Autumn 2007

Ruth was in her house and sharing a bottle of wine with a friend. Such a nice thing, to have a friend. Ruth hadn't ever really been one to have many friends. Not like this. Not another woman with whom she felt comfortable enough to share anything and everything. And it was even nicer to have a friend who seemed to like her cats.

"So what's Harry doing tonight that allows you to be free to drink wine on a Tuesday evening with me, hmm?"

"Harry is at his own house doing whatever it is he does on his own. Just because we're together doesn't mean I don't still need time on my own. And I'm sure Harry does, too. He's not the most personable man in the world. I imagine if we were together at work and at home all day every day, we'd get rather sick of each other," Ruth answered with a slight laugh.

"Oh I don't know about that. Didn't he try to propose to you? Marriage would get him exactly that, and I think it is what he wants."

Ruth sat down after pouring them each another glass of wine. She took a long sip and sighed. "Honestly, Connie, I don't think he knows what he wants. I know he loves me, but marriage is a very different thing. And he wasn't very good at it the first time."

Connie nodded, absent-mindedly petting Mopsy on her lap. "You're very different than his first wife."

"Did you know her?"

"Not well. But I did meet her a few times. She was very tall and blonde and assertive. Not one to get pushed around, that Jane Townsend. Unless, of course, she was in one of her moods."

This was news to Ruth, and that terribly nosy part of her that made her a good analyst was gnawing at her now. "Moods?"

"Jane suffered frequent bouts of depression. They didn't really have a proper term for it then, I don't think. But we all knew it contributed to the divorce. Harry was never around. And when he wasn't working, he didn't have the patience to care for her the way she needed. Frankly, the way she deserved. She retreated from him, and in the end, they were nothing more than two people who shared dresser drawers. Between Jane's depression and Catherine's flights of fancy and Graham's drug abuse, Harry's never really been one to seek out another family for himself," Connie confided.

"Poor love," Ruth breathed, mostly to herself.

"You're different, though. And actually, Harry's different. I hadn't seen him in quite some time before he called me out of the blue to come back to the Grid while you were gone. So I don't know when the change in him really started. But I'd wager it's thanks to you that he's softer and kinder now. And he's finally got something to live for that isn't just his duty to the job. And that's definitely you."

Ruth blushed and took another sip of her wine.

Their glasses had gone empty again, so Connie got up to fetch the bottle—Ruth didn't like to keep it too close in case the cats wanted to knock it over. On her way back, she paused at Ruth's bookshelf. "Quite the collection you've got here."

"I read Classics at Oxford," Ruth explained with a wry smile.

"That makes sense. Look at all of these! Ovid, Homer, Sophocles, Dante. Oh the Inferno is one of my favorites," Connie noted, pulling out Ruth's well-worn copy.

"I've read it a dozen times, I think."

Connie flipped open a page. "Tiresias, who changed his sex from man to woman and back to man, wandering the Inferno as the blind prophet of Thebes."

"The symbolism of all those mythological characters is utterly incredible, isn't it?"

"Yes," Connie answered softly. "It is."

Meanwhile, on the other side of London, Harry had finally poured himself a glass of scotch and turned on his stereo to play some Mendelsohn and sit down to review the Pilgrim file more closely. He'd been working with Connie for weeks now, trying to get to the bottom of the Sugarhorse mole. He'd talked to Qualtrough in his little bookshop as they untangled the web they'd woven all those years ago with Hugo Prince. Connie knew nothing about it, of course, despite having been Hugo's lover for so long. Good old Hugo, keeping his mouth shut when it counted. But Hugo was long dead, Qualtrough had left the Service over a decade earlier, and Harry and Connie were at a loss.

The murky lines had begun to grow clearer, however, thanks to Connie's research. Pilgrim was a Russian codename from the KGB given to their mole in MI-5. The records were long-buried, and for good reason. Harry had gone to the archives and retrieved the old file himself. It was Qualtrough. That bastard. He'd sent Harry on a wild goose chase and nearly gotten away with it. The man was probably dust in the wind by now, back in Moscow where the FSB would laud him for his efforts.

Harry had called Ros into his office to share the news with her and brief her on Sugarhorse. "I've cultivated assets within the highest levels of the Russian government. We started as the Berlin wall fell, knowing the Kremlin wasn't far behind. We have sleepers all throughout Russia, but none of us knew the other's assets. Before Hugo died, he passed half his assets on to me and the other half to Richard Dolby. Our network was called Sugarhorse. And it's been compromised. There was a mole within MI-5 called Pilgrim, feeding information back to Russia. And I have his file here. I'm going to review this myself tonight, and tomorrow, we can brief the rest of the team."

"Who all knows?" Ros asked.

"Only Connie and myself. And now you."

"Not Ruth?"

"She received the message to convey to me that Sugarhorse was compromised. But she doesn't know what it is. She knows her place, Ros, and I hope you know yours," Harry warned, hoping she'd get the hint to keep his personal life out of their work for the time being.

Ros, ever the professional, nodded curtly and left the office. Harry watched her out the window of his office as she spoke to Connie, who then looked to Harry. He briefly held up the file for her to see, and she nodded to him in understanding.

But now he was home and alone. Scarlett was fed and taken care of. Ruth was at her house with her cats; he'd told her he needed the evening to himself to work, which she had not minded whatsoever. Things were going very well between them now. She had not bothered him about Sugarhorse again. He had not bothered her about marriage again. Everything was easy and happy. Harry was happy.

Before he got too swept up in the joys of her personal life—a circumstance he'd never found himself in before—he settled into his chair with the Pilgrim file. He opened to the first page, expecting to see Qualtrough's face there as he had earlier that day.

The only face Harry saw was his own. He put his scotch down and frantically turned every page. Everything in the Pilgrim file had his name and his information in it. All the operations run by Pilgrim pointed to Harry Pearce. According to the file in his hands, it was Harry who was the traitorous mole.

His mobile rang even as his mind was trying to parse out who could have possibly replaced the file with this fake designed to frame him. Numbly, he answered the phone.

"Harry?"

He swallowed hard. "Yes, Home Secretary?"

"I needed to call to make sure that Sugarhorse is still in place. With the Russians and the Americans at each other's throats over missiles placed in Syria, your network is more important than ever in keeping Russia from starting World War Three."

"Yes, of course."

"Can you guarantee that Sugarhorse is not compromised?"

Harry considered his words carefully. "Sugarhorse is as secure as it ever was," he replied.

"Good."

The line went dead and Harry put his phone down on the side table. He got up from where he was sitting. He knew what was happening. He knew what was coming. He could do nothing about it, not now. He'd find a way out of this, as the truth always came to light in the end. Time and again, Harry had found that to be true. He was not a traitor, he was not a mole, he was not Pilgrim. Eventually, that would be made known. But not yet.

He helped Scarlett hobble into the kitchen and closed her in with a bowl of water and her little cozy bed. After that, he poured himself more scotch and turned up the Mendelsohn. He sent a quick text to Ruth asking her to feed Scarlett for him tomorrow. She did not respond right away, and he did not expect her to. He sat in his favorite armchair and drank his scotch, listening to the beautiful music.

The melody was so entrancing that he could still hear it over the shouts of armed officers storming into his house. Harry complied with their orders, getting down on his knees with his hands up in surrender. The music played on.