Author's Note: thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, your feedback is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Chapter Nine: Lady Lazarus
Apologies were never Ros's strong point. At least, not spoken apologies. As an alternative, she pottered about in the small kitchen; brewing up English tea and preparing a stack of grilled cheese sandwiches, with which she intended to cajole Lucas back into a modicum of pliability. Their operation was already complicated enough, without the two of them squabbling over misunderstandings. It always led to them spending more time trying to crack their tangled emotions than any code they were sent. Once her fare was loaded onto a small, stainless steel trolley with ridiculously independently minded wheels, she made the short journey to Lucas's door.
Before knocking, she parked her trolley and pressed her ear against the door. From deep within the room on the other side, she could hear him tapping away at a keyboard, despite the lateness of the hour.
"Lucas," she called out, rapping her knuckles on the wood. "I've made some supper."
The keyboard tapping stopped instantly, followed shortly after by the sound of approaching footsteps. But, when he opened the door, he only went so far as to be able to peep at her through a narrow gap. By the light of the hallway, she could make out the uncompromising scowl on his face, but he at least glanced down at her offerings of peace, quickly cooling on the trolley.
"Quick, or it will get cold," she chivvied him along.
A reluctant smile preceded the door being opened to admit her.
"Thanks, Ros," he said, stepping aside and helping himself to a toastie as she passed.
Quick to move the peace process along, she hauled the trolley over to his small work station and pulled up a spare chair. A piece of paper with a sequence of numbers, lit up under the desk lamp, caught her eye.
"You eat, I'll decrypt this, if you want?" she offered.
He still had his mouth full as he sat beside her at the desk. Gulping it down hurriedly, he shook his head and frowned malignantly at the sheet.
"It came from Connie about an hour ago," he explained, putting down the rest of his sandwich. "I've given up trying to decrypt it. She's using the wrong codes, I think. And it was broadcast on a different station to ours. The frequency was all wrong."
"Then how did you get it?" she asked, picking up the paper and glancing down the list of numbers. "It was probably meant for someone else."
"After our, er, disagreement, I knocked the radio over and it must have pushed the dial up to the next station. It was definitely Connie, though. Some guy replied to her. Whatever the order was, he replied with the phonetic alphabet: 'confirmed'".
Glancing up from the page in her hands, Ros noted that Lucas didn't look too bothered by it. After all, he knew Connie's voice, he knew it was coming from Thames House. Despite his newly raised curiosity, he simply finished off his supper and poured them both strong tea.
She studied the numbers again, noting matching pairs and the jumps in the gaps between their numerical orders. 33. 27. 36. 36. She drew a line under the two thirty-sixes. 45. 54. 12. 15. 54. Again, the same number occurring twice, close together. 36. 63. 9. 3. 57. 42. 45. 54. 60. 24. Nine and then three. Whatever the codes, Ros noted that the letter value of each number was still working in multiples of three. Once again, Ros picked up the pen she found and began rearranging the cypher into a new order.
Meanwhile, Lucas was still talking to her.
"That pen drive we found at the scene," he was telling her, as she only half-listened. "It wasn't Mace's. It must have been one of the men he was with – one of the suspects. A lot of it's in Greek so we'll need it translated. By the way, what did you say that Analyst's name was, again?"
"Huh?" she asked, suddenly looking up. "Do you mean Ruth Evershed, the one Mace framed?"
Lucas's expression darkened again, as he pulled over his laptop for her to see. He clicked on one of the minimised windows along the bottom tool bar, opening it up again. Ros looked at it, the code paper slipping off her lap, instantly forgotten. She leaned in closer, giving him a delicate nudge out of her way, scarcely believing what she was seeing.
"Is that her?" asked Lucas.
There was a picture of Ruth climbing out of a car in front of a nice house; another showed her leaving a hospital in a busy city centre. Underneath, her address was given as a district in Polis, complete with telephone numbers for her home and work.
Ros nodded. "That's her. Hand me your phone, we need to warn her."
There was no time to think of a backstory, to pretend to be anyone other than who she was. God knows what she was going to say to her, but it had to be done. She dialled the number with a trembling hand, then the phone rang and rang until a man's pre-recorded voice sounded on the answering machine. Deciding that the matter was a little too sensitive to be left as a message on a machine, Ros hung up with a muttered curse.
"Do you think we should tell Harry?" asked Lucas, peering at her tentatively.
Ros pondered that for a minute. That house looked nice, if indeed it was Ruth's. Much nicer than anything she had in London. Then, the man's voice on the answering machine, a lover or husband? It couldn't be ruled out, Ruth had been gone long enough.
"No," replied Ros. "If Ruth's built a new life out here, I don't want to be the one to tear it up again. We'll speak with her first; let her make the decision. You keep digging through that memory stick and I'll crack this code."
The shock of Ruth Evershed's sudden appearance had driven the code from her mind, and Ros found herself having to look at it all over again. She had almost memorised the numbers by the time she realised that the cypher had simply been reversed. She took the pen and worked out the value for herself, while Lucas continued searching through the files on the memory stick. She smiled as the first legible word formed itself from the cypher, snuffing out her surge of triumph in the space of a heartbeat. The unbroken sentence formed into four separate words.
Feeling faintly sick, she checked it again. But she knew the result was accurate. To use the wrong numbers and wrong cypher, and still get this result would be a coincidence of the highest order. She folded the result before Lucas could accidentally see it, and tucked it away in her back pocket as she went to get some headspace at the opposite end of the room. Her heart was fluttering, two shocks tailing each other was having the cumulative effect of knocking her clean out of her happy equilibrium.
Lucas, noticing her sudden silence, looked at her from over his shoulder. "Are you alright?"
She forced herself to smile and gave a nod. "Fine. Lucas, how sure are you that this message came from Connie?"
"You don't look fine. You're sort of pale and clammy," he observed, brow creasing. "And yeah, it was definitely Connie. I recognised her voice."
Lucas stopped what he was doing and turned his chair around to face her. She could tell his innate sense of impending bad news was firing on all cylinders. Spinning out the suspense would only make it worse and, besides, she thought he probably had enough of being lied to – even if the silver-tongued liars had his best interests at heart.
"Connie issued a kill order," she explained. "Against you, Lucas."
For a long moment, neither of them said anything. Lucas remained seated, looking back at her as though the information simply hadn't registered. So Ros took the lead.
"Who was that man?" she asked, walking back over to him with a renewed sense of purpose. "Rack your brains for me, who was it? Age? Tone? Anything at all you can remember?"
Lucas's face crumpled, as though he was failing a test. Giving his head a shake, he got up and buried his face in his hands. "I just don't know," he replied, sounding desperate. "He was older. Much older than us. A gruff voice. Not smooth, like Harry's. Real grizzled sounding. It wasn't Mace; I would remember him. He didn't sound like a pompous ass, so not Jools Siviter either-"
He cut himself off, frozen midway between sitting down again when he turned white. For a moment, Ros allowed herself to hope that he had suddenly remembered a vital piece of information that would lead to the big reveal and save the world. But, when he did speak again, it was only to inform her that he was going to vomit. Which he did, not two minutes after bolting from the dormitory and with great gusto.
While he was gone, Ros thought back to their last day on the Grid. Connie virtually smothering Lucas with kindness, when all she wanted was information, wringing him dry like an old flannel and now tossing him casually aside. Their station had been sabotaged from the moment they arrived, and was now worse than useless, it was a liability. Feeling numb with shock, she found herself moving towards the door, out to her own rooms where she had a spare, clean mobile phone that could be ditched after its first use.
Harry had got as far as putting his coat on and taking one more step, to within touching distance of the pods, before the phone in his office rang. He winced against the noise, feeling his whole body sag in defeat. The Grid was almost empty; only Malcolm remained and he knew he'd say nothing if he decided to just ignore that call. But, as their eyes met across the Grid, Malcolm raised a brow. "Remember Harry, it's for Queen and Country."
"Queen and Country," Harry muttered darkly as he trudged back to his office.
The small hope that the caller had already rung off by the time he declared his name died quickly. But, to salve his wounds, it was Ros, at last.
"Ros, we've not heard from you in days-"
He found himself cut off by a rapid explanation of what had been happening. Mace going missing in suspicious circumstances; opaque clues; then, a kill order issued against Lucas in an intercepted message. By the time Ros drew breath, Harry was almost in a dead faint. His hands shook violently as he knocked on the window to get Malcolm's attention, waving him over. He reached for the nearest chair and almost fell into it.
"Ros, Ros!" he cut in on the conversation. "Slow down, and tell me again, what happened? When did this message arrive?"
As Malcolm entered the Office, Harry jabbed the speaker button so the other man could listen in to the latest turn of events. Malcolm kept his wits about him, scribbling down notes on the nearest pad behind Harry's desk. Times, dates, details of the message and a description of the mystery man's voice.
"I think it goes without saying that we issued no kill order against Lucas," Harry stated. "But we cannot countermand it. You need to get out of there, whoever is acting out the order will already be on their way. Drop everything, grab whatever you need and get to the nearest British Army base."
"And Ros," Malcolm called out, raising his voice so the speaker phone could pick him up. "Take the radio, leave it on the same frequency and record every message you get on it, in case our man tries to get back in touch with Connie."
Ros confirmed the order and relayed it to Lucas, who they could just hear in the distant background.
"Harry, apprehend Connie immediately. You know I know why," she said.
Malcolm was already on his feet and out of the door; they would have her brought in immediately. With Malcolm gone, Harry jabbed again at the speaker button, making their conversation private once more.
"Ros, tell Lucas I'm arranging for you both to be on the first possible flight home-"
"Wait! Before you do that, there's something else I need you to know. But first, tell me honestly, why is Connie issuing a kill order against Lucas?" she asked, brisk and business like once more. "Is it to do with Sugar Horse?"
Harry gripped the telephone receiver in one hand, knuckles whitening as he tried to stop his trembling. With his free hand, he kneaded the bridge of his nose, dispelling the tension gathering fast. His thoughts were in a melee, in which each fought the other in a joust to the death.
"Ros, please understand, I can't tell you what Sugar Horse is over the phone," he eventually said. "But, it is real. It has been compromised. I think we might have found the leak."
Even admitting it aloud didn't make it seem real, to him. He had seen more than one worm turn, before. But nothing could ever quite prepare a man for the next betrayal; once you trusted someone, the barriers were gone and the soul was exposed. The very nature of trust meant that there was no protection from the betrayal that followed. He couldn't dwell on Connie's apparent betrayal, or delay his acceptance of the barren facts. All he could do was act before the lives of two of his most highly valued agents were placed in any further danger. The time for maudlin lamentation would come later.
On the other end of the line, he heard Ros taking a deep breath, calming herself down.
"I need to speak to Lucas," he said.
"Sure," she replied.
A muffled crackling sounded over the line as the phone changed hands; seconds later, a tremulous sounding Lucas greeted him.
"I know it was her, Harry," he said, jumping ahead in a conversation he clearly expected to turn against him.
"She's the only one who's been manning the radio, Lucas," he answered. "There's no one else it could have been."
"Oh!" he sounded pleasantly surprised.
It saddened Harry that he had clearly expected to be disbelieved, or doubted. A fact made worse by what he needed to ask Lucas to do next.
"Is there anything else at all you can remember from the Sugar Horse interrogations?" he asked. "I know it's a big ask, Lucas. But I need you to go back there, to try to remember any small detail, even if it seems insignificant. Call me, regardless of time, the moment anything comes back to you."
His request, met with silence, even made him feel sick. So soon after his return, Lucas was being asked to relive unimaginable torture, all without even a debriefing for emotional backup.
"You know what they were doing to me at the time," Lucas said, his tone once again subdued. Then he sighed, resigning himself to what must be done. "But I'll do it, Harry."
"If you do this, we can close this case for good and you can move on," Harry explained, putting the best possible spin on things. "Now, you need to get out of there. But, before you leave, set up a motion detector on a security camera and leave it running. Malcolm will conduct surveillance from here. We need to get a look at your would-be assassins."
"Sure. I'd love to get a look at my fan club too, as it happens," he replied, managing to inject a little humour into proceedings. The first sign he was recovering his equilibrium. "See you, Harry."
Harry was about to hang up, when Ros's voice snapped him back to attention. The shock of Connie's betrayal had made him forget that she had yet more merry tidings for him.
"Harry, I wasn't going to say anything, but there's something you need to know before you make any decisions about extracting us," she said.
Harry leaned back in his chair, as close to lying down as he could get. If this night got any worse, he wanted to be in the most comfortable position possible for the heart attack that might well follow.
"Just tell me, Ros. Rip off the band aid."
"We recovered a memory stick from the scene of Mace's abduction," she explained. "On it, we found pictures of Ruth. She's here, Harry. We think they're going after her, next."
Stunned, Harry's heart palpitated painfully in his chest. He caught his emotional free-fall just before it plunged off a cliff-edge. Now that the situation had turned personal, his cold stoicism rebuilt itself with renewed fortification as the storm whipped up around it.
"Where is she, Ros? Have you spoken to her? I need to know."
"I've been calling her home number, down in Polis, but there's no answer," Ros replied. "She works in a Hospital, so I called them on the off-chance that she's working a night shift. They can't tell me anything, it's confidential."
"Right, first get yourselves to safety for the rest of the night," he instructed. "First thing tomorrow, leave for Polis and make sure Ruth is aware of the situation…" his voice trailed off for a minute. "If you see her, tell her…" again, he faltered.
He remembered what she said to him the last time they saw each other: "leave it as something that was never said. Something wonderful, that was never said." He found that, even now, he couldn't break his oft-unspoken word to her. Nor was this the time to dwell on what might have been, now was the time to make sure she was safe from the past.
"Harry," Ros's voice was uncharacteristically soft on the other end of the phone. "We won't let anything bad happen to her. You have my word."
"Thank you, Ros," he replied. "Let me know when you've seen her."
He hung up the phone and let his mind drift for a minute, back down the Thames when he saw her last. The memory rears up from the back of his mind, that same place where all the painful, tangled affairs of the heart were kept in permanent lock down. But even in the emotional fog, logic rears its pretty little head. It was too coincidental. Ruth was the reason behind the Op, and the Op had led him back to her. He almost reached for the flight schedules, before he remembered Connie. And now, thinking logically, he sensed that someone, somewhere, was being led into a trap.
Ruth paused in the driveway of the house she shared with George, and turned to wave goodbye to their friend. The lift home had spared her a second long journey by bus, followed by a hike up a steep hill. It was already late, the hue of the skies deepening to indigo as the day drew to a close. She picked up her bag as soon as the car vanished down the lip of the hill, and made for the front door. After digging her keys out of her handbag, she unlocked the door and almost fell over the threshold. However, the flashing light on her answer machine drew her attention and she went to get the good news.
"You have twenty-three missed calls," a woman's synthetic voice informed her. "Message one, today at 20.00 hours."
All those missed calls in four hours? Ruth frowned at the machine as the message began. Two seconds of silence before the caller realised the machine had kicked in, a female cursing quietly in the background before terminating the call. There followed another twenty-two dead calls. After the last message played out in silence, she remained frozen in the doorway, looking at the answer machine as though it might explode.
After another minute had elapsed, the living room caught her eye. The hard drive had been removed from her computer, the slot in the tower was empty with the Ide cable left hanging out. Whoever had been here hadn't even tried to cover their tracks, or make it look like an authentic burglary. She set down her handbag and left her travel bag by the door, in case she needed to make a run for it sometime in the next few minutes. She also had another bag, packed with emergency supplies that she kept under her bed at all times, so she made her way into the bedroom to fetch it. While there, she used the stump of an old eyeliner pencil to leave an emergency note to George:
"If I'm not here when you get back, call this number and say it's about Lady Lazarus."
She left the note, along with the number, in his empty sock-drawer, rolled up inside one of her own stockings. It would catch his eye in there, and he would look at it. Or, so she hoped. There was nothing missing in the bedroom. Any doubts she had about this being a normal robbery were banished by the presence of several items of jewellery, untouched and on open display on the dresser. Nervously, she crossed the room to the window and twitched the closed curtains apart. If the house was being watched, they would already know she was in, but her twinging fear wouldn't permit her to abandon basic caution and switch on any lights.
Outside, down the hill and partially obscured by trees, she could make out the roof of a car glinting in the moonlight. But, it could easily belong to a neighbour. She couldn't make out the model, and there was no one in sight. With nothing to see, she reached under her bed and got the bag she came for. She had kept it with her ever since she went on the run, in case of emergencies like this one.
As she reached the hallway, she heard the lock picks in the door and froze. Her heart beat raced as the door clicked open and footsteps, tapping softly on the lino in the hall. She swallowed hard and stepped silently into the bathroom. The window was much too small to climb through and there was nothing in there that would even pass for a weapon, beside the toilet brush. Even that would only work if her intruder just happened to have a pathological fear of germs. It was worth a try. She picked it up, extricating it silently from its plastic stand and holding it out in front of her like a sword, she advanced slowly on the living room.
She should have guessed that Mace had found her; that he was hiding out in Polis, biding his time until she returned. She paused at the corner, where the passage way between the bedrooms crossed onto the hallway. Straining her ear, she could hear one man just feet away. Mace. She drew a deep breath, blanked her mind and stepped out.
"Hold it right there and back the fuck off!" she yelled with as much force as she could muster, brandishing the toilet brush as boldly as any other Spook would brandish a loaded gun.
She fell silent as the man approached her, a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. "Hello, Ruth. Were you expecting somebody else? Oliver Mace, perhaps?" He chuckled, amused at his own deception.
She was the one who backed away; slow, cautious backwards steps until she hit the rear wall of the house. Her expression froze in a deep frown, her jaw almost hitting her chin. All the while, as casually as he liked, he followed her, in no hurry at all.
"But-but-" she stammered, her head spinning as furiously as a child's top. "I don't-"
The smirk got wider, revealing a neat row of nicotine stained teeth. "I know, I know, it's confusing. But all will be explained, Ruth. I promise. Put the dirty bog brush down and come with me."
A surge of indignation swept up inside her. "I'm not bloody well going anywhere with you-"
She got no further as a rag was pressed to her mouth, covering her nostrils and the over-powering sweetness of chloroform pulled her under a deep, black tide.