A/N: Fifty! Chapter Five-Zero, can you believe it? My thanks go, as always, to all those readers who have stuck with this story, and especially, and with deep gratitude, to my faithful band of reviewers, who make the late nights worthwhile. You know who you are, and both Malcolm and I are indebted to you ;)
It is quite a while since I have gone into the field with a raw recruit – Zoe, I think, would have been the last – but Jo acquits herself well after Colin cracks the door-codes remotely to get us into the Liberation office, deserted now as all the staff are at the press conference with Little Miss Lawyer, no doubt whipping up dissent and calling it freedom.
Colin and Zaf, in the tech suite, are simultaneously keeping watch on the press conference, Malik, still awake in his hotel room, and us, as Adam, Jo and I move swiftly through the office space, affixing bugs and wiring the place for sight and sound, chatting to me through my earwig as we do so. "Is Jo OK?" he wants to know, when she disappears off camera for a moment. I growl under my breath and wait for him to use the correct call-sign before answering as I thread fibre-optics through the ceiling light fittings and install the transmission box in the hollow space above a row of downlights – it's been very handy for us indeed, this trend towards recessed lighting – and test the feed. "Positive," Colin replies, and I give him a reassuring smile as I answer his question. "Jo is doing splendidly, she's just gone with Adam to bug the boardroom." I look back into the feed, and my exasperation must show, for Colin's next word is "Sorry." With great exaggeration, I roll my eyes at him, and he chuckles. "Yeah, yeah, fair enough. But turn about's fair play, right?" I understand his meaning immediately: he's listened to me often enough going on about Ruth, after all. I smile at him, and as Adam and Jo come back into the room, I start gathering up my kit, making sure nothing is left behind. Work fast, work accurately, work clean: that's how it should be done. All in all, we have only been in the building fourteen minutes and thirteen seconds out of an estimated twenty before the backup alarm system is activated, and our task is complete.
I do a final visual sweep to ensure that everything accords with the photographs I took upon entry – we can't afford to leave one paper out of place with this paranoid little lot – and we leave as silently as we came. Once we're safely back in the van, Jo's excitement is palpable. "That was brilliant! I can't believe we just did that!" she enthuses, as Adam swings the van out from the kerb and sets course back to Thames House. He changes lanes swiftly, and Jo, still standing, loses her balance and sways towards me with a little scream. Awkwardly, I catch her and assist her onto on the stool next to mine. "Everyone OK back there?" Adam wants to know, and Jo calls back, "We're fine. I was just a bit slow getting myself sat down, that's all". She winks at me conspiratorially, and I smile back at her. I can't help myself; there's something so refreshing about her, so straightforward; she's easy to be around, and that's not something I say very often about my female colleagues. "That was great!" she tells him happily, and Adam calls back, "Wait until you've done it as often as Malcolm has, then you won't find it so exciting." Big blue eyes, full of excitement and curiosity, fix themselves on me, and I blush at her scrutiny. "How long have you been doing this, then?" she wants to know, and casting aside my usual reticence, I find myself giving her a potted history of my career at Five. She listens intently, all eyes and ears, as my mother would say, and I have to admit the attention is flattering. She would have made a very good journalist, had Adam not been able to persuade her to join us, and I think she has the makings of an excellent field officer. If only she weren't quite so young, a warning voice at the back of my mind whispers…
By the time we are back at Thames House, Zaf has offered to take over the night surveillance from Colin and I, indicating Jo by tilting his head. "She may as well get used to pulling all-nighters on the Grid now, instead of in the pub – it'll be good for her." Colin hesitates, but he has been outplayed: reluctantly, he heads off for the night, and I follow him soon after. Ruth is in another briefing with Adam and Harry, so with no prospect of seeing her any time soon, I decide to head home; I've barely seen Mother this week, what with the nights I have been staying over at Ruth's, and I feel guilty for neglecting her. Silly, vain, and difficult she might be, but she is still my mother, and I love her. I stop by the late-night supermarket on the way home, and buy her a potted cyclamen, bright red to herald the approaching festive season. Arriving home, I let myself in, grateful to be in the warmth of my perfectly temperature-controlled house, for it is a bitterly cold evening. Before I can call out to Mother, I hear an unusual sound: somewhere, someone is giggling, or dying, I'm not sure which. Mystified, I follow the high-pitched noises upstairs, and towards my mother's rooms: perhaps she is choking, or maybe her heart…I hasten my steps and burst into her boudoir without knocking, afraid of what I might find.
Mother turns around, mid-giggle, telephone handset still to her ear, and stares at me in surprise. "Malcolm! I didn't expect you home tonight… whatever's wrong? Why did you come barging in here like that? You gave me such a fright, and you know my heart's not good." Blushing with embarrassment, I back out of her room, apologising as I go, and still clutching the cyclamen in its pot. She was only on the phone, I tell myself, it's all right, even if it's a bit unusual for her to be giggling like a schoolgirl. She must have been having a chat with Aunt Emily… I take the cyclamen back downstairs and sit it on the kitchen bench where Mother will be sure to see it, before compiling a scratch supper: a couple of Scotch eggs from Fortnum's, some leftover mashed potato, carrot and cabbage which I heat up on the Aga, wishing for the thousandth time that Mother would just agree to let me install a microwave oven, a wedge of Caerphilly cheese, and a crisp Cox's Orange Pippin from my own tree to enjoy it with, before leaving a note to let her know that I have retired for the night, but have had something to eat. I load it all onto a tray, along with a glass (just the one will do, tonight) of Beaujolais, and carefully carry it the whole lot upstairs, all the while wishing that Ruth was waiting for me, already snuggled seductively into bed, or perched in the window seat with one of her beloved books, looking up with a pleased smile as I carry the tray in; but the room is empty, the four-poster as neatly made as I left it this morning. Oh, Ruth…my heart, my love, I miss you.
I do not sleep well now, alone in the big bed; I have become used to Ruth's warmth curled into my side, her hair tickling my nose on the pillow, her little cold feet tucked between my large, warm ones to thaw them out, the small noises she makes in her sleep, all reassuring me that this is not a yearning, lovesick dream, but my new reality, after a lifetime of sleeping alone.
The next morning, I take over surveillance duty from Zaf; he is still annoyingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after a night spent peering at screens (although I suspect he has also been making the most of his opportunity alone with Jo, if the look I intercept passing between them means anything), and thus I am the one to see it, an hour or so later: Malik is finally on the move. This is what we have been waiting for, and I immediately let the team know; Adam and Ruth join me in the tech suite, even as I switch over to CCTV, the better to keep tracking him through the streets of London. Zaf and another agent designated Alpha 2 are shadowing him on foot, and to my surprise, Ruth seems to be in charge of this part of the op; Adam has stepped back, seemingly content to observe, and she is making the calls herself. I do what I can; I track them both remotely, while running face recognition on the man Malik has handed a small rucksack over to; Adam at some point slips out of the suite, and the next thing I know, he is walking next to Zaf, over in Bayswater. He can get himself to any point in the greater London metropolitan area faster than anyone I know; his ability would be almost uncanny, if it weren't that I have spent more than enough time scrubbing traffic camera footage clean of any trace of him driving like a maniac. That lead foot of his will be the death of him one day… I shudder at the thought.
A couple of hours later, both men return triumphant: they have found all the paraphernalia to forge passports in a lockup off the Bayswater Road, and they have brought the spoils back to me for analysis. Not for nothing does Harry call me the Leonardo of the dustbins, but this proves to be an easy job. The photo paper is of a type common to every photo-booth in Britain, but with closer investigation, I find that three sets of photos came from one booth, going by the stock serial numbers printed on the margins, and one has come from another. Ruth is quiet today, and she looks tense and tired, the dark circles under her eyes more noticeable than usual after another late night. She does not once look at me while we are in the briefing room, although she has made sure to sit next to me before Jo could. Not that I expect her to greet me with a kiss and cuddle (if only…), but we usually find some way of surreptitiously acknowledging each other's presence; so far today, there has been nothing. I notice that she is taking more of a lead in the briefing, too, and again wonder why Adam and Harry are content to let her. Not that she is incapable, far from it, but it does make me curious…or perhaps it's just that I have been at this game too long, and have started to see shadows where there are none…
Just then, Colin's voice into the meeting through the polycom, ready to patch through the live feed from the Liberation office; as we watch Malik meet Ms St Clair, Ruth is called out of the room to take a call, doubtless from the French security service. It looks as if Malik's operation is underway, and Harry and Adam begin strategising, when Ruth comes back in with some startling news, her face paler than usual: French intelligence has just stormed a suspected terror cell in the Gare du Nord, Paris, and among the dead is one Nazim Malik, an Algerian citizen. This is a completely unexpected result, and Harry hates unexpected results. The meeting breaks up with Harry barking orders for us to find out what the hell is going on. Ruth, back at her desk, begins running a visa search for all Algerians into the UK in the last five years, and when she is satisfied that the French intel is correct, she lets Harry know; moments later, Harry and Adam are in the pods, and headed for Whitehall. Juliet Shaw, I speculate, will not be pleased. Zaf follows them out the door, on his way to find Malik, who is certainly not behaving like the innocent man he seems to be…Colin has got him on CCTV meeting the man he handed the rucksack over to, and is directing Zaf.
Events move fast, once Zaf catches up with Malik; he reports that he has secured him, a rare understatement, considering that the man had tried to jump off the roof of a multi-storey parking garage, as Colin later tells me; he had watched the arrest via CCTV with bated breath. The next field report from Zaf advises that he is taking Malik to a debriefing location favoured by Adam, and once more Harry and Adam leave the Grid. Harry's skin looks tight around the eyes; that's a sure sign that his meeting with Juliet did not go well, I think, watching as he storms through the pods, Adam having to lengthen his stride to keep up with the older man. Ruth watches too, but her face is carefully neutral, her expression one of mild interest, rather than heartfelt concern, before she turns back to her still haven't had an opportunity to speak to each other in private, but some days are just like that, when an operation is growing like Topsy and branching out in a dozen different directions. Adam makes a brief situation report; Malik has finally admitted that he arrived illegally, with a wife and two children in tow, and the four sets of passport photo paper edges suddenly make sense. They are en route to collect his family from an East London address.
The next call from Zaf is for full backup; Colin glances over at Ruth, and she nods once, urgently. His fingers fly over the keyboard as he co-opts the police dispatchers' network, sending the local area cars immediately to the scene, but it is too late, and Ms St Clair is reported dead, her head battered in; I feel physically ill at the thought. Poor girl, she would be just about Ruth's age… not thirty minutes later, Juliet appears on the Grid, spitting like a cobra, and Harry herds her into his office, to the vast relief of everyone present. Ruth looks up as the pods whir open again, and her mouth falls open in outrage as Paul Seymour of Special Branch stalks in and heads straight for Harry's office without so much as a by-your-leave. Incensed at this breach of protocol and common courtesy, she whirls out of her chair and trots determinedly after him, and they both disappear around the corner of the corridor leading to the inner sanctum. Colin lets out a long, low whistle, and a few seconds later his email drops into my inbox.
The faithful watchdog at her post once more…she's not going to head him off in time, though!
She's hardly that. I'd have done the same if I'd seen him first. What an absolutely insufferable man…the nerve of him! Special Branch, indeed…he must be very special!
I'd give fifty quid to be a fly on the wall of Harry's office, right about now. Can you imagine the ding-dong that must be going on?
Unfortunately, yes. And we're well out of it, believe me.
Ruth comes marching back to her desk, her face like thunder, and in spite of the seriousness of the situation, I feel a sudden urge to laugh: she does look rather like a dog (a nice one, of course, like a Beagle or a chocolate Labrador) that's been denied its chance to finally, legitimately, bite a burglar. She sits back down with a loud Hmmmph, and takes it out on her keyboard for the next few minutes. Shortly after, Harry emerges, looking choleric, and asks me to run a long and tedious search through the UK telco database, looking for the PAYG phone that was used to call Ms St Clair yesterday, while Harry paces and Adam, Fiona, Zaf and Ruth discuss what Malik may be capable of, with his children's lives at stake. I am only listening with half an ear, though, as I have just located the handset actually in use, and am busily triangulating the signal and patching it into the comms satellite network, trying for a view over the park Malik is in… Ah, there, there he is!
I zoom in, and in a second, we have an audio feed from the signal carrier, and my sighting is confirmed with a match of his voice print. Malik exits the park, getting into a red sedan and tossing his phone out the window; no matter though, for we have seen the vehicle he is in, and in moments I have every police car in the area primed to pick up its licence plates. Adam and Zaf head out to intercept him, while Colin runs voice recognition on the other party to Malik's phone call; when he gets a hit, he calls Ruth over, and her eyebrows shoot up in alarm, before she spins on her heel and heads briskly back to the inner sanctum to give Harry the news: it is the voice of a leading member of the Free Islam movement, a known terrorist organisation operating in Algeria, and now, apparently, here, God help us.
Ruth comes quickly back to her desk, and begins to work swiftly and intently, rapidly typing in such long strings of characters that I know she must be accessing some very secure sites indeed. I take a quick glance at what she is running onscreen (being the systems administrator has its privileges) to see if I can be of any assistance, and am curious to see that she is attempting to hack the Met; trying to get into Special Branch records, I suppose, inferring this from Paul Seymour's cagey appearance as he had left Harry's office earlier. Silently, I wish her good luck with that, before closing the remote session into her machine and getting on with my own work, liaising with the police who are currently tracing the vehicle in Greenwich. If Ruth had only thought to ask me, I would have told her that Special Branch is so paranoid, they are one of the few agencies not to have digitised their records yet, or ever, if their CIO is to be believed, but I can't very well just volunteer this information out of the blue.
With a little sigh of annoyance, she gives up and reaches for the phone, instead, and what ensues next, I can hardly believe. Ruth, looking as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, calls the Special Branch Records Office, asks to speak to a Gordon Hopkins, and when she has him on the line, proceeds to talk to him as if she has been harbouring a secret affection for him since meeting him last year at GCHQ, inveigling him until he agrees (apparently) to meet her for lunch immediately; then, with all the subtlety of an angler fish which sees its prey within reach, she snaps the trap shut, and the poor man finds out that the price of his nice lunch with Ruth is to breach his employer's trust, and smuggle out a confidential file. It is a reprehensible thing to do to a fellow member of the security services, and the sheer ruthlessness of her approach turns my blood cold. She seems quite pleased with herself after she has rung off, humming a little tune under her breath until I can't bear it any longer, nor the self-satisfied smile playing about her lips. My Ruth, behaving like this? A year ago, it would have been unthinkable for her to display this level of deceit, never mind the ease of her manner while doing it. No, I can't ignore this, I decide: everything about it reeks of Harry, and quite suddenly, I am thoroughly furious. I wonder why I never realised it before: she's just as manipulative as Harry ever was, and the revelation fuels my resolve; in that moment, my habitual calm evaporates as my anger begins to rise. How dare she treat this poor sod, Hopkins, like that? And has she been treating me in the same way? Careful now, don't spook her…a good sheepdog controls the flock from a long way back, and doesn't ever let them have their heads…stay calm and collected, that's it…
"Ruth. A word, if you don't mind. Meet me in the server room in five minutes, please, and make sure no one sees you leave the Grid." My voice, pitched low, is rock-steady, my gaze direct as I stand just behind her chair. She turns around and nods, eyes wide, and I continue on past our workstations and into the server room, which hums and blinks comfortingly around me. I close my eyes for a moment, willing myself to appear as dispassionate as the data stacks around me, locked behind bulletproof glass and processing millions of signals every second with no regard for their import or effect. But I am not a cold, emotionless machine, I'm just a man, with a very human heart… Focus, Wynn-Jones, come on…stand your ground…
Ruth enters the server room quietly, but the air is so still that even a slight movement stirs it; I can almost feel her coming nearer, and my heart begins to pound. It isn't that I don't love her, quite the opposite, in fact; and this inconvenient truth only makes what is to come more difficult than I can begin to imagine, although the outrage I feel spurs me on. "Malcolm?" her voice is uncertain as she walks between the stacks toward me. I fold my arms across my chest and straighten my back, and she stops, trying to read my face. Fortunately, the lighting is dim, and I have chosen my spot well. "What's going on? Why are we in here…and why are you looking at me like that?" I wait for her to stop speaking, and my heart twists with remorse as I see her eyes, filled with confusion. Oh, God, I don't want to do this….but what choice do I have? Either I grasp the nettle now, or keep on getting stung…
"Well, all of those are very good questions," I begin, and at the tone of my voice, Ruth's eyes widen even further, "but why don't we start with this." A cold trickle of sweat runs down my spine as I continue, "What the hell do you think you were doing just now, playing that poor man at Special Branch, leading him on?" Even in the low light, I can see her face blanch at my last words, and she takes a step forward, hand outstretched pleadingly. I lock eyes with her, and she stops short of actually touching me. "It's not like that, I swear! I was just…doing my job. We need that information, so I was getting it." I breathe out slowly, trying to fight the tightness in my chest and the pounding in my head. "Like that? Ruth, it was unethical, illegal, and unkind, and you're so much better than that."
She stares at me, her face full of bewilderment. "'I'm so much better than that?' God, Malcolm, we all cross the line every day in this job, the line between ethics and reality. Why are you reacting like this now?" I fire back, "Because it was beneath you, my love." She laughs in disbelief. "Are you jealous? Is that it? I don't know what's gotten into you, but you're being completely ridiculous." My blood thumps in my ears and I clench my hands into fists, striving for control. This has been a long time coming…
"Malcolm, I don't have time for whatever this is; we're in the middle of an op, and Harry will wonder where I…"I cut her off then, unable to listen to any more. "Damn Harry, and damn the operation too! This is about us now." My voice is louder than I intended it to be, and Ruth takes a couple of steps back, her arms around herself defensively. "Please don't raise your voice at me. If you want to talk, then we'll talk in a civil manner, or not at all." There is a faintly patronising tone to her words, the sound of a mother placating an overwrought child, and that only serves to fuel the burning anger rising from the pit of my stomach. I take another couple of deep breaths – it won't do to lose my temper completely – and force myself to speak calmly. "There were other ways for you to obtain that intel, and you know it, so why did you do that?" She looks at me, her pupils huge and dark, and frowns. "Why does this bother you so much? I don't get upset when you spend all night in a van watching beautiful women strip off and do God knows what, so why should you care if I flirt with some sad little man in the Records department at SB, if it gets me what I need? What do you want from me?"
Why does it bother me so much, my love? I answer her in my mind, too upset to speak, because it shows me another side of you, a side I don't want to see, the side that Harry is acknowledging when he calls you a born spook…and when I see how easy it is for you to lie, and how plausible you sound as you do it, I begin to question whether everything I think I know about you, about us, is just an illusion too… and, as if I care, or even really see, those women, when I'm in the van...it repulses me to have to monitor that sort of thing...my heart feels so heavy, all of a sudden, so sluggish. As if it just wants to stop beating altogether, and spare me any further pain…
"Malcolm, what do you want?" Ruth steps near, facing me squarely, and her eyes are piercing now, inky blue in the dimly lit room; my senses are filled with her, the scent of her, the warmth of her, the maddening proximity of her…"You," I finally manage to choke out, my mind unable to articulate a more rational response as my body's hunger makes itself felt, and in an instant she closes the distance between us, and her arms slide around my neck, and her body moulds to mine as she pulls my face towards hers and kisses me, rising on tiptoe as we embrace. My arms go around her awkwardly at first, like marionette limbs on strings, and then I crush her to me as her hands slide inside my suit jacket, then under my shirt, and my heart races, and my breath comes short, and my blood roars in my ears, leaving me dizzy with passion and thwarted outrage. "Mmmm...it's been too long since we had a moment to ourselves…" she murmurs, her breath hot in my ear, and then reason reasserts itself. "We can't, not here, not now," I say shakily, and she quips, "Afraid your precious servers might be jealous?" I rearrange my clothing with hands that tremble with repressed emotion, struggling with the surge of reactions crashing over me – anger, arousal, need… God help me, I have never needed anyone as I need her… as she turns back to me, asking, "So, are you jealous? Of poor old Gordon? That's not like you."
I blink, my brain blank; her eyes scan my face, and she catches her breath. "You are! You're jealous…I didn't think you had it in you! There's nothing to worry about… Gordon will be a very short-lived fascination, I can assure you. He's shorter than me, for one thing, with halitosis and an unfortunate squint, as I recall." I shake my head, unable to speak; for a second, I had thought she was going to say Harry, not Gordon, and my ribcage contracts so hard that I can't get my breath. She places one hand on my chest. "Oh, sweetheart… your heart, it's hammering so hard…just take a nice deep breath, and then another…." Gasping, I slump against the nearest server stack as Ruth rummages through my pockets and retrieves my inhaler, while I rail wordlessly against my wretched asthma for what seems like the millionth time in my life. I draw the medication into my lungs, once, twice… ahhh, air! At last…how can something so simple suddenly become so damned difficult?
With the return of oxygen into my bloodstream, my self-possession also returns, and I straighten up and step away from her slightly, the better to think. "It's not a question of me being jealous: I trust you, my love. It's a question of integrity, and when I see you do something like that, it frightens me. I don't want to see you dragged down, Ruth, I've seen too many good officers lose their way in this job, and if I were to lose you like that… I couldn't bear it. That's all. I just couldn't bear it… and it seems to me as if you're standing on a very slippery slope, at the moment. We don't treat our colleagues in other branches of the security services like subjects, Ruth, we don't honeytrap them for information, we find other ways, more acceptable ways." Ruth looks up at me, her arms folded over her breasts; her eyes, usually so clear a window to her soul, are now the opaque grey-green of pebbles on the beach.
"It's not that simple, Malcolm, and you know it. My job isn't like yours: I have to produce whatever Harry asks for, usually at the drop of a hat. So if I have to woo the Gordon Hopkins of this world, then so be it; the security of the nation could rest on the contents of that file, for all we know, so I'm bloody well going to get it, whatever it takes." She is quietly defiant, and I concede she has made a very valid point, but I'm too heartsore over her behaviour to leave it there. "Our integrity, our good character, is all we have that's our own in this strange life we lead, and we have to preserve them, no matter what." She breathes out slowly, a long sigh, and then reaches up to touch me lightly on the cheek, her fingers tracing bone in an intimate caress. "I'll try not to lose my way, I really will, but if I do, I know you'll find me. You're the most impeccably moral man I've ever met… and I really do have to get back. Shall we talk some more, tonight?" I nod in reply, exhausted, and gesture to her to go out first; I need a few more minutes to compose myself, here in my sanctuary of perfect logic and reason, surrounded by the data stacks around me, locked behind bulletproof glass and processing millions of signals every second with no regard for their import or effect. For a moment, I envy them their machine minds, cold and precise and utterly impartial… Ruth, now at the door, turns around suddenly. "Malcolm?" I look at her, framed by the stacks. "FYI, you are scary when you're angry. But in a good way…" and then she is gone, leaving me once more to wonder on the peculiarities of the feminine mind in general, and hers in particular. I rapidly conclude that this is a futile endeavour, and exit the room myself.
The operation comes to a dramatic close; Zaf, faced with the choice of shooting Malik to prevent the assassination of the Algerian bank president (as I said earlier, events move fast and in a dozen different directions sometimes, and while we were in the server room, all sorts of things unfolded, as Colin later explained), or talking him down, opts for the latter, despite disobeying a direct kill order from Harry, and my estimation of the young man increases a hundredfold: he's got the makings of a truly great field officer, with those instincts and that heart. I move through the rest of the day in a bit of a daze, to be honest, shattered by the intensity of my confrontation with Ruth; I am told later that Adam, Fiona, and Jo got Malik's family out, but not without an exchange of gunfire between the terrorists and Special Operations; and that in the end, Harry lent on someone in Whitehall to procure passports and fund a new life for the unfortunate Maliks in the Irish Republic, and quite right too. They have suffered greatly at our hands, and once again I am reminded of why I have so long held Harry bloody Pearce, with all his faults and flaws, in such high esteem: essentially, he is a decent man, doing a job which asks him to make some very indecent choices at times, for the greater good.
It gets harder and harder to know who the good guys are anymore… it used to be so simple; there was Us, and then there was Them. And then Us began to act like Them, and Them became Us… and that, my dear Ruth, is why it is so important for the likes of you and I to know who we are and what we stand for, to have standards we are held accountable to, and to never lose sight of our true selves amongst the myriad of masks we must wear to do our job…the most important job in the world, as far as I'm concerned. Regnum defende… defending the realm. This sceptred isle, this earth of majesty…Shakespeare had it right, I tell myself wearily, as I prepare to leave for the day: This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England… Ah, my Ruth, why is it that I can always think of the perfect answer after the argument's been had?
Slowly, I walk out of the Grid, and back into the real world, icy cold and gleaming under a light dusting of snow. A world where the Maliks will have touched down in Ireland by now, about to embark on their new lives; a world where the president of the Algerian bank is laying his head on thousand thread-count pillowcases in one of the city's best hotels tonight, thanks to us; a world, too, where a brave young woman called Rebecca St Clair is now in a morgue, and where the truth about the woman I love continues to elude me, slipping through my fingers like quicksilver, beautiful, bright… and deadly.
A/N: A CIO is the Chief Information Officer in an organisation. They pretty much do what it says on the tin. And Malcolm is musing over some lines from Richard II, at the end of this chapter.