Chapter 20
Day 1: Monsters Under The Table
Ironically, when it came to it, Lucas and Ros ended up sitting either side of the wardrobe that concealed the Priest's Hole they had hidden in on their ill-fated break in of the house. on one end of the table while Ruth and Sofia sat against the decorative wall opposite them on the other side of the table.
They watched patiently as the diplomats settled themselves around the polished slab of oak shaped into the table in the centre of the room, already eyeing each other suspiciously.
"Do you think they'll all play nicely?" Lucas muttered to Ros undercover of the chairs being pulled out and the buzz of casual conversation that filled the room.
"Do you think I'm a bloody fairy princess?" came the predictably irony-laced remark.
He smirked and watched as the Home Secretary got to his feet, killing the hushed conversations.
"Well, first of all, I would like to thank you all for agreeing to participate in these talks, i am sure that the next few days will bring about a stable agreement and a lasting bond of trust between our nations."
"Optimistic isn't he?"Sofia muttered to no-one in particular.
"'Peace Talk Virgin' springs more comfortably to mind."
"And now." he continued, "I find it only fitting to ask Ms Myskin if as it was she who was so instrumental in the conception of these talks, if she would consent to give us a small introduction."
This was news to the Russian Prime Minister, who got tentatively to her feet as the Home Secretary sat down she flashed him a look of mingled curiosity and suspicion, before saying in her hypnotic whisper.
"Thank you Home Secretary." she paused a moment, dipping her head graciously in his direction before continuing, "I would also like to extend my thanks to you all for joining here today. In these uncertain times, it is good that we can come together in this way and in this aim; our world has changed much. Fifty years ago world wars dragged on for years and claimed millions of lives; today, with the weapons we all possess, a similar war would result in the same death toll in minutes. I am glad therefore, that we have all agreed to respect our past protect our future by coming together for peace."
She sat down and the small smattering of applause that threatened at her words was quickly stifled by the venomous response of the North Korean Leader, Jīnyū,
"Have we?"
"Well these are peace talks you know, so I wouls presume so." The American President said genially, while his eyes narrowed in response to the other man's words.
"Peace is overrated and unattainable indefinitely, the world will always com e to war, and none of us can truly believe that we can stop this, so I ask again, why are we here?"
"I agree, peace is not infinite, but we are all here to protect it while we can, and if you are indicating that you are not; then I find that it is your motives that should be questioned." Sabelle Dorè hissed in response to the deliberately antagonistic words of the North Korean Leader.
Jīnyū looked impressed by her reasoning, while she had leapt to the offensive and had directly countered his words, which had been designed to illicit this kind of response, she had not attacked his argument in the way he had expected,
"At this moment in time, I am here for the same reason as everyone else in this room, even if they will not openly admit it, to see where our loyalties lie..."
"Our loyalties all lie in the same place," Kenneth Williams, the British Prime Minister put in, "Does North Korea want war?"
"Of course not."
"Well then, you now know where our loyalties lie, we are not here to discuss formal alliances, we are here to negotiate a treaty limiting the use of nuclear weapons, so let us discuss that."
"Precisely." Hui Sūn proclaimed comfortably from his chair.
"All that matters is that we share a common interest, none of us want war, hence the reason we are all here, I agree with Mr. Williams, that is what we should be discussing." Akash Singh, the Indian PM put in.
"One moment if you please ladies and gentlemen," Broke in the oily voice of Shakil Zardari, the Pakistani Prime Minister whom Ros had been expecting to grease the conversation far sooner than this, "I find myself agreeing with Leader Jīnyū, it does matter, and now wonder why the one voice we have not heard from is the one that called us all here in the first place, Ms Myskin, perhaps you should explain, why did Russia feel the need to schedule these impromptu talks? Does she merely feel threatened in these times by the growing number of nuclear weapons? Is it this a political move to appease her people? Or is there something more that she is not sharing? Something that she ought to if she does indeed want to 'protect our future'?"
Despite themselves, the leaders all turned to Kalina Myskin, murmuring among their parties all of them now suspicious over the issue that Zardari had smugly raised.
"Slimy bugger isn't he?" Ruth observed, irritated,
"Quite...I felt the need to bleach my hand after our brief encounter yesterday." Ros agreed drily,
"I don't know what, but she better do something or these talks will be over before they even begin." Lucas pointed out, watching the restless diplomats anxiously.
As if in response to this, Myskin began speaking, instantly silencing her fellow diplomats,
"'What makes life dreary is the want of a motive', and I do indeed find your quest for a motive dreary. If you wish to spend all of your time searching for hidden meanings and half-truths that have no bearing on anything, then I do not wish to spend it with you. I did not come here to ask why or how or what, I came here to do something. To do something about the pit of secrets that we find ourselves in, something that your ridiculous words only evidence further. For too long we have sat back and done nothing while the world descends into chaos around us, I cannot therefore consider these talks to be 'impromptu' when they are decades overdue. If you do not feel that they are necessary, or that they are only being done for appearances, no-one has tied you to your chair Minister, so please, go, and stop wasting my time."
"Well, she's got balls if nothing else." Ruth muttered, impressed by the younger woman's impassioned words.
"Close your mouth." Ros murmured dismissively to Lucas.
"Bless him, I think he's in love." Sofia added mercilessly, "Dark, beautiful, powerful, and she quotes things...His perfect woman."
"Don't say I didn't warn you." he smirked to Ros, refusing to rise to the sizeable bait they had tossed him.
"Consider this due warning, her bed, remains free of you."
Nobody moved and nobody spoke after Kalina Myskin's monologue and so she felt compelled to fill the silence left in the wake of her bluff,
"Five of us are already bound by an existing treaty limiting our nuclear arms, three of us currently are not, and so I propose, before we begin talking specifics and numbers, that we talk general opinions. I would ask you all now then, in light of recent ill thought out remarks then, who is willing to at least consider negotiation of their nuclear weapons programme?"
"Well I would have thought that our mere attendance implied that we were at least willing to give the matter consideration." Singh pointed out, with characteristic frankness.
"I think not." Sabelle Dorè replied flatly, "As our North Korean friends have implied, we all seem to be a little uncertain here."
"The implications of attendance may not be so clear cut Ms Dorè, but what your words imply to us could not be more obvious!" Jīnyū snarled across the table.
"Let us put it to a vote." Hui Sūn said evenly, "At least get something decided before lunch, a simple yes or no on a piece of paper would suffice I think."
Ruth dutifully took the hint and provided Sūn with several rough squares of paper to use as ballot slips.
"Only whether or not we are willing to negotiate caps, not whether we will." Zardari clarified insistently as he accepted his paper.
"Of course, " Dorè said impatiently, "A little yes on a piece of scrap paper is hardly a binding legal contract Zardari, relax." She tittered irritatingly,
The sheets of paper were collected and, for one reason or another that they would surely have squabbled over had they not been in the process of dismissing themselves for lunch, every nation voted yes, leaving them all in a relatively reasonable mood as they were gently ushered through to the larger lunch hall by members of the catering team.
"Only politicians could agree to meet somewhere to discuss something and then take a bloody vote to see if they were actually prepared to discuss it!" Ros growled, swiping a glass of champagne that swooped under her nose, "Whoever decided to serve alcohol deserves a bloody peace prize..."
"Ah well, it wouldn't all have been for nothing, I'm sure they get free air travel, do a spot of sightseeing, wouldn't have been a completely wasted trip." Sofia said, airily,
"It's been a bloody wasted morning." Ros fumed, sipping at her champagne.
"I wouldn't say it was entirely wasted," Ruth said, unwisely sticking her head in the lion's mouth that was Ros' fury when argued against in this mood, "What do you think of the country leaders?"
"I feel like a nursery teacher wrestling with a group of stroppy three year old." Ros replied irritably, "If these are the most powerful people on Earth than God help the rest of us mere mortals."
"I don't know, I think there's something brewing between the North Korean's and our American cousins." Sofia said, more helpfully,
"You always think there's something brewing." Lucas pointed out,
"Because there generally is. What makes you think that Sofia?" Ruth countered,
"I don't know why, they seem a little possessive over one another." Sofia said, her eyes flicking towards Jīnyū, who at that moment happened to be engrossed in deep conversation with the American President, Crowe.
"Shall we check back in with Harry and Tariq?" Ruth suggested after a lull in the conversation, "See if they have anything on our insider."
"Not sure how much they'll have, we said more during the talks, if you're not a world leader there doesn't seem to be much room for you, they could have neon signs announcing their affiliation with Hiroshima and we'd still struggle identifying them." Lucas said bluntly,
"Whichever bit of Ros you've stolen, give it back, the world can't cope with two of you." Sofia informed him,
Remarkably however, Ros agreed with Ruth,
"For the sake of Harry's sanity, we will." she said, dialling the number and connecting the comms they were all wired with the allow them to converse over the table.
...
Harry sauntered from his office to the cupboard that some coffee-crazed Section D officer, who would only ever be remembered for just that, had had the bright idea to convert into something that may have passed for a staff room if it had accommodated more than the two people that could perch on the table that had been jammed into it. As a result it had affectionately called a walk-in coffee vending machine and was, all-in-all, a very welcome addition to The Grid, as the haggard officers of which seemed to mainly run on caffeine and fresh air.
"Coffee?" Tariq asked as Harry rounded the corner and jumped when he found him holding out the coffee pot he was in the process of helping himself to.
"Bloody Hell." Harry snarled under his breath, thrusting his mug in Tariq's general direction by means of answering.
"I didn't know it offended you so." Tariq grinned, filling their cups.
"I think this is a ruse to make me lose my marbles-" Harry growled,
"Haven't you already?"
"Not quite...There are only two of us on this bloody floor, you're trying to tell me that our coffee clocks coincidentally synced?"
"Coincidence has nothing to do with it, I needed a break." Tariq replied grimly, "Every time I close my eyes I see little coloured dots dancing mockingly in front of them..."
"Any joy from these dancing dots?" Harry enquired, sipping his coffee which was, shockingly, something that the food standards agency may actually have considered approving as safe for human consumption.
"Nope, our little blobs are careful, they're all behaving themselves."
"Dam."
"What were you hoping for? Ammonia in closets and secret drug deals done under the table?"
"Give it time..." Harry said darkly,
"On that note, it's lunchtime-" Tariq began eagerly,
"You've just eaten." Harry said, severely,
"I know that, it's their lunchtime, if any worms are crawling out of apples it will be now."
"Then why are you still here?"
"What-" Tariq said, clearly wrong-footed.
"Early bird Tariq..." Harry smirked airily,
"Right...Yes..."
Harry allowed himself twenty minutes of the talk's lunchtime to enjoy his coffee, one of his few and rare indulgences, before going to visit Tariq and his dancing dots.
"I've got three potentials for you." he told him happily as he entered,
"I hope there's more reason to this than you jabbing a pen at the monitor." Harry said suspiciously,
"Shockingly, I do." he said sardonically, "These three, " he highlighted and enlarged three of the dots causing the screen to their spit profile pages at them, showing two men and a woman "Everyone in the delegations flitted about a bit and left the main body, didn't give me much, you know the usual gossip, nosy, cigarette, quickie in the cleaner's cupboard, anyway, these were the only ones who avoided the cameras while going wherever they were going.
"Really?" Harry said, listening now, "It's like Khrushchev's Big Brother House in there."
"Exactly, they know the blind spots."
"For once their caution is to our advantage."
"Problem is we have one insider and three potentials. In theory it could have been accidental, none of them went very far...How do we choose?"
"How indeed? Our insiders will just have to show us how to throw the dice."
At that moment the phone went, the comm connection implying that it was Ros,
"You scare me sometimes..." Tariq mumbled as Harry answered it,
"Ros?"
"Harry, how are you getting on with our Mechanical Merlin?"
"Better than expected, he makes better coffee than you lot, yourselves?"
"Our heads are intact, as are the politicians'...For now."
"About as well as can be expected then?" he paused a moment before saying, "We have the names of three potential insiders for you all to enjoy surreptitiously digging in to this afternoon."
"Really?" Ros asked, sounding mildly impressed,
"I take it from your tone that you haven't got a thing?"
"And they said you weren't intuitive..."
"Indeed they did, well as I know you're tired and your psychic powers are not working too well, I'll have Tariq send you their details, briefly however, you have Alexy Dastik, Russia, Luke Evans, America, and Camille Alice, French."
"Right, I'll tell the others, I have to go, they're leading us back inside now, see you on the other side, if this doesn't descend into a bloodbath by tea-time."
"Your eternal optimism never fails to inspire me Ros..."
The afternoon the talks progressed much as they had done that morning; not at all. Several arguments, rash comments, broken pride and much offence later, they had broken up for the day, the Home Secretary's talk virginity well and truly lost along with the accompanying optimism as he said, without much confidence that, "now they were over the hurdle of the first day, he was sure that 'the rest of the talks would run as smoothly as a jazz piano'."
"If he's an idiot, he shouldn't be allowed out in public unsupervised, and if he's a liar, he shouldn't be allowed out in public without a warning label..." Lucas observed as they all began to file irritably from the room.
An imperious tap to Lucas' shoulder caused him to turn and Ros to bite her tongue,
"Liam?" Sabelle Dorè purred throatily, "Would you please meet me in my room?"
Lucas stared after her as she turned and walked up the stairs with a superiority that would have put Jools Siviter to shame.
"If she asks you to prostitute yourself for your country, please don't, it's just tacky the second time around..." Ros informed him as he made to leave,
"Don't worry..."
"Oh but I do, there's nothing more dangerous than a spy that's not getting any..."
"...There's you."
...
"Liam? I was wondering if you could help me with a slight discrepancy, something I'm having trouble with?" she said in a tone that implied it was not a question.
"Of course mademoiselle Dorè," he replied obligingly,
"Strip." she said, flatly,
Lucas stared at her in disbelief as Ros said "Lucas..." warningly in his ear,
"I'm sorry mademoiselle, but I do not think that I-"
"I do not think I was giving you the option." she snarled, two large, well muscled body guards caught him unawares as they tripped him and pinned him to the floor on his knees as she advanced on him with a thin knife.
"Lucas!" Ros said, more insistently,
"I want to know..." she said, threateningly, advancing on him and using the knife to cleanly slit open the back of his shirt, causing it to peel apart and fall to his side like the wings of a butterfly, exposing the pale skin of his back, before she hissed
"Why an aid for the British Government has Russian prison tattoos."
A/N: I am asking you to forgive any errors in this as I have absolutely no experience in these kind of talks and this entire chapter comes to you straight from brain to page, written purely on instinct. (hopefully that's not too obvious!)