Same Disclaimer as before

Chapter 12

Early April 2009, Hong Kong

Finally, Ruth returned. After she set her purchases down on the kitchen counter and had a few words with Dalane, she came into the living room and laughed softly when she saw her cat staring at Harry. She swooped the cat up into her arms and looked at the two of them.

"So, have you been giving my friend a hard time?"

Harry was not sure whether Ruth was reprimanding the cat or him.

Ruth was cradling the cat as if she was holding a baby and started to scratch his belly. The cat immediately placed both of his front paws on top of Ruth's hand, as if to say, just keep it there, lady, and don't stop until I tell you to. He also started to purr, loudly, and closed his eyes to enjoy his tummy rub. Harry could have sworn that the cat opened his eyes a slither and shot him a look which told him, 'she loves me, not you'. This jetlag business must be worse than I thought, why am I now jealous of a cat?

"Harry, meet Nikoo, the love of my life. I inherited Nikoo when Leonie, my Kiwi colleague across the hall, went home after her contract expired. This is one cat with some serious attitude issues. He was abandoned by his previous owner in 2003 when Hong Kong went through the SARS health scare (see Note below) and people believed, erroneously, that cats and dogs could pass the coronavirus to humans. I'm told that at the time, a lot of people simply threw their pets out the door! By the time Leonie found him, his stomach had been sliced open by some other animal and he was near death. That's why he has a major problem with strangers. He finds it difficult to form attachments and now that we've lived together for a while, he has become very possessive of me."

Give me half a chance, Ruth, and I'll show you how possessive I can be.

"I don't have too many visitors, and when I do, Nikoo here always gives them his patented stare. Just ignore him. The vet thinks that he's around 10 years old now, I just think he's becoming a grumpy old man," Ruth smiled at Harry.

I might not be your boss any more, Ruth, there's no need to be rude. Harry took that remark in the light hearted manner it was intended.

Harry was busy processing all this new information. A cat is the love of her life. This must mean that Ruth does not currently have a man in her life. Not too many visitors. Even better. Wait, get a hold of yourself, Pearce, you're here to get answers to more important questions.

"I see that you have also met Dalane. That woman is a force of nature. I don't know how I would cope without her. She runs the most efficient Filipino grapevine on campus. I know more about my colleagues in the university from my conversations with Dalane than through any other means. If only the Grid has someone like her, out gathering intelligence …"

Harry laughed with Ruth over this. Never mind Dalane, its you that I want back on the Grid, but how do I even begin to broach the subject?

Nikoo could smell something cooking in the kitchen, so he terminated the tummy rub session and headed to the kitchen, with his tail held high, in the hope that his dinner might be ready. Its never too early for a meal.

"I don't usually keep alcohol in this apartment, but in honour of your visit, I went and got you a bottle of scotch. I assume that that is still your favourite poison, though this might not be your preferred brand. You will have to bear with the quality though. This is, after all, a university supermarket and they don't usually have the good stuff on their shelves. They don't think that us poor academics can afford the more expensive brands. Shall I fix you a drink?"

Harry was not sure whether he should be doing any more drinking for now, but he did not want to turn Ruth down. He could tell that Ruth was rambling more than usual and he wanted to put her at ease.

"Yes, that would be nice, thank you."

After giving Harry his drink, they both sat in the living room and neither said anything. Since Harry appeared in Ruth's office a couple of hours ago, she had excuse after excuse of not talking properly with Harry. There were a million questions which Harry wanted to ask but he did not know where to start. It worried him that Ruth had been doing most of the talking, and that she mostly talked about banal matters. It almost felt as if Ruth did not want a proper conversation with him.

After another awkward silence, Harry could not bear the suspense anymore.

"You look well, Ruth. Are you enjoying your life out here?" As soon as those words left his lips, Harry knew that he had made a bad start.

"It took a little getting use to, but its alright, I think that after almost three years, I have finally acclimatized." What kind of question is that? How the hell do you expect me to enjoy a life which I did not choose?

Yet another awkward silence. This time, Ruth decided that she had to deal with the elephant in the room.

"So, Harry, how did you find me?" Ruth gave Harry an awkward little smile.

"Sherman Tang told me ..."

Sherman Tang! I should have known. "Ah, Sherman Tang."

"So you know him." Harry's pulse quickened. Another stupid question. You already know the answer to that one.

"Yes, unfortunately I do, though I wish I didn't. Did he organize this trip for you?" What did Sherman say to Harry to make him come?

"Yes, more or less. I'd rather assumed that he might have told you that I was coming." So, why didn't he? And what did she mean by wishing she had never known him? Has he done something to her?

"No, I haven't spoken to Sherman for some time now. In fact, I have only spoken to him no more than once or twice since I moved here." Ruth remembered her last meeting with Sherman only too well and the bitter taste which it left in her mouth. The awkward smile she had on earlier had now disappeared.

If she hasn't seen Sherman for some time, could it be that she's not working for them after all? In that case, how did she end up getting involved with that encoded document? Harry then took a deep breath and came straight to the point, "I understand that you may have been doing some work for the Chinese Secret Service."

"No," Ruth said emphatically. "No, I haven't." Ruth was puzzled by this question. Just because I know Sherman Tang doesn't mean … is that what Sherman has told Harry? How could he?

Please don't lie, Ruth, and make things harder for me than it is. "Are you sure about that?" In a bid to rein in his own emotions, Harry had abruptly put on his serious face when he put this question to Ruth.

"Of course I am." Ruth was surprised by the directness of Harry's first question and a little hurt by the accusatory tone in his voice when he posed the second question. "Why would I lie about something like that?" Ruth shot Harry an angry look. "I see, you've come to check up on whether I have joined the Chinese team. And if I have, what difference would that make to you or MI5? You will recall that I had to leave the Service in rather unfortunate circumstances. I was not aware that there is a restrictive covenant on my ability to work for another intelligence service." Then Ruth caught the slightly apologetic look on Harry's face and decided that she might have over-reacted. She remained quiet for a couple of minutes, and when she spoke again, her tone was softer than before. "I have not been spying on my own country for the Chinese, if that's what you are wondering. After I left London, I was not expecting to be able to work in this field again, and I haven't. Even if I were interested, I wouldn't have chosen the Chinese as my new employer."

"Ruth, I'm not accusing you of spying on Britain for the Chinese. Let me re-phrase my question : have you been trying to pass intelligence about China's dealings with Iran to the West?" Please, Ruth, tell me the truth and put me out of my misery.

"What? I don't understand what you mean." Ruth now looked completely baffled.

"We recently came across a document which contained rather sensitive information about China's dealings with Iran over arm sales and apparently, you have an involvement in this matter." Harry then started to relay to Ruth the events which took place in London one week ago, the discovery of the encoded document, her fingerprints on the document and its plastic envelope, and his meetings with DS Boyd and Sherman Tang. Harry only gave an abridged version to Ruth. He did not touch on his subsequent meeting with the DG and the Home Secretary, not yet.

"… oh … that document … I see … oh no …" Ruth was now looking quite upset. "I guess I should have been more careful about handling that document." The colour had drained from Ruth's face and she began to look extremely worried. "But I had no idea that the document was going to be used in that way or that it would end up in London. When Sherman asked me to decode it back in January, he never mentioned any of this." Ruth felt really miserable about the whole affair.

"He … asked you … to decode … the document?" asked Harry. These were only small points of detail but it made a great deal of difference to Harry.

"Yes." Ruth nodded.

"Are you quite sure about that?"

Ruth nodded again.

"And he asked you to do this in January?"

"Yes." Ruth remembered the date well.

"Do you know why he asked you to do that?"

"He told me that the information was compiled by a rogue agent on the Chinese team who wanted to earn more money by selling Chinese secrets to the Americans. He didn't want the other agents to know about it, so he decided to get an outsider to decode the document." By now, Ruth knew that she had been set up by Sherman Tang; she also knew why but she did not want to discuss that aspect with Harry.

Well, that all makes sense now, doesn't it? Harry realized that if Sherman already knew what was in the document but still allowed it to be carried to Britain by the teenage illegal immigrant, then the value of the information contained in that document had to be suspect in which case, it made it a whole lot easier for MI5 to honour the agreement he had made with Sherman. So Sherman had been economical with the truth. All that hand wringing over wanting to retrieve the document from me and not letting the Americans have the document. Was it no more than just a ploy to dangle Ruth in front of me, to see if MI5 wanted her back? If that was the case, then I was right, it was a trap. Harry thought about Sherman's professed aversion to the use of honey traps and realized that he had been caught in one himself, a perverse version of the traditional one. But it's only a honey trap if Sherman knew how I felt about Ruth. He couldn't have known that, or could he? Thinking back on that breakfast meeting, Harry now realised that Sherman never said anything about Ruth's involvement or that she was in danger. He just told a few half truths and made a series of oblique remarks, and then he let Harry connect the dots himself. The only conclusion which Harry could draw from all this was that Sherman had enough of babysitting Ruth after all this time. He couldn't wait for me to come and get her. But why, and why now? Why did Sherman bother with the elaborate way in which this whole thing had been set up?

Harry then noticed that he had spent so much time deliberating Sherman's intentions that Ruth was looking at him anxiously for a reaction to what she had just told him.

"When we found out about this document, I'd assumed that you might have been involved with the Chinese Secret Service these past few years, otherwise you wouldn't have been able to lay your hands on this kind of intelligence. I thought that you might be in trouble, Ruth, when I let slip to Sherman that we found your fingerprints on this document. Had I known that he was the one who got you involved in the first place …" Harry swallowed the rest of what he was going to say, since it was beginning to sound like he would not have come if he had known that Ruth was not in any danger after all. Harry knew that he had botched this interrogation. He noticed that Ruth had lowered her eyes and was now refusing to look at him. Still, Harry had to be sure of the extent to which Ruth had been entangled with the Chinese Secret Service.

"How much work have you been doing for the Chinese since they moved you here?"

"None. That was the only time, and it was only done as a favour. You have to believe me." She raised her eyes and looked intently at Harry. Her voice had started to shake. Any minute now, she was going to burst into tears.

Harry held her eyes for a moment before he replied, "I do believe you." He was relieved to know that she was not in any danger, and had not been mixed up with the Chinese Secret Service in any way. He knew that Ruth could be a good actress and could pull off the most convincing of lies. He had seen her in action before, for example, over the Angela Wells incident, and when she got on the phone, on occasion, to spin stories in order to worm information out of unsuspecting members of the public. But Harry also felt that he knew her well enough and that she would not lie about something like that, not to his face. Ruth was looking so distressed that Harry did not have the heart to interrogate her further. He made a mental note to grill her for further details when she regained her composure. The DG was right, I am absolutely not the right person to debrief her.

Then something occurred to Ruth and now she looked horrified. "Harry, does this mean that London now knows that I'm still alive? Does that not complicate things for you?"

Now that Harry was sure that Ruth still had her allegiance in the right place and that she did not have any involvement with the Chinese other than that wretched document, he told her about his meeting with the DG and the Home Secretary, again, an abridged version of what had been discussed.

"Its alright, Ruth, everything's fine. I've explained your part in relation to the Cotterdam mess. You've been exonerated. You can have your life back. We can go to the local British Consulate as soon as they open for business and a new passport will be issued to you, in your own name. You'll need to be debriefed properly once you get home, of course, by someone else within the Service, but I'm sure that that would be nothing more than just a formality." He thought it best not to mention that he was currently regarded as being on suspension, or that he had offered to resign, in order to resurrect 'Ruth Evershed'. That information should only be dispensed on a need-to-know basis, and right now, she does not need to know this.

Ruth looked bewildered and stared first at Harry and then at her hands for a long time before she finally looked up again and said, "thank you, Harry, I don't know what to say." She often wondered whether this day would come and if it did come, how it would take place. That Harry would come and bring her home was her favourite daydream, of course, but now that it was happening in more or less the way she had imagined, she was not as ecstatic as she thought she would be, not when she could not go back to the world she used to know.

Harry knew that Ruth was not the emotional type but for such a momentous occasion as getting your life back, he thought that she could have shown more of a reaction than a simple thank you. She's being too polite. I don't want her to be polite.

"That's alright, it's the least I can do for you, after all that you went through for me." Harry very much wanted to lean over and give Ruth a hug, or better still, kiss her, but given the subdued response from Ruth, decided that it was probably not the right thing to do for now. They were interrupted by Dalane who announced that dinner was ready. It was probably a little early for dinner, but it had been more than 6 hours since he had something to eat on the plane and there was an empty feeling in Harry's stomach, so he followed Ruth to the dining room.

The ever efficient Dalane had already set the table and laid out a green salad. She made sure that Harry knew that the salad dressing was home made, one of her own special concoctions. The main course was roast chicken, also prepared by Dalane. Once Harry and Ruth started on their dinner, Dalane came in to say goodnight and left for the evening. Ruth explained to Harry that Dalane had her own quarters elsewhere in the building.

During dinner, again the conversation was polite but not intimate. Ruth appeared to have calmed down after that little question and answer session with Harry. Harry tried to put Ruth at ease by telling her about what had happened to several of her colleagues since she left, and about some of the new members in Section D. Ruth nodded and made some comments along the way, but overall, Harry had the feeling that she had either heard it all before or was not really that interested. So Harry tried a different approach and made discreet enquiries about Ruth's life since she left London. Ruth was a little more comfortable talking about her life in the university.

"I've kept a low profile since I got to this city. I seldom venture outside campus. I don't like crowds, and if there is one thing that Hong Kong is not short of, its crowds everywhere."

Harry knew that Ruth did not have this problem before. He could guess at the reason why she had developed this aversion to crowds, that it must have something to do with having lived a life on the run.

"I rarely socialize with the Chinese teaching staff, and its not because I don't want to," Ruth continued. "Even though most of them speak good English, they would rather not spend the entire evening chatting to each other in English for the benefit of just one or two English speakers included in any gathering. That's why the expatriate staff are rarely invited to events organized by the Chinese staff." Ruth pushed her food round the plate but did not eat very much of it. "I tend to stay away from the British teaching staff. They are old timers who have retained a very colonial, holier-than-thou attitude which I don't like." Ruth also did not want to give them the chance to interrogate her about her past and her credentials. "I'd much rather hang out with the Aussies and the Kiwis since they never take themselves too seriously and are always good for a laugh. On my long term breaks, I travelled to parts of China once or twice, and to the southern hemisphere to visit with some of my colleagues."

Given the number of times that Ruth had mentioned colleagues who had finished their teaching contracts and moved on, Harry knew that she would not have been able to form any lasting friendships with these people. He got the overall impression that she had kept a very lonely existence in this town these past few years, and he felt really sorry for Ruth. He wanted so badly to hold her hand and to tell her that this would all change in future, once she's back in London, once she's back with him. But Harry noticed that Ruth remained distant and aloof, and there was nothing in her demeanour which suggested that her hand was available for holding by anyone. He wondered whether she was still angry or concerned about their earlier conversation.

It was a very simple and light dinner, and it was over much too quickly as far as Harry was concerned. He noticed that Ruth did not say anything yet about returning to London.

"Ruth, are you glad that you will now be able to go home to London?"

"I'm not sure," Ruth sighed, after taking a moment to consider this question. "You know what they say, sometimes you wish so hard for something, yet when that thing is within reach, somehow you don't seem to want it anymore."

Harry felt a lurch in his stomach. She doesn't want to go home?!

"I see. Do you have other plans?"

"Hmm, I don't know. I wasn't expecting this so I haven't really thought about it."

"Do you feel that you're already settled in this part of the world?" Is there someone else here who is holding you back?

Ruth did not want to continue with this discussion and stood up to clear the dishes from the dinner table.

"I'm not sure I want to discuss any of this right now. I mean, I want to thank you, Harry, for having made all these arrangements. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but I really don't know how to react to this new development just yet."

Polite, yet distant. This was not at all the reaction that Harry was expecting.

"You must be very tired by now. You mentioned a long time ago that you never sleep well on planes. Why don't you try and get some sleep. The sooner you rest, the sooner you will recover from jetlag."

Harry did feel tired but he was unhappy about being dismissed by Ruth in this manner. That's the second time today she's done that! Is she avoiding me because she still has something to hide, or is it simply because she doesn't want to see me again? We've already ruled out any involvement with the Chinese Secret Service, then what can it be? Harry refused to consider the other possibility, that Ruth did not want to see him again.

There was nothing more he could do. Perhaps it would be a good idea to leave Ruth alone with her own thoughts for now. Maybe the shock of my sudden appearance bearing news that she could have her life back was a little too much for her to digest. Maybe both of us should have a good night's sleep. Maybe in the morning, there might be an improvement in Ruth's attitude. Harry did not argue and went to his own bedroom.

Note : The SARS health scare blew up in 2003. A mysterious new virus came out of China, infected a lot of people in China, Hong Kong, Canada and a few other countries, and killed many of those who were infected. If you saw the Dustin Hoffman movie, 'Outbreak', you will have a good idea what Hong Kong had to go through that year. Cats and dogs do carry the coronavirus at birth, but there is no conclusive evidence to support the claim that they can pass this virus to humans. A large number of pets were abandoned at the time. There was one report out of Beijing that an owner became so scared that he threw his dog from his 8th floor apartment and killed the animal. Any one interested in further reading can look this up on the web or Wikipedia.

As always, any and all reviews will be gratefully received.