A/N: Apologies for the long delay! Most of y'all know that I only write outside, and we had an unusually long stretch of dismal rainy days this week. I haven't worked ahead on this fic and so didn't have anything to share with you during those dreary days, but the sun came out and I am back at it!
"What's this?" Erin asked, leaning over Tariq's shoulder to get a better look at his monitor. Harry was off to the Home Office for another meeting with the Russians, and Erin was once more in command of the Grid in his absence. She knew what people said about her, the way they cast sidelong glances in her direction and whispered the word ambitious when what they meant was bitch. It had long since ceased to worry her, that people were intimidated or even put off by her dedication to her craft. Erin knew what she wanted and had no qualms about going after it; likewise, she knew that those particular traits were considered unappealing in a woman, and she had grown a thicker skin rather than give into everyone's insistence that she soften her approach. She saved softness for her daughter; her work was a cutthroat business, and Erin was a survivor.
The truth was that yes, she did have her eye on Harry's chair, and yes, she disagreed with his sometimes over-enthusiastic approach to the job and occasional utter disregard for regulations, but more than that she admired him. He had been Section Head for longer than anyone else currently working with Five, had survived more political turnovers and disastrous personal moments than anyone she knew, and he remained tenacious and dedicated and a damned fine officer. Erin was in no rush to see him depart; she felt she still had much to learn from him, and for now she would be content with the status quo. Even if she did miss the authority his office had brought her from time to time.
At the moment, Erin was focused on untangling the mystery of who was behind the attack on Harry and Ruth. As far as she was concerned, nothing was more likely to endear her to Harry than to capture those responsible for threatening his life and the life of his...actually, Erin couldn't think of a word appropriate to describe just who Ruth was to Harry, and she was loath to contemplate their connection for too long. She had decided that this mission would be her primary focus, that she would not rest until the culprit was apprehended, and she could at last prove to Harry that she was a part of this team, someone to be trusted and valued as much as Dimitri or Tariq or even Ruth. Well, she amended to herself, perhaps not as much as Ruth.
"It's the transcripts from Harry's tribunal," Tariq explained. He gestured towards the screen, and Erin squinted slightly, trying to read the tiny font. "This session focused on the events immediately prior to Ruth's return to the Grid. I think they were trying to determine whether he had cut any corners, when he brought her back."
Erin hummed to herself, trying not to look too intrigued by this news. She had only worked with Ruth for a few weeks; by the time Erin arrived the Home Secretary had already tendered Ruth an offer to come and work with him, and she had gladly accepted it. In the brief time they had together, however, Erin had found herself with more questions than answers, where Ruth was concerned. Ruth had been standoffish and short with Erin, but warm and gentle with Tariq and Dimitri. She had a fierce intellect and a sadness behind her eyes that left Erin feeling a bit wary, and in truth there had not been time for either of them to become accustomed to the other. The transcripts might hold the key to the attempt on Harry and Ruth's lives, but more than that they held a potential for answering some of the many questions that Erin harbored where Ruth was concerned.
"Tariq, could you forward those to me? I'd like to look them over."
"Sure," he said, his fingers flying over the keyboard. Erin thanked him politely and then wandered back over to her station, smiling softly to herself. It was going to be a good day; even with her misstep in Harry's office earlier that morning still smarting, she felt it in her bones. They were going to find something today. They had to.
"I think you'll find, Mr. Pearce, we don't bite," Fedorov said in that oily voice of his, smiling a bitter little smile that made Harry's fist clench reflexively. The meeting so far had been tense and uncomfortable, each of them sniffing around one another like wary dogs, wanting to claim everything for themselves while likewise giving nothing away. There was no one Harry could imagine more undeserving of a special intelligence sharing arrangement than the Russians, and so far these proceedings had been almost farcical in their fecklessness. And Harry had not forgotten the strange scene he'd witnessed upon entering the meeting room, the way Ruth's eyes had shone with sheer relief when he'd stumbled across her having a private chat with Fedorov, the way she had come straight to his side, touched his arm, her gaze pleading with him to extend her the same warmth and save her from the rather obviously unwanted attentions of their esteemed Russian guest. They would need to discuss that later, he and Ruth, would need to talk about just what exactly it was he had interrupted, as well as the fact that Ruth would not be allowed back in her home for the foreseeable future, but for now they had to play at being politicians, and it rankled.
"I'm sure you don't," Harry ground out from behind clenched teeth, thinking nothing could be further from the truth. There was no arrangement he could fathom that would protect them from the endless machinations of the Russian intelligence gathering machine, and Harry still had not forgotten Tiresias, and the carnage that was very nearly wrought on British soil on the orders of some unknown faction in Moscow. No, he had no intention of trusting the Russians. "Be that as it may, we have to protect our own interests. I'm sure you understand."
"Perhaps, rather than a more transparent intelligence sharing arrangement, what we need is a more consistent one," Ruth supplied from the other end of the table, leaning forward so that Harry could see her around Towers's generous bulk. "We could discuss parameters for the regular passing of information, or set forth a list of events that would trigger an automatic message, so that in the future we are able to move more quickly to collaborate as needed."
Harry only just managed to suppress a smile at her words. It was a very Ruth response; it would make the Russians think they were getting a deal, but still allow Harry to maintain a certain level of discretion. She had surpassed all his expectations thus far, had shown herself to be a keen negotiator, and a diplomatic one, at that. Towers had seen it, Harry knew, had given her her head and allowed her to chime in as and when she felt it was warranted, and they all benefited from her calming presence at the table. That she was the only woman in their little coalition benefited them all in that the Russians seemed to think they might score points by being conciliatory with her, and as a result considered her propositions rather more carefully than they would have done had Harry voiced them instead.
"We already have a designated liaison for dealing with British Security Services," Fedorov mused. "But expanding their access would be beneficial for both our countries."
This again, Harry thought grimly. He would die before he saw a regular Russian presence on the Grid, or at Vauxhall for that matter, and given the way Frank was glowering, he rather thought his counterpart at Six agreed with him.
"We can discuss parameters for access," Ruth allowed, shuffling through her notes. "But don't expect an office at Thames House."
Fedorov chuckled darkly at that. "I wouldn't dream of it," he told her with a smile that was probably meant to be charming, but only succeeded in putting Harry's teeth on edge.
Erin leaned back in her chair, rubbing her eyes and taking a moment to absorb what she'd just read. She'd spent the last hour buried in the transcripts from Harry's tribunal, and they had been as illuminating as they were distressing. The details were all there; Lucas North's return to the Grid, the Sugarhorse fiasco and Harry's internment as he was investigated for treason, Connie James's betrayal and Tiresias, Harry's kidnapping by the rogue Russian agent and subsequent torture at the hands of a rogue Indian operative. Taken separately, each of them seemed to be horrific in its own right, but to see it all laid out in front of her, linear and dispassionate, had given Erin cause to reconsider some things.
What if, she asked herself, these aren't disparate catastrophes? What if they're connected?
A Russian had been behind the death of Adam Carter, one of Harry's previous Section Chiefs and a fine agent. A Russian who had subsequently, rather mysteriously, disappeared. Lucas North had been returned to the Grid after eight long years in a Russian prison cell, and he had eventually turned traitor. The Russians had been working with the Chinese to orchestrate the hack of Section D servers that had occurred when they tried to join their systems with the Americans, ultimately resulting in the death of a young American technical agent. It would seem that every personal loss Harry had suffered, every attempt on his life, every damn near unraveling of his team in the last four years could be traced back in some way to the Russians. What if there was a reason behind this common theme? What if there was a single thread that bound them and held the key to the current threat?
Dimitri was still looking into Paul Hadley, and Erin was grateful for it, unwilling to discount him as a possible suspect just yet, but the Russian angle was looking more and more appealing the deeper she dove into Harry's past. She could understand why, at the time, no one had questioned the possible connection between all of these events; understaffed and overworked and struggling to re-integrate Ruth into his team and his life after the death of her husband and the loss of her stepson, Harry had most likely been too busy keeping his head above water to question the stories he had been told. Now, though, Erin was determined to keep looking.
What if, she asked herself, there was a link? What if Lucas North was sent back, what if the Sugarhorse network was attacked in order to remove Harry from the field of play in advance of Tiresias? And what if, when they failed to eliminate him on their first attempt, Viktor Sarkisiian had been authorized to sell him to Mani, encouraged, even, in the hopes that the Indians would do Moscow's dirty work for them? And then, when that failed, well, North was still in play, and he very nearly succeeded in ending Harry's career and Ruth's life in one fell swoop. Someone had sent Vaughn careening into Lucas's path; what if that was the Russians, once again?
And now they were in London.
Erin's heart began to pound in her chest as she pondered the evidence before her. It was illuminating, certainly; she found her exploration of the history between Harry and Ruth had only served to elevate the pair of them in her estimation. They had endured so much, and yet remained true, to one another and to the realm. The story laid out in front of her was one of survival, and yes, one of love. It was love that brought Ruth crashing back into his Harry's life, love that had given her back her place on the Grid, love that had saved her life and damned Harry's career, and somewhere deep inside Erin's heart, locked away for safekeeping, was a piece of her soul that rejoiced, to know that such love had endured, and continued on, in spite of all the obstacles they had faced. She was determined to do right by them, to protect them, to use every resource available to her to make sure that they did not lose one another now, after everything else.
But first, she would need to speak to Harry. She would need to pick his brain, ask for hard truths, determine whether there was some piece of information she was missing, hidden away in his past or in Ruth's labyrinthine mind.
"Erin?" Dimitri's voice disturbed her musings and nearly sent her diving out of her chair, so lost had she been in her thoughts and Harry's past.
"Yes?" she answered, trying not to sound too breathless as she spun to face him. He was a nice young man, was Dimitri, and a nice looking one, too. The moment she'd first stepped onto the Grid months before she'd taken one look at him and felt her heart sink in her chest; this was a complication she could ill afford at this time in her life. Still, though, she looked forward to their every conversation, even if he was still fiercely loyal to Harry, even if he was terrible at hiding the hunger in his eyes when his gaze fell her way. With time perhaps he would learn to hide the longings of his heart, but Erin hoped it would be a long time indeed.
"I've had a thought," he said, leaning back against her desk and crossing his arms over his chest. "Yesterday's meeting with the Russians was cancelled, right? Because of the evacuation?"
"Yes," Erin said slowly, wondering where he was going with this.
"Well, then, where did they go? The Russians, I mean. They had a whole day to themselves, without Towers or anyone looking over their shoulders. How did they use it?"
Erin could have kissed him on the lips, she was so delighted by his inquiry. It hadn't even occurred to her ask, but Dimitri was right. It was the flowers from the Russian delegation that had caused the evacuation in the first place; had they known it was coming? Was the whole thing staged? And if it was, what the bloody hell was it all for?
This day had so far brought her nothing but questions, and yet she felt closer to solution to this riddle than she had in days. They finally had a lead, and she would pursue it, to whatever end.