Sorry for the delay in updating guys. I was distracted by uni and other fics, mainly H/R. Hopefully this story will still interest some people :) xx

6

The arrests the next morning took place without any real problems, and soon Ros, Lucas, Jo and Purdey made their way back to Thames House with the four men in custody. As far as they could tell they hadn't picked up any tails, so thus far everything had gone according to plan.

The men were put in cells underneath Thames House, and the foursome went back to the Grid to discuss how they'd progress from here.

Ros assumed that she and Lucas would be doing the questioning, but just as they entered the Grid Harry was about to leave.

"Ah good, you're back," he said. "I'm just off to see the Home Secretary, Ros will you come with me?"

"Sure Harry," Ros said, seeming reluctant. It wasn't hard to tell that she'd much rather stay and interrogate the Russians than be in a boring meeting with the Home Secretary.

As they left through the pods, Lucas turned to Purdey. "So, how's your Russian?" He asked.

"It's rusty," Purdey replied with a smile.

"That'll do," Lucas said, and they both returned down to the cells to start the interrogations.

Purdey didn't have a lot of interrogating experience, and watching how Lucas went about it was absolutely fascinating. They had agreed to a specific technique beforehand, and it had brought them the best possible results.

They had decided to interrogate the men in pairs, instead of all four separately. At first everything would be conducted in English, without letting the men know that they understood Russian. This approach paid off, because once they put more pressure on the men they started panicking, and began discussing their own strategies and cover stories in Russian, oblivious to the fact that Lucas and Purdey could understand them.

The moment they let the men know they'd been listening in to their private conversations all along, they knew there was no way back, and started spilling more details about their planned attack. Most of this was done in Russian, and Purdey's knowledge of the language was indeed rusty, but she understood enough of what was being said to know what was going on. Lucas on the other hand, having spent eight years in a Russian prison, was fluent in the language, and understood every detail of what the men were telling them.

Mission accomplished, Lucas and Purdey returned to the Grid to inform the rest of the team about what they'd found out. Together they walked back through the long, narrow corridor, towards the lift that would take them back upstairs. They talked a bit more about the case and everything they'd discovered, when Purdey suddenly stopped dead in her tracks.

Purdey!

She let out an involuntary gasp.

Lucas stopped walking too, noticing something was amiss. "Are you ok? Purdey, I said are you ok? Can you hear me?"

Hearing Lucas talking to her, she snapped out of it. "Did you just hear a voice?" She asked him.

"Not apart from our voices, no." He answered. "Is anything the matter?"

"No, it's fine. Never mind." Purdey replied. But she could've sworn she heard a voice. And that particular voice sounded far too familiar to her to miss it. There was no mistake to be made here; she had heard Gambit's voice.

Back on the Grid they gathered everyone around to tell them about what they'd found out.

The attack was to be carried out in Whitehall, during a public appearance on the first day of the president's state visit. Smoke bombs would be used to cause distraction and panic amongst the crowd, and then the president and at least 4 other cabinet members would be taken out by snipers. Neither of these men were the mastermind behind these plans, so this was all they'd been told about the nature of the attack. They also disclosed the location of the warehouse where the weapons were being stored, and told them that it also functioned as their HQ. Lucas and Purdey had already known about the warehouse, but now at least they had a confirmation that they had been on the right track all along.

After they had finished sharing all they had managed to find out with the rest of the team, Harry took over again. There were only three days left before the start of the state visit, so in order to let everything go smoothly and prevent the attacks from happening they had to act quickly. Ros joined Lucas for the further interrogation of the men, to try and get more names and information out of them. Purdey and Jo got assigned a stack of files to wade through, while Ruth and Malcolm worked on the technical side of the state visit by checking CCTV cameras in Whitehall and trying to uncover the weak spots.

In the meantime Harry was off to Whitehall again, this time to inform the Home Secretary of the latest developments, and what they had uncovered regarding the state visit.

By the time Purdey was ready to pack up and go home it was late, really late. The whole day had been a rollercoaster of events without time for a break, so the entire team was positively exhausted. After she had bid goodnight to her colleagues she had only just managed to catch the last bus home. She walked the last few minutes from the bus stop to her house, enjoying the fresh air and the silence.

That's when she heard it again.

Purdey!

And for the second time that day she froze.

Purdey, wake up!

Again it had been Gambit's voice. She could instantly recognise that voice out of thousands. She increased her pace and hurried home. The silent streets and the darkness suddenly didn't feel so welcoming anymore.

As soon as she entered her flat she dropped her bag and keys, and moved to sit on the sofa before her legs went from under her. Over the past couple of days she had slid into her new routine of going into work at MI5 with surprising ease. But these strange occurrences today had been a real eye opener, and reality had hit her hard. All of a sudden she again realised the seriousness of her situation. She was in a place without knowing how she got there, and with no means of getting home. All had been going ok until she had started to hear that voice, his voice!

Purdey took a couple of deep breaths and tried to get a grip on her thoughts and emotions. She decided to see the Russian operation through to the end. There had to be some significance in that, even though she hadn't been able to figure it out yet. Once that was out of the way, she'd start to figure out a way to get home.

After she had managed to calm herself down a bit, she started to feel how exhausted she really was. She soon fell asleep, dreaming of brollies, bowler hats, Russian spies, and a certain dark haired man.

TBC

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