Chapter Eleven
He had just gotten home and changed for bed when he received the text. Just a time and an address. He glanced at the clock and groaned in frustration. It had been a particularly long evening, and he only had an hour to get dressed again and get to the meeting.
He had noticed early on that the other had a fascination for the cloak and dagger world of international intelligence, a taste he did not share. Having actually worked in a branch of that world himself, it no longer appeared glamorous to him. He knew that intelligence, like any other field, was made up of people who were often as concerned about what to have for tea while watching telly as they were with their jobs. But what they were doing was more than important; if they were successful it would change the course of human history. And he had to admit, at this stage of their plans there still was a pressing need for secrecy, and the other was in charge. His complaining about the time and place would not only do no good but could possibly create friction between himself and the other. And the last thing he wanted to do was to risk that.
His destination was in an unfamiliar part of town, this time on the edge of a council estate on the south side of the city. The address was in a seedier section of London than he had ever been in, filled with abandoned cars and broken street lamps, graffiti covered walls and vacant shops. Some of the buildings had evidence of gunfire and others were burned out, both of which were very visible reminders of the war with the Cybermen. Metal shutters and iron bars covered the windows and doors of the few businesses that remained.
To his annoyance, the streets were not well marked, and most of the buildings weren't numbered. What was worse, the GPS in his vehicle flatly refused to acknowledge the address even existed, its flat, artificial voice insisting to him to recheck his information. Finally after driving down the same stretch of street five times, he found what he was looking for. It was a building that housed, among other things, a Chinese takeaway, a hair salon and what looked like a particularly dodgy tattoo parlor.
He pulled up to the kerb, thankful that the area was deserted. He didn't know what he would have done if it hadn't been. There were few cars parked on the street, none of them the one he wanted, and he couldn't see a car park associated with the building. After parking and walking back and forth in the front of the building, he finally found a small sign next to a nondescript door.
Parking in rear of building.
Leaving his car where he had put it, he nervously walked through a narrow alley to the back of the building. The car park was almost empty, and he quickly spotted the dirty, brown sedan parked in the shadows next to the bins. This time when he entered the car the other spoke immediately, before he had even had a chance to close his door.
"Do you have it?"
He looked distastefully through the car windows at their surroundings. "You know we are taking a risk by meeting again so soon, and by meeting here."
The other shook off the warning impatiently.
"Yes, yes, I know, but do you have it?"
"Yes," he answered. He placed a padded envelope in the space between them. "The break-in was successful. The bugs were planted, it was retrieved and they'll never even notice it's missing."
"Do you know what is in this?" the other asked, picking up the envelope.
"I have an idea."
"Then if we are both right, you know just how important this is to the entire operation."
"Yes, I do."
The other let out a sigh of relief. "The contents of this envelope could change everything. Everything. What about the person who committed this little larceny?"
"Unfortunately he was seen," he answered. "He got away, but they were alerted to the break-in."
The other was silent for a minute. "Can he be identified?"
"We don't think so. But he is being dealt with." He grew quiet. "I had hoped there wouldn't be any more deaths," he said after a moment.
"Don't tell me you are going to be squeamish now. If he was seen, he could possibly have been traced back to us, even if you had used Ret-Con on him."
"I know," he said. "This business is just getting… unpleasant, and this one seems so unnecessary."
"You knew the risks. You know how vital it is that this not get traced back to us."
He nodded.
"And this is just the beginning," the other warned. "It's going to get more… unpleasant… before this is over. Are you up for this?"
"You know I am," he said. "I took care of this, didn't I?"
"Yes, you did. And you need to remember how important this all is, how vital. We need to continue, and you need to be totally committed to this."
"I am," he repeated. "I swear."
"Good. Then we no longer need anonymity between us," the other said. He turned to face him and dropped his hood. "The next phase will commence immediately. And I want you to keep an eye on Smith. He's entangled in all of this in a way I can't foresee. Smith could bring this entire operation down. We have to prevent that at all costs."
"Should we arrange another accident?"
"No," the other responded. "From what I understand, he's practically a member of Pete Tyler's family. Torchwood would investigate if he disappeared, and it could lead to us. For now, just watch him."
~oOo~
Due to the late night, it was almost noon by the time the Doctor and Rose woke up. When they finally stumbled down to the kitchen, Pete was sitting at the table drinking coffee while Jackie was supervising the cleaning crew.
The cleaning company had sent over a half a dozen employees to work on sweeping, dusting, vacuuming and otherwise scrubbing up the mess left by the Torchwood staff the previous night. All were dressed alike in jeans and matching white collared t-shirts with the company logo emblazoned in blue across the left breast pocket, and all had been required to show a photo ID before being allowed in the mansion.
As most of the cleaning crew left to work on other rooms, one young woman, barely out of her teens, stayed behind to finish up in the kitchen. She was trying to mop black scuff marks off the floor.
"Ya missed a spot," Jackie told her, pointing it out. "You got to get down on your hands and knees and scrub."
When she saw the Doctor and Rose enter the room she turned to them, much to the young woman's relief.
"It's about time you two got up," she said. "I was about to come and get you. Was tryin' to put that off as long as possible. Really didn't want to interrupt anything, if you know what I mean."
"Jacks," Pete complained, wincing in sympathy.
"Mum, please!" Rose protested vehemently, glaring at her mother.
"What?" Jackie asked.
The girl from the cleaning service, now on her hands and knees with a scrub brush, ducked her head down and tried to muffle a snicker.
Sighing heavily, the Doctor sat down at the table next to Pete, pinched the bridge of his nose, and calculated the time before they could leave for Cardiff down to the millisecond. Meanwhile, Rose poured two mugs of tea and joined them, pushing one of the mugs across the table to the Doctor. Without being asked, she immediately passed him the sugar and a tiny pitcher of milk she had retrieved from the refrigerator. She grinned as she saw him add more sugar to the cup than it ought to have been able to hold.
Pete cleared his throat and gave Jackie a meaningful look. She stared at him blankly until he nodded at the young woman still scrubbing the floor.
"Why don't you go out and help in the other rooms for a bit," Jackie said to her. The young woman looked at her curiously, and then looked at the others in the room, all of whom were staring at her. She shrugged, picked up her bucket and left, and then Jackie turned back to the others.
"Jacks, you too," Pete said with a jerk of his head towards the door. Jackie glared at him.
"Ooh, that's nice," she said sarcastically. "Anything you're talking about has to do with me, too, y'know."
"Not this time," Pete answered with a shake of his head. "We need to deal with Torchwood business."
Jackie narrowed her eyes and stared at her husband, who returned the gaze expressionlessly. After a moment, she nodded.
"Alright," she said grudgingly and left the room.
"What is it, Dad?" Rose asked as soon as the door had closed behind her mother. "Is it about the break-in?"
"Among other things." Pete looked from one of them to the other. "Doctor, you searched the house again after everyone left. Did you find anything?"
"Nothing you don't already know. It appears that the intruder limited himself to specific rooms in the house; the living room, my study and all three of our bedrooms. That would indicate that they, whoever they are, were looking for something specific, and were here for a while. Of course we did interrupt the intruder; it's possible, although unlikely, that the search just wasn't finished yet."
"Do either of you remember anything else about the person who broke in here last night? Anything at all?"
Rose shook her head while to her surprise the Doctor nodded.
"Yes. Well, no, not remembered exactly," he said, "but I think I've figured some things out. First of all, I believe our intruder was male. The height of the person I saw through your window, combined with the ratio between his height and his shoulders, typically would indicate a human male. Now this ratio is not universal among species, for example, the…." He stopped his lecture when Rose kicked his shin under the table. He glanced at her sharply, and she gave him a meaningful look that had stay on topic written all over it.
"Anyway…" The Doctor drew out the word and rubbed his left eye. "That combined with a footprint I found outside last night would indicate someone who is at least six feet tall and probably about 175 pounds. There are some females that would fit that description, but as a proportion of the population…."
"There are 63,000,000 people in Great Britain, so that leaves about 32,000,000 males as possible suspects."
The Doctor shook his head. "Only 26 percent of the population is between the ages of 20 and 40, which is the most likely age of our intruder based on the experience level necessary to get in and out of here, as well as how quickly he was able to escape. Half of those are female, so now we are only talking about 13 percent of the population. Now you factor in the fact that in that age group 25% are over 6 ft. tall…."
Pete had pulled out a calculator and rapidly typed in numbers. "You're still talking over 2 million people."
"And now we need to factor in those who have the necessary skills to break into a place like this. That would indicate a professional of some type."
"A professional thief?" Rose asked.
"Or a professional agent," Pete answered. "Or someone else that might have the same type of skills. Police officers, military…"
"And don't forget the surveillance equipment came from Torchwood," the Doctor reminded them. "That would indicate that the person was either from Torchwood, or had a link to Torchwood in some way. Whoever did this could simply have been hired to do the job by someone in Torchwood."
"So we're still talking about a traitor in Torchwood," Pete said coldly.
"And this time it isn't Lisa Hallett," Rose said.
"What's the likelihood that there were two traitors in Torchwood and they weren't connected?" the Doctor asked rhetorically, and they all grew silent.
"Yeah, but who?" Rose asked finally, having wracked her brain to try to think of someone, anyone, who could not only be a traitor but also have a connection to Lisa.
Elbow on the table, Pete rubbed his forehead and frowned. "I suppose that means Hallett didn't escape on her own after all. It certainly would have been easier for her to do it if she had had an accomplice."
"Doctor," Rose said, turning to him, "Lisa had been taken over by one of the Kern. Does that mean her accomplice also has been?"
"I don't know." The Doctor grimaced and yanked on one ear. "I didn't think we had missed any, but there were two I wasn't certain we had accounted for. I thought they had died, but on further reflection maybe they hadn't. It also brings into question Hallett's memory loss. Maybe it wasn't as a result of being joined with the Kern."
"You're suggesting that she was Ret-conned," she said. "But Dr. Collins tested her for that and said she was clean."
"Hmm. There is that," he said. He pursed his lips. "What do we know about Frank Collins?"
"Good doctor, no family, not terribly ambitious, absolutely no reason to doubt his loyalty," Pete answered. "But speaking of Frank Collins, he just turned in his resignation today."
"What!" the Doctor and Rose said in unison.
Pete nodded, running one hand through his sparse, graying hair. "Effective as of this coming Friday."
"Well, that lets him out," Rose said. The Doctor and her stepfather looked at her curiously and she explained. "Well, if he were the traitor, wouldn't he want to stay if no one suspected him? What good would it do to leave? Once he was gone, he wouldn't have access to any more inside information or technology."
Pete nodded. "Well, his departure still leaves us with a problem. Where am I going to find a doctor to replace him? I need someone who is intelligent, loyal, brave, has a taste for adventure and wouldn't be frightened by the idea of aliens."
Rose turned to the Doctor and stared at him meaningfully. He looked at her and shook his head.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" she asked.
"No, absolutely not," he replied emphatically. "That is not a good idea at all."
Pete looked from Rose to the Doctor and back again. "You don't mean him, do you? I didn't think he had a medical background."
"I don't. Well, I do, in the sense that I know more about medicine than most medical professionals on this planet, weeell, all of them really…."
"But I didn't mean him," Rose interrupted. The Doctor turned back to face her.
"You have no idea what she went through when she was with me," he said.
"No, I don't, but she didn't go through it," Rose said. "The other Martha did."
"You don't even know if she's anything like her parallel version," he argued.
"Doctor, you of all people should know that parallel people are essentially the same deep down. They aren't identical because of the different experiences they've been through, but they are incredibly similar."
"Just who are we talking about here?" Pete interjected.
"Martha Jones," they answered in one voice.
"Martha Jones?" Pete's brow furrowed. "You mean Jackie's doctor?"
"One and the same," Rose said. "The Doctor used to travel with the parallel Martha. And…" she turned to the Doctor, "according to you yourself, she was brave, intelligent, adventurous, basically all the things we need in a doctor for Torchwood."
Pete Tyler rubbed his jaw and looked from Rose to the Doctor and back again. The Doctor didn't look happy but didn't contradict her. And Pete knew the truth about what Rose was saying about parallel people from experience. He had known both Rickey and Mickey Smith, been married to two different versions of his wife, Jackie, and had heard stories about the parallel version of himself. Finally, he took a deep breath and let it out in a rush.
"Rose, you know her," he said. "I want you to contact her, sound her out, find out if she'd be interested in this… but don't mention Torchwood right away. I'm authorizing you to offer her the job, but only if you are absolutely certain about her."
"What about her security clearance?" Rose asked. "Shouldn't she be checked before we talk to her?"
"We've already investigated her background," her stepfather told her. "We needed to make sure she wasn't a security risk before Jackie started seeing her. So if she's interested and you feel comfortable with hiring her, go ahead and do it."
When the Doctor looked like he was going to object, Pete cut him off.
"Next topic," he said firmly before the Doctor could say anything. "With the inauguration coming up next week, there are likely to be a lot of changes in the country."
"Oh, I forgot about that," Rose said.
"What inauguration?" the Doctor asked.
"The inauguration of the new president of Great Britain," Pete told him. "A man by the name of Brian Greene. By himself, he's not particularly worrisome, but his campaign was funded in large part by an organization called the GBF."
"That stands for Great Britain First," Rose interjected.
"The GBF were first organized by a man named Ronald Nowak as a political action committee which promoted the idea of increased security and more centralized government in response to Lumic's Cybermen. They made a lot of inroads with a lot of people at that time. That was seven years ago. Since then they fell by the wayside as it soon became obvious they were just a bunch of nutters trying to take over the country."
"Dad came out against them when I first got here," Rose said. "He was the main reason that the group fell apart."
"Well, it evidently didn't last. About six months ago the group was reorganized by Nowak's second-in-command, Harrison Keeling, who stated that they had seen the error of their ways and were now trying to work within the system to make positive changes in people's lives. Since then they have been supporting the campaigns of politicians in key districts, all of whom have ended up being elected.
"Anyway, I spoke to Harriet Jones this morning. The push for more security across the country came from congressmen who all had been supported by the GBF. With Greene heading into office soon, we don't know what's going to happen, but it's not likely to be good."
Rose looked worried. "With all of this going on, do you need us to stay here?" she asked.
Pete shook his head and looked at her meaningfully. "Absolutely not. With everything happening, I need you in Cardiff. You both need to leave as soon as you can, right after this business with Martha Jones is resolved one way or another."
"Pete, with the break-in as well as the likelihood of another traitor in Torchwood, you're going to need us here, whether or not the Kern are involved," the Doctor said.
The other man shook his head vehemently. "No, I don't. Doctor, I appreciate your offer to help, but we got along for years before you were here. Now that Jake is here, he and I can handle an internal investigation as well as an investigation of the break-in."
The Doctor leaned back in his chair. "Pete, why do I get the impression there's more to this than what you're telling us?"
Pete tightened his jaw. "You're right," he admitted. "There is more to it. Jake just got back from America. Even the Americans are worried about what's happening over here. There are rumors of something coming, something big, but no one knows what."
He turned to his stepdaughter. "I need people I can trust leading the different branches of Torchwood. After this investigation, I'm going to be transferring Jake to head Torchwood Two in Glasgow. Meanwhile, I want you in Cardiff, but I don't want anyone to know you are there. You need to keep a low profile. Both of you," he said with a sideways glance at the Doctor. "I'm not even paying you through Torchwood. I'll be paying both your salaries directly. The Doctor was only going to be a consultant there anyway." He leaned back in his seat, in an effort to appear relaxed. "Who knows, this may all blow over and end up amounting to nothing. Just… don't mention any of this to your mother. With everything going on, her worrying about you is a complication I don't need.
"One last thing," he added. "Where were the two of you planning on staying when you got to Cardiff?"
Rose and the Doctor exchanged glances. "We were planning on trying to buy a house out of town," the Doctor said. "Until then, a hotel I guess."
Pete shook his head. "Vitex has a fully furnished flat just off the bay and within walking distance of the Hub. You are welcome to use it as long as you need. Plus it will keep your names off of any hotel register."
"When did Vitex get a flat in Cardiff?" Rose asked suspiciously.
"What time is it?" Pete slowly grinned, the first time the Doctor and Rose had seen him smile since the Vitex party the night before.
"Dad," Rose protested.
"Don't argue," her stepfather returned. "It's only temporary, until you get a place of your own. It's a good investment and we could use a flat in Cardiff anyway. And when you decide to buy something, let me know. I'll set up a trust, so it'll be harder to track you through the title on the property. Same goes for a car. I don't want anything with your names on it associated with Cardiff. Now Rose, why don't you go and contact Dr. Jones?"
Rose pulled her mobile out of her pocket and stepped a few feet away from them to ring Martha. Meanwhile, the Doctor turned to Pete.
"While she does that, I need to ask for your help with something," he said.
"Anything," Pete answered, and the Doctor smiled wryly.
"That's probably a dangerous response where I'm concerned," he told him, chuckling, "but not in this case. when I came to this universe I brought some things with me, and I was wondering if you would help me sell some of them."
