A/N: Apologies for the delay. I got sucked into a very good book, and couldn't make time for anything else until I finished it!
These complete bloody imbeciles, Harry thought glumly. Wheeler had been questioning him for nearly an hour, prancing around the room, waving a massive knife in the air and threatening all sorts of violence, never delivering on any of it. It had taken less than a minute for Harry to determine what sort of nutter he was dealing with; Wheeler was under the impression that Harry really was Richard Blackburn, despite not resembling the man in the least. While it seemed that Wheeler and his crew had taken the time to map out an entry and exit plan to the bank, they hadn't taken the time to so much as photograph their intended target. But the evidence of his captors' sloppy planning did not instill a great deal of hope in Harry; if anything, it frightened him all the more. These men were ill prepared and highly-strung, and he knew that was a dangerous combination. So he spoke in a soft, level voice, and tried to keep the conversation moving.
He had wondered, just for a moment, if he might be better off telling Wheeler who he really was. Perhaps the man would be so terrified, upon learning that he was up against the full might of Her Majesty's Security Services, that he would cut and run at the first possible opportunity. Harry disabused himself of that notion rather quickly, however. Wheeler was half-mad and in possession of rather a large knife, and Harry was trapped on the floor, his wrists and ankles bound, and his dodgy knee had locked up, banishing any thought of overpowering these lunatics. So Harry played the game.
"I'm telling you, it won't work," he said quietly as Wheeler continued to pace the room like some sort of rabid panther. "The vault requires four different layers of authentication. You need a fingerprint scan from one employee, a retinal scan from the manager, and two different passwords, only one of which I know." He was making this up out of whole cloth, inventing things as he went. It was dangerous, he knew; if he'd said only the vault requires a fingerprint scan, he'd likely find himself short an index finger in a matter of seconds, and he was rather attached to his fingers, thank you very much. Of course, thinking of his fingers made him think of Ruth, and the way she moaned, when he thrust himself inside her. Not for the first time, he found himself rather regretting answering his mobile the night before. He could have delegated, and continued where he'd left off with Ruth, and maybe none of this would have happened. But he had answered the call, just as Ruth had told him to; she knew better than most what this job required of him.
It was all down to money, in the end. Wheeler had apparently Googled the word usury and decided that all lending institutions were the devil's own handiwork. In a misguided attempt to right the wrongs done by those nefarious, money-grubbing heathens he had come up with some half-cocked scheme to rob as many banks as possible, as quickly possible, using whatever force necessary. What he planned to do with the money remained a mystery, though Harry sincerely doubted he'd be passing it out to the widows and orphans.
It was, quite simply, the stupidest plan Harry had ever encountered, and he'd foiled more than his fair share of madcap schemes in his time. Bank robbery wasn't usually Harry's forte, but Wheeler's religious rhetoric had twigged on MI-5's radar, and so here Harry sat, bleeding and sore and quite frankly furious on the floor of some dingy warehouse, when he could have been home, snogging Ruth senseless. All in all, this was not one of Harry's better days.
"What can be more unreasonable than to sow without land, without rain, without plows? All those who give themselves up to this damnable culture shall reap only tares. Let us cut off these monstrous births of gold and silver; let us stop this execrable fecundity."
Ruth rewound the tape, and played it again. She'd been at it for a few hours now, trawling through the depths of Greg Lawson's life, playing back bits of Anthony Wheeler's sermons, trying to put the pieces together. In a mad sort of way, she thought she understood what had drawn Wheeler off his pillar, his motivation for attacking Harry in the broad light of day. It seemed she'd been correct, after a fashion, in thinking that it all tied back to Greg Lawson. The plods had sent over Lawson's phone, and Tariq had quickly unlocked it, revealing a string of rather risqué messages between Lawson and Wheeler, the lunatic on the pillar. It would appear that in addition to being old friends, the pair were also erstwhile lovers, and despite all his pious claims to the contrary, Wheeler had not spent his time in the park standing on a pile of rock and considering the glory of God; while his followers slept, he had been furiously texting Lawson, and most of what he said made Ruth want to gag. The messages had been revealing in more ways than one; apparently, Lawson had done business with Richard Blackburn's bank, and owed them rather a lot of money. This had sent Wheeler into a spirited frenzy, and in the days before the attack on Harry, he'd spent much of his time railing against the practice of usury, or lending money and charging interest.
She played the tape a third time.
"Let us stop this execrable fecundity," Wheeler declaimed in his most dramatic voice, which in truth was hardly more than a nasally whine.
There's no way this man knows what fecundity means, she thought. No, she had listened to rather a lot of their would-be pillar-saint's ramblings, and most of what he'd said was incomprehensible bollocks. This particular passage, though, sounded more like something he was quoting than something he'd invented on the spot. Dutifully she turned, and typed the phrase into her computer.
As always, the internet delivered.
Apparently, Wheeler had stolen his entire speech from St. John Chrysostom, an early Eastern Christian ascetic. That made sense; Wheeler was modeling his manic behavior on the stylites, most of whom made their pillars in the Eastern fringes of the Roman Empire, and this St. John fellow had spent two years standing non-stop, even while he slept, resulting in rather a lot of health problems. Perhaps he should have prayed harder, Ruth thought ungraciously.
She reached out, and shuffled through the papers on her desk, finally retrieving Greg Lawson's bank statements. He owed money to several different intuitions; what if, Ruth wondered, Blackburn's bank wasn't the only target? Wheeler had been obsessed with the sin of usury; what if he had decided to take vengeance on everyone who had abused his lover?
Ruth scooped up her phone, and rang Dimitri. "I think we're looking at multiple targets," she told him. "I'm texting you an address. Take a few plods, and go check it out. I'll send teams to the other locations."
"Yes ma'am," Dimitri said, somewhat cheekily, she thought, and rang off.
It's better than nothing, she told herself as she rose to go in search of Beth. At least while she was busy, she wasn't consumed with grief and fear over Harry's fate.
"He that hath given forth his money upon usury, or hath taken increase, shall he live? He shall not live, saith the Lord," Wheeler shrieked, his eyes mad, spittle flying from his fleshy lips to land on Harry's cheek.
Things were not going well for Harry, at present. Apparently, Wheeler thought that Harry – or, rather, Richard Blackburn – carried the keys to his bank's vault in his trouser pocket, and upon learning that he would not be able to simply walk in and empty the accounts, he had flown into a rage. Harry had the lacerations on his chest and arms to prove it. He was bleeding quite profusely just now, and lamenting the loss of one of his favorite shirts.
"Is that from something?" Harry asked in a resigned sort of voice. Wheeler was kneeling beside him, knife dangling from his fingertips, his face uncomfortably close to Harry's. For all the he had shaved and appeared to have cleaned himself up, Wheeler still smelled rather bad, and Harry wished he'd move away. The stench was making him dizzy.
"The prophet Ezekiel," Wheeler answered.
Ah, of course, Harry thought glumly. The old ones are the best.
"The prophet Ezekiel says you shall not live, Mr. Blackburn," Wheeler continued, pressing the tip of his knife into Harry's thigh. "But I am giving you the chance to repent. Empty your vaults, enemy of Christ, and your soul will be cleansed before you enter eternity."
No, thank you, Harry thought. It would take more than that, he believed, to wash out the sins of his past, but he rather wisely kept that thought to himself.
"I've told you-" Harry began, but before he could finish, the entire warehouse erupted into a blaze of light, and through the shattered windows Harry could hear the thrumming of a helicopter. Drawing upon some previously undiscovered well of strength, Harry flung himself to the side, rolling out of reach of Wheeler and his knife. Before the nutter could make a move, a veritable army of gun-toting CO-19 officers burst in, Dimitri Levendis leading the pack. To a man, Wheeler's followers dropped to the floor and raised their arms in surrender, while Wheeler all but frothed at the mouth, dancing on the spot in impotent rage. Harry watched, trying not smile, as Dimitri waltzed right up to Wheeler, and punched him square in the face, dropping him to his knees and sending the knife skittering across the floor.
"All right, Harry?" Dimitri asked him as he subdued the raving lunatic on the floor.
"Never better," Harry answered, grinning.
Ruth had done it, in the end. As Dimitri rang off, Beth turned to stare out across the Grid, her eyes alighting on the petite woman currently huddled beneath a pile of paperwork, still dutifully scrolling through Anthony Wheeler's past speeches. It was a stroke of brilliance, Ruth's plan to check the banks; Beth's team had found a transit van full of unwashed loonies at the first place they'd checked, and once the nutters realized they'd been well and truly nabbed, they all began to sing like canaries. Beth had the location where Wheeler had taken Harry in hand within fifteen minutes of arriving at the bank, and Dimitri had just called to say that Harry was fine, and at this very moment he was on his way back to the Grid, ignoring all requests that he stop off at A&E on the way.
Oh, Beth was sure they would have stumbled across this lead in the end, but it was Ruth who had seen straight to the heart of the matter, who had accomplished in just over three hours what might have taken Beth and the rest twice as long to discover. It was Ruth's quick thinking that had no doubt saved Harry's life; according to Dimitri, the nutters had done a number on him before he was rescued. What would have happened, Beth wondered, if she weren't here?
It seemed that Ruth could feel Beth's eyes upon her; she turned, and their gazes caught. Beth dragged herself to her feet, and made her way across the Grid.
"Harry?" Ruth asked, her heart in her eyes as she gazed unblinking at Beth.
"He's fine," Beth answered, noting the way Ruth's shoulders slumped with relief, the way her eyes shone all the brighter for knowing that her husband was safe. Whatever might have gone wrong between them in the past, it was clear that Ruth still loved Harry, very much, and Beth was thankful that they had managed to bring him back to his wife, battered and bruised though he might be. "He's on his way, Dimitri says he'll be here in about fifteen minutes."
Ruth nodded. "I'm going to kill him," she said, and then she began to laugh, a slightly hysterical sort of sound that frightened Beth, just a little. "I'm going to absolutely bloody murder him."