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Chapter Twelve

Despite the constant hum of background noise – more than a hum, really, more like a too-loud movie soundtrack – Henry and Elizabeth both still jumped when there was a knock on the bedroom door, so engrossed in trying to figure out the most likely source of the leak that the interruption came as something of a surprise.

Henry flipped closed the file holding the list of names as Elizabeth called, "Come in."

A second later Matt poked his head into the room. "Phone call downstairs, Ma'am. It's Mr Jackson."

"Thank you. We're coming."

The DS agent disappeared back through the door to wait for them. Henry glanced down at the file in his hand. "Should we tell him?"

They had agreed that Matt was on their listed of trusted people and not at all a suspect in their search for the traitor, but Henry wasn't sure if Elizabeth was planning to bring him into their little circle of confidence. Personally he thought that they should; he knew that the knowledge would make the man step up his level of protection and hover closer to Elizabeth, which she would hate, and would likely be pretty obvious, but Henry would rather that than have something awful happen. He wanted their enemies to know she had protection.

Yet he said nothing. He had to remind himself that no matter what he felt as a terrified husband and worried bystander, his wife was the Secretary of State. She was at work, and she outranked him, and so ultimately it was her call. They could fight over it first but the outcome would still be the same and so Henry bit his tongue, pretty sure keeping quiet was going to kill him. Damn, he sometimes hated the demarcation between work and personal.

Elizabeth looked conflicted, her mouth set in a line of indecision. She didn't ask Henry what he thought; no doubt she didn't need to. She looked at him for a long moment and he could see the wheels turning in her head as she weighed up the options. Then she reached out and took the file from him. "We need to take that call," she said.

"Right." At least he was with her, so even if her DS agent didn't know what they were up to, Henry would have her back, could keep her safe. He always would.

But then she surprised him; as they left the room and met Matt where he was stationed just outside the door, Elizabeth handed the file over to him as they walked past to reach the stairs. "Would you hold onto this for safe-keeping?" she said, in a casual way that suggested it wasn't a big deal, but the meaning behind the look she gave her agent was clear. She wasn't about to tell him what was going on, but if he happened to find out for himself by looking in a folder she just happened to give him, then… so be it.

He opened the file and quickly ran his gaze down it, no doubt noting the six names that Elizabeth had underlined. Then he snapped it shut. "Yes, Ma'am." He slid the file inside his jacket, his face giving nothing away.

They made their way back to the communications suite where they found Corporal Greenwood engaged in a slightly tense exchange of glances with Helena Garfield.

"Could we have the room, please?" Elizabeth asked, heading over to the desk where they'd be able to pick up the phone call.

Greenwood and a couple of others who were present dutifully filed out of the room, but the ambassador lingered, sitting at a computer and seemingly unaware of the request.

"Helena?"

She looked up. "Madam Secretary?"

Elizabeth looked pointedly at the door, just beyond which Corporal Greenwood stood with Matt.

"Oh." Helena looked thoughtful for a moment, but then she stood and reluctantly – a little too reluctantly, Henry thought – left the room, pausing in the doorway and looking back at Elizabeth like she was thinking about saying something. She let whatever it was drop, and then Henry shut the door behind her, making eye contact with Matt as he did, silently willing the DS agent to keep a close eye.

Just in case, of course.

Henry joined Elizabeth at the desk where she had already pulled on a headset and was holding out the other set for him to take. He sat down next to her, close enough he could feel the heat of her thigh against his, and then she hit the button to take the call off hold.

"Russell, you there?" she said.

"Elizabeth, good news," the chief of staff answered brightly. "Well, not good news." Less brightly. "More like terrible news, but I like to put a positive spin on things, you know?"

Henry resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands, wondering how much worse things could get.

"Give it your best shot, Russell," Elizabeth told him, the look on her face matching exactly how Henry felt, except with an added measure of stoicism he was currently finding it hard to muster.

"So it turns out your helicopter isn't owned by Petria."

Henry groaned. "The Russians."

"Probably."

Well, at least Henry had his answer: it turned out things could get much worse. Good to know.

"You're looking into it, right?" Elizabeth said. "We have plenty of assets in Russia that we can tap for information."

"We're looking into it," Russell confirmed.

Henry through briefly of Dmitri, of how he had tried to turn him into an asset and how it had worked for a time until it really, really hadn't, and how they were still getting over that and how he was selfishly glad he didn't know any other Russian assets, because he wasn't sure he could handle anything like that happening again. Suddenly he got an insight into that whole sorry mess from Elizabeth's point of view; the situation was completely different, but now as then, she was simply trying to rescue something in the best way possible. He knew that she was aware of the potential costs involved, but her job was to see the bigger picture. And now his was, too.

He turned to press his forehead against her hair, feeling the need for some contact. He swore to himself that while they might need to focus on the bigger picture, he'd never again let either of them forget their personal priorities, either. They were a team, and they needed to stay together, no matter what.

Elizabeth turned her head to look at him, making him pull back a little bit, and he was sure she'd be able to see everything he was feeling reflected in his eyes. Everything – their jobs, the bigger picture, everything – stemmed from the solid foundation of their circle of two. Without that, nothing else mattered.

Henry's mistake over the past year had been to forget that for a time.

His wife's expression softened as she looked at him and she nodded almost imperceptibly. Yeah, she got it. She reached out to squeeze his hand and then drew his hand up so she could brush her lips over his knuckles. She kept the soft, understanding look on her face even as her voice was all business as she said to Russell, "I need you to look into something else for me as well."

She could be both his wife and the Secretary of State at once, and do both of those things exceptionally well. Henry wondered how he had forgotten that.

Too caught up in himself, most likely. Idiot.

Still, that was done now, and their partnership was intact and Henry wasn't about to let something like a violent coup and the Russians circling overhead derail them.

"You think I don't have enough to be getting on with?" Russell replied, snark in his voice but it was obvious he didn't mean it.

"We think we have a leak, Russell."

"Well, of course we do."

Henry could just imagine the expression on the chief of staff's face, the eye roll he probably gave as he learned that the shit show they were dealing with had just acquired more shit.

Elizabeth told him the list of names they were interested in.

"There are some big names on there," Russell remarked.

"Yeah."

There was a pregnant pause before the next quiet, careful question came. "You know what you're doing, Bess?"

If Henry wasn't mistaken, he'd say that Russell Jackson actually sounded slightly worried for her. "We know what we're doing," he answered definitively before Elizabeth could reply.

Russell sighed heavily. "OK, then. Unless you have any more good news to share, I'm going to set our guys to research your dodgy names then go and brief the President that we have a traitor in our midst. I'll call you back within twenty minutes."

Briefing the president was one job Henry definitely did not envy. There was no way Conrad Dalton would take the news well.

"Speak soon, Russell," Elizabeth said.

"Yeah." There was the sound of scraping chair legs and papers shuffling and no doubt Russell Jackson was already on his way out of the room before the call had even finished. "Stay safe, Bess. Henry."

The line went dead.

Elizabeth's hand still holding his, Henry stroked his thumb over her knuckles. He glanced upwards as though he could look through the storeys of the building to see the helicopter circling above them. "So, the Russians, huh?"

Then he laughed. Elizabeth joined him a couple of seconds later, her face crinkling up in a smile as they shared a bit of light relief. Henry was pretty sure it was a laugh or cry situation, and he figured laughing was more productive, and definitely better for morale.

"Yeah, we're screwed," Elizabeth said.

She said it jokingly, but Henry knew there was a measure of truth in her words. Still, at least they could put off dealing with it until the laughter had stopped.


He couldn't get the kid guard to break.

Regional Security Officer Andreou Flack had spent several minutes questioning – casually, at first, almost idly really, and then blatantly and persistently – Corporal Greenwood to find out exactly what the Secretary of State had entrusted him to do. But the young MSG wouldn't crack.

"Consider it an order," he tried. He couldn't order the man, not really, but he did have superiority.

Isaac Greenwood looked calmly back at him, his youthful face giving nothing away except determination. "The Secretary's orders outweigh yours, sir, sorry."

Great. Short of marching the President of the United States into the room and getting him to override Elizabeth McCord's instructions, Corporal Greenwood would never break. Andreou Flack forced a jovial smile and clapped him on the shoulder. "OK, then. Good for you, son. She'll appreciate that."

Let the kid think he was just trying to test him.

"Thank you, sir."

Oh, but the kid clearly knew that he had been fishing for information. And while Flack hadn't been able to confirm anything, he knew Secretary McCord was suspicious of something. She was hiding something from them, and that wasn't a good position for the staff to be in when there had been a coup and the protest outside the embassy was about one struck match away from a full engulfing inferno. She shouldn't be keeping things from them.

Which led to the question of why she was keeping things from them.

Flack looked to his right as movement caught his attention. Helena Garfield stepped up next to him, dark hair a little wild around her head thanks to the stresses of the evening and her long red ball gown entirely out of place in the circumstances. "You know, Madam Ambassador, you should really change."

She glanced down at her front and then looked up to find Flack looking at her front, too. She frowned a little, but not disapprovingly, as was their game. "Later," she said. She tilted her head in the direction of Corporal Greenwood, who was studiously ignoring both of them. "What did you find out?" she asked softly.

So she knew that something was going on too, that the Secretary of State had trusted the kid with something important, important enough to hide from the ambassador.

Helena was in charge of the US mission in Petria. What would need to be kept from her?

Flack thought that he might have an idea. He thought that the Secretary might be onto something… someone.

He opened his mouth to reply to her but was cut off by Frank, one of the Secretary's DS agents, calling across to Matt from the doorway.

"Come and see what you think of our plan," Frank called.

"Your plan to stage a counter-coup?" Matt quipped as he strolled towards the door, passing Flack and Helena as he went.

"That, or at least rescue our friends from the palace."

The two men disappeared off down the corridor and turned into a little passage towards where the security suite was housed, away from the main hub of the chancery building.

Flack turned to Helena. "Madam Ambassador, if you wouldn't mind stepping out with me for a moment. I need a word."


She thought for a moment about just switching it all off.

The laptop, the TV, her phone, everything. Just switch it all off and go to sleep like it wasn't happening and maybe, just maybe, it might not be true. Alison McCord was pretty sure denial wasn't going to make the godawful situation go away but hey, a girl could dream.

Especially when reality seemed to be something of a nightmare.

She sat with her brother and sister in the TV room, watching the breaking news coverage of Gleb Kodalov making his first address as a man who stole a presidency. It had all been bad enough to begin with – and then he had mentioned her mom, and basically told all the people in his country who hated her to go down to the US embassy, where she was currently based with her dad. And he had smiled while he did it.

It had made Alison feel gross. Then they had shown some cameraphone pictures and shaky footage of what was going on outside the embassy and Alison was finding it really hard to find the positive in the situation.

Across the room, Blake paced in the corner, phone pressed to his ear as he called Nadine at the State Department to try and find out what was going on. From eavesdropping as much as she could on his side of the conversation, Alison figured he wasn't having much luck.

But, she thought, clinging on to a small measure of optimism, maybe no one had yet tried the obvious approach.

She pulled out her phone, opened up a new message box to send a text to multiple contacts, input both her parents as recipients and typed in: Mom, Dad, what's going on? Are you OK?

Short and to the point. She hit send and watched as the little message sending symbol whirred. She could feel the acid churning in her stomach and her heart stuttering in her chest, beating so fast as to almost be a hum. She didn't think she had ever been so anxious, not even when her mom was in Iran. A notification popped up.

Message delivery failed.

She felt sick. Alison stared at the little screen for a moment before calmly placing her phone back on the arm of her chair. She looked blankly in the direction of the TV and did her very best not to think about anything at all.

Yeah. Maybe denial was good for now.