The light from the chandelier cast a warm glow over the room, cocooning the inhabitants from the darkness outside. A red velvet cordon was strung across the entranceway, insulating them from the ordinary patrons of the theatre. Ruth observed the crowd on the other side of the rope, milling about, dressed in varying degrees of what passed for formal wear, enjoying their drinks, chatting, laughing. They were the free ones; she was the one who was corralled, trapped in a pen of politicos and bureaucrats. Her eyes wandered up to the chandelier and she wondered at the weight of the dangling prisms and how safely it was attached to the ceiling. Her brow furrowed. At what point in her life had she started to view objects of beauty as possible weapons for assassins?

The notes of a piano tinkled in the background while a junior minister stood before her, holding her captive with his conversation. His voice was overly serious and ingratiating, obviously thinking she wielded far greater power than she did. She sipped on her glass of white wine, too sweet for her taste and gave herself over to imagining that she was having a night out. She closed her eyes and pictured Harry walking up to her, dressed in his tuxedo, the palm of his hand pressing into the small of her back as he leant over to whisper in her ear. A tart comment about the drudgery of the assembled personages or something more personal, seductive, loaded with implication, the thought caused a secret smile to play on her lips. She opened her eyes, the smile dropping from her lips as the junior minister, oblivious to her salacious musings, continued to drone on. A flame of anger flickered in her that she was here talking to this man rather than Harry. She sighed and resigned herself to the fact that they would never have their night out. She focused her attention on the young man and felt a moment of panic when she realised she couldn't remember his name. It was very disconcerting, her memory was razor sharp, she needed every advantage tonight; she would have to stop thinking about Harry.

She took another sip of the wine and quickly schooled herself not to indulge; she needed to keep her wits about her. Glancing around the reception area, she picked out the camera positions, though she was well aware that they did not need eyes on her. The technology implanted in the sleeve of her dress allowed Malcolm to track her every move, listen to her voice, monitor her heartbeat. She wondered if he had picked up the quickening of her pulse when she had thought about Harry. The dress was a simple black affair, very modest, covering all the essential areas, although it was more form fitting that she would have liked. She felt exposed without the layer of her jacket for protection or the sturdiness of her boots. The ear devices were made of pearl studs and she had to stop herself from constantly adjusting them. She hated earrings; they pinched her lobes and tangled her hair. She had swept her hair up in a vain attempt to stop any strands from becoming twisted. There was a ring on her finger, a simple silver circle that could easily be mistaken for a wedding band except that she had chosen to wear it on her right hand. Like the earrings, she had to stop herself from fiddling with it, Malcolm having schooled her that constantly rotating the device would damage its intended function. She could see her reflection in the large floor to ceiling window and stopped, not recognising the image that looked back. If she didn't know it was her she would say the woman looked rather sophisticated. She decided to embrace that notion, the thought giving her a much-needed boost in morale for the task ahead.

Any delight Ruth could have possibly salvaged from the evening quickly evaporated at the appearance of the Gavriks. Sasha walked behind them, choosing to oversee security from the theatre as opposed to backstage. Raising her glass, she spoke into her sleeve, alerting Malcolm that the Russians had arrived. Her lips twitched as he chastised her for not using their code names. Her eyes found the Alphas; Erin and Dimitri. The Section Chief remained oblivious to Ruth, instead focusing her attention on the crowd. She was probably reporting the same information to Callum and if there was any other salient news, it would be relayed to her through Malcolm. The only voices in her ears were that of Tom and Zoe, the Echos, placed inside the theatre, away from the reception guests, lest some government official recognise them. She had a twinge of conscience that she had not informed Erin of the scope of their operation. She told herself she was making Erin's life easier, that the Section Chief need only deal with the threat to the Russians while she dealt with the Russian threat.

Ruth politely excused herself from the conversation and moved towards the Home Secretary in time to hear him address the Russian minister.

"Ah Gavrik," Towers greeted the man. "Not sure if you will have time for a drink before the show. Time is closing in on us."

"There is always time for a drink, William," Gavrik declared, taking two glasses from a passing waiter to illustrate his point. He handed one of the glasses over to Elena.

Seeing that the two men were engaged in conversation, Ruth manoeuvred herself closer to Elena. Sasha stood facing his mother, his back toward Ruth. She placed her right hand on his arm and softly said excuse me. Her hand lingered with more pressure than was strictly necessary, the ring brushing his sleeve. He looked into her eyes before he stepped away and she remembered his stinging accusation that she didn't care about him, that all she wanted was information.. Once again, her conscience sounded but she quickly shut it down. Conscience is a luxury, Harry would say. She moved to stand beside Elena.

"This reminds me of your welcome reception," Ruth observed. "A different place perhaps, but the same people."

"There is one absence," Elena responded, looking at Ruth with speculation, her eyes taking in the other woman's dress.

Ruth carried on. "I've had a message from backstage; the soloist would be honoured if you came to visit her at intermission."

"How wonderful," Elena answered drolly.

"I understand she once danced with the Kiselow Ballet." Ruth kept her face neutral; looking out over the guests, hoping the other woman would understand the coded meaning to her words; that the Kiselow Ballet had once been a ruse for a meeting with Harry.

"Ah yes, I believe you are right." Elena gave Ruth a thin smile. "I would be happy to meet with her."

A bell chimed, signalling ten minutes until the start of the performance. With an aristocratic self-assurance, Elena took one last sip of her drink and handed it to Ruth, walking away towards her husband. Clenching the stem of the glass, Ruth marshalled all her self-control not to hurtle the goblet after the Russian. Instead, she gave it to a passing waiter. She turned back hoping to find Towers but found herself looking straight at the chest of Oliver Mace.

"Miss Evershed, you look particularly enchanting this evening."

Ruth gave him a tight smile certain that Malcolm's instruments would record the speed of her escalated heartbeat. "We should find our seats," she said evasively, taking a step to move past him.

Mace shifted, blocking her path. "The buzzards are circling. The CIA want their laptop." He paused, his eyes raking over her dress as Elena's had, but with a completely different intent. "How long will Towers protect you?" He bent down to her ear and whispered. "Tell me where Harry is and I can make it all go away."

She looked at him blankly. "I have no idea where Harry is." It was the truth, for at that moment he could be in Biarritz for all she knew. "And I don't know anything about a laptop."

"Then you won't mind speaking with Americans tomorrow afternoon." He stepped away, motioning with his hand for her to walk ahead of him. "As you said, we should find our seats. It should prove to be quite a performance."

Ruth closed her eyes, quelling the sensation that a net was slowly tightening around her. "Oh well," she murmured into her glass, "Into the valley of death." Taking a large gulp of her drink, she set the glass down on a linen covered table and tried not to think of how she would hold up under CIA interrogation. She proceeded to walk in front of Mace, her back straight, head held high, showing no fear, but with the distinct feeling she was walking towards the gallows.

...

Removed from the glow of the theatre, the demonstrators huddled behind a makeshift barricade, crowding together to keep warm. Hidden away in the shadows of an alley, Harry stood with his hands in his pockets assessing the situation. There was something wrong with the protest but he couldn't put his finger on it. Why here? Why now? There had not been no other rumblings of public discontent before this. In amongst the placards of Russian aggression and human rights violations were slogans championing Moldovan sovereignty. Harry's mind toyed with the possibility of agent provocateurs. At any rate, the protest wasn't his main concern; he had every faith that Erin had things well in hand, having spied a dark van parked along the street. He needed to figure out a means of getting into the theatre. For a brief moment, he contemplated walking back to the van and browbeating whoever was inside to assign him clearance.

Security would be tight at the backstage entrance; he concluded his best bet was the front door, hidden in plain sight. He smiled to himself; if he was going to go that far why not step to the wicket and buy a ticket. He scanned the crowd of patrons waiting outside, a crush of people arriving at the last minute. As usual, there were stragglers, the ones with a penchant for nicotine, squeezing every second that was left to satiate their habit. He spotted a man and a woman, chatting animatedly and sharing a cigarette.

"Excuse," Harry said, approaching the couple as he held a cigarette. "I can't find my lighter. I wonder if I could..."

"Yeah, sure mate." The young man patted his coat looking for a lighter.

A crowd of people walked by pushing into Harry and he stumbled into the young man.

"So sorry," Harry apologised. "Wait a moment." He pulled a lighter out of his pocket. "Here it is, silly me."

"Right. Cheers mate," the young man responded congenially.

Harry smiled back. Nice boy; he almost felt bad for fleecing him. He quickly embedded himself into the crowd and walked away. He kept his head down; knowing there would be cameras everywhere and presented his ticket to the usher. He hoped his ordinary street clothes would cover his appearance for the moment. He walked into the lobby to the sound of bells, patrons walking briskly to their sections. He approached an usher, a pimply-faced lad.

"Could you tell me where my seat is?" Harry showed him the lifted ticket.

"Yes, Sir," the usher said while looking at the ticket. "It's up those stairs to the balcony."

"Nosebleeds, yes I know. I tried to upgrade but there was some sort of government thing going on."

"Yeah, a reception for a Russian Minister. They took the best seats on the Tier."

"Thank you." Harry smiled at the young man and walked towards the stairs, careful to avert his head. As he walked up the stairs, he could see the young man whose ticket he had liberated embroiled in a heated discussion with the door personal. Harry quickened his pace and the words he had said to Ruth rattled around in his head. He hadn't wanted to be remembered as rogue agent gone off-piste, but here he was alone, no backup, no plan, save for the burning instinct that Mace was here and he had to be stopped.

He turned the corner to the next level and stopped short. Across the landing, directly in front of his gaze stood Erin. Their eyes met, and they stared at each other in stunned silence. She raised her hand to her ear and he saw her lips move. He took a quick step back and pressed himself against the wall, shaking his head at the folly of hiding from one's own agents. In three swift steps, he found cover in another group of people and headed up to the balcony.

...

The air was close and stiflingly hot. Callum tried to stretch his arm but ended up banging into a monitor. He cursed and silently vowed that he would make it his mission to design a comfortable obo van. Malcolm looked over at him with a raised eyebrow. Callum smiled back apologetically.

"Guess you've spent a lot of hours in one of these haven't you?"

"Yes, I have. And it never gets any pleasanter."

Callum wasn't sure if he should be insulted or not. He turned back to the monitor, his gaze flicking over the screens. He felt rather Jekyll and Hyde over this whole operation. He was sitting at the connecting vertices of two universes, the conduit between the official Service operation and Ruth's clandestine one.

"Good Lord," Malcolm exclaimed. He pointed at the screen directing Callum's gaze. "Is that Harry?"

The figure was hard to discern, Callum never having seen Harry in anything but a suit. "Can you zoom in?" Callum asked, moving closer to the monitor. The image revealed the back of his former boss' head. "Shit."

The com crackled. "Control, this is Alpha One." It was Erin. "I think I may have spotted Papa Bear."

"Roger, Alpha One," Callum responded.

"Do you have a visual, Control."

Callum looked at Malcolm and mouthed, "What do we do?" Malcolm shook his head. "That's a negative, Alpha One." He waited for Erin's response, tapping nervously on the video equipment. He looked sideways and saw Malcolm crossing his fingers.

"Right," Erin said with an unmistakable air of annoyed disbelief. "I'm coming to you."

Callum ripped the headset off and tossed it onto the space in front of the monitors. "That's it, we're cooked."

"What will she do?" asked Malcolm.

"Well, she did refer to him as Papa Bear, so anyone on this channel would have no idea who she was talking about." Callum shrugged his shoulders. "That might be a good sign." He blew a frustrated breath through his lips "We have to tell Ruth."

"I suppose we do," conceded Malcolm.

"Better you than me."

Malcolm spoke into his headset. "Come in Decima."

"Why did you choose Decima?" asked Callum

"Roman goddess, one of the Fates. She measured out the length of one's life."

"Cheerful."

Malcolm leant toward Callum as if imparting a great secret. "Never underestimate the importance of call signs."

Callum's phone rang, diverting his attention and he left Malcolm to break the news to Ruth. As he listened, he ran his hand through his hair, a look of consternation on his face. He rang off and turned to the former officer.

"That was the Grid. We have a bomb threat."

"Oh my," Malcolm responded, unfazed by the announcement, "Do you have a source."

"They're sending us the information now."

There was a loud bang on the outside of the obo van; the noise Callum had been dreading since the start of the whole operation. Knowing there was nothing he could do bar starting the van and driving off, he opened the door. Erin unceremoniously hitched up her dress and climbed in with a look of complete rage on her face.

"Alright, what is going on?" She noticed Malcolm sitting beside Callum. "Who is this?" she demanded angrily.

"I'm Malcolm Wynne-Jones, Miss Watts. I'm a former technical officer with the section. I was brought in by Miss Evershed."

Erin glared at Callum, her expression echoing the warning she had given him earlier about Ruth. "Miss Evershed has no jurisdiction over the operation. Unsanctioned personnel cannot be in this vehicle. Your presence is a threat our mission."

"If I could explain-" Malcolm said mildly.

"No. The one who needs to do the explaining is him." She rounded on Callum. "What are you doing mixed up in this?"

"We tried to keep Harry away but Dimitri-"

"Dimitri?" Erin's voice hit a higher decibel. "He's involved in this too?" She gave Callum a look of complete disbelief. "I'm your Section Chief. Why would you go behind my back? This is the security of the nation we're dealing with not some schoolboy prank."

"Yes and I know and," Callum cleared his throat. "We didn't come to you because Ruth believes that Oliver Mace is somehow involved with the Russians and we wanted proof before we told you. We don't know how high this goes."

"Mace?" Erin asked incredulously. She looked back and forth between the two men, both of whom remained steadfast in their explanation.

"Listen, we're talking about Ruth," Callum justified, "a woman who is not known to exaggerate. And at this point, she's the least of our problems; we've got word of a bomb threat."

Erin took a deep breath through her teeth. "God that's all we need. We swept the building; if it's true, it's been brought in. How seriously do we take this?"

"That's the thing," Callum continued, "We don't know what's real and what's been fed to us by the Agency.

Erin gave him a confused look.

"A Russian organisation that disseminates misinformation on the web," Malcolm volunteered.

"Let's take it as real until we find otherwise," Erin concluded. "Liaise with the Met and see if they've set up a Gold Commander. Dimitri and I will cover inside. He should be in the theatre with Towers."

"What about the protestors?" asked Callum.

"We'll have to clear them out and assess an evacuation of the theatre." She looked back and forth between the two men. "Let me get this straight, Ruth is running her own operation, Harry who is a fugitive from the CIA is here, there's a bomb threat and we have no idea what's going on."

"That pretty much sums it up," Callum confirmed.

Erin nodded. Placing her hand on the door but stopped before she opened it, narrowing her eyes at Callum. "Is there anything else I should know?" Callum shook his head. "Keep me updated." She swung open the door and hopped out of the back of the van.

Callum turned to Malcolm and smiled. "I think that went rather well."

...

The house lights were still up as Harry entered the section. He moved down the stairs, looking for his seat. After the obligatory apologies to those already seated, he found his location. The dissonant notes of orchestral tuning filled the air, a sound that he usually relished as a prelude to an excellent performance. Tonight, the trill of the flutes and the thumping of the timpani only heightened his apprehension. All that was needed was for a gunshot to be coordinated with a cymbal crash.

To his left, two young women sat happily engaged in conversation. The woman beside him fiddled with an object in her lap, her free hand rising to tuck her short dark hair behind her ear. Harry closed his eyes, overcome with the image that it was Ruth sitting beside him. He let his mind go, imagining that it was her, smiling as she leant over to him, pointing out a line in the programme, her shoulder brushing his, her thigh fleetingly pressing against his, he would dip his head closer to listen, catching the intoxicating scent that was particular only to her. He quickly opened his eyes. Fool, he chastised; this is how operations are compromised. This is the sort of fantasising that got you in trouble in Berlin, he reminded himself. He glanced again at the woman beside him, concluding she looked nothing at all like Ruth. He noticed that the object in her lap was a pair of opera glasses.

"Pardon me," he said, interrupting their conversation. "I think my wife may have wandered into another section, I was wondering if I could borrow your glasses for a moment." He smiled, hoping that he still possessed enough charisma to persuade the woman as opposed to seeming like a predatory letch. To his amazement, she smiled back at him, handing over her glasses with a friendly "of course." Harry nodded graciously. Perhaps he still had a bit of the old charm left in him, only evident when he was not dealing with prats from Whitehall. He scanned the audience, lowering the binoculars to the mezzanine level and stopped when he spotted a head of red hair. Elena. He moved across the row; Gavrik, Towers, Mace and sat between the two men, Ruth. His heart constricted at the thought that she was so close. Had Erin informed her he was in the building? No, Ruth was part of the Home Office now, she wouldn't be on coms. He suppressed the urge to rush down there, pull her away from them, and run. It warred with an equally potent urge to wrap his hands around Mace's throat. He moved the glasses back to Mace and flinched as the man seemingly looked straight up at him. Impossible, he thought, Mace could not recognise him from this distant. He handed the glasses back to the young woman with a smile and sat back in his seat, contemplating his next move. He would bide his time until intermission and pray that he had not walked into an elaborate trap.