Old habits die hard, and as Ruth finished his sentence, the light came on, briefly, far too briefly for Harry. It was a beautiful Monday morning, they were together again, they were on the grid, and Ruth, his beautiful and brilliant Ruth, had bounced her way into his office, her eyes sparkling with enthusiasm and the words tumbling like a waterfall, telling him that she'd found the answer to their latest problem. And then Ros had called.

'And you're going to suggest what Harry? That Ruth does a bit of gardening while you're here? Are you completely insane?' Was her response to him suggesting that as she was so obviously overstretched, then maybe he should come on to the grid for what remained of the day and help out. That was of course until he'd looked up and seen Ruth's stricken face, and Malcolm looking at him as if to say, l give up, before he'd grabbed their shopping list and headed out through the door, muttering something that sounded remarkably similar to what Ros had said.

'Work together for Christs sake it's what you do best isn't it, find Tessa for me, we'll sort out the rest,' and Ros was gone.

'Keep me informed Rosalind,' she failed to hear, the phone had been put down.

'Oops,' didn't seem appropriate, 'I'm an idiot, I love you and I'm sorry Ruth,' did and was what he went for.

She refrained from telling him that he was and reminding him that it had been his idea and that the whole point of them being there together, in a house that none of the protagonists could possibly know about, was to keep them both safe. He knew that he didn't need her to tell him, it had been just a moment's aberration on his part. So instead, she just picked up the book that she'd been reading the previous evening and walked back out into the garden waiting for him to join her.

The peace offering when it arrived came in the form of a freshly made cup of tea and a packet of her favourite chocolate biscuits, along with an envelope that she supposed Malcolm must have brought with him from the grid. It was battered around the edges and had been sealed with very sturdy tape, not very well, as though it had been done in a hurry.

Harry's expression was one of contrition, mixed with a hint of nervous anticipation and Ruth presumed that he was still worrying about what he'd suggested to Ros.

'It's fine Harry you can stop worrying, I don't expect you to be able to change the habits of a lifetime after only three weeks,' she encouraged him, budging up on the swing seat, where she'd settled herself in the morning's sunshine.

Swinging back and forth wasn't ideal when you were preparing yourself for an adult conversation that involved putting to bed what was left of your past life and discussing building a future together with the woman you loved, whilst at the same time worrying about what the rest of your team were doing, so Harry engaged the brake.

'Wouldn't want you to spill your tea or be sick,' he joked nervously, 'besides which.'

Ruth didn't like surprises, but Harry's expression had changed and his breathing had increased, so much so that she put aside her tea and tugged at the well - worn tape, assuming that he wanted her to see what was in the envelope.

'It was just frantic on the grid the day after you died,' stilled her fingers and forced her to look back up at him. It was the only subject that still hung in the air between them, but up until then had been kept to one side. It would have meant talking about that dreadful day and colleagues that were no longer with them and they'd had more than enough pain in their own separate lives to work their way through, before they got around to that.

'I was at home, trying to find a reason to go into work, when without you there wasn't one,' was something so profoundly unlike Harry, that Ruth felt the breath still in her chest and the need for her hands to disappear between his. I was just about to take myself out for a walk with Scarlet, the alternative was far too dark to contemplate, when the phone rang. For one glorious but ridiculous moment I thought it was you, but it was Adam ringing me to say that Mace's cronies were already heading to your house and if I needed to get rid of any evidence that I'd been there, then I needed to be quick. My first reaction was to tell him that there wasn't, well not in the way that he was inferring, other than when I'd made you that wretched cup of tea, when my whole being was telling me that I should hold you. Then I suddenly remembered the other time.'

Ruth had stopped listening when he'd said that he'd wanted to hold her, when she'd countered what he'd been doing by making some totally ridiculous remark about sweet tea being English. Beyond that she had no idea what he was talking about, but this conversation was clearly important to him, so she just nodded and waited for him to continue.

'Do you remember that night when you called me and asked me to come over, when Gary Hicks was there?' he asked her.

She did, as vividly as he obviously did, most especially because of the tone of his reply. 'To yours, now?' he'd asked her, with so much more than a straightforward question in his voice.

'It was during that conversation, when what I wrongly presumed was an invitation that didn't involve work, that I realised I was falling in love with you,' she hadn't been expecting, as she desperately tried to reboot her memory back to that evening and remember every single detail.

Up until then there had been plenty of, for want of a better expression, meaningful glances and moments when he'd turned to her for support, but she'd always assumed that it was her analytical skills and her ability to read people and situations that had formed their strong bond and friendly mutual attraction, but that he was already falling in love with her, absolutely not.

Me too she thought giving him a small smile, pleased that she'd got it wrong, but this conversation could so easily spiral into maudlin and head them towards another of their, we've wasted so much time conversations, so she turned her attention away from his eyes and back to the envelope.

Any chance of stopping what he so obviously needed to tell her was gone, as he held her hands even tighter and continued without pausing, reverting back to the day after she sailed away and Adam had called him.

'I went to your house Ruth, I went upstairs which I didn't need to of course, but it made me feel closer to you and in a sense feel as though I was protecting you from their grubby little fingers. I was tempted to stay there and to hell with it, but what would that have achieved other than to give those bastards even more satisfaction. That's all I managed to retrieve before they broke the door down and I had to high tail it out of there, I'm so sorry,' he told her, nodding towards the envelope.

There was absolutely nothing of any value, but to Ruth, the contents of the envelope was priceless. Harry needing to seek out her bedroom because he'd wanted to feel closer to her, and here she was, looking at items from almost every meaningful decade of her life.

Two photographs, one of which was of her cuddling fidget and the another with her father on a beach in Devon when she'd been small and a small prayer book that her grandmother had given her on the day she'd been confirmed, he'd found in a drawer. But most importantly, at the moment when for the first time they were discussing how her exile had impacted on both of them, was the card that Harry had left on her desk, a few days after he'd taken her out to dinner.

You win, New York it is, Harry x, he'd written. It was the single most important item and which had stood on her bedside table.

'Even after what you'd told me, you kept it?' was another loaded question, but it gave her the opportunity to finally confess to him her deepest regrets and he so deserved to hear the truth.

'It was the kiss at the end that did it, besides which, it was never in doubt that this was what I wanted Harry, you must have realised that, despite me telling you otherwise. You have no idea how many times during the weeks that followed that night, that I picked up and put down the phone, or walked into your office determined to tell you that I'd changed my mind. I was a coward Harry and then it was too late and I'm so very very sorry.'

He thought about telling her that he was the coward not her. That he should have listened to her concerns about Maudsley, stuck to protocol and not insisted that she kept this between themselves, but most of all he should have found a way to protect her and taken the wrap, whatever the outcome. But it was pointless and would have continued a conversation that needed putting to bed. They were here, they were together and that was what mattered.

'It's just another of our once upon a time stories that we can't change Ruth, what counts is today and the future and I'd like to think that we can talk about that?'

She wanted to, she really did, but there was this tiny box in her head where she stored her dreams, that wasn't quite ready to be opened.

'Can we just leave the rest of the story until this Op is over Harry?' wasn't what he wanted to hear, but she was begging him to hear her out. 'Despite what I've said and I know that I'm being irrational, but I'm still scared Harry. There have been hundreds of moments in my head when we've been together like this and yours too so it seems, even when I was away. I want whatever it is that you want Harry, wherever you want that to be, but until this is over and we can walk through that door together without having to look over our shoulders, please can we just stay in the moment?'

Ruth didn't usually go in for long speeches, well not ones that wrapped up so clearly what she was feeling and wanted, but she looked too serious and exhausted for him to make anything other than a sensible comment.

'Whatever you feel happiest with Ruth.' he told her.


The sun was shining, the birds were singing and life was about as good as it got. With very little research and a few behind closed door conversations, the discovery that so many other people had a grudge against Harry Pearce, had made it so much easier to piece their plan together. Who would have thought that Collingwood, poor dead and disgraced soul that he now was, or Myers for that matter, could have paved the way to an idea that had first festered and now grown to be delicious.

It was all going to plan and with this morning's call to say that they were nearly there, just one final meeting before the day, 'to seal the deal,' Connie had said, and then they would be able to wave goodbye section D, and pave the way to a future where they had control over whatever they wanted. Connie it was rumoured was planning to run for the border, although none of them had dared to ask her which one. What the rest of them intended doing mattered not one jot, when you were the one planning on pulling the strings. Power was everything and he was almost within touching distance.

Give Ros Myers her due, she'd stepped up to the plate pretty well, but she didn't have Harry's tenacity or his one-time analyst or supposed lover to help her, although fortunately nor did Harry the poor bastard. They'd done their research and she was clearly still in the States, hopefully still whittling her life away, with absolutely no chance of coming home or seeing her precious Harry again.

The door opened and another cup of coffee duly arrived on his desk. It brought everything into perspective and with it the realisation that you once you achieved power with a vision that appealed to those who perceived they'd been wronged, you could almost imagine yourself becoming immortalised. Better still his disciples were all women and how ironic was that if you were planning on putting an end to the reign of Sir Harry Pearce.

The clock struck one, happy days. A gentle stroll through the park could be followed by a relaxing afternoon and then just another couple of days to wait before the inevitable. The door opened and closed again. The cup had disappeared without a word.


Four of John's contacts had accepted Ros's offer and had opted out. Two because they'd never been on a bicycle and the others because despite the gravity of the situation, they had unbreakable appointments, one of which was a meeting with his social worker. All however had signed up for the race itself, agreeing they'd join it at various points along the route, to be determined later, depending on what if anything they found today. So it was Ben with two of John's pals who headed down river towards Greenwich Park, while Jo with John and another asset called Rob, headed towards Buckingham Palace and the Mall.

Ben had a far greater distance to travel to his starting point than she did, so taking an alternative route in order to use up some of the time, she crossed the river again and took her charges via Westminster Abbey and then down Whitehall, past the Home Office. Alec seemed adamant that it was going to be the embankment that would be targeted, but none the less with time on their hands, there didn't seem to be any harm in checking the non - descript and up until now unnoticed electricity junction boxes that lined the pavements in what was essentially the heart of London.

Having followed Malcolm's instructions to the letter and determined that the seals hadn't been tampered with or altered in any way, they emerged at the far end of Whitehall and were just about to head in the direction of St James Park and less than two miles from the finish line, when she realised that it was time for her to touch base with Tariq. Stopping for a moment to let some tourists pass them by, her eyes were drawn to a couple who were sitting in a secluded corner of a nearby tree lined square, hidden away from any of the main thoroughfares. One of them was Nicholas Blake, deep in conversation with 'Christ he's with Connie,' she whispered to Tariq.

Pushing Rob unceremoniously into the nearest driveway, she spun John around and told him to kiss her until she told him to stop. 'It's a matter of life and death and yes I am bloody serious,' she told his questioning face. Please god they hadn't spotted her she thought, as she fumbled for her phone and with her lips locked with Johns, who unbeknown to Jo was more than willing and making the most of it, she tried to keep her concentration on Connie. Taking a photograph wasn't easy but she managed it, pinging it to Tariq with a message that said 'urgent, show this to Ros now.'

Firmly encased in John's arms it felt like an age before she eventually saw Connie and Blake shake hands and go their separate ways, by which time she'd heard Ros scream 'my office now everybody,' which amounted to Alec and Malcolm as Tariq was still sitting at his desk waiting for anymore news from her.


This changed everything or did? It was a question that Ros couldn't answer. The Home Secretary, looking as though he was involved for Christ's sake, how much deeper did this conspiracy go? She'd sat and watched him through the debacle that her father and Collingwood had wrought across London, when he'd backed Harry and Juliet to the hilt, which had included getting himself blown up in the process. Harry had told her that Blake was one of the few politicians that he'd ever trusted. A friend turned traitor, it just didn't make sense.

Less than two weeks ago he'd offered her his complete support, waxing lyrical bout Harry's worth and how concerned he was that someone had tried to eliminate him. She'd even told him how concerned she was about his own safety, well not anymore, but how to handle it was the question? Had it been anyone else she'd have called CO19 and asked them to arrest him, but this was Home Secretary with the potential to topple the government. She needed to talk to Harry.

It was another half hour before they'd thrashed out a plan. Based on input from Malcolm, they made the decision not to ring Harry - well not at this stage. Harry when his cage was rattled would need some holding down, and after this morning's performance, they weren't convinced that Ros or more importantly Ruth should be the ones faced with that.

'Another nice little job for you tomorrow morning eh Malcolm?' Ros told him.

'What do you want me to tell Jo?' asked Tariq, his face reappearing around the door.

'That she has to keep this information to herself for the moment and I want them back here now, Ben's bunch included,' she told him.

With only two days to go before the main event and as late in the day as this was, they'd come to the conclusion that this whole thing needed re jigging. They'd get everyone around the table with a firm strategy in place, explaining to them that as from this evening until the end of the race, they would in effect be employees of the Security Services, but unfortunately with non of authority that came with it. Their dummy run needed to be the dress rehearsal for Saturday's race, which was why they'd be doing it at exactly the same time this evening.

'Before that,' she told Alec and Malcolm, ' we need to take a break.'