A/N: I know this may not be quite what you've signed up for, but this is what we've been building to all along, and I thank you for your patience, and for all your lovely reviews. Hang in there, y'all!
Albany.
With that one word, Harry felt his whole life crack open, fall away, shatter into splinters at his feet in a hail of glass and broken dreams. Albany.
He wasn't really listening, as Malcolm carried on with his tale; one quick look at Ruth's face showed him she was more than attentive enough for the both of them, just now. Instead of sharing her concern, Harry lost himself in a haze of memories. The Albany project had failed, many years ago, back when he was a young agent and tasked with its protection. The powers that be had kept the fiction going, convinced that the very idea of such a weapon would be enough to keep their enemies at bay, and so far, it had worked. That those same enemies might covet such technology was not outside the realm of possibility, he knew, and it seemed that now this particular chicken had finally come home to roost. Harry had been part of a team that told the world they had the power to kill very discriminately, based on any combination of genetics they chose, and now the world demanded that technology for itself.
That the weapon didn't work was scant comfort; whoever had sent Edwards after it was well informed, well connected, no doubt well funded, and bloody ruthless. They would have to be, to lust after such a weapon in the first place. Lucas and his paramour were likely in grave danger, and Malcolm, too, now that he had been identified as one of the few Brits still living who had worked on the Albany project. Where would this end? he wondered. How far would he have to go, to protect his nation's secrets? Was he willing to sacrifice Lucas and the woman, Malcolm, maybe even himself, to protect a weapon that never worked? Would it even come to that?
As his thoughts wandered, his eyes come to rest on Ruth. His Ruth, his beautiful, brilliant, steadfast Ruth, large with child and fairly vibrating with anxiety. She shouldn't be here, he thought sadly as he watched her. Ruth had tried to leave, near the beginning of her pregnancy, had tried to tell him this was no place for her, and he had selfishly begged her to stay. It seemed the tables had turned on them now, though. Ruth was determined to stay, determined to work, determined to see this tragic farce through to its conclusion, and Harry was desperate for her to leave. He wanted her safe, far away from whatever madness lay in store for him.
"Harry?" she asked him, her glorious blue eyes huge and round as planets in the dim light of his office. "What do we do?"
"We carry on," he told her gruffly. "The team is searching for Lucas and Edwards now. While they try to track them down, we have to come up with a contingency plan. I want to save Lucas, if I can, but we cannot give up Albany."
Regnum Defende. Whatever the cost.
This is impossible, Beth thought glumly as she trawled through call longs and GPS records, trying to determine where Lucas had gone once he'd left the Grid. As always he'd been two steps ahead of them; he'd left his mobile in his desk drawer, and his car was still parked at Thames House. There had been no trace of him or Edwards on CCTV, yet, but they had thousands of feeds to search and only a handful of analysts. Harry had sent out orders to bring in every available analyst and field agent from every section of Five, determined not to let Lucas slip through their net, but the reinforcements were slow in coming, and the clock was ticking.
None of it made sense to Beth. Not Harry's strange story about Lucas and the woman (or the strange look that passed between Harry and Ruth as he explained it), not Lucas's refusal to name Edwards before yesterday morning, not Dakar, not any of it.
At the moment Harry and Ruth were closeted in his office with a man Beth had never met before, a man called Malcolm. Ruth had mentioned him, a few times; as far as Beth was aware, Malcolm was Harry and Ruth's only living friend. He wasn't at all what she expected; in her heart, Beth believed that only the strong survived, and she had gotten it into her head that this Malcolm must have been like Harry, brutal and hard and belligerent. He wasn't though; he seemed kind and gentle and had been unfailingly polite during their brief interaction. Erudite, soft-spoken, self-effacing; these were not the sort of traits Beth associated with the survivors. Perhaps there are many different kinds of spooks, she mused while she worked. Perhaps Harry's way isn't the only way.
Hours passed, hours of frantic chaos and whispered conversations and unspoken terrors. Through it all Ruth seemed to wilt like a flower; she had hardly spoken, since leaving Harry's office, and every now and again Beth glanced her way just in time to watch her flatmate's brow furrow momentarily, as if in discomfort. I wish she would just go home, Beth thought sadly as she watched it happen again; Ruth didn't need to be here, mired in this twisted game of cat and mouse; she ought to be at Harry's putting the finishing touches on her nursery, picking a name for that bloody baby, resting, something, anything that wasn't sitting here scrambling to produce a miracle under intolerable pressure.
Before Beth could say anything to her about it Tariq twigged. His explanation made no sense to Beth, not that it mattered anyway; she grabbed a firearm and Dimitri's hand and ran for the door.
They had a possible location for Lucas, and no time to spare.
They caught up with Lucas and Edwards at a park. Bizarre that, finding these two gruff, grizzled, fearfully dangerous men sitting together on a park bench on a beautiful sunny day while children played all around them. It's a funny old world, she thought as she marched across the park, drawing her gun when she locked eyes with Lucas.
He rose slowly from the bench, as Beth came into view, holding one hand out in front of him in a calming sort of gesture.
"He's down, Beth. He needs a doctor," he told her. "You need to get him patched up, and then he'll tell you everything he knows."
Behind her Beth could hear Dimitri calling for an ambulance; she took a tentative step forward, and recoiled sharply when her gaze landed on the blade thrust deep into Edwards's thigh.
"Jesus, Lucas, did you have to stab him?" she asked incredulously.
"It was either that or shoot him, and given our location I didn't want to start waving a gun about," he told her with a pointed look. Beth took the hint, and tucked her gun back into waistband of her trousers, hiding it beneath her jacket.
"You really think he'll talk?"
Lucas nodded. "He's already told me he's working for the Chinese, and they're going to try to make contact with me. Look, Beth, I can't come in. I need to see this through. Maya's in terrible danger, because of me. Take Vaughn back with you, but please, let me go. Let me go, now, before they come looking for me. Give me a chance to fix this."
Beth had never actually heard Lucas North beg before, hadn't thought him capable of such a thing, but he was pleading with her now. What do I do? Oh God, what do I do?
Should she take him at his word, let him run, and cart Edwards back to Thames House, dripping blood as he went, and hope for the best? Or should she refuse him, insist he check in with Harry, and risk losing Edwards's employers, and possibly killing Lucas's lover in the process? Harry trusts him, she reminded herself as she regarded him warily. What would Harry do, if he were in your shoes?
"Do you think they're watching you?" she asked him very quietly, her lips hardly moving.
"I don't know. Maybe," Lucas cast around, as anxious as deer.
"I don't like this, Lucas, I don't like this at all." She took a deep breath. "Promise me you'll call in? Within the hour."
He gave a barely perceptible nod. "I promise."
She wanted to shake his hand and offer him her help, wanted to slap his face and damn him for a betrayer, but before she could make up her mind she heard the wailing of sirens in the distance.
"Run, Lucas."
Oh Beth, Beth, what have you done? Ruth thought morosely as the girl came trooping back through the door with Dimitri and a very nearly unconscious Edwards in tow. She had called in from the field, to explain that Lucas was still running the op, that the Chinese were behind it all, and that Edwards should have more information for them, once the medics had patched him up. Harry had seemed to take her unilateral decision in stride; he did not outright condone her giving Lucas free reign, but he had tendered no rebukes, either.
Ruth wasn't sure what to make of that. It was clear to her that Harry was still willing to trust Lucas, and that Beth in her naiveté was still willing to trust Harry, but Ruth did not share their certainty. Lucas had lied, had used his knowledge of her and Harry's past to manipulate their boss into a corner, and now there was this man Edwards to deal with as well. He'd been in Dakar with Lucas, had been seen meeting with him in Battersea Park, had apparently wrangled a meeting with Harry independent of his nefarious dealings with Lucas; who the bloody hell was he, and how did all of these pieces fit together?
That was her job, making sense of the insensible, but she just couldn't quite get it to make fit. Harry and Beth disappeared into the meeting room with Edwards, and a part of her keenly felt the slight at her having not been invited to join them; surely she should have been in there, to evaluate his information and prod Harry in the right direction, yet no request had been made for her presence.
"Are you feeling all right, Ruth?" Martha asked, leaning around her monitor to peer at Ruth with an expression of genuine concern on her face.
"Fine," Ruth answered shortly.
Martha returned to her work with a faintly harassed air about her, but Ruth didn't have time to worry about the new girl's feelings. She needed to know what was happening, and she was getting no closer to the answers.
Vaughn Edwards had never been a pleasant man, Harry knew. They'd had their fair share of dealings in the past, trading money and favors for information, and his evaluation of this man had always been that he was rather slimy, completely without morals, and utterly craven. As he worked with Beth to unravel the tale of Edwards's deceit, it seemed that the man was determined to prove all his prior assumptions as fact.
Edwards spilled his secrets, desperate to save his own skin. Yes, he'd been the brains behind the bomb in Dakar in '95, funded by a group of unnamed British intelligence services personnel who, as a sort of precursor to the antics of Jocelyn Myers and his cronies, had decided that "short term chaos for long term stability" was to be their cause du jour. No, he couldn't name names, and besides, it was so bloody long ago, they were all probably dead by now, weren't they? As for his current employers, well, all he would say was that they were Chinese, that they were willing to do whatever it took to secure Albany, and that they had set their sights on Lucas, having lost all faith in Edwards himself. After all, why waste their time with the middleman when they could go straight to the source?
After nearly two hours of listening to Edwards's drivel, Harry called the medics, and had the man dragged off the Grid and shipped back to a hospital to recuperate under the watchful eye of an armed guard. When they had the room to themselves, he turned his attention to Beth. She looked pale but alert, concerned but very much engaged, and he felt a brief flash of pride. In the beginning Harry had been uncertain how Miss Bailey would work out, in the long run, but she was turning into one hell of a spook.
"I can't decide if you were very brave or very foolish in letting Lucas go earlier," he told her quietly.
Beth offered him a tight, uneasy grin. "We need information, and for that, we need Lucas. He can't do us any good in here. With any luck, the Chinese will make contact, and he can tell us more about their plan."
Harry nodded. "Did he say anything about checking in?"
Beth's face fell. "He was supposed to call within an hour of our meeting in the park."
Perhaps she's not quite as good as I thought, Harry thought ruefully. "It would appear that our Section Chief has not kept his word."
"Maybe he did call, and they just didn't want to disturb us?" Beth suggested hopefully.
Harry shot her a withering look, and departed without another word.
Still, the day dragged on, and no word from Lucas. Ruth was digging through intercepts on Chinese assets currently at work in London, trying to determine who might be capable of organizing the kind of support Edwards needed to pull off his daring plan. So far, she'd found nothing, and with each passing second her anxiety grew.
"Oh, no," Martha sighed as she hung up her phone; the sound of her voice dragged Ruth from her reverie.
"What is it?" Ruth asked her, rather reluctantly. The last thing she needed just now was more bad news.
"It's Mr. Deery, your counsel snooper. I'm so sorry, Ruth, but he was found murdered in his home."
It felt to Ruth like an explosion had taken place inside her head; her ears were ringing, her heart was pounding, her sight had gone blurry. He was right, he was bloody right and I wouldn't listen, I fobbed him off, I ignored him, and now he's dead, oh God, he's dead…
He'd seemed like such a sweet man, Keith Deery. Sad and awkward and bloody uncomfortable to be around, but earnest and well-meaning, and Ruth had treated him with disdain. Maybe if she'd been willing to listen, maybe if she had ignored Dimitri's voice saying that's what we in the trade call an unreliable source and followed her instincts that poor, dear man would still be alive. Who had done it? Why had they done it?
There was no time to spare for following that trail (no time to grieve, a little voice whispered in her mind) and Ruth stood up sharply. She regretted this immediately as she wobbled on her feet and dark spots swam before her eyes and she reached out to clutch her desk, desperate to steady herself.
"Harry!" Martha cried at ear-shattering volume, leaping to her feet in alarm.
He came thundering out of his office like a charging bull, and made a beeline straight for Ruth, wrapping one arm around her waist and holding her upright. Oh, Harry, she thought sadly. Dear Harry, always there when she needed him, always something real, something solid she could cling to.
"All right, Ruth?" he asked her, his voice no more than a whisper.
"I just stood up too fast, I'm fine," she protested weakly.
"Bollocks," he fired back. Carefully he eased her down into her chair, and then pulled his mobile from his pocket. She listened as he rang his driver, feeling entirely too out of sorts to defend herself against the deluge of his over-protective instincts.
"I don't need to go home, Harry, I'm fine."
"You're not fine, you damn near passed out," he told her, not unkindly. "Go home, Ruth. Get some rest. Please."
"Harry-"
"If you won't do it for yourself, do it for me, please. Do it for little Sophia," he added, a ghost of his playful self sparkling in his eyes for just a moment before the reality of their situation reasserted itself and the devastation crept back in.
"We're not calling her Sophia," Ruth told him absently. She'd been feeling funny all day, dizzy and out of sorts, and as much as she couldn't bear the thought of leaving, she knew she was doing no one any good. Harry stayed with her until his driver arrived to escort her off the Grid, and when he helped her from her chair, he took her by the hand and walked her to the pods, and there in front of God and everyone he kissed her on the cheek.
"I'll think more clearly, knowing you're safe at home," he told her. "Get some rest."
Ruth wanted to complain, but she was just so bloody tired; she gave him a weak little nod, and allowed his driver to lead her through the pods, and out of sight.
