Chapter 12

21 None

Lucas and Ros had barely had a chance to draw breath on the other side of the pods when Tariq was upon them.

"Briefing room." He told them, shortly adding to Lucas as they set off, "You look bloody awful."

"Cheers Tariq." He said, as Ros helpfully pointed out,

"If you like I could shoot you and we'll see how bright-eyed and bushy-tailed you are."

"No thanks." Tariq muttered, as Lucas smirked and sympathetically patted him on the shoulder.

"Lucas. Ros. Good to see you back." Harry said as they sank gratefully into chairs beside one another.

"The two of you look as though you swam here through broken glass." Ruth observed, concerned, "What happened?"

Lucas allowed Ros to speak for both of them as she concisely gave an account of what had happened in the warehouse.

"Lucas your shoulder, do you-"

"It can wait." He said convincingly, though he felt as though he was in danger of keeling over if he was asked to stand. "Ros patched me up at the warehouse, we have more pressing matters to deal with right now."

Ros, who had decided to let the man's damn shoulder fall off as punishment for his pig-headed stubbornness and said, "Indeed, and item number one atop said list is Artem Salko, what's our strategy with him?"

There was silence around the table. Everyone knew what their best line of attack against Salko was, but none of them wanted to say it.

"Someone needs to question him." Sofia said delicately, finally choosing to bite the bullet.

"And that someone will definitely not be you." Harry intervened, heading her off before she could continue.

"He won't talk to anyone else she said flatly, staring intently at him.

"Well you won't be talking him." He shot back firmly.

"Then everything up to this point has been a waste of time. You could offer to resurrect his sister and he still won't give you what you want."

"And what, pray tell, do you have that will make him confess all to you?" harry snapped, "You have about as much to offer him as we do."

"I can be very persuasive Harry."

"You can't Sofia, you're too close to this already."

"I'm fine."

"That's what worries me." He said paused sighing as he made a decision, "We've all been going at this for too long, we need a break. No-one will be speaking to Salko for a few hours anyway, so we have time to decide our next move while he recovers from Ros' mugging. Take this opportunity to get some sleep, we'll come back to this in a few hours."

Realising that they were being dismissed the team stood, Lucas swayed on the spot as the colour drained from his face and the only thing that stopped him crumpling to the floor was Ros' reflexes.

"You take the time to go to the bloody hospital." Harry told Lucas sharply, realising that Sofia's assurance of being fine was not the only one he should have questioned, shaking his head he muttered sourly, "You can stop off and pick up your bloody Oscar on the way back...Ros?"

"Yes." She said, already half-supporting, half-dragging Lucas to the exit.

"Sofia? A word please?" Harry said, quietly, gesturing towards his office as everyone began to slowly filter from the room.

Ruth and Tariq moved away from the others, both seeking the respite of a quiet corner on The Grid to try and make a dent in the sleep debt they were owed.

Sofia quietly closed the door on the others and dragged to chair a comfortable distance from the desk before settling herself in it. She watched Harry quietly, watching him as he seated himself behind the desk, she knew what was coming, she had been waiting for it since her arrival that morning.

"You know what this is about." It was not a question but she nodded all the same, however the question was not exactly what she had been anticipating, "How?"

She watched him silently for a moment, slightly thrown, he was not asking why, and there was a distinct hint of disgust in the shortened version of the full question that was implied, 'How could you bring yourself to do that?' and paused before replying, "People are often capable of more than you expect...You know the answer to that."

"I'm not so sure that I do. Every time I think I know you and your capabilities, you do something like this and I end up back at square one with more questions than I ever had answers."

"Well that should tell you something." He raised his eyebrows, "I like to keep you on your toes." She smirked easily.

The corners of his mouth twitched involuntarily, but she took the opportunity to change the tone of the conversation saying, "If you're expecting a blow-by-blow account of last night it's not going to happen." She told him flatly, "There was a reason I did it on my own time, I didn't and don't, intend on letting you play shrink for the sake of paperwork."

"You should let someone." He told her quietly.

"I learned to deal with it Harry. I don't need some idiot that thinks they can get inside my head because they've got a piece of paper that tells them they're qualified to, cell walls in Russia understand more than they do."

"You can't compare the two Sofia, whether or not a shrink has been through it, they know that rape isn't physical it's psychological. That means that unlike most violent crimes where the location and even to an extent the perpetrator don't have much of an effect on the outcome, the circumstances and situation of a sexual assault can change the aftermath of said attack. This is, therefore, completely different to the senseless violence your Russian prison walls know, and I don't think you're dealing with this as well as you claim." She watched him carefully, her face smooth and impassive as he continued, "Everything that happened to you in Russia was forced upon you, nothing was consensual, the assaults you endured were physically forced on you. This is a different situation entirely, this took brains not brawn, this time you felt forced into it for reasons. There was logic and reason, a conscious decision was made, by you, to go through with this. You can't tell me that you feel the same and that this hasn't affected you."

She hesitated, surprised by his instincts, particularly considering how devastatingly accurate they were. He had answered questions that she had sweated blood over the night before without being able to reach a conclusion, with apparent ease.

He may have complained that he had spent the last few weeks re-evaluating her with every decision that she made; but she sin turn had been constantly second-guessing his motives to every choice that he made also. It was not that they did not trust one another, something that was essential to allow them to function in their line of work, but they were both too paranoid to trust the other unconditionally.

"Did you ever doubt Salko?" she asked perceptively, picking up on the many U-turns Harry had performed regarding him in recent days.

"I doubt everyone Sofia." He replied evasively. She smiled, "Did you?" he asked.

"No. I knew what he wanted from the beginning. The rape was a test, he was never going to give us everything for that, big deal for me, Monday evening for him...He wanted to know how far we were willing to go, we had to prove to him that we were serious about this attack, which we are. If the US President is killed during these peace talks we'll end up with a situation worse than the one we're trying to prevent. Forgetting about the immediate effects of the collapse of the nuclear deal for a second, which would be disastrous in themselves; if the Americans got hold of the fact that we knew about the potential of an assassination attempt on their President and failed to stop it blood will be spilt. They won't hear the fact that we had an uncooperative informant, or that one of its officers allowed themselves to be raped by said informant to try and get information, they'll just hear the fact that the British Security Services knew about the threat to the life of one of the most influential men in the world and did nothing to stop it. At best we're incompetent, at worst we're involved. These talks are designed to stop the outbreak of a nuclear arms race between the world's leading powers, Russia knows as well as we do that their little Lighthouse trick has left them balancing on a knife edge as it is. And Salko knows as well as we do that if this attack goes ahead it will be catastrophic, not just for these peace talks but for peace in general."

"You're right, we need this information." Harry said, staring at her pensively, "Everything we do here is done behind closed doors and without public knowledge or consent. We make decisions that affect every man woman and child in this country; and they will never know about any of them. Usually that's a good thing,t his is one of the most rewardingly thankless jobs you can choose to do, none of us are in this profession to be universally adored or thanked every time we step outside our doors. Usually just being able to wake up in the morning and step outside itself is enough...If one of us were to die tomorrow, having given everything and then some to this country, receiving nothing in return, no-one would know, and no-one would care overmuch."

"Some things in life mean more than the number of zeroes at the end of a pay check or the number of people you've never met who'll remember your name when you're gone...If being deprived of everything teaches you anything, it's that we value the smaller things more than the extravagant luxuries people often take for granted. All that time in Russia, and the only thing I ever asked for was a cup of tea...That was it, no stretch limos with champagne on ice taking me to my villa on the white sandy beaches of Barbados, just tea. We all know that Harry...We don't need the public to know what we do, to know what we've sacrificed...It's better if they don't."

"Indeed. Ninety nine times out of a hundred I would agree with you; but sometimes there are things we go through, things that we sacrifice that cannot be ignored, that cannot go unrewarded or unpunished." He paused there, placing the key card he had been absent-mindedly playing with onto the table as he continued in exactly the same tone of voice, "Salko is being held in interrogation room 329, he's not due to be formally interviewed for the next four hours, but it's important that we do this right, as you say his information is vital to us..." He rose from his desk and left her sitting alone in the office on the pretext of checking something with a junior officer floating nervously just outside the door.

She watched him walk to the door, as he closed it softly behind him, her eyes darted back to the desk and lingered on the key card lying innocently on the desk in front of her. Though subtly presented, his meaning was perfectly clear, not or the first time, she was left thinking not what, but why.

A/N: I'm beginning to worry that this is becoming predictable or worse still, dull, so please share your thoughts and let me know what you like or don't like about this.