'We've got him,' Adam shouted, punching his fist in the air and smiling for the first time in days. A police patrol car had spotted Blake's Mercedes, three hours north of London and travelling at speed.
Thanking them and confirming that they wanted him monitored but on no account stopped, Adam told Juliet and Alec to gather their things together. They'd already packed their overnight bags and a whole lot more besides, none of which he wanted to know about. Linked via comms to every police forced in England and now what was probably Scotland, Adam or more precisely Malcolm would be able to follow Blake and report his whereabouts to his pursuers. Driving in Judith's car because Alec's wouldn't have made it beyond central London, unlike the fleeing Blake they would be exempt the speed limits.
Prior to them leaving, they'd spent a frustrating couple of hours searching through his belongings. A letter from his bank manager had confirmed nothing other than what they suspected that he was very short of funds, but unfortunately no evidence as to who his co - conspirator was. The photograph albums had given them their only possible clue. In one that was labelled holiday snaps, there was a picture of a very young Blake with who they presumed to be his parents and much younger sibling. On a later page a now much older Blake stood with the same group of people in front of a very large house, with a backdrop of what they now knew to be Scottish moorland and a loch. A brief phone call by Juliet to Julia Blake had confirmed that it had been his grandmother's home, its approximate location and the fact that the nearest neighbours were several miles away.
'Keep in touch and remember don't do anything stupid,' were Adam's last instructions, to the unlikely couple that were striding towards the pods.
Driving for hours in the dark and faced with a long and tiring journey, the last of which would be across miles of barren and inhospitable countryside, an overnight stop was inevitable. Their need to stay as inconspicuous as possible, had Tariq doing what Tariq did best. He was multi - tasking. With one eye still searching for 'the face' that Adam demanded, the other was researching small and off the beaten track B&Bs at a halfway point. Estimating that they could be as much as four hours behind Blake wasn't a problem. They had all the time in the world, whereas he didn't.
By the time that it reached two in the morning, it was obvious that this was going to turn into one of Adam's proverbial we're in for the long haul nights. Having rung Jo to confirm that Harry and Ruth were alright and Wes's child minder to say goodnight, he'd abandoned Harry's office and joined his colleagues on the grid. After the chaos and uncertainty of the past couple of weeks, they'd reached the stage where a sense of finality hung in the air. Blake was done for in all senses of the word they all knew that, but it was Adams overwhelming concern about Harry that was still weighing heavy. Apart from Wes, who Adam as a father would have given his life for, there was no one apart from Harry that shone as bright in his life. He was everything that Adam aspired to and he knew without a doubt that if they lost him, that section D would change for ever.
This one single thought hit him with an uncomfortable revelation. Whoever this was, they weren't just going after Harry, it was a deliberate attempt to destabilise his section. It was someone that knew everything about them, that would know how to get into their data bases and into their systems. It was one of their own that they were chasing. Completely forgetting that Malcolm had been there since the mists of time, he took himself back into Harry's office and turned on his computer. Faces from the past flooded onto the screen. Ros or Zaf who as yet might still be alive, he couldn't bring himself to believe that it was either of them. He stole himself against the fact that Fiona's face was looking back at him, and as he did almost every night, he told her that he wished she was still there to help him and asked her to forgive him. It had to be further back than them, it had to be, but who? He finally found what he was looking for, a much younger looking Harry. Far less careworn and with a lot more hair, looking for all the world like the soldier he'd once been. It was at this point that he needed to start.
There was far too much reading and it was a further hour by which time Malcolm had come in to join him, that they made their breakthrough. He'd reached the point that preceded Ruth and then him joining the section. There had been a huge changeover in such a short space of time, with the loss of Tom then Zoey and Danny which he could remember so vividly. Hidden in amongst all of these, there was someone who hadn't been so high profile and that he'd never met.
'Tell me about Tessa Phillips,' he asked Malcolm.
Harry was still awake when he heard Jo's phone ring. Despite him trying to pretend that he wasn't frightened, he knew he was failing. If anything happened to Ruth he'd go out of his mind, he truly believed that. He'd lain there for hours, imagining all the dreadful scenarios where she would be taken from him again, all the time savouring every second that he was holding her against him. Of one thing he was absolutely certain, she was part of him now. She'd gently burrowed her way deep into his very soul and they were bound together forever. If she truly wanted him after all the terrible things that he'd put her through, then when this was over, whatever she wanted to do and wherever she wanted to go he'd take her. He was quitting MI5.
He was dragged back to reality by a gentle tapping. Infiltrators tended not to knock and it was Jo's head that appeared round their door.
'Harry,' she told him through the darkness, 'we need to talk.'
'I'm not leaving her, even for a minute,' was said with such a desperate need in his voice, that Jo heard herself whispering back.
'That's fine Harry, Beth's on duty, we can talk in here.'
Adam had asked her to ascertain if there was anything in Harrys and Tessa's history, other than of course her dismissal, that might have made her resentful enough to want to kill him or Ruth, but not only that to destroy the section.
'It happened a long time ago,' he told her, going on to explain how they had been the only two people on the grid late one night. 'Tessa came into my office which wasn't extraordinary in itself, but then without any warning, well, without going into details she tried to seduce me. It was dreadfully embarrassing, more so for her than for me I imagine, and things became very difficult after that. The fact that I'd made it quite clear that I wasn't interested and then Ruth not only replaced her as my analyst but gained what she must have perceived to be my affection, may well mean that Adam's right.'
Affection was such an old fashioned expression, but so very Harry, she thought. He and Ruth, it was so much more than that.
'I need to know that you trust me Harry,' she told him. 'I'm going to talk to Adam and get him to send Dimitri here and I promise you we'll keep Ruth safe.'
At the same time as the occupants of the annexe who had been joined by Dimitri were finishing their breakfast, Juliet and Alec who had spent a less than comfortable night in a dingy B&B, were back on the road and close to where the English border crossed into Scotland. Having declined breakfast before they left, they'd stopped for coffee and to re affirm their tactics. Whatever they inflicted on Blake had to be put down as the result of a mugging, before he was unceremoniously handed over to the authorities. When they were within five miles of their destination, Malcolm confirmed that Blake had been there for some hours. He'd been observed by the local constabulary, carrying not only a couple of cases but what appeared to be a large box of groceries.
There was a brisk wind blowing across a cloudless sky, rarely seen in and around the area where Nicholas Blake was making himself his mid - morning coffee. Idiot that he was, he was chuckling to himself as he contemplated his wife free future. He was away from London and all the razzmatazz that went with being the Home Secretary, he was content. Money might be scarce for a while, but he'd made hundreds in the past by stepping outside the so called legal boundaries, and he was more than confident that he could do it again. If he holed up here for a while until the heat died down as it invariably would, he would still be able to find his way to a life in the sun.
Assuming that it was the postman or the lady that came to do their cleaning from time to time, he opened the front door without a second thought. The fist that caught him full square in the middle of his face and broke his nose belonged to Alec, but the pain that came with it was nothing compared to the vice like grip that Juliet inflicted, that had him hanging on to what was left of his testicles.
As the room spun in front of him and just before he passed out, he could vaguely hear a voice telling him that he'd got his wish and that he wouldn't be having children.
In London, a grateful and delighted PM was congratulating Adam and his section and offering them all his support in their quest to protect Ruth and Harry.
