Chapter 21
Day 2: Monsters Inside Us
Dorè lightly traced the eight inked churches on Lucas' back as he closed his eyes in despair.
"Shit." Ros hissed in his ear, knowing he was most likely blown.
"We all have a past..." Lucas murmured
"Indeed, and people with your past do not get your future." She snarled, slashing through the air with the knife in anger, accidentally catching his shoulder.
"I think we both know strings can be pulled in these circumstances..."
"Easy Lucas..."" Ros muttered, wondering where he was going with this as Dorè turned on him, snarling,
"What do you mean by that?"
"I think you know..."
"You be careful now Mr. Ford...You do not understand what you are saying..."
"Lucas, what the Hell are you doing?" Ros spat, petrified,
"Everyone has things in their past that they would rather forget; when they come back to haunt us in our future, it's usually better for everyone involved that they too forget...I think we both understand what I mean by that..."
"Do not try and play me Mr-"
"Oh I'm not trying to play you, I could only do that if I'm bluffing...But if I know...Are you willing to take that risk? History is not often as forgiving as we would like it to be..."
She considered him softly as Ros reassuringly informed Lucas, "I hope to God that wasn't a plea for information Lucas because I don't have much at my disposal to trade for your bloody stupid life right now, you're on your own..."
Dorè swore softly and barked in rapid French to one of her body guards, too quickly for Lucas' broken French skills to translate, before she bent down and whispered dangerously,
"Who are you?"
"I am an aide for the British government, in order to-"
"No, not who you say you are. Who. Are. You?"
He watched her carefully, his next words making Ruth gasp and Ros bury her face in her hands in despair, "If you try to find out the answer to that, then you will also find your secrets splashed across the front pages of every major newspaper in this country..."
"You are lying!" she spat turning away from him dismissively, "You have no proof-"
"Don't I? You're sure about that? People have an unfortunate habit of remembering things they shouldn't unless they're given very good reason to forget..."
She swore softly once more and muttered to herself under her breath before taking a shirt from her body guard and thrusting it into his chest. As he peeled of the remnants of the one she had ruined, she leant closer to him and breathed,
"Be careful, you will only push me so far..." pressing her lips against his ear she hissed, "A canary cannot sing if its throat has been slit..."
"But if it starts...It's hard to cut the throats of the others..." Lucas said, they stared intensely into one another's eyes for a fraction of a second, attempting to read the other before Lucas took control of the situation, buttoning the new shirt and standing.
She watched him leave the room, twirling the slim knife between her fingers as she did so. As he turned to quietly close the door he saw her deliberately wipe the smear of blood that adorned the silver blade on the torn remains of his shirt.
...
"Are you alright?" Ros asked, roughly as he joined them at the car,
"Fine." He said shortly,
He slipped into the passenger seat, at last allowing his protesting, painfully tense muscles to relax as the adrenaline finally drained from them.
"Well?" she demanded when an explanation was not immediately forthcoming.
"Little tip I picked up from chess games in prison, when you know you've done something your opponent can make use of, instead of trying to cover it up with your next move, anticipate theirs instead...Applies in the real world too..."
"You already had your eye on the Sugar Plum Fairy?" she asked, starting the car.
"Half an eye, I didn't think she was going to say anything after she ignored it this morning, I saw her clock the tattoo on my wrist, she put two and two together and got Russia..."
"Clever bitch..."
"Quite...I indulged myself by taking the time to learn a few of mademoiselle Dorè's dirty little secrets, every politician has them, else they wouldn't be politicians...It's truly incredible what drunk, overworked, pissed of PA's can be charmed into divulging..."
"And?" Ros asked, irritably,
Lucas smirked and said, "You're expecting her to be a secret member of the FSB aren't you?"
"I'm expecting something..."
"The curses and blessings of being a politician...Go to a charity event for sick children gets you a dozen votes...Go to a strip club as a prostitute in your youth, gets you professionally executed by your own party..."
"She did not? Snow White's a hooker?" Ros asked delightedly,
"Evidently...According to her very tipsy PA, she was 'paid in secrets'. Several of her old clients are now high ranking cabinet members, apparently blackmail works fairly well in making politicians put up and shut up..."
"Buys votes and silence...The cunning, manipulative..." she trailed off before saying, satisfied, "Well, I don't think we'll be having to worry about Snow White and her seven dwarves in the near future...If she bought what you were selling and doesn't slit your throat in your sleep of course..."
...
Sabelle Dorè flounced past Lucas without looking at him as she took her seat at the table the next morning, looking as superior and unconcerned as ever,
"Well it doesn't look like she wants to rip your clothes up so I'd say that's a good start." Ros murmured to Lucas, watching Dorè settling herself comfortably at the table, with distaste.
"Nice to know your personal thoughts on the whereabouts of my clothes..."
"I know far too much about your previous relationships to have different ones..."
He smirked but said nothing as the Home Secretary stood to welcome them all to Day 2 of what Harry had now affectionately termed, 'The Mickey Mouse Club', his irritating bounce returned and switched to its highest setting this morning. S
"Whatever that man's taking, I want some..." Ruth muttered, watching in optimism as he gave his first pep-talk of the day, detailing everything from 'mountains scaled' to 'rollercoasters yet to ride'.
"For you or for Harry?" Ros asked, tartly,
Ruth mockingly considered this for a fraction of a second before shooting back, "Both. "With a smirk.
The tension between the talks participants continued to increase but, miraculously, they made more progress than they had the day before; for all their squabbling, it seemed as though the leaders had all realised that they were, in actual fact, there to prevent the outbreak of war as opposed to giving themselves reason to start one.
Two hours in and half-way through a heated debate that solely involved the Americans and North Koreans throwing arguments back and forth while the other diplomats contented themselves with pretending they were attending a political tennis match, concerning the appropriate number of nuclear warheads a country needed and whether or not this should be, hypothetically, affected by landmass or population, Sofia hissed under her breath,
"You sneaky bastards..."
"What?" Ros asked, sharply,
"Our American and North Korean friends aren't at each other's throats for the sake of being at each other's throats, they're covering the dodgy deals they're doing under the table...Or more accurately, over it."
"What do you mean?" Ruth asked softly, while studying the respective parties.
"What the green-eyed monster two seats to the left of Jīnyù and the blonde twat directly behind Crowe..."
They were all quiet for a few minutes until Lucas laughed softly and Ruth said, incredulously,
"Are they...?"
"Yes they are..." Sofia said, smiling smugly, "The ones supposedly taking notes of the meeting scribe messages from their respective leaders then feeds them to the translator who sends them across the table where they are received, translated and replied to. Like smoke signals without the health risks..." she said, smirking at their ingenuity, "As far as I can tell, so far they've agreed that they both want the same things, higher numbers of warheads than are currently proposed. Simple enough plan, one sows the seeds, a certain number, the other argues against, eventually they'll ask the others to choose, roughly splitting the group, then when it actually comes down to it, one of them will jump ship at the last minute, causing confusion amongst their erstwhile supporters, and, like the adorable little lemmings that they are, the rest will follow and we'll end up with a room full of politicians drowning in their own stupidity...Who said that spies weren't present at these talks? This is brilliant..."
"You can sign?" Ruth asked, as the others pondered this.
"Yes, my grandmother was deaf, I was fascinated by it and started studying different variations, what they're doing is fairly basic, their grammar is horrible, but it works..."
"Well we couldn't have political negotiations without some good old Cold War skulduggery..." Ros said airily.
"What do we do?" Ruth asked softly,
"Nothing. Nothing we can do." Ros said dismissively,
"We can't just let them-"
"Look Ruth, save chopping their fingers off I can't think of anything, if you want to pull them aside and politely ask them if they'd mind awfully be my guest, beyond that we leave it alone, anything else will be more trouble than their worth. We're not here to make these talks work, just the President's heart, if we tried to save politicians from their own stupidity every time then we would all end up in serious need of professional help."
"Besides, if things continue as they are we won't need to worry about Crowe doing any deals under the table as his insides will be inconveniently on the outside, something that's looking increasingly likely. "Lucas pointed out grimly.
...
"Harry, I've got something!" Tariq called, not even bothering to stand up,
The Grid, as it turned out, carried sound exceptionally well when it was empty of absorbent officers, so much so, that, after harry had irritably pointed out that he could hear Tariq slurping coffee from his office, they had abandoned all methods of sophisticated communication in favour of simply yelling across the room at one another.
"If Sabelle Dorè has been flashing the PM over the prawn cocktail in order to make him agree with her then there really is no hope for this country-" Harry began, wandering over into the tech suite,
"No, Alexy Dastik, one of our potentials? I've caught him on camera collecting a dead drop..."
"What?" Harry said, sharply.
Tariq pulled up a blurry shot of Dastik removing something from the underside of the bench he was sitting on, seemingly smoking,
"This was the best camera angle we could get; something I'm sure he knew...We can't actually see what he takes but I don't think it was chewing gum..."
"How long do the talks have this morning before the lunch break?"
"Almost two and a half hours, they had an early start."
"Get me Ros."
"Do we think that's him? Dastik's our insider?"
"We definitely think it's a possibility, pull them all bar Sofia, if we decide to do something about our little Russian infestation I want her kept close to it."
"Won't that blow their covers?" Tariq asked, pausing with the phone to his ear,
"Maybe, maybe not, it's a risk we have to take, cover it by pulling other random British workers, call it a routine security check, they've won scratch-cards, whatever you feel like, get creative, but I want them back here in less than thirty minutes..."
...
"So we're basing everything on a grainy CCTV video that might show a dead drop?" Ruth asked, incredulously,
"No, we're basing everything on the risk involved in making a dead drop in that place, that house makes Fort Know look about as well guarded as a strip club in Russia..." Lucas countered,
"'Risk' is exactly what it is." Ruth retorted, "We're going to take out a foreign diplomat because we're getting a bit desperate?"
"No, we're going to take out a member of an extremist group because he is attempting to aid the assassination of the American President in our back garden, something that looks fairly bad for us." Ros shot back.
"We haven't got anything to suggest-"
"Haven't got anything to suggest what? That he's got a beautiful singing voice? No. That he poses a threat to this country? Yes."
"No we don't." Ruth said, flatly, braver than most in the room, "We have something on a security camera that might be a dead drop, and even if it is," she continued loudly over Ros' protestations, "We have no idea that it's related to this, it could be drugs, money, lovers, we don't know."
"Occam's Razor." Lucas said, softly, "The simplest answer is usually the right one, and right now the simplest answer that explains why Alexy Dastik is avoiding our cameras, fondling benches, and also why Artem Salko knew about this, is that he is involved with the extremist group Hiroshima."
"But-"
"Harry, you need to make a decision." Ros said, cutting over Ruth, "We can argue about this all day, we're running out of time."
Harry pressed lifted the phone in the centre of the table and connected them to Sofia's comms,
"Morning plague-" Harry began, neutrally,
"What the Hell is going on?" Sofia snarled, in the midst of the talks her three colleagues had been summoned away leaving her sitting like a lemon wondering what was happening as no-one thought to inform her.
"Our Russian problem has become more serious than we first anticipated." Harry said, delicately, "We need you to deal with it over lunch."
"Oh do you now? And might I ask why our mild throat infection has suddenly gone viral? What have we got on it?"
"Enough..." Harry said, evasively,
"Shit." Sofia snarled, "If you want me to start playing assassin you need to give me more than that Harry, what exactly have you got on him? I am not going back to prison for you on a hunch!" she spat.
"CCTV footage of a dead drop and a miraculously accurate allergy to our tapes."
"That's it?" she snarled, "You want me to kill him based on sticking something somewhere and being a little camera shy?"
"If this man is working for Hiroshima he is our best chance at stopping this attack." Harry said,
"And if he's not then he's my best chance of being thrown in a cell and forcing the Russians to declare war on Britain!" Sofia snarled,
"Only if you get caught." Ros pointed out helpfully,
"God I didn't know we were this desperate, Harry this is insane-"
"No, this is an order." He said, flatly, "Get to Alexy Dastik and be back in your seat for desert."
"Fuck...You'll need to give me a diversion...Get him up to their suite." She said bitterly,
"How do you propose we do that?"
"You're all clever, clever people and if you can all figure this to be the best way out of this mess well then you can bloody well figure out how to clear the damn thing up."
...
Sofia twitched her way through the rest of that afternoon's talks and rose with the rest as lunch was called, staying close to Dastik.
Ten minutes in to their allotted hour, a waitress approached Dastik and whispered something in his ear; he in turn leant in to speak to Kalina Myskin,
"Please, I have an urgent phone call to take, they are on a line, may I please use your suite?" he asked, quietly, it had been established over the last few days that Dastik was close to Myskin, closer than any of them were comfortable with.
"Of course Alexy...Something wrong?" she asked, concerned,
"My mother, I can't, I must,"
"Of course, of course, go..."
Seizing her chance Sofia knocked Myskin, causing the reading glasses that had been balanced precariously in her pocket to tumble to the floor where they were promptly stepped on by Robert Crowe.
"I am so sorry Ms Myskin, he send bending to pick them up and blanching at the damage his heavy step had done to the delicate spectacles.
Sofia hovered close by and as Myskin said, "Would you-"
She stepped in swiftly and said, "Of course Prime Minister.
"Thank you, they are on my cabinet."
"Thank you, I will be as fast as I can." Sofia promised, slipping quickly from the room she jogged upstairs, fiddling with the pins she had stuck in her hair to keep it in a tight bun. They were painted black but were made of strong, light metal and the points were like snake's teeth.
Feeling anticipation claw at her stomach she inserted the key card into the reader outside Myskin's room and stepped soundlessly into the room, the long, thin metal pin in curled beneath her fingers. Dastik was on the phone, his back to her, angrily bellowing down the line at whoever had taken responsibility for informing him of whatever story they had invented involving his mother.
Swiftly crossing the room she deftly stabbed the pin into the back of his neck, inserting it between the bones of his spine and skull, severing the spinal cord causing him to choke and crumple to the floor at her feet.
Withdrawing the pin she wiped it clean calmly on a napkin on the table before slowly and coldly winding her hair back into a knot and inserting the pins into it to keep it in place. She was intending on retrieving Myskin's glasses from her cabinet and returning downstairs when she heard the lift at the end of the corridor announcing an unexpected visitor.
Darting from the room she closed the door as quietly and as slowly as she dared before pretending to approach it from the other end of the corridor, hearing voices coming from the lift, she inserted the key card back into the lock and re-entered the room before letting out a piercing scream that caused the meandering footsteps to run towards the source of the commotion.
She waited until the two large Russians almost drew level with her before falling into their bewildered arms in a dead faint.
A/N: Thank you all for reading and reviewing, hopefully this is all going OK so far!