Idiot, what in God's name had possessed him, was he insane, virtually ordering her to come into his bedroom?

Perhaps in mitigation he'd been encouraged by the fact that whether she'd been acting or not, Ruth had seemed so totally relaxed throughout dinner which wasn't at all like her, until he'd chanced his arm and then with five words had blown it. Well so much for him agreeing with her that until this op was over, that they needed to keep their relationship professional, and as for him once telling her that self control and self denial was what kept them together, it was complete bollocks.

To some extent he'd been irked by Ros, insisting that she needed to keep him in the dark, but she'd been doing as she'd been told, trying to protect his supposed fragile state. So why the hell couldn't he accept it? The answer was simple, well at least it was to him. He was spook through and through and now that he was starting to feel better, it wasn't as easy as he'd imagined it to be to take a back seat.

But back to the matter in hand and how to drag himself out of this mess that he was in. It wasn't as though they'd even discussed why she'd come back. What had she actually said to him 'we have to keep this whatever it is between us Harry on hold,' and as far as she was concerned 'whatever it is' meant what? It all sounded good in theory but in practice it was virtually impossible. In the space of a few days he'd gone from hell to heaven, and heaven in this case had just happened to be sleeping on the other side of the wall.

'I'm making tea, do you want one?' indicated that she was at least still speaking to him as he said yes please and then tried to decide what he'd actually say to her when she eventually opened his door. He was sitting in his pyjamas leaving little to the imagination, having left his dressing gown behind the bathroom door, but as Ruth tended not to knock, he didn't dare risk stripping off and getting back into his clothes in case she walked in. She he presumed would be fully clothed. Was he allowed to think unfortunately?

Ruth didn't want a cup of tea she was buying herself time as she tried to make up her mind as to what if anything Harry was going to say, or better still might happen. Despite having told him that they needed to keep their relationship on hold, it really wasn't working. So to have spent the last few days tip towing around each other, as though if they touched they'd cause an earthquake, when she'd left a perfectly good job and flown what felt like a million miles to be with him, was ridiculous. They'd stood on that bloody quayside and shared a kiss that had sustained her for the best part of two years and protecting him or not, it wasn't as though someone was going to rush through the door and drag him away from her, no one knew where he was. The expression comfort shag briefly filtered through her mind, but she and Harry were more than that to each other. Now all she had to do was decide how best to open his door with two mugs of tea in her hands and not ruin an opportunity, because at what would be well past her bedtime in any other circumstances, she didn't want to start their conversation with, 'you know Connie better than I do Harry, do you think there's a possibility that she might be a traitor?'

As the air between them got thinner and reached the point where if one or the other of them didn't say something soon, then either she or he would say something stupid and bring an end to this late night opportunity, Ruth found her voice.

'I'm not prepared to talk about work at one in the morning Harry,' went a long way to boosting his confidence, as she finally put their two mugs of tea on his bedside table. If she wasn't going to talk about work then presumably it was something else, but rather than doing the sensible thing by waiting to find out, he interrupted her by suggesting she should sit down.

But in the smaller of the two rooms which presumably had been designed for a child, the only chair was small, so her only option was to sit on the side of his bed. It wasn't as though he could budge up and make any space for her, the bed was way too small. She should never have allowed him to talk her into having the larger room, it was ridiculous.

Well she'd delivered his tea and hadn't run, but she'd stopped talking, and he still felt it necessary to apologise.

'Look if I've made you feel uncomfortable Ruth, then I'm truly sorry. I shouldn't have said what I did,' clarified that he wasn't talking about their close proximity which she was enjoying.

Ruth found herself smiling. Harry was truly struggling, whereas she for once wasn't.

'What's so funny?'

'It's this bed, it's so small.'

'Well you try sleeping in it,' Christ he'd done it again.

How much more encouragement did she need to give him, she was sitting within inches of him, her breathing as laboured as his? But this was Harry and as he continued to flounder in a sea of indecision, she threw him a much needed lifeline. Combining loving Harry with work might not always be easy, but time was more important and that was only infinite until the day you died.

'You owe me a kiss,' she told him.

It was a sad indictment to a human life, that since his divorce from Jane and the virtual loss of his children, that Harry could count on one hand, the number of times when he'd really smiled. But with those four simple words, that in the end had been so easy for Ruth to say, he smiled as wide as the ocean that she'd crossed to be with him. Despite the fact that his body was telling him otherwise, he knew that tonight wasn't the moment to take this any further than the kiss that she'd suggested. They were both tired, wired like coiled springs and stressed, and if and when he made love to Ruth, he wanted it to be absolutely sure that when they eventually left this flat, that she wouldn't be on the first plane back to the States, unless he was with her. The pain the last time he'd barely coped with, if it happened again it would finish him.


The following morning, leaving Jo in charge on the grid with strict instructions to keep Connie busy, Ros picked Tariq up at eight.

'Alpha one report,' said Malcom's voice from the archives, where he settled himself down away from the grid and with a direct link to Ros. He remembered only too well how he'd felt when he and Ruth had arrived at Kettlemere, bluffing their way past the guard at the door, both as nervous as each other, whereas Ros could pull anything off and not blink an eyelid.

'On our way alpha three, plenty of traffic on the road this morning so progress is slower than expected. Tell mother we'll be arriving later than planned would you.'

The approach to Kettlemere was as imposing to Ros as it had been to Malcolm and Ruth, although in the sense of wow, so this is what we pay our taxes for. With Tariq in tow, his instructions were to stick to her like glue, his role a purely technical, to gain as much evidence as they could, whilst posing as inspectors from the County Planning Department, making preliminary visits to large country houses, where the owners had applied for a grant to improve the sanitary conditions.

Their arrival outside the house where there should have been multiples of cars, wasn't what Ros had expected, as Tariq gathered his equipment together and followed close on her heels towards the front door. Armed with information given to them by Malcolm, she knew that the walled garden where they'd rescued Harry was at the back, but this wasn't what was uppermost on her mind at the moment. The place felt deserted which suggested that it had been abandoned, and that concerned her.

'Alpha three, when you came here, how many cars were there apart from yours?' she asked him.

'One from memory, plus a van,'

'Which indicated what Malcolm?'

He paled inwardly as he realised his mistake and the reason for Ros's question. Harry must have been the only person that was being kept there, so whoever had set him up would know that he'd gone.

'Contact the Home Secretary and get the names of the regular guards, but keep Harry and Ruth out of this just for the moment,' Ros told him.

The back of the house revealed nothing more than the front in terms of there being anyone around as Ros and Tariq let themselves in. Finding where Harry had been kept was their top priority and then after that, getting as much evidence as they could before heading back to the grid. Making their way past the main staircase which according to Harry he'd been escorted on his twice daily walks, they found a warren of small corridors that lead to what appeared to have once been the servant's quarters. The kitchen lay silent, but there was evidence of recent occupancy all of which Ros nodded to Tariq to photograph. One by one Ros opened the doors, nothing, the rooms were empty and devoid of furniture, until at the far end of the corridor they found what they were looking for. But it wasn't the bed, the crude wash basin and toilet that was holding their attention. It was the lifeless figure that was dangling at the end of a rope.

'Get a soco team down here now,' Ros yelled at Malcolm. What had Mace once said, 'you're all in this together?' Well depending on how high up this went and with no cctv to prove otherwise, it could be made to appear that Harry had escaped unaided. In which case, someone was going to extreme lengths to have him framed not only for treason but for murder, which wasn't only an affront to Harry, but the section as a whole, who had seemingly abandoned him believing him to be guilty. What was the best way to kill a tree? Chop it off at the roots and as far as section D was concerned, Harry was the bedrock that made it tick. Whoever was doing this didn't just have a grudge against Harry, it was the whole section that was being targeted and this changed everything.

'Check everywhere Tariq, every bloody inch of this house and then we need to get back to London and I'm going to have a serious talk with the Home Secretary,' Ros told him.

Telling herself that by driving too fast and getting them both killed or inducing a heart attack was a pretty dumb idea, she dropped Tariq off at Thames house, asking him to brief both Jo and Malcolm, and then however long it took them, they were to piece together everything that they'd found.

'Lock her in a bloody cupboard, I don't know, use your initiative,' was in response to him asking her what they were supposed to do with Connie. She was going to talk to Harry and Ruth before she went barging in to see the Home Secretary and if soco came up with anything, or the list of guards that Malcolm had requested came through, then they were to call her immediately.

She was totally out of her depth, she needed extra staff and without Harry being there, it was pointless her going back onto the grid. So please god Jo was right and he'd feel well enough to help her sort out this mess.


They hadn't been expecting to see anyone until much later in the day, so despite Ruth's unexpected downturn in mood which was confusing him, Harry was just about to broach the subject of her time away and whether she was considering going back, when the front door bell rang. Faced with Ros without an audience, Ruth saw for the first time the lack of certainty that had always been Ros's overcoat, when she told her that she presumed that she wanted to talk to Harry.

'Both of you, but I need to have a word with you first,' really surprised Ruth. Ros had never deferred to her, in fact she'd been dismissive of almost everyone and the way that she'd spoken to Harry when they'd come back from Havensworth, was something that had stayed with her and still rankled.

'Coffee?' she suggested, as Ros followed her into the kitchen, bypassing the lounge where Harry was relaxing with his feet up in front of the news.

'We have a major problem and I need Harry's help, but firstly I need you to tell me if he's really ready to get involved?'

'By major you mean what?'

'That it's not only treason that he's being framed for, because after this morning's visit, you can add murder,'

'That's impossible, he's been here with me, I can prove it,'

'But you can't Ruth, you're dead, you don't exist, we can't use you.'

Christ this was a nightmare, it was Cotterdam all over again, except that this time she wouldn't be able to save him.

'Then I agree you need to talk to Harry, but I absolutely insist that I'm in there with him,' she told Ros in a voice that didn't broker argument.

'Ros is here, she needs to talk to us Harry,' she told him, carrying the tray of coffee into the room and sitting down on the sofa beside him, absentmindedly taking his hand and confusing him even further.

In Ros's opinion, of the two people that were listening, Harry appeared to be the most calm, as she started at the beginning and slowly filled in the bits that he couldn't remember.

Had she really appreciated Ruth's real worth, she'd have realised that she'd switched back into work mode and by not interrupting, she was listening and analysing at the same time, trying to make some sense out of what she was saying.

The fact that the services doctor could attest to the fact that Harry had been drugged and his ability to hang a man on his own would have been impossible, might come in useful later, but without declaring his whereabouts, wasn't a current option, was a case in point, as was the fact that for however long it took for this to be resolved, that she and Harry had to be kept hidden.

'No there aren't any positives yet,' Ros told them, in answer to Harry's, was there anything else to go on, 'other than Tariq's photographs, what the soco team might find if anything and a yet to be had conversation with the Home Secretary about the guards that should have been working there during the time that he'd been incarcerated.'

'Should?' asked Harry.

'Malcolm has confirmed that the man we found dead was the daytime guard and bona fide, but the guards that were there at night probably weren't.'

'What I need,' she concluded, 'is for you two to put your heads together and come up with a list of people who you think would go to such lengths to discredit the section by getting rid of you, and most importantly why now? I'll ask Jo to keep you updated and vice versa.'

'Stop worrying Ros, this isn't the first time that someone's tried to get rid of me, at least I haven't been shot,' had a far deeper meaning than Ros realised, as she picked up her things and said she needed to go because she had a meeting at the Home Office.

'If you need extra help on the grid, I can give you a name,' Harry told her, 'he could prove very useful,'

'Alec White, he was drummed out wasn't he?' Ros asked him, after Harry had scribbled down his address.


Once Ros had gone, Ruth had sat through an interminably long afternoon listening to Harry recounting every aspect of his life in the service, with a list of potential enemies that read like the latest edition of Who's Who. She wasn't stupid enough to believe that he hadn't had more affairs than the one she knew about with Juliet Shaw, but that wasn't her concern. What was done was done. The Russians were at the top of his list, but why, it had been years since their two countries had really crossed swords.

'Let's just put who to one side for a moment and concentrate on the why, can we Harry?' She asked him, as she stood up to stretch her aching back and 'no just bear with me,' followed his, 'that's ridiculous.'

'What have they achieved by getting you out of the way, they obviously didn't intend killing you, otherwise they'd have done it?'

There had always be method in Ruth's madness and the light was slowly beginning to dawn on him, but he let her finish, realising how important it was to her that he didn't interrupt. She was standing in front of him almost bouncing with enthusiasm, just as she'd always done on the grid. This was why Ros had persuaded her to come back, it had nothing to do with him.

'When have we ever known the section to struggle like this?' she asked him, which was never but he didn't say so, this was Ruth at her best. 'This has been orchestrated Harry, to happen when the section's at its weakest, not to destabilise it long term. It gives whoever they are, their best chance of pulling it off.

'Well they've already killed one man to achieve it and made an attempt to get rid of me.'

'Which tells us that this is big Harry, whatever it is?'

God I've missed you, he thought, but he didn't say so.