that warred for dominance. The humiliation and fear.
"Will you do it? Time is running out," he pleaded. No, the thought occurred to her suddenly, he demanded. She had no choice; he really had taken it away.
She hesitated for too long. "Anneke, please!" Mark began to sound impatient.
"Fine!" She spat. "It'll probably be left in his office tonight. How long do you need it for?"
There was the sound of muffled voices on the other end of the line, then Mark said, "Less than ten minutes."
"Two am. I'll be outside." She hung up before he could force her to do anything else. She pressed her knuckles into her forehead for a moment before dumping her phone on the bed and shaking the tension out of her hands. When she eventually walks out to her cousin-in-law she needed to look like a woman in the throes of infatuation, not like she wanted to put a hole through the wall.
Lucas spotted movement from the side of the Dijkstra house several painfully long minutes after Anneke's agreed time to meet. She avoided the street lights and made her way carefully to the road. He opened the van door where he and Tariq had camped out and couldn't help but ask as he jumped out, "Did something go wrong?"
She gave him a glare of such loathing that he took a step back. "It's all wrong, Mark. Here's the laptop." She almost threw it at him.
Lucas turned to give it to Tariq, who was staring at the pair in open curiosity. He closed the van doors on the techie and turned carefully to Anneke. Tariq didn't need to hear this.
The woman had crossed her arms tightly across her chest and turned away from Lucas, taking a few steps further up the street.
"If it makes you feel any better, Ani, this may be the big break of the operation."
She didn't look at him; she stared instead into the darkness of the quiet street. Lucas began to grow anxious. "You're not having second thoughts, are you?"
She pinned him with her narrowed green eyes. "Don't be stupid. I didn't walk into this with my eyes closed."
"Then why are you so angry?"
Her jaw dropped. "Why - ?" She marched up to him and shoved him in the chest. "I'm fucking spying on my family! My family!"
He recovered from the short shove and turned on the woman. "Don't deny you weren't doing that already. You were watching your cousin as closely as you are now."
"That's different!" She gasped.
"Hardly," he growled. "You knew there was something wrong and now you're taking it out on me."
"You can hardly blame me, can you?" She snarled back. "You aren't exactly the innocent party in all this."
Fury and guilt flooded him and Lucas wasn't sure if he should glare at the woman or turn away from her angry green eyes. The glare won. "You think you're the only victim here? You think this is all about your hurt feelings?" He stepped closer, using his height to his advantage. "Tell that to the man who had his belly sliced open by your cousin's mates. Who watched his boyfriend die." As her jaw betrayed her tension, he gently lowered his head and reached for her shoulder. "Don't you see what we're trying to do?"
"Don't," she spat, slapping his hand away. "Don't make this about the greater good. I fucking know it's about the greater good. But the greater good doesn't have to live with the fact that it's cousin may be a terrorist. That the man it was attracted to was using it to get close to its cousin."
Lucas felt his anger melt under her admission. "Ani," his voice gentled further.
"You don't call me Ani! Friends call me Ani!" Her voice cracked.
Anneke twisted away, facing the dark end of the street again.
The guilt came to the forefront. Usually able to think on his feet, Lucas floundered. Anneke's voice was hollow as it echoed back to him.
"In my head, Mark, I know what you're doing. You're a hero, you all are. The real sort. The ones no one knows about. The heroes who stop a bus load of kids from being blown up, and walks away, no one the wiser. The heroes who shelter a reformed terrorist from his former comrades so he can testify against them, but is vilified by the media as a panderer to foreign governments." Her voice dropped. "A hero who survives a Russian prison as a British spy and covers the scars so no one remembers. You do what I can't, what no one else will, and that makes you a hero."
Lucas froze in stunned silence as Anneke turned back to him, tears in her eyes. The first time she let him see them.
"But I wanted it to be real," she whispered. "Silly me." The spook shook himself out of the spell she had woven around him.
"Anneke," Lucas lowered his voice to match her whisper and shifted close again. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. That was never my intention." He reached out and brushed a lock of blonde hair away from her eyes. There was a kind of desperate joy in being able to touch her again which he locked away with whatever else he felt for this woman.
She didn't slap away the fingers that had begun to trace their way down her cheek, but she didn't relax either. She just caught his eyes with hers. They almost glowed with the intensity of her words.
"I'm a selfish woman, Mark. But what I'm going through means nothing. What I want doesn't matter." Her voice become stronger. "What you're doing is important. This is so no one else dies."
His fingers froze for a moment on her cheekbones, his brain insisting that they be removed immediately. They slid to cup her face instead. Before his brain could start screaming at him again, the van doors opened.
"I'm done," Tariq spoke quickly, knowing he interrupted something between the spook and the asset. Lucas took a step back, dropping his hand from her face. Anneke walked over to the van and Tariq handed over Pete's laptop.
"Thanks," Tariq said.
"No problem," Anneke replied with a hesitant smile. She threw a glance back at Lucas and started to head back to the house. Studying Lucas, Tariq wisely decided that it wouldn't be the best time to ask how it was going with Sarah.
Anneke had barely settled in for what she was expecting to be a sleepless night when she heard the muffled slam of a car door outside the house. Heart thumping, she leapt out of bed and rushed over to the window overlooking the side and part of the front of the house, both hoping and dreading it was Mark. The figure standing in the shadows was, however, not Mark. The glow of his mobile lit up his heavy features, then he waited, leaning his wide frame on the car door.
Anneke felt sick with the realisation that if Bobby had arrived only minutes beforehand she would have been spotted sneaking back into the house. That was just too close. She snapped to attention when her cousin emerged from the front of the house, pulling an old woollen jumper over his head, his legs clad in checkered pyjama pants. Bobby waved a small box toward Pete, but the young man shook his head. Shrugging, he took a cigarette out for himself, his face lighting up again, this time with the glow of a lighter.
Without pausing to think, Anneke pulled back from the window and threw on her own thick jumper and a pair of runners.
Slipping out the back door and silently making her way back down the side of the house, she crouched low so she wouldn't be seen over the hip-high fence circling their yard. She stopped when she heard her cousin's harsh whisper. The frantic note was becoming all too familiar.
"I don't want to do this, Bobby. I really don't. It's gone too far and I swore to Hannah-" Pete paused. "This may be our chance, y'know? It's not too late. With Bill bein' taken in maybe..."
The younger man hit a note of desperation. "Maybe we could back out righ' now, and jus' walk away, Bobby."
She heard the other man sigh.
"Pete, mate," Bobby bit out, his voice harsh. "At this point we have no choice. You said it yerself, it's gone too far. You know they're watching us. Of course they're watching us. They've been fucking emailing us for weeks!" A sharp inhale, and exhale. Cigarette smoke wafted over Anneke's head. "You want to go to the cops? Na ah, no way. What these fuckers can do to us is much worse."
She heard some shuffling, a few scrapes across the concrete footpath, someone pacing and Pete groaned softly.
"Yer goin' soft on me, aren't cha?" Bobby's voice held a mixture of amazement and fear. "You don't get to go soft on me, y'little prick. We got to do this now!"
"But I didn't want this-"
Anneke heard a thump and a short grunt and instinctively raised herself to look, to see what happened, but caught herself in time. She pressed herself against the fence, her breath coming in shallow pants.
"You don't go soft!" Bobby growled. "We see this through!" More scraping on the concrete as one of the men stumbled and caught himself.
"We see this through," Bobby whispered.
"Bobby-"
The sound of a car door slamming broke the stillness of the night, and Bobby, it appeared, had left her cousin alone on the dark footpath.