Chapter 18
Swept Under the Rug
Friday, 7:22 AM
It was early morning, but no light penetrated the walls of the MI-5 detention center. They were each being held separately while the investigators attempted to sort it all out. They weren't able to get any sleep due to the near constant questioning. Over and over, the same topics again and again. Each one repeated each sequence as they remembered it, leaving out those details that they had agreed not to mention.
Jenny Thatcher was the sole exception to that. She offered more than her share of opinions, corrections, and all around vitriol to proceedings. Finally, upon Crombey's orders, she'd been given a sedative and taken to a quiet place to rest. It was a right fine mess.
Crombey had woken up Number Ten with a report at about one a.m. By five, the PM was sitting in his office debating the issue, knowing they would need to leak something to the news outlets soon. What exactly that would be was a matter of furious debate and endless recriminations.
Jonathan Trimble had managed to reach Jerome and order him to come in right away. He wanted his team to be present during the sorting out process, most of them anyway. His message to Alicia had been somewhat different. She didn't arrive until six-thirty a.m., and with her was the Foreign Secretary, Sir Mark Blackwell.
Sir Blackwell was much more than a spectator, he had nearly the entire story worked out. The official version, anyway. He had little enough idea about what the truth really was, but he knew how to spin it into something that the public would consume and feel good about. Being a close confidante of the PM didn't hurt much, either.
In the end, they were left with little choice, primarily due to the two letters which had been in MacKenzie and Trimble's possession. They were … problematic. Their very presence made the situation very sticky. They needed to bury them, and the easiest way to do that was to avoid any lengthy trials.
"The fact is, the country has been on alert for two days and needs to be set to rights." Crombey had dragged them all out of their separate confinement – minus the sedated Jenny Thatcher – to a conference room, with the PM and Sir Blackwell in attendance. "Which is why we've decided not to fight what's in these letters." He paused, glaring at the two men, before asking the next question. "Do you know what was in them?"
"No, sir," Jonathan replied instantly.
"I have a suspicion, but nothing more," MacKenzie supplied. He had finally understood Sir Radcliffe's statement about taking a lesson from Dumas. He had done exactly what Cardinal Richelieu had done, for exactly the same reasons. Only this time, the letters had stayed in the hands of the intended recipients.
Crombey waved one of the letters at them, daring anyone to challenge that this was, in fact, the actual letter they had been given. Seeing no challenge, he put his glasses on and read aloud: 'The bearer of this letter has done all they have done for the good of England, and at the order of her Majesty, through her servant, Sir Radcliffe Holm, Director of Special Projects, blah, blah, blah." He set the letter down and rubbed his forehead.
"Do you understand the position this puts us in, either of you?" It was the prime minister who was speaking, and he was clearly unhappy. "This is a pardon – a blanket pardon. Completely preposterous. Simply unheard of." He waved his hand, at the absolutely absurdity of it.
"We can't very well have it getting out that Her Majesty's government is in the habit of issuing blanket pardons, in advance, to rogue agents." The Foreign Secretary was clearly disturbed at the thought. Indeed, the foreign policy implications were staggering. The backlash from other governments would set diplomacy back twenty years.
"But they are legal, aren't they?" MacKenzie was more than willing to push his luck in this. He had them on the ropes, so to speak. He simply needed to play his cards right, and they would all come out of this okay.
"They're legal simply because we've decided that they're legal." Crombey pointed at the two of them with his glasses. "And let's be clear, we've only done that because we don't want anyone challenging the legality of it all."
Despite his best intentions, Giles burst out laughing. The absurdity was clearly in the explanation, not in the pardon. He realized that no one else was laughing, but he couldn't help himself. He sobered after a moment.
"The point is," the PM interjected, "that you two are off the hook. As much as that makes me ever so uncomfortable." He glared from one to the other, but he was clearly not making much of an impression. "As for Miss Rosenberg, there's not a single indication in any of the testimony that she actually ever did anything wrong." He shrugged, that fact having made him even more furious than the letters that Sir Radcliffe had written. "Mr. Giles, in exchange for keeping all of this secret, we are prepared to offer you immunity from any infractions you may have committed."
"Thank you, yes," said Giles, trying to suppress a sigh of relief. In truth, he really wasn't sure what those infractions might be. He could fight it, but what would that gain him? He wasn't inclined to say anything to anyone to begin with. This way, at least, everyone got what they wanted.
"That's that, then," the PM declared, then stood up and left the room without any further commentary. The Foreign Secretary trailed after them.
Crombey, for his part, burst into laughter as soon as the two politicians had left. "Good God," he said, wiping his eyes, "where do they come up with these things?" He was referring, of course, to the issue of the legality of the letters. "Let's be honest, gents. I have no idea whether or not these things would hold up in court. I seriously doubt it, to be honest. But the flap they would cause would be a disaster. And, as much as they hate to admit it, you were in the right. You were acting on behalf of your country, doing your jobs, and right bloody well, too."
He shuffled through some papers, looking back and forth at the various documents spread out before him. "The Foreign Secretary had crafted a report already – crafty bastard, that one. I'm going to hit the highlights for you, so you know what to expect. It'll be all over the BBC in an hour."
He paused, getting his bearings on this altered version of reality. There was more fiction in government press releases than he cared to admit, but this one really took the prize. "It seems that there's been an attempt by unnamed malcontents to engage in illegal arm sales to questionable foreign governments. It seems that the Foreign Office engaged with the military to assign one of their best men to breaking up the ring. That would you be you, Lieutenant Colonel MacKenzie. Heh, the promotion is effective next month, so we still have time to take all this back and throw the book at you." He turned his gaze back to the paper, sorting through to find his place again.
"Now then, Mr. Giles here has a young lady friend visiting, that would be you Miss Rosenberg. I'm sorry, but everyone's going to pretty much assume that you two are shagging. Not much way around that." Willow looked aghast, but Giles simply smirked. Well, it wouldn't hurt his reputation, at least.
"It seems that Miss Rosenberg stumbled across something using a public computer at an Internet café. The bad guys – all of who are dead, by the way, it gives us plenty of names to pin this all on – tried to eliminate her. Mr. Giles took her on the run. Mr. MacKenzie tried to help. And the whole thing got all wrapped up last night. We apologize for any misleading public information that got out."
He stopped, looking them all over. "Now, the case was solved by Jenny Thatcher, who is taking a new position with the home office. Thank God! Sorry Jonny, but you were working the Heathrow case, just like we agreed."
"No problem," Jonathan replied. He hadn't expected any credit; he was grateful just to avoid ending up in prison.
"However, with Jenny leaving, I've decided that I need a section lead to take over more of my responsibilities. I'm afraid that you're the only one qualified." Crombey waggled his eyebrows.
"What about the others in the group?" Jonathan asked. His team had acted counter the rest of the organization. That kind of action could lead to very bad feelings in the office.
"Officially, it was part of a planned 'live fire' exercise to test our operational readiness against unexpected challenges. Your team was just doing as they were ordered to, and the others will be getting their chance during some other evaluation period." It was the best he had been able to come up with at the time, and he was sticking with it. Staff would start arriving soon, so they had to have some sort of story to tell. "Miles is the most personally affected, but he'll be getting a promotion out of this, so that should settle him. As for your man Eric, I think maybe a month in the steno pool might wise him up a bit."
Jonathan nodded. Eric had gotten sloppy, he needed something humiliating to reinforce that lesson. The steno pool would be just the thing to do that. "Anything else?" he asked.
"Well, you've managed to get a number of MPs flitting about with a bad case of the vapors over all of this, but that will just need to be handled." Crombey shrugged. Parliamentary oversight was an ongoing game in this business.
Jonathan turned to MacKenzie, a smile on his face. "The MPs like to flit, it's pretty much how they get around. I think it's called flittery."
MacKenzie returned the smile. "And here I keep getting told that flittery will get me nowhere." Lack of sleep hadn't improved his sense of humor.
"That will be quite enough out of the two of you," Crombey said, his own smile belying his sternness. "Now, Mr. MacKenzie here is giving the accounting office fits, and the foreign office has a proposal for him, so I would kindly request that you all get out before I have you thrown out." He smiled again, sweetly, but there was steel behind it this time. He had an office to run, and it was getting near business hours.
Ripper, Willow, and Jonathan all left the office, allowing MacKenzie to have his discussion with Crombey. They weren't sure quite what to say or what to do. So much had happened in less than three days. Much of it they didn't understand. But they had survived, and, apparently, stopped Arinoth. He wouldn't be coming back from this, that was for sure.
"We weren't able to shut down the Weber Institute," Jonathan said, his voice indicating some regret at that. He'd wanted to shut it all down, to root them all out, but there was neither time nor stomach for that sort of operation.
"Don't worry, control has been returned to the rightful place." Giles, at least, was more sympathetic to his employers than Jonathan was. It would be a long time before a group like the Ring of Arinoth would be able to grab so much power within the Watcher's. They had been caught asleep at the wheel – they were unlikely to let that happen ever again.
There were still the other members of the Ring that had to be flushed out. That would be accomplished by the council, and others working for them. It would be done quietly, discreetly, but it would be done. They were unwilling to allow such a nest of vipers to exist in their own backyard without extinguishing it. There were also the remnants of Arinoth's own network. There was too much of that to have a hope of destroying it completely, but his death should mostly shatter its effectiveness.
That left little enough for them to do now, but go back and try to live the life they had three days ago. For Giles that meant returning to his apartment cum crime scene, and try to continue unpacking and settling his life here. He had thought his identity of 'Ripper' had been left behind long ago, but it was clear to him now that it was still alive and well. It provided some measure of inspiration to him. Could it be that he was destined to be not just what he was then or what he was now, but perhaps some blend of the two? Only time would tell, but he seemed to have enough of that ahead of him.
Willow knew that for her, it meant returning to the coven and her lessons. It meant learning control, and being responsible, and all those other things that seemed to weigh her down when she wasn't running for her life. She realized that she had done two things during this misadventure. First, she had used her magic without losing control, even in a dangerous circumstance. Second, she had used non-magic skills to help out. The thought of that made her feel very warm inside, which took away some of the dread she felt about going back to her old life.
Jonathan knew that he would sleep today – it'd been forty-eight hours since he'd slept last. He was dead on his feet, and he really had no other choice in the matter. He would collapse if he didn't get some rest soon. Perhaps Jerome could take him home. Then, tomorrow, with this all over the news, he would start another case. This time, preferably, with no demons or magic.
MacKenzie came and joined them, a broad smile across his face. He looked like the proverbial cat that had eaten the canary.
"What was all that about accounting?" Jonathan asked. "Are they making you pay for damages?"
"Actually, it seems that with this official story in place, they owe me nearly two years back pay and back leave. So, I'll be getting a nice fat check soon. Which, considering that everything I own is pretty much on my back right now, should come in rather handy."
"Good for you," Willow said. "Yeah us!" she added. "Then what?" She wanted to know that he would be okay. For some reason, she felt responsible for the last two years of his life. She knew in her head that it had been Arinoth, not her, that had so disrupted his existence, but her heart didn't quite get that. Maybe she was just on too much of a guilt trip, but she felt she needed to do something or, barring that, at least know that things would be okay.
"Well, for that," he began, then rubbed the back of his neck. "They've offered me a job. I'll retire from the military, and then go to work for Her Majesty's Secret Service."
"You'll be working here?" Giles asked, astounded at the turn of fortune.
"No, no," he replied. "The foreign office has requested that I be assigned to MI-6. I'm going off to be a foreign spy, aye?" There was wisdom in that. He had extensive experience in infiltration, and he had already traveled the globe trying to stop Arinoth.
"Then I guess this is goodbye," Ripper said, shaking each man's hand in return. "Best of luck to you."
"And to you," they both offered, somewhat simultaneously. Willow gave Mac a hug, and then Jonathan one, too.
It was finally over. The threat of Arinoth gone. Their lives were once more their own. They each had somewhere to go to, a new dawn to enjoy.
For Collum MacKenzie, though, he had something to do first. He had to go open a good bottle of whisky and get some fine cigars, and he had to sit and remember his friend. England had mourned Sir Radcliffe Holm nearly two years ago, now it was his turn. He'd do that before he took on his new responsibilities. His life had been on hold for two years, fighting this fight. It could wait a few more days while he remembered.
After all, some things were worth it.
* * *
Back in his office, Crombey stared at the ring he had taken from his safe. He hadn't worn it for years. Being a spy, it wasn't a good idea to let too much of your real personal life be revealed. He stared at it, remembering that part of him.
Then he put his Masonic ring back in his safe – the square, compasses and letter 'G' fresh in his mind. The 'old network' would live a while longer.