The red flash, as it turns out, is for nothing; the three suspected terrorists, one woman and two men, have disappeared so completely upon their supposed departure from Iraq that only an organisation with a very great deal of money could have orchestrated it. Al Qaeda is the unspoken name on everyone's lips. Harry, puce with annoyance at having had to dispatch Danny to find Ruth and me in the first place, tasks her with keeping an eye on the internet chatter coming out of Baghdad and Kabul – a junior analyst's job, except that none of the current batch are as fluent in Arabic as Ruth. As for me, I am banished to the tech suite with the instruction to find them, by satellite, by hacking airline records, by going over every inch of ground, if need be, between London and the Persian Gulf with a digital fine-tooth comb until I turn up a clue as to their whereabouts. I find nothing, not so much as an electronic sausage, as Colin is fond of saying on those occasions where the combined intelligence and technology capabilities of Five draw a blank. All we can do now is to watch, and wait, and pray…
It is very late, well after one a.m., when Harry finally relents and calls it a night. Danny left some hours earlier to tap a possible source somewhere in the East End, and there are only the three of us – Harry, Ruth, and myself – still on the Grid. Ruth is nearly asleep at her desk, and Harry, after glancing her way several times from his office, tells her to call a driver and go home. She protests, but he is insistent, and during this exchange, I say goodnight to both, before slipping out of the pods and making my way down to the car park to collect the hire car. For once, I can't wait to leave. Harry has been like a bear with a sore head all day, partly because of our inability to locate the three suspects – it is as if they never existed at all – but partly too, I fear, because of the uncharacteristic behaviour of two of his most trusted staff – missing an alert, then responding far later than could ever be construed as acceptable, and one of them not even being where she said she would be while off-duty. I don't know what Danny told Harry upon his arrival at the Grid, with Ruth in tow, but at least he doesn't appear to be harbouring any unusual degree of suspicion towards me or Ruth. Then again, Harry's poker face is legendary, and he is not a man to show his hand until he chooses…
Still, I have found today to be an extremely enervating experience, as I am once again a reluctant witness to the unspoken undercurrent which runs between them, so soon after discovering my own passion for Ruth. Until last night, I loved her tenderly and unreservedly, but always with a certain hesitancy and uncertainty too; all this is still true, but now, Eros has reared its seductive head, and from the moment Ruth pinned me against the bedroom door, I have felt as if I am truly awake for the first time in my adult life. It is a disturbing, yet exhilarating sensation, and one that I distrust with every cogent brain cell of my being. O, that way, madness lies; let me shun that; no more of that, sounds the general alarm clamouring in my rational mind. And yet, how wonderfully alive I feel, more alert and present in my body than ever before. No wonder Paris stole Helen away from her husband, if this was the effect she had upon him; and equally, I am no longer surprised that Menelaus launched a thousand ships, and the greatest epic poem in the world, in pursuit of her.
If this is how being in love really feels, it terrifies me, this endless, aching need for her. I know that I need to collect myself, to get my emotions back under control, and to think; or perhaps, I should stop thinking altogether, and just wait to see what happens. That is doubtless what Adam, or Danny, or any other man would do in the same situation, so why can't I? But even as this thought forms, I know what the answer is. Because this is me, and Ruth, and nothing can ever be simple or straightforward where we are concerned; both of us live too much in our own heads…and then, there's Harry…always Harry, claiming her time and attention for the most legitimate of reasons – because he is her boss, the head of counter-terrorism for his country, and as such, a man worthy of the utmost loyalty and respect. What can I offer, that even comes close to that? I torment myself with such thoughts all the way home, and it is with relief that I finally pull into the garage and turn off the engine, before slipping upstairs to bed.
As I stare at the ceiling, sleep eluding me like a thief avoiding capture, I realise how much I am missing Ruth's presence next to me; I miss the feeling of her softness against my skin, of the ends of her hair, tickling my face as it spreads across the pillow; I miss the little noises she makes in her sleep, the warm weight of her body pressed into mine, and the comfortable feeling of her in my arms as we finally curl into each other and drift into unconsciousness together, exhausted, yet fulfilled. I miss her, in short, and I need her, and more than that, I want her, heaven help me. Eventually, I fall into a restless and unsatisfactory sleep, and wake feeling more tired than when I finally dropped off, sometime in the wee hours; I look over to the other side of the bed, where Ruth is not, and my heart sinks like a stone…she should be here, smiling back at me as I greet her with an early morning cup of tea and a kiss, which could lead to anything, anything at all…sighing heavily, I haul myself upright, and wearily I start yet another day on my own.
Over the next week, Danny proves to be as good as his word, and no mention is made of our surprise encounter at Toad Hall, to either Ruth's knowledge, or mine. I know Ruth is worried for her friend, and I share her concern, as I too have witnessed the changes in him since Zoe's forced exile. In the intervening months since her departure, Danny has become taciturn, sometimes sullen, and withdrawn; he refuses invitations to join teammates for drinks after work, he arrives on the Grid early and leaves as soon as possible, and his once keen sense of fun has turned into a world-weary cynicism that is distressing to hear.
I have seen the signs of burnout in other fine officers, too many times, and I fear that Danny is beginning to show some of the symptoms. I keep a closer eye on him in the field, afraid that he could suddenly go off-piste, but he continues to perform his duties well from what I can see; only, all the flair and joy which once characterised his work with Zoe is gone, replaced with a cold, efficient professionalism. Adam, sensibly, decides to partner Danny with his lovely wife and fellow field officer, Fiona, and the two of them work effectively enough together, but nothing can mask Danny's air of loneliness when he sees them stealing a quick kiss on the Grid, or watches them leaving together at night, arms looped around each other, laughing as they separate at the pods, only to join up again on the other side. I almost know how he feels, except that my usually fertile imagination is not up to the task of contemplating life without Ruth; it simply does not compute.
Ruth spends much of her time at work over the next two weeks trawling through internet chatter in three different languages, stung by her inability to turn up any trace of the suspected Iraqi terror cell; she asks Colin to write a weighting algorithm similar to one he has been testing recently, and with some input from a GCHQ linguistics boffin, he comes up with a way to simultaneously search for similar words in chatter in Arabic, Farsi and English. But even with this new weapon in her arsenal, Ruth is unsuccessful, and failure is not something she is used to. It becomes a personal mission of hers, and she works early and late, sifting through endless chat rooms and black sites when her other tasks allow.
I understand her frustration, respect her dedication, and help out when I can by analysing terabytes of data from satellite, CCTV, and half a dozen other surveillance systems, looking for that one tiny anomaly which will unravel the mystery; but we find nothing on the two men and one woman reported by Six as attempting to leave Iraq almost a fortnight ago for the UK. Nothing, that is, until they find us, or to be more precise, they find the Carters, and the worst day yet of Ruth's tenure on the Grid begins, as I watch helplessly, powerless to protect her from the one of the most brutal realities of our work: sometimes, our luck runs out, and one of our own dies.
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof – Matthew 6:34, KJV
A/N – the "madness" verse is from Shakespeare's King Lear. And yes, ep 3.10 is up next, heaven help us.
I know I've said it before, but my thanks go to those readers who are leaving such lovely reviews; it is a very humbling experience to see how people are taking this story, and in particular my version of Malcolm, to their hearts - Airgead