A/N: A big thank you to everyone who is reading and reviewing. This chapter has been split into two as the original was too long to put up as a whole. The second half will go up some time over the next few days so apologies for the slightly abrupt end to this part!
4A. 26/12/2014
12:45 Canberra
Harry guided the Subaru to a stop under a large tree which he judged would provide them with shade for the rest of the day, although at the moment there was only enough of that blessed, cooling darkness to cover half the vehicle. They had worked out early on in their new life in this country the attraction of strategically placed trees, buildings, even trucks for lowering the inside temperature of a vehicle from blast furnace to kitchen oven and now it was second nature to dive for whatever was available. As they extracted a bag of goodies for their hosts and a second bag full of swimming gear and changes of clothes from the back seat a white Toyota Hilux pulled in behind them and they glanced up to see Lucas grinning back at them from behind the wheel.
Their greeting was brief but heart-felt. The past, although not expunged, had retreated far enough that its own shade now barely reached them. There was now little left of their recent awkwardness so they could leave their cars to bake and cross the road towards Ilian's house as a friendly group. Perched part-way up a hillside with views over the lake the building was, on approach from the street, a minimalist white architect-designed glass-fronted box that tumbled down the slope to the rear of the plot. Surprisingly, there was no apparent security but Lucas explained the reality as they approached the front door, also glass and located up three steps and under a portico supported by gleaming black columns. It looked like a fairly normal house for the neighbourhood but all the glass was both bullet and bomb-proof, the walls that blocked off access to the rest of the property were actually electrified, the yard was crawling with artfully concealed CCTV and the house had a direct link to the nearest police station as well as the monitoring centre at work. Harry lifted an eyebrow and murmured,
"That's more than I ever had."
Lucas glanced at him and responded with a twinkle in his crystalline blue eyes,
"You weren't living with one of the senior criminal judges in the country!"
"True…"
The younger man bounded up the steps towards the door only to have it swing open and a disembodied voice that sounded like Ilian float out from within,
"It's about time you mob got here. We were starting to wonder if anyone was going to show!"
The door closed automatically behind them so they moved in the direction of the sound and found her in the spacious living area, pouring icy champagne over fresh strawberries in Swedish glass flutes for them. As tall and elegant as ever, even with her hair pulled up in an untidy ponytail, no makeup, bare feet and dressed in a light cotton ankle-length dress that was startlingly reminiscent of San Francisco, 1968, she greeted them all expansively and shepherded them towards seats and the spread of goodies on the coffee table.
"Hazel couldn't make it, Nate?"
"No, she sends her apologies but she'd already organised to take her daughter up to her mother's place in Newcastle this year – Willow is starting uni up there in February."
Harry and Ruth glanced at each other – this was the first they'd heard of any children attached to Lucas' partner – but Ilian waved a hand airily as she flopped into her chair.
"Never mind. There's always next time and it means that when the other pair get here soon we won't have to worry about any accidental slip-ups when we're all catching up."
"Where is Megan, anyway?" Harry asked, savouring a sip of the wine. "I've been hearing about her for almost twenty five years, it's about time we met."
Ilian grinned.
"Heaving into view as we speak!"
A woman about the same age as her moved quietly into the room as she finished, bearing a pre-lunch platter of hot-out-of-the-oven sourdough slathered in herb and parmesan butter. About Ruth's height but rather more curvaceous, her silver hair was cut in a shoulder length bob under which were large, almond shaped brown eyes and a generous mouth, currently sporting bright red lipstick which accentuated her olive skin, all of which spoke directly of her Syrian ancestry.
"'Heaving'? What am I, a tea clipper?" was her dry response, delivered in a rich, melodious voice which in turn spoke of her judicial majesty. Ilian was unrepentant.
"Well, you have been known to be three sheets to the wind on occasions!"
Meg snorted but it was softened by the smile in her eyes as she chose to ignore the provocation.
"I know Nathan but when you've finished insulting me you can introduce me to our other guests."
She put the platter down and pointedly gazed at her wife, who just grinned at her for a moment before hauling herself to her feet to do the honours.
"Meg, this is Iona and Laurence Stafford. Iona, Laurence, this is my wife, Megan Tamuza."
Formal greetings over she dived into the bread and settled back in her seat, nibbling happily, as everyone else also sat back down and the conversation began to flow. They were well into it, on their second drinks and the bread mostly demolished, fifteen minutes later when the doorbell rang. On her way back out to the kitchen to get the next round of nibbles and check the oven Meg said,
"Can you get that, love, I've got to get the meat out before it burns," leaving Ilian to unwind herself from her chair and head for the front door, pressing the remote for the lock on the way. The English trio continued talking quietly about nothing much until steps and voices indicated the newcomers were entering the large room. Ilian's voice and two others: a man with a deep baritone and a woman with a contralto as honeyed as Ilian's own but with a more indeterminate accent. Harry stopped speaking mid-word and lifted his head, eyes sharp and slightly disbelieving; Ruth and Lucas glanced quizzically at each other as Ilian announced,
"Here they are! Laurence, I've got an old friend of yours here."
Lucas watched, fascinated, as the expression of puzzlement on Harry's face changed to surprise and then delight as he got up and turned to face the new arrivals but it was even more fascinating watching the woman. Not quite Ilian's height but not far below it and a few years older, she had long, dark hair streaked with silver that was pulled up in a neat bun, with sea-green eyes and a quiet, slightly sideways smile that lit up her face. Dressed in loose, sage green linen trousers with a crisp white shirt her smile had also faded to puzzlement at Ilian's words but when Harry stood up and turned around her face went as white as her shirt for a moment, accentuating the colour of her eyes, and she swayed on her feet momentarily, the giant man with her solicitously putting his arm around her shoulders. Glancing from Harry to Ilian and back again the newcomer's colour returned to normal as she narrowed her eyes, cast a slightly accusatory glance at her hostess and then moved forward, eyeing Harry up and down with a measuring gaze.
"You're looking remarkably chipper for someone who's supposed to have been dead for the past three and a half years."
"Hello, Hope!" Harry joined her and they exchanged a kiss on each cheek. Hope sniffed very deliberately before adding,
"You don't smell like you're a zombie, either!"
"Yes, apologies for the confusion but we didn't have any choice but to die."
"Obviously." Hope turned her attention towards Ruth. "I presume this is the new bride who supposedly went up in flames with you when the car went off a Welsh mountain side in a storm? Are you going to introduce yourselves so we know to whom we are speaking?"
"Allow me," Ilian stepped forward graciously, immensely enjoying herself at this reunion. "Hope, Wynne, please meet Laurence Stafford, his wife Iona, and a mutual friend and co-worker Nathan Tolmie. Folks, this is Hope Johnson and Wynne Sharrug. Hope and Laurence have known each other for even longer than he and I have."
Everyone shook hands and quietly measured each other up as they resumed their seats. Ruth watched Hope closely, wondering, as she always did, about what might have been in Harry's past but she was no longer jealous. Observing the other woman and her man, she noticed the little things that indicated a pair who were totally devoted to each other and clearly had been for some considerable time; Hope also had a quietly subversive sense of humour that tickled her own and she suspected that they could end up personal friends, as she had (albeit at a physical distance) with Ilian.
Lucas and Harry came to a similar conclusion about Wynne. Lucas rarely had to look up at anyone – Ray Williams was probably the last time that had happened – but he did with this man, who topped him by at least five centimetres and, like Ray, was also significantly heavier built, with muscles on muscles. Quiet, with pepper and salt hair that had a habit of flopping over his forehead and a hard, almost bony face that would suddenly change to that of a shy boy when he smiled, as the afternoon wore on it revealed he had an air of competence that rivalled Harry's so Lucas suspected a military background. Harry knew it, immediately, just as he recognised a fellow senior military intelligence operative as soon as he met one. What he found interesting, apart from the fact that he had only been dimly aware that Hope had got married around the turn of the millennium, was the way the man moved. Only in his mid fifties and fearsomely fit, he nonetheless moved with a subtle but noticeable carefulness that spoke of old and probably serious injuries. War wounds or something else? He would be interested to find out eventually.
The man himself spoke as they all made themselves comfortable and Ilian topped up their glasses. Looking from Hope to Harry and then to Ilian he asked in his soft, deep voice, cornflower blue eyes curious,
"Is someone going to explain? Or is it classified?"
At that point Meg returned, bearing more nibblies, and joined the throng with a casual,
"It's not classified in this company. Hello, you two. Settling back in okay?"
"Yes, thanks, although it's taking a while to get used to the quiet after years in Beijing."
Silence fell for a moment after Hope's response. Meg reached for an olive and said,
"Well, is someone going to tell Wynne what's going on? And me, come to think of it. I never have heard any details. If you want to talk about it, of course."
It was strange, Harry thought, even as he was running them through a selective version of the events of three years previously, but it was starting to feel like it had all happened to someone else. They were living a life so far removed from London and MI5 that it almost felt schizophrenic now on the increasingly rare occasions that the subject came up. Most of the time he was dispassionate about the ghosts living in his head – not so Ruth, she was still a more tender soul - but occasionally they surprised him with their capacity to inflict sharp reminders of what that time had been; this time, it had been Jim. Not named as such but mentioned as one of the toll that had been extracted in the service of RussiaFirst's overweening ambition, his voice hadn't wavered nor his face but he was unable to entirely repress the stab of pain from his eyes. Hope noticed it, and wondered; no-one else did.
Once lunch – an eclectic fare ranging from Thai warm beef salad to sherry trifle by way of gado-gado and cold roast chicken – was done everyone retired to the back yard via various rooms to change, for those who needed to, and its twenty metre pool for a lazy afternoon. Conversation ebbed and flowed, coalesced and bifurcated as was its want on these occasions and covered a multitude of subjects. Early on Ilian, who for once had been obviously buzzing with some sort of news, couldn't stand it any more and announced with fond pride that Meg had been elevated to the bench of the High Court of Australia, starting in the new year. That caused celebrations all around; later, Wynne casually revealed that they had returned after over a decade in China because Hope had herself accepted a new position. As the Deputy Director General Operations and Assessments, otherwise known as Ilian's boss.
That in turn created some good-natured ribbing for a while until Ilian diverted it with a mention about the new Director General in London and how much of an arrogant prat he had been when she had needed to contact him recently. Horrified at the news when it had filtered through from Tariq to Ruth a couple of months before, the expressions that neither Harry nor Ruth could now repress, along with the curl of the lip that Lucas gave as he remembered the general dislike and contempt the man had been held in when he was head of Section X back in the nineties, naturally raised the interest of the rest of them so eventually Harry dished all the dirt he had on Oliver Mace. There was quite a lot of it, as it happened; silence fell once he had finished until Ilian eventually quirked an eyebrow and said,
"What a sleaze-bucket. I don't think I'm going to be able to keep a straight face next time after that lot! But thank you for confirming that my gut feel was right. Anyway, enough of work, it's time for a swim."
Harry, water-baby that he was, was first in, diving off the end with surprising grace and reaching the other end with a few economical strokes. Popping back up to find he was alone in the pool he stood up, still chest-deep in the sparkling blue, grinned up at everyone and asked,
"What are you waiting for? It's beautiful in here!" before a splash at the far end indicated Wynne diving in. He didn't reappear until half-way up the pool and, with his longer reach and more powerful build, reached Harry just as the latter got out of the way. He didn't stop, executing a perfect tumble turn to come up and do another length, backstroke this time. Lucas slithered in next, carefully holding his bottle of beer out of the water.
"Not swimming?"
"Not yet." He waved his beer at his former boss. "When this is done. We'll give Wynne a run for his money."
Harry glanced up to where Hope's husband was now powering back down towards them with a suspiciously professional looking action, although he noticed that there was still that hint of restraint about the movement.
"I don't know how much of a run that'll be. I think there's more to Wynne Sharrug than meets the eye…"
The man himself surfaced next to them and shook the water out of his eyes, his hair flinging droplets everywhere.
"Sorry!" He nodded at Lucas' drink. "That looks like a good idea. I'll have to go and get another one in a minute."
"You and me both. In fact—" Lucas swallowed the last of his beer and hauled himself back out "—I'll go and get them. Laurence?"
"That would be nice, thank you."
They watched him disappear into the games room towards the fridge, throwing a comment in passing at Ruth and Hope, who were still comfortably ensconced on their sun lounges. Allowing himself to slip a little further into the water, Harry said,
"You look like you've swum before."
The other man grinned, boyish.
"You could say that. When I was a teenager I was on the national swimming team, training for the Moscow Olympics. I didn't keep it up, though, not at that level: couldn't stand the culture inside the squad."
Harry threw his head back and laughed.
"Yet you ended up in the army!"
Wynne laughed with him, recognising the irony.
"Oh, it wasn't the hierarchy or being ordered about, I just didn't have the will to win. Not that way, it all got to seem a bit pointless." Something of a sly expression crossed his strong face. "I may also have been a bit of a naughty boy at training."
Harry lifted an eyebrow, an inviting twinkle in his dark eyes.
"Now that sounds interesting. Do tell!"
The slyness was replaced with something close to comfortable reminiscence as the man expanded on his comment.
"I was seventeen and with the training squad in Townsville over summer. Doing well but already really didn't want to be there. So, you can work out how it went: young, fit, testosterone overload, balmy tropical evenings, lots of girls wearing not much, lots of pubs…" Harry's twinkle was broadening into a grin as the other man continued on. "Let's say I might have taken to slipping out at night to partake of the delights of the tropics. And I might have got arrested for being drunk and disorderly before they figured me out and slapped me with under-age drinking as well." The Englishman's grin was turning into a laugh by now as Wynne ploughed to a finish that was oddly triumphal. "And I might have been booted off the squad as a result! I was so happy because I was really bored with staring at that bloody black line for hours on end!"
When their laughing eddied back into something calmer Harry leaned towards his gigantic companion and said,
"Remind me to tell you one day about the drinking club I belonged to at university. We can compare shenanigans!"
"I'll hold you to that—"
A clinking of glass heralded the return of Lucas.
"Here we are, gentlemen." Wynne turned to grab the bottles as Lucas eased himself back into the water, revealing in the process a back thickly criss-crossed from the neck down in old scars which disappeared into the top of his board shorts. Both the Englishmen had already spotted the scars on his chest, disguised by fine, dark hair though most of them were, as well as those on his arms which suggested he had been on the receiving end of some serious unpleasantness; his back suggested even worse. Harry was about to say something but Wynne himself got in first. Clinking bottles with the other pair and taking a swig he nodded in Lucas' direction and said,
"Nice bit of Blake there. You've got some interesting ink – where'd you get it?"
He didn't miss the almost subliminal glance that passed between his companions but he waited, patiently, while they decided whether they could trust him. He knew they had clocked his souvenirs, as he had theirs, and he had already decided he could trust them, something confirmed by Hope, at least as far as Laurence was concerned. Evidently they decided in the affirmative as the man known as Nathan suddenly flashed a bright, slightly combative smile.
"Eight years in the Russian prison system. Got caught on a black op and that's how long it took him—" he jerked his head towards Harry "—to get me out again, not only into a new millennium but a whole new world."
Wynne nodded, slowly.
"Thought it might be something like that. The onion domes on your back are a bit of a give-away."
"One for every year."
"At least he got you out. Not all are so fortunate."
"It didn't feel fortunate while I was in there but you're right, of course."
Harry finally spoke.
"I thought you were going to start getting rid of them?"
Lucas shrugged and held up a wrist where its former marking was now gone.
"I did. But it took forever and wasn't exactly comfortable just losing this one. There are so many people around with tattoos these days that no-one really looks and anyway they're part of me now, a salutary reminder of how quickly life can change."
"That it can. For good or bad."
The silence that fell as they all drank was a companionable one. Harry knew there was more to it than that; Wynne suspected but knew he had plenty of time to find out, being aware of plans that, according to Ilian, Nathan was not, yet. Pretty much on cue, Harry asked quietly,
"What about you, Wynne? Your back is more scar tissue than skin."
His blue eyes darkened and he grimaced at the recollection.
"Something not dis-similar. It was during the problems in East Timor in 1999. I was monitoring events with a wing of FALINTIL when a group of Indonesian Army personnel came out of nowhere. They had been tipped off where we were by someone we thought we could trust. They killed the East Timorese outright but me… they decided they would have a bit of fun with me. Fun that involved whips, chains and thin canes, among other things." His voice took on a musing tone but his words were chilling. "There are places in Asia where they beat chickens to death with canes before they cook them because they think it makes them more tender and tastier to eat. Let's just say I know how the chicken feels."
The other men were quiet for a moment, considering what had been said. Both of them had been on the receiving end of similar treatment but there was something about his comparison to the unfortunate chicken, and the appallingly senseless brutality of that act, that un-nerved them slightly.
"How did you survive?" Lucas voiced the question a fraction of a second before Harry was about to.
"I was fit but it was mostly pure luck. Xanana Gusmao himself arrived, equally out of the blue, with a small cohort of troops: he had got word that his own hideout was about to be targeted so was on the move and checking his lieutenants at the same time. They realised what was happening and took out the Indos, saving my life in the process. I don't remember any of that part of it because I was unconscious by that stage. It was only the fact that Xanana had a medic with him that I'm still here, it was touch and go for a while." He suddenly grinned. "I'm also a bloody-minded bastard when I want to be and I had not long married Hope: I wasn't about to leave her behind if I could avoid it!"
Harry smiled, reflecting on how he had felt when Sasha Gavrik had attempted to slice Ruth open.
"I can understand that. You speak as though you still know Gusmao."
The other man nodded.
"I do. We do. He is a good man and has become a friend, along with Kirsty, his wife. Hope and I met in East Timor when we were both there on black ops for our respective employers – I already knew Xanana and Hope had been working on and off with Kirsty for years, when she was still calling herself Ruby Blade and working towards independence for the country. Once I had recovered enough and after the UN moved in we both returned, officially, and spent three years working with Xanana, Jose Ramos-Horta and the government before Hope got promoted and posted to Beijing. I stayed in Dili for a year until a role came up for me in China as well."
Lucas' ears had pricked up at the mention of treachery and he asked, curious,
"What happened to the person who betrayed you? Did you ever find out who it was?"
Wynne's expression became bland, eyes opaque.
"Yes. One of Hope's assets. He disappeared for a while but was eventually found at the bottom of a ravine with a broken neck. Hope said it was an unfortunate accident."
Harry's smile was hard.
"I'm sure it was." He would have to talk to Hope about that one day… Returning the subject to their earlier conversation he added an observation. "You have a little trouble because of the scar tissue? You move very carefully."
The acknowledgment came with a wry expression and a matter-of-fact explanation.
"Partly. The beating extended from my head to the soles of my feet and was so bad that there was also internal damage – I lost my spleen, among other things – and spinal injuries that it took me almost a year to start to recover from. The backbone has never been quite the same since."
"Neither has my shoulder," the older man prodded the still somewhat angry looking scar that was visible, "after one of my Section Chiefs ripped it apart with a rifle bullet. It's functional but has its limitations."
"You'll have to explain that one to me one day, before or after the discussion about the university drinking club! But yes, it's fairly obvious when you swim – your left arm struggles to get out of the water."
"All of me struggles to get out of the water on days like this!"
Up on the sun deck, in the dappled shade of a white painted pergola covered with a grape vine dangling what would be impressive bunches of fruit in a couple of months, Ruth had been practicing her Mandarin with Hope. The conversation had been limited to generalities as much because Ruth had come to the dismal conclusion, when the discussion had wandered into technicalities, that she had forgotten more of the language than she realised. When she said so, glumly, Hope laughed and responded in her perfectly pitched, accentless form of the language while watching Lucas' retreating back,
"Don't worry, you will remember. Maybe we should keep on simpler subjects, like a swimming pool full of not unattractive men!"
That topic kept them going for a few minutes as they watched said men clearly getting on splendidly as they lolled about in the glittering water, drinking beer and talking about who knew what. Meg and Ilian reappeared from inside, where they had been up to the kitchen to restock the fridge and bring out the next lot of food, including home made fruit cake, mince tarts and rum balls as well as fresh fruit and nuts. They came out to join the other women; Meg sat down with a sigh, raised her glass of wine to them and swallowed half of it in one go but Ilian was looking at the rest of her guests and frowned slightly.
"Bloody typical: the boys on one side of the room, drinking, the women on the other—"
"—Also drinking!" Hope crowed, draining her own glass. The red-head growled.
"They're looking far too cosy over there. It's about time it stopped."
Untying the halter neck of her dress she let it drop to reveal a one-piece swim-suit the same startling shade of blue-green as her eyes and then took off, running lightly and swiftly towards the pool where she launched herself off the edge and executed the perfect bomb into the centre, effectively half-drowning the men in a mini tidal wave. As soon as she surfaced a water fight erupted with much splashing, inept wrestling and shrieks of laugher ensuing.
Hope stood up, intending to join the fray; Meg just looked at them all and shook her head, announcing in her most magisterial tones,
"Don't they remind you of a bunch of kids running amok?"
Instantly, for the first time in ages, Ruth was transported back almost six years to the sunny day in her Cyprus back yard and the stone terrace around her own pool, Nico also executing a spectacular bomb that had splashed the stonework and somehow accentuated the scent of citrus in the air. A frozen moment of small delight that presaged forever in her memory the crunching of tyres on gravel and the arrival of a black car with tinted windows that signalled the end of the strange facsimile of a normal life that she had been pretending to live…
Seeing the blood drain from the English woman's face Hope caught Meg's eye, who looked totally nonplussed by the reaction, and sat back down again.
"What's up, Iona?"
"Nothing, nothing…" The voice was tremulous and the eyes stark against her pallid skin. Two gazes settled on her, both concerned, the sea-green ones somehow radiating a calm compassion that was almost Zen-like and rather irresistible.
"I – I had a step-son once, when I was living in Cyprus. It didn't end well – his father died because of me, leaving Nico an orphan – and what Meg just said reminded me of him. Of all of it. We had a small pool and the boy and his friends loved it. And they were very noisy." She sighed. "He would be a teenager now, almost a young man. I hope he is alright, maybe even happy. He didn't deserve what happened to him, to his father."
"Do you want to talk about it? Or not?" Meg asked gently, aware of the other woman's distress.
"Not. Really. Something from the past came back to bite me but it got Nico's father instead. Collateral damage, as our American friends so charmingly christened it. I hadn't been part of the family for very long so the boy went back to his grandparents and I haven't been in contact since. It doesn't feel…appropriate but it doesn't stop me wondering. Or caring. You know how it is."
They did, in their own ways, Hope with more genuine experience and understanding than Meg. Silence fell for a moment before Ruth gave herself a little shake, swallowed the last of her lime and soda and stood up.
"Enough of the past. Shall we go and impose some decorum on that lot before they entirely empty the pool of water?"
Hope got back to her feet with a grin.
"Definitely! Meg?"
"Nah, not this time. I've still got half a bottle of bubbly to finish before it goes flat so off you go!"