One hour later, Goren and Eames were seated at a corner table in the Pig and Whistle, a cavernous, echoing barn of a pub, with young men and women from the neighbouring offices crowding round tables and consuming beer at a fearsome rate. The noise level was rising already, and they could overhear snippets of conversation from nearby tables: "So, who do you reckon to score first – Rooney or Owen?" "You got tickets?" "…nah, we'll watch it here – they're doing a two for one offer on Stella.." "…if they lose this, Eriksson's out, for sure…" The pub had signs up everywhere inviting people to watch the match on the big screen TV, with cheap beer and alcopops thrown in as a sweetener, and was decorated with small white flags with red crosses. (Eames had been thrown by this at first, then remembered that the red, white and blue of the Union Jack was the British flag, and the white and red St George's Cross the English.)

Eames had to hand it to Davenport - assuming, of course, that they were right about the identity of "A.D." – this was an excellent place to have a conversation and not be overheard. Beside her, Bobby took a tiny sip of his beer, bought as camouflage and not refreshment, and turned to her with a worried expression. "Are you happy about this?"

"I haven't been happy about this for the past day."

"No, me neither."

That hadn't been Bobby's voice. She glanced up and saw Davenport's lean figure behind her. As he dropped lightly down onto the stool across from the pair of them, she noticed that he'd shed his suit for a pair of blue jeans and a black T-shirt featuring a blond man in a trenchcoat, with a speech bubble saying "I walk my path alone; who'd want to walk it with me?" There might be a moral there, she thought gloomily. This whole situation had the potential to turn to hell in a handbasket very quickly indeed.

"This is all very dramatic," she commented dryly, by way of an opener.

"A little drama never killed anyone, plus the Big Issue seller's a good informant, and he needed the money," Davenport replied, and grinned at Goren. "I don't particularly want anyone I've been working with to see us having this conversation, although if they do, it should look like we're just catching up on old times."

"You think we're being watched?"

"If anyone's being watched, it's me. Right now, I doubt it. I don't pick up any watchers, although, to be fair, it's possible even I wouldn't. The people working for Mulligan are pretty good, I trained some of them myself."

"So, what would you done if I hadn't bought the Big Issue and turned up here?" Goren rumbled from beside her.

"Waited for you in your hotel room," Davenport replied cheerfully. "By the way, I hoped you locked any valuables in the safe there, their security's crap. Anyone dressed as one of the hotel staff can get into the rooms. The cleaning staff leave the master keys just lying around in the staff room when they pick up their trolleys at the start of their shifts."

"What the hell were you doing trying to break into our rooms?"

"Oh, I haven't been in them. I was just looking to see if I could get in..."

Goren fixed Davenport with a piercing stare, interrupting him. "Davenport, what do you want?"

The spy's grin faded, and was replaced by a look of dead seriousness. "The short answer to that is, your help."

"And the long answer?"

"The long answer, I would rather not give you in public."

"Is there an answer in the middle?"

Davenport grinned lopsidedly. "As you've seen, I disagree with Mulligan. I don't know for sure that Elahi's killing is related to the Newcomers plan. I don't know for sure that it isn't. Khaleel's plan may have been a smokescreen intended to distract us from another attack, organised by someone else; it may not. I don't know. What I do know is that I want the truth. I want to be one hundred percent sure that I'm wrong, if I am wrong, because I don't want to wake up the day after the match and read about the deaths of innocent people in that stadium knowing that I could have stopped it."

"Nice speech."

"It gets better. To that end, I'm offering my help in your investigation into the Elahis' deaths, and I suggest we start by pooling our knowledge about Mikhail Andropov, and trying to either eliminate him as being involved in this, or prove that he is, and that Graham Mulligan is an incompetent over-promoted bean counter who values giving the politicians the answers he thinks they want to hear over people's lives."

"Let me get this straight. You're asking us to help you in an unofficial investigation, which your immediate superior has expressly forbidden you to do, and which, if discovered, will probably end your career and quite possibly ours too." Eames fixed him with her own stare, which left him unfazed; there was a lot of steel behind Davenport's apparently pleasant exterior.

"That would be one way of looking at it. The other way would be; you're officially here to solve the murder of Ranjit Elahi. I'm unofficially offering my help with that. If our purposes happen to run parallel, well, that's a happy coincidence." He spread his hands and smiled, a charming smile that Eames immediately distrusted.

The two of them looked at each other. "You mind giving us a little time to discuss this?"

Davenport considered for a few seconds, then evidently realised that that hadn't really been intended as a question. "Okay. I'm going to go to the bar." He unfolded himself from his seat and sauntered off towards the bar. Eames noticed that he was careful to choose a spot sufficiently far enough away from the barman that he could stay there for a while without it looking odd, but which also gave him a nice vantage point of the entire room; they'd not be able to leave without him noticing. Not that he could stop them going, if it was just him. Was it just him involved with this?

"Bobby, can we trust this guy?" she asked urgently. He sighed, and rubbed his neck.

"Honestly? I don't know for sure, but my gut instinct says yes. I don't think we have a choice."

She decided to play devil's advocate. "Like Mulligan says, we don't have any proof that Andropov's the killer, or that the killing's related."

"Maybe not, but if we assume for a minute that it was Andropov, then if it's related to Khaleel's group, I can't believe that a kid who's never been out of the country could hire someone like him. If it's not related, then we don't know why Andropov's involved, and he's too dangerous to ignore even a remote possibility that he might be involved. I trust Tim Whitefield; if he says it was Andropov, I think we should assume it was." He shrugged.

She considered this. "So, what now? You really think that the three of us can prove anything else in the space of three days with no back-up and no support?"

"I think we have to try." He said that very quietly, and they held eye contact for some time. Dammit, she thought. He was right. They had to try, no matter what the consequences were for themselves or their careers.

Displaying nice timing, Davenport wandered across, clutching three beer bottles; Goren smoothly and very swiftly magicked their untouched beers underneath the table. Eames suddenly wondered if Davenport could lip-read. "So, are you in?"

"Yes," they said in union. The die is cast, she thought, and restrained herself from patting her gun holster for security. Bad habit to get into.

"Excellent. Drink up." He sipped his beer. She raised an eyebrow. He grinned. "It's not alcoholic, but this has to look like we're just having a nice sociable chat, catching up on old times." She and Goren sipped in unison. It wasn't bad for imitation beer.

"So, what have you been up to since I last saw you?" Davenport remarked casually to Goren, keeping up the pretence of just catching up with an old acquaintance.

He shrugged his massive shoulders. "Still doing the same job." Jesus, he sounds bored, Eames noticed, and could see from a small flicker of Davenport's expression that he was thinking the same thing. As he replied, airily discussing some of his recent work (in very vague terms; she realised that social occasions for Davenport must involve continual and detailed lying), she was struck by a sudden thought.

The spy had to be the 'British friend' Sienna had referred to in that note she'd written to Bobby a long time ago, that Eames had had mistakenly translated, thinking it was a document relating to a case. That meant he probably knew about Bobby's relationship with Sienna Tovitz. Hell, she thought, he'd been there when the two of them had first gotten together. Dear God, she thought suddenly, please don't let him be going to ask about Sienna. She took a large slug of the beer, hoping to speed things up.

The idea seemed to catch on; Davenport and Goren both finished their drinks and the conversation ended, much to her relief. The three of them ambled out towards a small black SUV parked by the bar; Davenport fished out the keys and clicked the alarm off, unlocking the doors, then pressed another button. The engine turned over and started humming to itself under the hood. He saw her glance, and replied, "Remote starter". In case someone ever plants a bomb under it, she realised, and shivered.

As they pulled out into traffic, Davenport driving fast but within the speed limit, carefully not attracting attention, she couldn't help thinking that whilst she was relieved Davenport hadn't asked about Sienna, that fact in itself was slightly odd. It would have been a natural question to ask, after all… oh, well. Perhaps even a British spy could have British reserve about asking personal questions. They pulled up briefly outside their hotel.

"I'll wait here – you guys go get anything you think might be helpful." Davenport frowned, and looked briefly tired. "Andropov's about the only lead we've got – anything on him would be good. Don't worry too much about clothes, don't bring suitcases, we want anyone watching to think you'll be staying at your hotel tonight."

"Mulligan really doesn't trust you, does he?"

"No, I can't imagine why," Davenport replied, in that ironic tone peculiar to the British, that Eames had learned to interpret as meaning that the speaker was trying to convey both possible meanings of whatever he or she was saying at the same time. As they got out of the car, he reached across and flipped on a CD, leaning back in his seat and half-closing his eyes.

Ten minutes later, they slid back into the car, each carrying a briefcase with all their papers from the Elahi murder case plus toothbrushes and a few spare clothes they'd each managed to cram in. Davenport's position hadn't changed, and she wondered for a minute if he was asleep, but spotted the tension in his neck, the way his hand was resting on his thigh – apparently casual, but she knew only too well that from that position, if you were carrying a gun concealed in your waistband, you could draw and fire very quickly indeed. She caught a fragment of the song: "I wanna be the minority, I don't need your authority…" before Davenport switched it off and pulled out into the traffic.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Somewhere secure to plan our next move." She could see Davenport's grin in the rear-view mirror. "An old friend's house; she has better security than some prisons I've been in. We just need to pick her up first, then we can get down to business."

And won't that be interesting. Well, the die was well and truly cast now.

Author's note: Copyright to the song Davenport is listening to, "Minority", is owned by Green Day (album "Minority" or "International Superhits"). I don't have a full soundtrack for my fics, but I do tend to have a song I think of as being associated with each character; "Minority" is Drew's.