All politicians promise to build bridges where there are no rivers. Ruth searched her memory for the author of that sentiment. Khrushchev, she decided, recognising the irony of her conclusion. The sound of polite applause broke through her thoughts and a flurry of activity claimed her attention. The Press Room was crowded and close, and she was thankful she had found sanctuary near the back. Photographers rose from their seats, encroaching on the aisles, a forest of hands shot up into the air as reporters vied for questions. Towers preened with a look of smug satisfaction on his face, while Gavrik smiled, or what passed for a smile from the Russian, politicians doing what they do best; congratulating themselves. Hollow words from hollow men, saying everything and nothing. The world of Whitehall was no less murky a duplicitous than that of Thames House.
The wood panelling was unyielding against her back as she leant into it, hoping she could somehow fade into the veneer. She was exhausted. Last night after work, she had returned to Malcolm's lair, where they had bounced ideas off one another, plotting, feeling wonderfully like old times. She closed her eyes and suppressed a yawn, wondering if anyone would notice if she left. Of course, she couldn't, her absence would draw suspicion. Soon it would be over, one way or the other. She surreptitiously glanced down at her phone. Nothing. Hoping that was a good sign, she bit her lip and raised her gaze, her eyes spotting the familiar head of carmine coloured hair weaving towards her. Much to Ruth's dismay, the woman came to a stop beside her and then turned to look out over the crowded room.
"Where is Harry?" asked Elena, a calculated note of indifference to her voice.
Ruth looked at the woman, unable to read her face, wondering if the Russian's words held a trap. "On his way to America, I should think."
Elena's eyes skimmed the room. "Such a shame, the incident with James Coaver." Her tone was casual as if they were talking about the weather rather than the incarceration of an ex-lover. "But Harry was always impetuous. Men of passion usually are."
It took all of Ruth's self-control not to walk away from the whole charade. She mustered a smile and what she hoped was a look of congeniality. "Do you require assistance with anything, Mrs Gavrik?"
"Always thinking of others, aren't you Ruth? We must be careful not sacrifice too much of ourselves for others."
Ruth looked out over the crowd. There was no way Elena could have any idea what was happening. Or could she?
"Will we see you tonight?" Elena asked. "Ilya hates the ballet, but I love it."
Ruth glanced sideways at the woman; lithe, elegant, impeccably dressed, a veritable ballerina compared to her own understated demeanour. "I'm sure to be working in some capacity."
"It is one of my favourites. Giselle - such a tragic story. Betrayed by a man, only to die of a broken heart. But we do not die, do we? We must live with our broken hearts. And unlike ballet, there is no Second Act to take revenge on those who betrayed us. Ah, there is Ilya, I must go to him."
Ruth watched as the older woman walked away. She expelled a long breath, realising that she had been holding it during Elena's speech. What more could she have gained besides one last twist of the knife? Double agent, double meaning. The Russian's words echoed in Ruth's head, like the taunt of player who gloats over their win before the game is done. Broken hearts and revenge. She stored the information in the back of her mind and looked about the crowd for Towers. Seeing him across the room, she moved to walk towards him. A voice spoke, near her shoulder and alarmingly close to her ear.
"So lovely to see you again, Miss Evershed."
Ruth froze. Her heart stopped in her throat. That voice. It couldn't be. She slowly turned around, her eyes landing on the last person she ever expected, indeed ever wanted to see in her lifetime.
"Mr Mace," she said quietly, a stomach churning disbelief washing over her.
"You look like you've seen a ghost." He raised an eyebrow, speaking in his familiar laconic manner; his smile failing to reach is eyes. "I know I have."
He was older and thinner but his repulsive aura had not changed. Her heart started again at ten times the normal speed. She swayed as she felt the floor shift beneath her feet, the walls moving in closer, a cold sweat broke out on the back of her neck. She schooled her face to remain neutral. She had seen Harry do it enough times - she needed only to relax her mouth muscles, keep her eyes unblinking.
"I heard that you had retired," she replied in a voice she hoped did not belie her panic.
"Ah, yes. If only that were true," he said, his eyes running over Ruth as if she were an object in his path. "But we both know the fate of disgraced public servants. The Diplomatic corps."
Ruth looked away, her stomach roiling. She felt exposed and defenceless. This is what Harry had meant by fighting one foe only to turn around and find another, this one ostensibly on their side. Mace watched her as if he were reading her thoughts, the corners of his mouth turning faintly upward, taking pleasure in her discomfort. The air between them was thick, fraught with an undercurrent of bile. Ruth had no idea whether to stay or flee. Luckily, Towers appeared, dissipating the tension.
"Thank goodness that piece of pageantry is over." He saw that Ruth was not alone. "Ah, Oliver, wonderful to see you. Have you met Miss Evershed?
"Yes, we're old acquaintances," Mace responded.
"Good. Excellent. Ruth is my Security Adviser so you're bound to be in close contact." Towers turned to Ruth. "Oliver is going to oversee Section D until we figure out what to do with it."
"What do you mean?" Ruth sputtered, trying to keep the edge of alarm from her voice. "Erin proved a very capable Section Head in Harry's absence."
"This is more than an absence, Ruth, he's gone. After everything that has happened, there is going to be a complete restructuring. More governmental oversight. We allowed Harry to enforce his own agenda for far too long. And look where that's gotten us."
"Yes, Harry has broken too many toys. We must make sure to take care of the ones that are left." Mace looked at Ruth, a thin smile stretching across his lizard-like countenance.
The effort to stay calm was becoming increasingly difficult. She was certain she had planned for every contingency, but she could never have anticipated this one. Her mind raced on. Somewhere, intelligence had been lost and this man's movements had flown under the radar. What was the connection? Why had Mace resurfaced the moment Harry was out of the picture?
"Shall we head back?" asked Towers. "Right the ship, as it were."
Towers and Mace turned and walked away, leaving Ruth to stand in stunned silence. She gathered her wits and found her phone; her fingers trembled, searching for a contact. From force of habit, she had pulled up Harry's number. She looked down at the icon and for the first time, the implication sank in that he was not at the other end of that line. She was in this alone. She couldn't help but feel hived off from the Section expressly for that purpose. She rallied her thoughts, inputting the number she knew she could trust. Leaning her head against the polished panels of the wall, she shielded her conversation from view.
"I need you to find out where Oliver Mace has been over the past two years." She closed her eyes, listening to Malcolm's reaction as he mirrored her own dismay and disgust. "Yes, I know. I just ran into him." Ruth paused, listening to Malcolm's outrage. "He's taking over the Section. Harry's gone, Mace is back. There are no coincidences in this business."
She rang off and held the phone against her chest, feeling the beat of her still pounding heart. Instead of her earlier sense of impending freedom, she felt shackled by this new chain of events. She struggled between two minds, contemplating what she should do. It would be disastrous if Harry got wind of this development and it would be equally disastrous if she did nothing about it.
...
Dark, airless, cramped. For one brief moment, Harry panicked, although he would never admit it. He focused on his breathing, inhaling deeply, letting it out in a slow release, the initial dread of the confined space dissipating with each exhale. He had come to find himself in the boot of a car. Again. Having experienced this too many times to count, he focused his attention on reining in his thoughts, that being the one thing he could control.
They had taken his tie and his belt but left him with his shoelaces. They had searched him for tracking devices but had not looked at his fillings. His were hands tied in the front instead of behind. He had been taken in by rank amateurs. With this realization, the seed that Ruth had planted in his mind germinated and grew to the forefront of his consciousness. What had he accomplished by handing himself over to people? Had he saved the nation? Averted catastrophe? Was he working on some misguided notion, meting out his own penance for all the times he had taken justice into his hands, after Adam, after Ros.
Shit.
He kicked at the door of the boot in frustration, only to be met with a shooting pain radiating through his heel and up his calf. His knee ached and the muscle in his calf twitched. He flexed his jaw where he had been hit, still feeling a dull throb. He was getting too old for this. He should be gardening, or golfing, or...
He lost hold of his thoughts and let them wander to Ruth – her lips, her skin, her breasts. He bit the inside of his cheek. She had once told him she didn't deserve a relationship, didn't deserve happiness after what she had done. At the time, he couldn't understand why she would deny herself the comfort, turn her back on them and now he realised that he was doing exactly the same thing. Damn. When had he become so bloody self-reflective? It had started with her. It always came back to her. He was overcome by a sense of dread as he realised the most heinous torture they could devise would be to leave him alone in a room with his thoughts.
A wave of nausea rolled over him as the car jostled about and he concluded they were no longer on the main motorway. He felt the engine change gears as the car slowed down and rolled to a stop. They were in the middle of nowhere. What the hell was going on? The bottom dropped out of his stomach as he contemplated what he would do with a hostile operative if he were far enough away from civilization. The car rocked as doors slammed shut. Faint voices, one of them a woman's. For a moment, he dared to think it was Ruth, but then he heard the accent. American.
"We've got an order transferring him to our custody." It was the woman.
"I'm going to have to call this in."
"You can try, there's no reception. Unless you're on the friends and family plan."
"Why are we doing the handoff out here?"
"You think the British Government is going to let their Head of Counter Terrorism go without a fight?" the woman asked. "They give him to us, it makes it look good politically, and then they steal him back."
Harry was unable to hear the man's rebuttal, the agent's voice diminished against the authority of the woman.
The woman spoke again. "Did you check him for trackers?"
"Yeah."
Harry smiled to himself. Liar.
"We've got Intel that they've set up an ambush further along this route. Orders are, we take him and you carry on as a decoy. Look, just hand him over and make your life easier."
There was no answer. As the silence stretched on, Harry's mind spun in circles trying to figure out what was transpiring. He heard the latch unlock and braced himself as the door of the boot opened wide. He squinted into the harsh sunlight, unable to see the faces that stood over him.
"You locked him in the trunk?" the woman drawled. "Classy,"
"He killed a Deputy Director," retorted the agent.
"Look at him. He's an old man."
Harry gave an internal wince.
With a great deal of stiffness, he half climbed, half fell out of the back of the car. An arm reached out to support him. He looked up and into the face of a rather attractive looking blonde woman with intense blue eyes. The eyes looked back at him, cool, unflinching. Good God, it was Christine Dale. Harry made sure the recognition didn't read on his face. He didn't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing as far as developments were concerned. He looked past her and saw a black sedan idling near a clump of trees.
The young agent addressed Christine. "Is it just the two of you?"
Levelling her gaze at the agent, she replied, "Unlike some people, I don't need back up."
Harry suppressed a smile. He had always admired this woman's brashness.
She grabbed Harry's arm and ushered him over to the waiting car. He stumbled, his knee buckling from use after the cramped interior of the boot, no doubt emphasising the fact that he was, indeed, an old man. Her grip tightened on his arm. They reached the car and she opened the door, unceremoniously shoving him into the back seat. She settled herself in the front seat and the car kicked into gear before she had the door fully closed.
Harry sat back, closing his eyes, letting his weary bones sink into the softness of the interior. "Miss Dale, I didn't know you were back working for Uncle Sam."
"She's not. She's working for me."
That voice. He thought he would never hear it again. His eyes flew open. He met the speakers gaze in the rear-view mirror and then exhaled what must have been the most thankful sigh of his life. "Tom. Thank God, it's you." Harry took a moment to collect his breath. "This is all Ruth's doing, isn't it?"
Tom smiled enigmatically. "I'm not at liberty to discuss my employer."
"Employer? Is she paying you for this? I didn't know you were a mercenary."
"I'm a businessman, Harry."
"Where are we going?"
"That's classified." Tom glanced at Harry in the mirror. He saw the older man narrow his eyes and purse his lips. "Hard isn't it? Not being the one in charge."
Harry let the question hang unanswered, acutely aware that over the past forty-eight hours he had not made one decision concerning his own well fair, and yes it was it was bloody annoying. For the time being it did not matter, he had escaped the jaws of American justice and for that he was thankful. He sat back looking at the profile of his former agent.
"You have been sorely missed, Tom."
"I missed you too, Harry. Once I stopped hating you."
Christine spoke as she pulled out her mobile. "I don't know about those new agents. They didn't even try to get a signal."
She keyed in the numbers and made a call, speaking into the phone. "It's me. Yep, it's done."
Harry attention turned to the phone conversation. "Is that Ruth? Let me speak to her. Give it to me." He stretched forward, attempting to reach through the space between the front seats to grab the phone, his movements hampered by his bound hands. "Blasted things!" he muttered.
Christine swatted him away with her free hand. "Yes, she's one her way. Will do. Bye." She gave Harry one last push into the back seat and looked over at Tom. "Jeez, was he this demanding when you worked for him?"
She reached into the glove box and pulled out a small grey device. Opening the back of her phone she took out the SIM card and placed it in the device, and waited while the machine shredded it. She smiled, looking back at Harry. "Whatever did you do before SIM cards and burner phones?"
"Smoke signals," Harry replied dryly.
Tom stepped on the gas, causing Harry to fall back into his seat and the car sped off into the unknown.
...
The pile of paper on the edge of his desk grew taller each time he turned away. Callum gave the stack an angry look. Apparently, someone had not received the memo that they were now a paperless society. Feeling as if he were the only one left on the Grid, he ran his hands over his tired face. At this rate, he would not see the light of day until next Tuesday. The thought made his already aching head even heavier.
He missed Ruth. He missed her calming presence and quiet efficiency, but more importantly, her wealth of intellectual capital. The woman knew everything. He was every bit as capable as she was of collating the threat assessments; he just wasn't as proficient. He had concluded that her ability to do the job had bordered on the supernatural.
He turned to his computer, hoping to find solace in the world of electrical data, but it only served to remind him how much he missed Tariq. He still regretted his flippant treatment of the young techie and even though he had tracked down the party responsible for his death, he felt he had not done enough.
His eyes hovered on the screen, his attention caught by a line.
"Hello, what have we here," he murmured to himself.
He hit the print button, feeling a certain satisfaction in adding his own contribution to the growing mound paper waste and fired off an email request to one of the junior analysts. He would have to run this information by Erin. He looked up to see the woman in question talking on the phone in Harry's office. When they had arrived from Six, the glass office had suited her, but now when he looked at it, he only saw it as Harry's domain. He could see her shoulders tensing, rising up to her ears, hear her voice through the glass, sharp and loud. Callum rubbed his forehead and reached towards his drawer, pulling out a small plastic bottle. He shook it and realised it was empty. There wasn't enough medication in the world to ease his slowly evolving headache.
He heard the click of Erin's heels as she walked towards him.
"He's gone!"
"Who?"
"Harry."
"What?" Callum looked at Erin as if she had sprung two heads.
"The CIA lost him. They handed him off to a man and a woman claiming to be American agents. And they're blaming us."
"I'd like to point out that if we were looking after him we wouldn't have lost him."
Erin closed her eyes and inhaled a long breath in an effort not to take her anger out on Callum. "No, I mean they think we staged the ambush."
"My American accent is rubbish."
"Callum this is serious."
"I say good for Harry. Sly old dog."
"Towers and the DG want us to find him. Not to mention the Americans."
"If we find him do we get to keep him?"
Erin glared at him. "I told Towers that we were stretched to the limit as it is. He would have to choose between us finding Harry or using our resources on increased security at the Gala this evening. After the bombing incident the other day, he chose security."
"Good choice."
The phone rang and Callum jumped at the sound. He picked up the receiver without looking at the display. "Ruth!" he said, surprised. He looked at Erin and pointed at the phone, mouthing, "It's Ruth."
"Ask her if she knows where Harry is."
Callum stopped for a moment to look at Erin, silently shaking his head in disbelief. Did she really think Ruth was going to rat out Harry? Surely, she must have noticed that those two had some sort of spy love affair going on, so secret that at times neither Harry nor Ruth even knew about it. Then again, Ruth did squeal to Towers about the kidnapping, but only after she had pulled rank on him. He returned to listening to the voice on the other end. He placed his hand over the mouthpiece and spoke to Erin.
"She wants me at the Home Office to vet the invitees for the Gala."
"You can do that here," Erin countered as she sat on the edge of his desk, rubbing her temple with her hand.
Callum was sorry he had no medication to offer her. He returned his attention to the phone, once again listening and relaying the conversation back to Erin. "Ruth says she wants to do a walkthrough of the theatre."
"Why? She's the Security Adviser, she suppose to leave the legwork to us."
Callum shrugged his shoulders.
"Fine, since you were tasked to do that anyway."
"Mom says I can come out and play," he told Ruth. He paused and kept his eyes down as he listened to another request. This time, he did not explain it to Erin. "Okay," he acquiesced, feeling at this point he could not refuse Ruth anything. He hung up the phone.
"I'll send Dimitri over when he's done," Erin said.
"Where is he?"
"He to me he had to deliver a package."
They suspended their conversation when a junior analyst walked up to the desk holding a piece of paper out for Callum. He took the paper from the young woman's hand, making sure to give her a smile though he couldn't remember her name. He would have to rectify that. With skeleton staff, he needed all the help he could get. He glanced down at the sheet. "Ah yes, this."
"What is it?" asked Erin.
"There's been some chatter. It seems that not everyone is as enamoured with the Russians as we are. Comments about selling out our sovereignty, isn't it bad enough our own government spies on us without sharing it with someone else, and this." He turned to the computer and pulled up a website. "A call for a demonstration at the Gala this evening, protesting Russia's aggression and the complicity of the West."
"Great, that's just what we need. We're going to have to pull resources from another section. Liaise with the Met. Find out how serious these people are. Let's hope they exercise their right to peaceful demonstration."
She took a step to leave but stopped and turned, narrowing her eyes at Callum. "Check in with me when you're done with Ruth, I want to know what she's up to."
"What do you mean?"
"Someone was behind Harry's escape."
"Not Ruth!"
"She broke into the American Embassy," Erin pointed out.
"To be fair she didn't break in, she was there on business and happened to get lost. In the Archives."
Erin massaged her temple. "At this point is there any law we haven't broken?" She expelled a long breath. "I need you back here as soon as possible with your assessment of the theatre. They're sending over someone from the brass to realign our priorities. I'm going up to the DG now."
"Yes, ma'am."
Callum watched as Erin walked away. Opening up a file, he pretended to be engrossed in its contents, covertly watching to see if Erin had gone back to Harry's office. Instead of going into the office, she walked towards the pods and headed out. He closed the file folder and took a deep breath. Nodding to himself, he rose from his chair, deciding to take the folder along with him as a cover. He thought his best bet was to walk straight into Harry's office as if he had every right to be there. He quickly entered the office and crossed over to the white safe sitting on the far side of Harry's desk. For some reason, he felt more nervous than if he had been breaking into a corporate office, his senses heightened, certain that at any moment Harry was going to walk in and chew him out. He took another deep breath. Remembering the combination Ruth had given him, he punched the numbers into the keypad. Thankfully, it opened without activating any bells or sirens. He rifled through the contents and found what he was looking for, placing the small document inside his jacket. He fished his phone from his pocket.
"Yes, I've got it. I'll be right there."
He headed towards the pods, whistling, a spring in his step, his headache having completely disappeared.