Goren was vaguely aware that he was staring, then closed his mouth and managed to stand up. "Uh… hi."

"Hello." He remained rooted to the spot as Sienna carefully unzipped her boots and outer gear, peeling off the layers to reveal a severe black suit underneath. He suddenly realised that he could now place the odd look Tanya had given him earlier. She had recognised him, he thought gloomily. That had been the look of So, YOU'RE the ex-boyfriend I heard so much about!

He was vaguely aware that he was standing staring, and closed his mouth. His mind raced on, alternating between two thoughts My God, she's here, she cut her hair, she changed her name, why? damn, she looks good… and I will kill Davenport for not telling me she was coming. Even as he thought this, he understood why the spy hadn't said anything until they had reached Tanya's house. He'd been fearing that Goren would have refused to help if he'd learned Sienna would be involved, and whilst he would have liked to have felt righteously indignant that anyone would assume he'd put his personal feelings ahead of the right thing to do, he was in too much turmoil to allow himself that luxury.

Sienna smiled politely but professionally at him, then followed McAllister (Goren assumed that, given the man's Scottish accent, that had been his original surname and that he and Tanya had joined their surnames when they married) out of the hallway and into the house's main room. He could vaguely hear Eames' own reaction to the unexpected sight of his former lover, then Sienna's voice, "Good to see you again, too, Alex… now, excuse me, I have to go change."

He waited until he heard the sound of footsteps, indicating that Sienna had left the room, then took a deep breath, then strode out into the room himself, where Eames and Tanya had settled themselves around the table, which was now half-buried under a mound of papers, with pizza boxes, salad and plates piled on top. He couldn't help noticing that each of them was carefully eyeing him for his reaction, and was careful to keep his most neutral face in place, avoid giving away his feelings. Just stay professional. Do your job.

He resisted the urge to think Damn it, I don't want to do my job, I want to follow her up those stairs and ask how she is, and what she's been doing… and then what? Then she tells me she's seeing someone? That she's engaged? That she wishes she'd never set eyes on me again? No. That line of thought would get him nowhere. Davenport, meanwhile, was darting around the room, pulling blinds and checking the walls with a small device that whined slightly. Checking for bugging equipment, Goren realised. Davenport glanced across at him.

"By the way, I'm sorry, I should have mentioned that SiSi would be involved," the spy apologised, with a stunning lack of sincerity in his tone. "Didn't really get chance. We'd better get started." Beside Goren, McAllister pulled out a chair, having changed into shorts and a T-shirt which read: "The pen is mightier than the sword, assuming the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp".

"When SiSi's back… ah," Tanya replied, hearing, as they all did, light footsteps down the stairs behind her. Sienna walked across to the table and seated herself neatly at the head of it, pulling across a pizza box and chomping down on a slice with some hunger. She'd changed into a simple black dress made of some light fabric that didn't crumple, with a bolero jacket over the top, and had on sandals and a pair of earrings. He carefully looked her over, striving not to be too obvious.

Her hair was shorter. That was the most obvious change; it was cropped nearly as short as Tanya's. although the colour was still the same bright coppery red. Tanya's hair was cut sufficiently short that no-one could grab it in a fight, he recognised the style from his years in the army and the police, but why had Sienna cut her hair the same way? A touch of hero-worship, or just practical if she rides around on motorbikes a lot? Or maybe just that it made her look older.

She was fitter and stronger too, he noticed. Sienna had always been fit and healthy, but before she had been rounded, too, soft curves of hips and waist and backside... Now her arms and shoulders were leaner, the muscles showing more clearly, and her face was less full, cheekbones more clearly defined. Suddenly he realised that whilst the shorter hair certainly contributed to making her look older, it wasn't only that which gave him that impression. Even allowing for the two years it had been since they had last seen each other, she seemed to have aged.

Well, for two years she'd been responsible for leading a small team of officers as part of her role as Liaison Officer between Interpol and the London Metropolitan Police. That probably accounted for it. Even so, he couldn't help thinking that she must have had some other experiences too in the intervening years, experiences that showed on her face and in her overall demeanour, which was… well, older, he thought, struggling to find the right word. Before, she had still had some traces of the very young woman, a teenager not all that long ago, that she'd been when he'd met her. Now, that almost-girlish sense of energy and wonder seemed to no longer be there.

His thoughts were interrupted as Davenport pulled out a chair and thumped down into it. He nodded to himself as Goren watched, remarking "No bugs – looks like Mulligan bought it."

"Bought what?" Eames replied.

"That I cleared out of London in a huff and went off abroad with Michael - my partner - to think things over. We both hopped a flight to Ireland. He's now on the connecting flight to Amsterdam, and I got a friend with a private plane to fly me back over here."

Sienna nodded. "Good. Best he's out of the way – that's all of us protected, no loose ends. No chance Mulligan will be having your friends' houses watched?"

Davenport shook his head thoughtfully. "Doubt it. We were careful on the way over here, and I haven't seen any signs of surveillance so far, doesn't surprise me – at this moment in time, Mulligan's unlikely to have the resources to stake out my friends' houses on the off-chance that he might be wrong. Besides, that would mean admitting he can be wrong, and he's incapable of that. Did you turn up anything useful?"

Sienna glanced round the room, and clarified: "Drew asked me to ask some of my contacts if they know anything about Andropov… so far, nothing, but I'll keep asking."

The room fell silent for a few minutes, apart from the sounds of pizza and salad being devoured. Interesting. Well, in two years Sienna had evidently learned to think like the people she was helping to catch, and to assess situations quickly. Even more interesting, he thought, was that if by that she meant what he was sure she did, that all of them either had no significant others – no-one to whose throat could be held a knife to make them back off – or that their significant others were out of the way, protected, or involved in this, then did that mean that she herself had no-one like that in her life? It could just mean that her significant other can look after himself, Goren mused gloomily. Probably a cop.

He wiped his forehead – it was still warm in the house after the sunshine earlier – and suddenly, the significance of the jacket Sienna hadn't taken off hit him. He looked closely, and saw the tell-tale signs; a slight bulge under one arm, the very slight change to her movements to accommodate the gun's extra weight. She was carrying. Why did that surprise him? He, Eames and Davenport all were…

Davenport's voice broke into his thoughts. "All right. Let's get started. I suggest I bring everyone up to speed with what we know so far. After that, I'm open to suggestions as to how we run this."

Eames interrupted him. "Before you start, and I'm not meaning to be offensive to anyone here, but why us? Why the six of us, in particular?"

Davenport sighed, and rubbed his face. "You mean, why one spy, two New York cops, one Interpol Liaison Officer, one police self-defence instructor and one journalist?" (Ah, that was McAllister's profession. Goren had thought he didn't seem tough enough to be in law-enforcement.) "I could say it's because between us, we have a wide range of useful skills, resources and contacts…"

Sienna interrupted him. "But the real answer is, we're about the only people outside MI5 who know what you do for a living, and no-one you work with wants to come near you right now, effectively making us the only people you can trust."

"That, and Tanya and I make a nice useful insurance policy if you get yourself killed," McAllister remarked cheerfully. Tanya, Goren noticed, looked slightly less than happy at the idea of this. McAllister, on the other hand, was wearing the I-scent-blood expression of a reporter with a story in his sights, familiar to Goren from his long acquaintance with the press.

Davenport grinned wryly. "Yeah, that's about it. Then again, I've faced worse odds. Let me bring you up to date."

An hour, the remaining pizza and a large jug of coffee later, Davenport had finished briefing the three newcomers, with interjections from Goren and Eames about what they knew about Andropov along the way as required. "So. That's what we know. If we start with the assumption that Khaleel and company are a smokescreen to cover something else…"

Goren shook his head. "We shouldn't assume that they're only a smokescreen – their intention to carry out the poison attack was real enough, and they had access to the stadium plans to help them do it."

"Through Khaleel's cousin, Elahi, later killed by Andropov," Sienna added, evidently testing out her knowledge of what she'd just absorbed. It occurred to him to wonder for the first time exactly why she was here. She'd referred to the five of them as the only people Davenport could trust, and she obviously knew Jack and Tanya well – she'd not needed to be shown where things were in their house – so, were the four of them friends? It seemed so. So, had she sought Davenport out as a contact in an unfamiliar city, or had the spy heard of her arriving here somehow, and made contact himself? Not productive speculation right now, he reminded himself sternly. Focus on the job!

"Perhaps we should be thinking about what we know about Andropov," Eames added. So far Tanya and Jack seemed to be content to remain silent, and Sienna was simply listening intently, in a manner that reminded Goren vaguely of Deakins assessing one of their updates on a particularly difficult case. "He's our best lead, given that we can't get to Khaleel and company, plus we are supposed to be investigating Elahi's death… we could use that as cover for asking questions about him if we have to."

"Okay," Davenport began. "So… Andropov's ex-Russian Special Forces, a known assassin and gun-smuggler. He sometimes works alone, sometimes in a team – he's been known to hire people to work with, not a complete lone wolf, unlike most assassins. He could, theoretically, plan something like this. He'd have been involved in planning covert operations as a soldier."

"He's also a mercenary." Goren continued the line of thought. "He wouldn't do this except for personal gain. He sells his skills… so who's the buyer?"

"No way of knowing." Davenport exhaled with annoyance.

"Does suggest something quite interesting though," Sienna added. "We shouldn't assume that whatever Andropov's planning is a terrorist attack. Whoever's paying him to do whatever he's planning might intend something entirely different."

"Could be Six, not Five," Davenport replied thoughtfully, then clarified for Goren & Eames' benefit: "MI6 is the foreign intelligence service, like your CIA. Five is national security – me, in other words, though I do often work with and sometimes for Six."

Sienna shrugged. "This isn't getting us anywhere. Our responsibility stops at catching Andropov, let's let Six worry about catching whoever's paying him – terrorist, foreign government, whatever."

"Yes. Let's look at this another way." Almost without being consciously aware of it, Goren found he'd gotten up from his chair and began to pace the room, gesticulating. "Why, exactly, did Andropov kill Elahi in New York?"

"You're assuming there's a link between Elahi's being killed and his cousin's getting the plans for the stadium." Sienna's voice was cool. "That might not be the case. Someone might have commissioned Andropov to kill Elahi for reasons entirely unrelated to Khaleel's plan."

"It would be a huge coincidence if there were no link," Eames replied. "He suspected his cousin of breaking into his house and copying the plans; a few days later, he's dead."

Sienna tipped her head on one side, acknowledging the point whilst still managing to inject a note of caution. "Nevertheless, we still need to prove some link between the two…"

Some link between the two… that jogged his memory. He reached across and swiped the pieces of paper Davenport had been reading, oblivious to the spy's expression of indignation. They were part of Tim Whitefield's information on Andropov that he'd sent to Goren and Eames following their contacting him about Andropov. He frantically scanned them until he found what he was looking for.

"Here." He shoved the paper back in front of Davenport, and pointed to the image on it. It showed one of Andropov's identifying marks; a tattoo of a wolf with a dove in its mouth, which he had on his left shoulder. And which the receptionist at Towells' construction had just above her left breast.