11. London, Sunday 2 February 2014.

Cromwell Road, Kensington, 21:30

Traffic was mercifully thin at this hour of the night as Erin guided the car smoothly but at speed along the road towards home. She was tired but still fizzing too much to be sitting in the passenger's seat so had elected to drive which Dimitri, equally tired, was more than happy to accept. So happy that he was currently snoozing, oblivious to the road, the weather and the radio that was playing late evening soft rock.

It had been a long couple of days, starting from the unexpected bomb blast on Friday night that had obligated the pair to turn around and head back to Millbank literally as soon as they had walked in the door at Stamford Brook. Since then they had caught cat-naps at work, managed to shower and change once, at work, and lived off the dubious offerings, at work, from the staff canteen, the kitchenette and whatever was stuffed in the back of everyone's desk drawers. The first night was spent almost floundering around, trying to work out what was going on. Saturday things started to become clearer and by the evening it was obvious that they were dealing with an internecine squabble between two Ukrainian groups, one nationalists and one pro-Russian that was threatening to spill out into the wider community. Today they had inadvertently run into a couple of their counterparts from the FSB who were working the same case and that had been interesting to say the least.

Realising who each other represented right from the start they had been cautious, even tetchy with the two men as they skirted around the issues. It was fairly obvious early on that the Russians were concentrating exclusively on the Ukrainian nationalists while MI5 were looking at both sides equally for entirely different reasons. The FSB were interested in getting as much information about the nationalists and their network as possible, for use in Kiev itself; the British were just trying to stop the violence that was increasing every day in Ukraine from spreading to their patch.

The meeting was short and as unproductive as they would have expected and was winding up quickly if not particularly cordially, and the English couple were about to turn away when one of the Russians muttered to the other, deliberately in English and loud enough to be heard by Erin and Dimitri,

"I would have thought she was on our side now that she's one of us."

Her reaction had been instant and sharp and it had gone downhill from there as the Russians needled her about Ilya Gavrik and she fired straight back, despite Dimitri's quiet attempts to get her to ignore the provocation. It finished with her smiling sharply, snapping a sudden photo with her camera and assuring them that she would be quite happy to pass on everything she had just learned from the pair of them to the General, no doubt he would take a personal interest in them. She was somewhat mollified to see the pair of them blench at the prospect of having just drawn the attention of one of the most feared, near-mythical legends of their service to their own sorry selves, before they beat a hasty retreat.

That was why she was still fizzing almost half a day after the meeting and why she was doing her best impression of a rally driver along one of London's main arteries. Not only was she still battling with the realisation that their insinuations would turn out to be true if her mother and the Minister ever formalised their relationship – the bloody man would actually be her step-father which meant that murderous little bastard Sasha would be her step-brother, neither of which she even wanted to think about – but she was also wondering how that pair of smart-arses knew about the burgeoning relationship and how many others were in possession of the same facts.

At least the weather had improved over the day, she thought as her turn-off hove into view, and the operation had ended well and now they were almost home with the delicious prospect of a couple of days off, nutters of the world allowing…

It wanted but another five minutes to ten o'clock when Jean heard the key in the front door. The day had been busy despite it being a Sunday: Mical had taken the weekend off so she had been full-time with Rosie as well as setting exam papers for her students. Ilya had been in Aberdeen for most of the weekend at the Kapsgaz North Sea Operations HQ – a trip he had been going to take for some time and had finally done it now as a means of not sitting at home, brooding about whether Jean meant what she had said - so they had been stuck with their normal means of communication and were finishing up their final call for the evening as Erin and Dimitri arrived.

"They're home at last but look worn out," she murmured as they walked into the kitchen and waved as her in passing. Putting her wine glass down on the side table she waved back as Ilya responded equally quietly,

"They will be. It is more exhausting than anyone realises, whether you are in the field or the office and I think I do not need to tell you what it can be like coming down from an adrenaline high."

Standing up she sighed and admitted as much before adding, watching the younger couple collapse into the couches in the nook beyond the dining area,

"I'll go and see if they need anything. Good night, my dear; I'm looking forward to seeing you again tomorrow."

The younger couple heard her approaching. Dimitri opened his eyes to reveal dark pools of tiredness but gave a genuinely fond smile. Erin, still smarting over the run in with the FSB, gave her a rather more sour expression and muttered,

"The Minister again, I presume." The response was calm and in the positive, which didn't help her mood so she added, waspishly, "As if I haven't had enough of bloody Russians for one day. You've got to stop this, Mum, you've got no idea who and what you're involved with."

"Erin, don't. Not now—"

She cut Dimitri's words off with a gesture and pushed his restraining hand away.

"Why not? She's got to learn the truth some time, sooner rather than later before it gets any more serious."

"I'm still here, you know." Jean's quiet voice cut through the rising tirade with deadly force. She knew what was coming, of course, and actually agreed that it was time to get it all out in the open. Struggling to control the shake in her voice at the prospect of a confrontation that she didn't want but she knew was necessary she continued, "And I think it's about time you did tell me the truth, although I doubt there's anything you will say that'll be a surprise."

Erin's laughter was almost hysterical, mostly from stress and exhaustion but also from her own fear of what was about to happen.

"Jesus Christ, Mum, you've got no idea." She stood up, shook her head at the older woman and said, voice somewhat raised, "For starters, not only is he ex KGB but he still retains contacts at the highest levels of its replacement, the FSB, who are just as nasty as the earlier lot were. Your 'friend' the Minister isn't just a bloody politician and oligarch, Mum, he's a fully fledged General in the Russian intelligence hierarchy."

Jean didn't even blink.

"I know. I worked out the former and he told me the latter, although it's past-tense: he was a General."

The response barely dented Erin's diatribe as she paced backwards and forwards across the room.

"And did he tell you what that entails? The lying, the manipulation, the violence and deaths? He's notorious inside the international intelligence community for some of the things he's done."

Still managing to retain her composure the older woman responded,

"I do know and he is aware of the reputation but he's not the only one saddled with it. Your immediate superior is another one, I believe."

Her daughter spun on her heel and glared.

"He might be but at least he's protecting what he loves!"

"So was Ilya—"

"His family might not think that, what's left of them! Stop defending him, Mum, you really have no idea of what he's done!"

Jean sighed silently, closed her eyes for a moment and then caught her daughter's stormy blue-grey gaze with her own, not stormy but flat, weary and strangely compassionate.

"I do know 'what he's done'. From that comment I presume you are talking about Elena Platonovna's death in that bunker on the Thames." It was a statement, not a question, and stunned Erin into silence while even Dimitri rocked back in his seat. The old man has balls if he's told her that," he thought admiringly, through the astonishment. Not sure I could. And good on Jean for taking it on the chin and understanding it was a one-off… Neither of them had got their breath back by the time she added, "He suggested I ask you for your version of the events, as you were apparently there, to check against what he told me. So please, tell me." With that, she pulled a chair out from the dining table, eased herself into it somewhat wearily and fixed them with a basilisk stare, clearly intent on waiting until they spoke.

Erin was still white from shock and that, in conjunction with her physical exhaustion, meant she couldn't actually speak but merely sat back on the sofa, staring at her mother in utter disbelief and incomprehension. She knew. How long had she known? And why was she was still with him? Dimitri, already getting over the surprise, knew the love of his life wasn't going to be capable of answering any time soon so took a breath, blew it out through puffed lips and began to speak.

"Well, we weren't there for all of it but I can tell you what we know. He told you the background to it?"

"Yes, but remind me."

He did. It tallied with what Ilya had said, as did the younger man's clipped account of that final half an hour or so but for Jean is also revealed stuff that Ilya either hadn't said or didn't know. The latter included Elena being behind the scandal that Jean vaguely remembered of MI5 assets being revealed to the press, resulting in one of them suiciding (except it wasn't a suicide) and later callously arranging the death of a man in a nameless office at a commercial complex solely as a set up for MI5 to find a false trail leading to the conclusion she wanted them to draw, not the truth, in the lead up to her attempt to set off a war between Russia and Britain. The former included some rather more personal events including that Erin had been the one to kill the would-be assassin on the night of the reception at Bannon Hall.

That was more shocking than anything else for her: Jean remembered that night vividly, as Erin had returned home in the early hours of the morning and, unusually for the grown woman but not so much for the teenager she had been, had knocked on her mother's bedroom door and come in. She had been in an oddly febrile mood, eyes bright and unable initially to sit still, instead pacing the room. It had taken a while to get it out of her but eventually she had calmed down enough to perch on her mother's bed and, in a roundabout way, it had all come out. Even later, when the adrenaline rush had worn off and exhaustion set in, it had also been revealed that this was the first time Erin had deliberately taken a life. She didn't regret it but the reality was still confronting and would take a little while to come to terms with. Now, Jean was having to quickly assimilate two things: Erin had killed to protect Ilya and she had been put in that position by the long, cold tentacles of Elena Gavrik's insane political ambitions. He had mentioned that his former wife had organised a genuine assassination attempt on him and that the plan's failure had set off a chain of events that had resulted in a string of other deaths before he had finally put a stop to it and she had thought that that would be enough to make anyone do what he had done. Now she knew the rest she was glad of his actions as her protective maternal instincts flared in a sudden-white hot spurt of anger that this unknown woman had put Erin, her daughter, in such a position that there was no option but to become a killer—

Dimitri was on to the events of the day so she forced her attention back to that, allowing the cold, ancient little voice that was buried in her core to be deeply satisfied with the denouement. Although Ilya had also been open about the cover-up that had followed the ultimate act he had not bothered with the details that were subsequently revealed by Erin, once she had her voice back and, somewhat dully, took over the narration. It seemed the old spooks had, through some Herculean effort of will, put their screaming, tormented souls to one side (avoidance behaviour, she immediately thought) for long enough to do what was necessary to protect the political partnership for which so much blood had been spilled. Their calm, methodical approach to turning an assassination into a suicide had set Erin aback, almost made her angry and talking about it now fanned the flames again so that she finished with a harsh,

"He's nothing more than a cold-blooded murderer, Mum! You really need to stop this."

Her voice echoed around the room at a pitch higher than she would have liked, reflecting her frustration. Dimitri laid a hand on her arm but she shook it off, realising it was too late to take back what had been said and her eyes suddenly bright with tears.

Jean took a deep breath but remained calm. Nothing that had been said about the crucial events of the day in question was new or surprised her, knowing Ilya and suspecting that Harry was cut from the same cloth. And nothing that Erin had just said surprised her either: she was well aware of her daughter's problems with the relationship and now understood the reasons why so in a way it was a relief to finally have it said. Blinking slowly her response was composed but quietly pointed.

"If Ilya is a murderer then so is Dimitri and Harry and Hope and so are you."

Erin went white again and her eyes flashed.

"That's different! You can't compare what we've done to him—"

"No, it's not." Jean could feel her control slipping but managed to keep a rein on her voice, although the tone was harder.

"It is. Whatever we've done was in the line of duty—"

"And so has Ilya. Including executing his wife. You didn't disagree when Dee said that she was a threat to international security that had to be dealt with and in such a way that she wouldn't become a martyr so I can't see much difference between that and what you did to that assassin."

"I wasn't married to the assassin!"

"No and you hadn't just found out that he'd been psychologically abusing your child for its entire life and using you as a political pawn for longer than that while pretending to love both of you."

"That's no excuse."

"No, it's not an excuse. It is a reason, no matter how unpalatable. Everyone has their breaking point: it took Ilya nearly forty years to reach his, under circumstances that would have defeated any of us long before that."

Erin couldn't actually deny that and in itself that just served to stoke the flames of her ire. Taking sharp steps towards the older woman she responded severely,

"Be that as it may he's still not the sort of person that I'd want to see you with after Dad! How are you ever going to trust him?"

"Erin, that's probably enough," Dimitri interjected gently but neither woman heard him.

"What, so I'm not entitled to get a life back at my age? All I'm good for is being a doting grandmother? You're wrong, you know, on both fronts, as you'll realise the older you get. I find it quite easy to trust him! He's never lied to me; how many people do you know who would have admitted to killing their wife without being forced?" She suddenly stood up and walked back to the kitchen to top up her wine glass. "Jesus, Erin, how stupid or desperate do you think I am? I'm neither, as it happens, and I've spent days thinking about all this and I can't for the life of me work out how I could possibly put him in a similar position even if I wanted to! As if he would let it get anywhere near that far anyway: he'd walk long beforehand if he got even a sniff that things were going down the same path again." Taking a swig she slammed the glass down on the kitchen counter and glared, the fire in her eyes not entirely disguising the tears that were also there.

"I don't know how you can be so sure after such a short time that he won't turn on you—"

"Because I've been there before, in case you'd forgotten! Ilya is more like Gerald than you realise but he's nothing like Kerry bloody O'Hanlon. Have you ever wondered why your biological father ended up in that wheelchair before he drank himself to death twenty years ago?"

Erin quailed a little at the fury coming out of her mother, responding quietly.

"He knocked you around."

"He didn't stop at knocking me around. When you were six weeks old he included you. I was in hospital with broken ribs and a bruised spleen and you had a fractured arm and dislocated collar bone. When your grand-dad asked me what he could do to fix the problem I told him he could kill him if he wanted to. So he took your uncles – including Ruairidh, who you know literally won't hurt a fly – and they went after Kerry. They stopped short of killing him but the wheelchair was the result. And to this day I don't have a single regret about it. If you think I can't recognise a man prone to domestic violence then you're entirely wrong!" She dashed tears from her eyes as Erin did the same, both their tempers beginning to subside. "Like the rest of you, Ilya's a good person, Erin. Just give yourself a chance to find that out."

Her daughter had gone a sickly shade of grey at the words (hearing in the terminology a sibilant whisper from the chill ghost of Elena Platonovna) but Jean didn't have time to find out why as a small, distressed voice came from the hallway,

"Stop it! Please, Mummy, why are you fighting with Nanna?"

Both women stopped dead as the owner of the voice, attired in her favourite ballerina nightshirt, appeared in the kitchen, blue eyes huge and troubled and they finally realised just how loud and acrimonious the discussion had become. Stricken, the older pair looked at each other before Erin rushed forward to scoop Rosie into her arms.

"Sorry, sweetheart, did we wake you up? We're not fighting, we just got a bit excited talking about something."

"It sounded like you were fighting," the child responded, her voice but not her anxiety muffled by Erin's embrace. Swamped by guilt, Erin took a deep breath before she replied, loud enough for both her daughter and her mother to hear,

"Well, maybe we were arguing a little but it's all over now and we've sorted it out."

Despite all three females being in tears the sole representative of the masculine gender breathed a silent sigh of relief. It was too late at night and everyone was too tired for this sort of drama and he was glad it was now done. He knew Erin would spend the rest of the night chewing the events over in her mind, despite the exhaustion, but he also knew that by morning she would almost inevitably come to the conclusion that her relationship with her mother was more important than a philosophical argument. Deep down, he was pretty sure that she wanted to see her mother happy; even deeper, he suspected there was even a spark of liking for the tall Russian, if only because of the uniformly positive effect he was having on Rosie and that, if nothing else, might be enough to start making her accept the situation for what it was. Or so he hoped.

Royal Athenaeum Suites, Union Street, Aberdeen, Scotland, 22:30

The chill, blustery showers that had dogged Ilya's morning run – taken on his own for the first time in a very long time – down to the point at Pocra Quay and back via The Esplanade had started to wear off mid-afternoon and now, at this hour of the night, all was quiet outside his single bedroom hotel suite. The peace was welcome after yesterday, when he had flown in through half a gale and heavy rain, the plane thumping enthusiastically onto the tarmac and fortunately sticking there despite the slick runway surface that was awash with rain, and had then endured a slow trip into the local Kapsgaz offices in St Magnus House, opposite Trinity Quay, as his Technical Services Manager had carefully wound her way through the Saturday morning traffic on somewhat treacherous roads.

His weekend had been purposely busy but not all work, having hosted a dinner the night before for his senior staff and representatives from his most important contractors with a more casual get-together for his employees and their families this afternoon to celebrate his North Sea operations achieving ten years Lost Time Injury Free both on-shore and off-shore. The latter had been more enjoyable than the former (although catching up with both his own and his sub-contracting people had been invaluable) but he had missed Jean's presence at both and had been glad of their evening phone calls to assuage the loneliness. The way the one tonight had ended, though, had left him a little unsettled. It had only been two days since the discussion in the art gallery where he had laid it all on the line and despite Jean's repeated assurances he still wasn't confident about their future. On top of that, he knew Erin had been away all the time since; with her return tonight he had a feeling that it wouldn't be long before the two women had a 'discussion' about it all and he suspected that it wouldn't be pretty.

Restlessness wouldn't allow him to retire for the night yet, despite an early flight back to London in the morning (he had nearly changed the booking to tonight but had overridden the impulse as he knew it wouldn't achieve anything), so he had made a cup of tea and was now standing at his window, gazing out over the empty nightscape while he fruitlessly replayed the events of Friday yet again in his mind. It had needed to be done, had been done, had gone better than he had expected and now he was in the waiting phase where control had passed entirely out of his hands. That wasn't something he was used to but he realised he had no choice in this case.

The niggling worry about what might be going on in the house in Stamford Brook reclaimed his attention as he finished the drink. This wasn't doing any good, standing here staring out the window at empty streets and buildings. Taking the cup over to the sink and picking up his phone to tap out a brief message, he was gratified by the instant response, so followed up with the speed dial.

Jean was on her way up the second flight of stairs to her loft when the text came through and had just shut the door when the phone rang. She answered on the first ring with a sigh.

"Hello, my love. I'm very glad you've called again."

Flopping into the comfortable chair near her desk she was unconsciously echoing Ilya's movements as he settled into a leather armchair that was positioned to allow him to keep gazing out at the empty square while they talked about what had just happened. By the time they finished it was well after eleven, Jean was much calmer and Ilya was relieved of his niggling concerns, at least for the moment.

In London, deep in the labyrinth of offices behind the official front of the US Embassy, Ted Michaeli, working late on another job, received a secure text from Langley on his phone. One eyebrow quirked upwards as he read it: it seemed that Head Office were getting more worried about Russian influence in Syria and wanted some answers, as fast as possible. He would have to call Don tomorrow so they could review the plans that had been on the back-burner for a while.

Jean's Diary:

That didn't take long. I'd cleaned up after dinner, put Rosie to bed and was kicking back with a glass of red and finally catching up with Ilya on the phone when Erin and Dimitri returned. Both looked totally fagged out – they've been at work non-stop since Friday night – but I gather the crisis has been averted, although it may not have gone well. To keep it short she went absolutely ballistic when I'd ended the call and finally lectured me on exactly what sort of man I'm keeping company with. I let her go before quietly informing her that I already knew all of it as he'd already told me, including about Elena. That took the wind out of her sails so I asked to hear her side of what had happened that day. In the finish it was Dee who did, as she was still shocked that I already knew, and it tallied exactly with what Ilya had said. Then she came back for another go, basically saying that he's nothing more than a murderer and I'm ashamed that I cracked and pointed out to her that so is she, and Dimitri, and Harry and that nonetheless Ilya's a good man and they are all good people. She went white at that comment (Dee later told me that Elena had said exactly the same thing about Ilya not long before he put her out of her misery) and ended up in tears, I was in tears, Rosie appeared from upstairs in tears and poor Dee was left to sort us out. I think we're okay but time will tell. Ilya must have picked something up somehow because he just called so I told him. He was philosophical and pointed out that now there was nothing more to hide so it should be a good thing. He's right, of course, and just the sound of his voice settled me down.

Sometimes I wish I had a normal family. But then I wouldn't have met Ilya.

Erin's Diary:

She already knows. He told her, everything. And it makes no difference, apparently. We had a blazing row tonight and I said something I shouldn't, she finally lost her temper and pointed out a few home truths and it was left to Dee to pick up the pieces. I don't know what I'd do without him. I'll need him in future because it's looking like Ilya Gavrik is going to become a family member, whether I like it or not. Mum's taking him on face value because of how honest he was so I suppose we have to do the same. She does have a point: not too many men would have confessed that particular crime to their new girlfriend. On top of those smart-arses from the FSB earlier on I really didn't need the rest of it. I've had enough for one day.

Ilya's Journal:

Jeannie tells me it all came out tonight, after our earlier conversation. I wasn't going to call her back tonight but I sensed about half an hour ago that all was not well so I did. I'm glad it's all out in the open because now we can all move on, knowing exactly where we all stand. I would have liked to be there tonight to comfort her but that will have to wait until tomorrow and the weekend, now that I have cleared my schedule so that we can spend some time together, uninterrupted.