Chapter 8
Precious Time
Ruth headed straight for Harry's office, Lucas having just left it.
"Harry, what the Hell is she doing here?"
"Good morning to you too Miss Evershed."
"You should have sent her home, not to the Home Secretary." She persisted.
"I didn't send her to-"
"Harry, she was raped. You can't just deal with that in the way you deal with everything else in here that falls into the category of 'personal', you can't pretend that this hasn't happened. And you can't let her do that either."
Harry chose to ignore the second meaning to this and focussed on the bit he could at least have a stab at answering "If Sofia's made up her mind, and is ready to come back, nothing I can say will change that."
"You're suspended." She retorted flatly.
"I can't do that Ruth; you know what that would mean for her, personally and professionally." Harry said, not being able to recall a time recently when he had been as tempted to seek solace in a good measure of whiskey, this early into the day.
"Yes, but what could it mean for her, and us, if you consider the alternative. The same thing happened with Jo, you ignored it, she wasn't dealing with it, and look how that ended up-" she broke off, "Harry I'm sorry I..." she left, flushing crimson before he had time to formulate something that would pass as a response.
"Hello." She muttered to Lucas as he passed.
"Morning." He said, stiffly.
"How is she doing?" Ruth asked, cautiously.
"As well as can be expected...She'll pull through."
"When though?" Ruth said, without thinking.
"I know what you're thinking Ruth, it won't work, she needs something to do...Something more meaningful than watching Loose Women and overdosing on tea."
"You know her that well?"
"Better than she knows herself."
"Well then, you should-"
"I know her better than you do Ruth, leave it alone." He said quietly, walking away from her.
He had been trying painfully hard to build bridges with Ruth, something she had noticed, over the past few weeks, but at the moment he cared more about Sofia than Ruth holding grudges.
He knew that Ruth meant well, but her judgement was clouded by what had happened to Jo, she could not understand that Sofia did not want help, and could never come to terms with the fact that, as far as her work was concerned, it was ancient history. Lucas knew that in her personal life she would be more than affected by this, and the trauma would haunt her for months to come, not only because of what he had done to her in London, but also because of the memories that would return to her from Russia.
He had found them revisiting him in his dreams last night, and if an oblique mention of the horrors of prison had done that to him then he could not begin to comprehend what it was doing to her. Nevertheless, the place she would have needed Ruth to be was not where she was. Sofia compartmentalized, Ruth was work, not personal life, there would be no crossover, Ruth would never be allowed to enter into that part of her life, they had only known each other for a few weeks. As a colleague she was OK, as a friend, she was far from it.
Sofia and Ros were sitting, one patiently, the other not, in the Home Secretary's lavishly decorated office.
"The money they could have saved on silver candlesticks and antique rugs would be enough to pull us out of the recession." Sofia muttered with distaste, even after three years, the beauty of prison minimalism had never quite lost its appeal for her.
"You can propose that to him now, solve our countries financial debts." Ros hissed back, personally she could not imagine the room looking any other way and immediately told herself she had been spending too much time in it.
"Here he comes." Ros muttered as the Home Secretary practically bounced up to meet them.
"If he attempts to hug me, can I shoot him?" Sofia enquired in an undertone.
"Just be sure to miss all the important bits." Ros replied.
"Good morning Miss Myers, my apologies for the late arrival, oh, now who are you?" he asked, squinting at Sofia but mercifully taking a seat behind his desk without attempting the awkward embrace he had enveloped a very bemused Ros in.
"Sofia Fletcher, latest addition to Section D." Ros supplied helpfully.
"Pleased to meet you." The Home Secretary beamed, "Welcome to our own little slice of this mad world."
"Thank you for letting me live in it." She replied, studying the man opposite her.
"So, to business, to what do I owe this pleasure?" he asked, turning back to Ros.
"Unfortunately Home Secretary, you'll soon learn that visits from us are rarely pleasant. Harry Pearce sent me to bring you up to speed on our current situation."
"Alright..." he said, a little wrong-footed following the abrupt change in the tone of the conversation, "So speed me up."
"We have received intelligence of an attack on the American President while he is here attending the peace talks." Ros said with her usual brutal efficiency.
"That's terrible." He blustered; if he had been wrong-footed beforehand he was now sprawled on the floor at her feet, "Where is this intelligence coming from?"
"Given the nature of their information our source wishes to remain anonymous, however it is reliable..." Ros said confidently, though her eyes flicked towards Sofia for a fraction of a second.
"Very well...What do you need from me?"
"What makes you think we want anything?" Ros asked, paraphrasing, the word 'need' was not in her vocabulary.
"I'm not that dense Miss Myers, please credit me with a modicum of intelligence and a working knowledge of the recent technological advances that have led to the development of the mobile phone." He said, the schoolboy persona slipping for a moment.
"We need the list of locations that the government plan on using for the talks; we have to identify a target for this attack."
"Frankly Miss Myers, there's no can do, the er, while the locations are still up for discussion." He said, hitching the cover of ignorance back onto his face with supreme ease, "When I know, you'll know."
"Frankly Home Secretary, I think that's bullshit." Sofia said flatly, before Ros could respond with a more acceptable answer, causing both of them to stare at her. She continued when no-one else seemed inclined to fill the silence, "Please credit us with a modicum of intelligence and the ability to know when we are being lied to."
"You have your hands full with her." The Home Secretary chuckled, conspiratorially to Ros.
"So do you." She said swiftly, her curiosity got the better of her and caused her to refrain from reprimanding her younger colleague; however like Sofia she bought neither his words, nor his boyish attitude. "These talks have been in the works for months, the locations would have been decided on weeks ago; don't play games with me Home Secretary."
He watched them for a moment, trying to decide what to do with the veiled threat in Ros' words, choosing his carefully now he said, "Honestly, the North Korean's have been very jumpy, they've been at this point before and backed out because they felt that the people they were doing deals with were untrustworthy, they pulled out at the last minute, we cannot have that happen again. As a result, we've been forced to include them, discreetly, at every stage of the preparation process, they were particularly insistent on keeping the location of these talks a secret."
"Well, as your secret service, we'll do our very best not to post the locations on Facebook." Sofia said sardonically.
"Of course, of course, "he muttered, distractedly, "I'll have copies sent up for you at once." He said, calling through to his PA and requesting the documents in question.
A silent battle of wits ensued, as each of them tried to guess the others thoughts, both the Home Secretary and Ros were watching Sofia, he broke the silence first,
"By the way Miss Fletcher, do I detect an accent that tells me you're not from London?"
This was news to Ros and thought he was hallucinating, Sofia on the other hand looked mildly impressed, "Yes you do." She said, slowly.
"Ha!" he said, triumphantly, "May I ask where?"
"Scotland." She said, with a small smile, "I thought I'd all but lost the accent, I moved to London when I was about sixteen and I've spent a considerable amount of time, abroad in recent years." She explained.
"Gone but not forgotten." He smiled, "It's a beautiful part of the country isn't it?"
"When it's not raining..." she commented drily, with a small smile.
"Yes of course." He laughed softly.
The door opened and a young, thin, dark haired woman deposited a large swathe of papers on his desk. He dismissed her with a wave of his hand and began to flick through them before handing two identical files to Sofia and Ros,
"Well, here you are ladies, I hope these will help."
"Certainly, thank you Home Secretary."
"Anytime." He replied with a winning smile.
"So, what do you think of the Home Secretary?" Ros asked, as they left his office.
"I'm not entirely sure...On one hand I want to give him a gold star and see if I can be the first to observe spontaneous human combustion; on the other hand I want to shoot him and get it over with, I don't entirely buy the schoolboy act."
"It's good isn't it?" Ros said, smirking.
"Very...Almost makes me wonder..."
"What?"
"You've seen the Lord of the Rings?"
"Yes..."Ros said, slowly, hoping this was going somewhere,
"You remember Gollum?"
"The schizophrenic nutcase? Vividly..."
"There was a woman in the prison I was held in, in Russia, they called her Gollum, she was schizo, obviously, one minute she'd be offering you her roll at lunch, the next she'd try and drown you in your soup bowl...The guards thought she was lying, making it up, they kept trying to break her, they didn't realise she was already broken...He reminds me of her."
"So you think our Home Secretary's schizophrenic?"
"I don't know what I think...The point was that people make assumptions, they see something and think they've figured it out, the guards tortured her continuously for days to get her to drop the act, as a result she had a psychotic break and killed herself, don't judge a book by its cover and all that..."
"It's a convincing cover..."
"Very."
"What are you thinking?"
"I'm trying to decide if I prefer him as an honest fool, or a lying scholar..."
"Lying scholar." Ros replied, without hesitation, "He's of more use to me that way and I can beat the irritating part out of him."
Sofia chuckled, "What did you think of his excuse for not giving us the location?"
"I don't know, if he's telling the truth then it's not good for us, jumpy North Koreans are the last thing we need. If they get jumpy the others will too, we could end up creating the problem we're attempting to fix. If he's lying..."
"Also not good for us...Still it's not a priority as of yet, we'll beat it out of him later."
...
The team were gathered around the large rectangular table in the briefing room when Ros and Sofia returned.
Tariq, who looked as though he had rolled from his bed and into his chair, gawked at Sofia, no-one having warned him that she had returned to work, as she took her seat opposite Lucas, she glared at him and demanded, "Have I grown an extra head?"
"No, sorry..." he mumbled, sheepishly.
"How did it go with the Home Secretary?" Harry asked no-one in particular.
"He dropped the rainbow act long enough to give us the location of the talks." Ros said,
"Act? What are you thinking?" Ruth asked.
"That you're too paranoid for your own good." Ros shot back
"And the lawyer calls the politician a liar." Lucas smiled, intervening smoothly, "Do you think he's involved in this?"
"I don't know, I just think butter would melt a Hell of a lot faster in his mouth than in mine." She said darkly.
"Please let there be a God to save us all in that case." Lucas smirked.
"Alright, enough speculation about the Home Secretary, let's stick to what we know." Harry broke in before Ros launched herself across the table at the still smirking Lucas.
"Which is what?" Sofia asked, "What did you get from Salko?"
Harry paused, "Nothing." He said bluntly, realising that there was no way to dress it up and make it acceptable.
"Nothing?" she repeated tonelessly. The calm, almost comical atmosphere had drained like a water balloon hit by a bullet.
"No." Harry said quietly.
"Sofia took a deep breath, memories of his assault wrenching her momentarily from the table.
"I think it's high time we brought Mr. Salko in for a friendly chat." Ros murmured, no-one fucked with her team.
"Indeed, I only agreed to let him screw me once." Sofia hissed, darkly.
A/N: I hope these chapters haven't felt too much like 'fillers' but the previous few and the next few look to being a bit heavy and I needed to inject some sort of humour into it, spooks humour of course :) Anyway, thank you all for reading and reviewing so far, I hope you'll continue to do the same :)