For such a dreadful day, it begins much like any other. People arrive on the Grid at their accustomed hour, carrying bacon and egg sandwiches and takeaway coffees, collected on their commute into Thames House; others, like me, who have already eaten at home, make cups of tea and exchange pleasantries with colleagues in the tea room. Ruth must have arrived at five in the morning - by the time I am in at seven-thirty, her desk is littered with three used mugs, a Pret A Manger "breakfast roll" wrapper (I shudder to think – I began my day with porridge, made by my mother, and some sliced fruit), and a half-eaten packet of gingernuts.
God is in the details, as Ruth is fond of saying, and I recognise the gingernuts as being a bad sign – she only eats them when things are not coming up roses. It must be the hardness of them that appeal to the fierce side of her nature, or so I surmise, from the way in which she is biting down savagely on one as she glares at her screen. "Good morning," I venture, pausing by her desk to take a couple of biscuits to dunk in my tea – a terribly common habit, Mother would say, but one I must confess to rather enjoying from time to time – and to smile at her, as her eyes briefly meet mine over the top of her monitor. "Is it?" she retorts grumpily, before she scoots her chair out from her desk and arches her body backwards, stretching both arms up over her head. She is wearing trousers, unusually, with a wine-coloured top which only just covers her midriff, and as she stretches, I catch a tantalising glimpse of said midriff; instantly, my mind is back in our bedroom at Havensworth, as she…I blink rapidly, schooling myself sternly to concentrate on the here and now, which is standing on the Grid, as Harry emerges from his office looking decidedly rough around the edges. I see that he is carrying a fresh shirt over one arm, and his shave kit; he must have slept here last night, I think, as I watch him walk slowly towards the men's lavatory at the far end of the Grid, head bowed with exhaustion.
Ruth, sitting back up again in her chair, gives me a tired look and says, "Sorry. It was a very long night, and you know what I'm like on too little sleep, but least I got to go home for a few hours. Harry was here all night…" I nod – I do know what she's like without enough sleep – and then say, "I'd better be getting in there, then. If we're able to leave at a reasonable hour tonight, would you like to have dinner with me? I thought we could try for that new place at the Oxo Tower, but I would have to book it as soon as they open today. We haven't really seen each other since, well, you know…"I am reluctant to even mention the words Havensworth, or ball, at work – one never knows who might be listening, or what carelessly spoken sentence could pique their interest. Ruth breaks into her glorious, all-too-rarely-seen smile, then, dimples and all, her eyes shining at the thought of an evening in one of London's better restaurants, and replies happily, "Oh, Malcolm, I'd love to! I haven't been there, but I believe it's wonderful." I smile back, and with a tiny little bow, really more of a nod, I say, "Then your wish is my command," and picking up my now cooling mug of tea, I float back to my desk, head in the rose-coloured clouds of my plans for our evening together.
A good meal, some decent wine, and a walk along the Thames in the long twilight of high summer, and then, hopefully, back to her house where, alone at last, we can make a feast of an entirely different sort, one that I have been craving since we left Toad Hall…it's ridiculous, at my age, and after spending almost an entire lifetime celibate, just how much I desire her, and how frequently I now find my thoughts drifting in that direction. This preoccupation with sex is, I believe, the norm for most men, but I am not used to thinking of myself in those terms, nor having my mind suddenly disengage from the task or discussion at hand, only to retrieve a highly inappropriate, if intriguing, image, or recollect a particularly erotic experience that Ruth and I have shared. I feel like an adolescent again, and some days it takes all of my self-discipline, all of my training in self-denial and in retreating into the realm of pure logical thought, to maintain my outwardly calm exterior, and not give the game away altogether by seizing Ruth and kissing her soundly in the middle of the Grid, onlookers be damned, then leading her off to the nearest private space – and I know them all – in Thames House, where we…
But this really must stop, I scold myself, as I take a soothing sip of tepid tea, then dip a gingernut in the mug and nibble carefully at the resulting softened mess, just as Colin enters the Geek Suite, as Sam has dubbed our little corner of the Grid, to distinguish it from the tech suite, which is a much bigger room that becomes the nerve centre of most of our operations. I'm sure she's not the first, and certain she won't be the last. Colin straightens up from removing his bicycle clips, and his eye falls on the gingernut I have left for him, sitting on the rim of his limited-edition Doctor Who mug, ready for the next time he has tea. He looks from it to me, face falling at the implicit meaning behind the presence of that particular comestible on his desk. "She hasn't found them, then." I shake my head, mouth full of biscuit, and Colin's shoulders slump. "I don't know what else to do, Malcolm, I've tweaked that algorithm twice, she should be getting only the top half-percent of relevant sites now."
Colin's voice is full of frustration, so I remind him that the top half-percent is still a lot of data to trawl through, and what Ruth is looking for can only be found with intuition as well as with information. "She's like an artist, really, working in the dark," I say, and flush with embarrassment at Colin's oh please look. "So, when are you going to do something about that?" he asks, firing up his array for the day. I turn back to my own screens, where I have already got half a dozen different tasks in progress, including yet another meta-search for Ruth's terrorist cell, plus a half-completed Times cryptic crossword to contemplate. "You know that silence speaks louder than words, right?" Colin observes, and I chuckle at his tenacity, and also at the thought of what I could tell him if I so chose…
"If the whole place is running a book on Ruth and Harry, what sort of odds do you think they'd give me?" I fence. "Some pretty long ones, I should think. Shergar would have done better for this year's Derby." Colin harrumphs in amusement, then rejoins, "You're probably right. I reckon you're better off out of all that, anyway. There's something about her, something…weird. Do you know she just handed me the Tessina a couple of weeks ago? I didn't even know it was out of the cage, there was nothing on the register. What would she need that for?" I am very glad Colin can't see my face right now, as I can feel the blood draining away. So she did return it, and blatantly so, if she just handed it to Colin, I think, before asking, in as uninterested a tone of voice as I can manage, "Really? Did she say anything about it?" Colin snorts, and answers, "She gave me some cock and bull story about how Harry had asked her to return it for him, but I didn't believe it for a minute. If Harry had taken it, why wouldn't he have signed it out?" I shrug, and say, "Ours not to reason why…" Colin groans, "Not Tennyson again, Malcolm, it's too early in the day. I'm going to get tea – do you want a top-up?" Without turning round, I hand up my mug, half full and cold, and Colin lopes out onto the Grid. I slump with relief in my seat, before picking up the crosswords page and staring at it without seeing. Not for the first time, I am grateful that I am not a field agent – all this dissembling is horrible, and I have begun to hate not being able to lay claim to the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened to me: Ruth.
The morning moves on; Colin returns with fresh tea, and I hear Adam and Fiona arriving, bantering about her birthday, which is today, or so I gather. Danny comes in not long after, and the Grid gets into full swing as Harry, freshly showered and shaven, in his clean shirt, but not fooling any of us, calls the morning briefing. I am not needed – generally, Colin and I only attend if there is a matter which requires our particular expertise – so I step out through the pods, and make my way up to the rooftop for some privacy in which to make my enquiry regarding dinner reservations. Five minutes later, I drop a slip of paper on Ruth's keyboard (she is still in the briefing) with the single numeral, 8, printed on it, and one corner folded over in a certain way to tell her it's from me, before heading back to my workstation, trying my best not to grin all the way. Ruth, me, and an elegant evening out– perfect!
An hour or so later, I hear Harry asking Adam if Ruth has gotten any more internet chatter, and I hold my breath in anticipation of the answer, turning slightly in my chair so I can see across to where Ruth and Adam's desks are located. Adam's shrug says it all, and I feel bad for Ruth, who has worked so long and hard on this with so little result. It happens to all of us, at some point, and there are few things as frustrating, or corrosive to one's self-confidence. I see Danny and Fiona head out of the pods, just as Sam comes in, much later than usual, and with a certain gleam in her eye, a gleam that Ruth sometimes has, afterwards... Blushing, I refocus my attention on the system diagnostic which is running on my primary screen, and so miss seeing a tall, dark man arriving a couple of minutes after Sam.
I register him later, though, as he walks out of the meeting room, headed for Sam's desk. He's handsome, self-assured (one might even say cocky) and very, very young. I already know his name, having heard Sam giggling about "Zaf from Six" with one of the admin staff in the kitchen as I washed up our mugs. I instantly recognise what a coup his recruitment was for our sister agency; a British-Asian male is the ultimate field agent, in this day and age; the speculative look on Harry's face says it all. Adam shakes hands warmly with the young man before strolling through the pods, on his way, I assume, to see how Fiona and Danny are going with their search of a suspected terrorist safe house, a lead which has come to us via a Moroccan agent codenamed Butterfly.
I have worked on the Grid, and with Harry, for so long, that when something goes wrong, I can often sense it before it is spoken; the air, usually chill and still thanks to the highly effective (and necessary) ventilation system, takes on a certain electric quality, and the atmosphere, normally one of quiet efficiency and focused effort, grows tense. Being in an exposed place, a beach or an open field, as a sudden summer storm blows in, filling the air with ozone and static, is the closest analogy I can think of; except that on the Grid, the thunderclouds are generally courtesy of Harry Pearce, rather than Divine Providence. Sometimes, I wonder if Harry would admit that there's a difference between the two…
When the hair on the back of my neck begins to prickle, I know that something has happened, and by the sudden churning in my stomach, I know it must be bad. Instinctively, I turn around to see what is going on, and my enquiring gaze falls straight onto Ruth, sitting as still as a mouse, knuckles clenched around her telephone handset, as she listens to her caller with a strange intensity. The call doesn't last long, but it is what she does next that really alarms me; she almost runs to Harry's office, face white, before racing back to her desk two minutes later. I get up, ready to head for the briefing room, when a red flash sounds on my mobile phone, then on Colin's a second later. Ruth is recalling the entire team, and Colin swings round in his seat to look at me in puzzlement. "What's going on?" he asks, and in reply I shrug my shoulders, unwilling to take my eyes from Ruth, or speak, until I have more of a grasp of the situation. Ruth is still rapidly dialling numbers, and a look of fear passes across her face as she dials the same number twice, then tries one more time. She sits down precipitately, as if her legs have just given way, and I start across the Grid towards her in concern. "Is everything all right?" I ask quietly, when I reach her side, and she turns eyes like a frozen ocean toward me. I feel ill at the raw fear I see in them. "No, it's not – please, don't ask me anything now, just go and trace Adam's most recent mobile calls – he rang me just a few minutes ago, he didn't make sense at first, but I think something terrible is about to happen…this is it, Malcolm, this is the terror cell we couldn't find, I just know it." her voice trembles as she says this, but she has the sense to speak softly, so only I can hear. I nod once and turn immediately towards the tech suite, where I get straight to work, bringing several machines online for the others, and commencing the trace.
Minutes later, Ruth joins me, and I seize the opportunity to take her hand under the table for a moment, hoping to reassure her. She looks at me, eyes wide, then squeezes back briefly – thankyou – before reviewing the intel I have compiled; Adam's mobile phone call log, the records of missed calls to Danny and Fiona's phones, and the CCTV footage I have pulled and reviewed from the last known location of Adam's phone, in the NFT café on the South Bank, not far from Thames House. What I have found in the footage is cause for grave concern – Adam is sitting, far stiffer than his usual relaxed posture, at a table outside the café, with an unknown woman of Middle Eastern appearance. There is something about the way she is facing him that suggests to my practised eye that she has a gun, or a weapon of some sort, but I don't mention this to Ruth – it is just my own speculation, at this point, and she already looks worried enough. It doesn't take her long to draw the same conclusions I have, and she leaps up to fetch Harry. I lock the screen with a password that Ruth and I sometimes use when we are working on something that Harry doesn't want the rest of the Grid to know about just yet, and slip out of the room and back to my desk, before Ruth returns.
Shortly afterwards, Sam comes bustling in, and asks Colin for an earwig and the smallest tracking device we have – one small enough to hide in a sweetie wrapper, as she puts it. Colin, always glad to oblige her, quickly fetches them from the tech storage cage, and then his eyebrows shoot up as she hands him the list of other items required. Fundraiser identity vests, buckets full of sweets, clipboards and casual civvies for Zaf plus six admin staff, who are being co-opted into some harebrained scheme to contact Adam while he is still in the presence of the hostile woman who is sitting with him. Five minutes and one call to the Property Department later, Zaf's impromptu team leaves Thames House, and I watch on CCTV as the drop goes successfully, much to my amazement. "Game on, then," Colin mutters, and I glance at him sharply before following Ruth down the corridor. This is not a game, anything but, if what I have seen so far is any indication; with difficulty, I keep my thoughts to myself.
Once Adam is wired for sound, and his tracking signal is activated, our lives – and his – become marginally easier, and I breathe a small sigh of relief as we follow him across the Thames on CCTV, listening to him as he talks to his captor, drawing out information, making it clear that he is not intimidated by her. A few minutes later, Ruth, flanked by Harry and Zaf, gets a frantic-sounding call from Danny, and on another screen, I begin to trace it, using sophisticated satellite mapping and triangulation software; the signal goes dead before the search is completed, to Harry's intense annoyance, but Colin cleans up the raw data with lightning speed, and we narrow its origin to within five miles of Virginia Water, in the stockbroker belt of Surrey, just outside the M25.
Events seem to move very quickly after that. Sam enters, carrying a small packet for Harry; he snaps at her, but she stands her ground, and explains that it was left at a police station in Surrey. It turns out to be a hostage video, with Fiona reading a statement in dead, flat tones – not like her normally vivacious voice at all – with some hitherto unknown terrorist group taking credit for the kidnappings of Danny and Fiona, boasting that they can take hostages wherever they choose, and making a lot of highly unreasonable demands regarding British involvement in Iraq, the Prime Minister, and a landmark speech he is scheduled to deliver tonight. Dear God, I think, and we have a government which publicly insists it does not negotiate with terrorists…my chest begins to tighten in response to the rising fear I feel for my kidnapped colleagues, for Adam, and for Ruth, who listens grimly to Fiona's message, face set, only her eyes betraying her true state of mind. They are all trapped like flies at the centre of a web of intel which only she can untangle; but will she be able to do it before their time runs out?…Yet stands the Church clock at ten to three/And is there honey still for tea? It's funny how the mind under duress throws out strange little snippets from memory…
I wait in dread to see what will happen next.
A/N: Shergar was a champion Irish racehorse, and winner of the 1981 Derby. He was kidnapped in 1983 from his home in Co. Kildare, and was never recovered – suspicion fell upon the IRA, who may have stolen him for ransom money to fund the purchase of arms. Malcolm is making a Five in-joke, in other words.
The poem referred to in the last paragraph is Rupert Brookes' The Old Vicarage.
