A/N: My sincere thanks to everyone who is still reading and reviewing this story, and hello to my new readers from Bulgaria, with your many, many views; you are making the monthly stats very interesting!
I find her alone in the library, browsing the shelves of classics and old periodicals, the late afternoon light gilding her dark hair. I watch her for a moment, taking in the unconscious grace of her movements, the look of rapt concentration on her face as she pages through the book in her hand, before clearing my throat to announce my presence. "I know you're there," she says without looking up as she replaces the volume – part of a leather-bound set of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – and turns to face me, a carefully neutral expression on her face, before continuing, "You must be the only man in England who always smells of Pears' soap and warm cotton." I jam both hands into my pockets and step into the room. "Why are you here, Ruth?" Her eyes meet mine for the first time, pale aquamarine in the golden light, and in them I see something so unfamiliar I can't quite place it, at first. As I watch her fingers twining together, the slight tilt of her head, the way in which she takes first one, and then another, tentative step forward, I realise that she's unsure of her ground. I don't feel inclined to reassure her. She crosses the floor and stops a few paces away from me. "How are you, Malcolm?"
Surely she cannot be serious, I think incredulously, as I fold my arms across my chest and take a step backwards. Whatever she's come for, it's not to make small talk. "I'm fine, thank you, and still wondering what you're doing here." She looks down at her feet, neatly clad in the black pumps she favours for work in summer: has she come here straight from Thames House? "Can we go somewhere to talk?" she tries, and I shake my head. "I don't want to go anywhere with you, Ruth, I just want to know why you're here." Ruth sighs, "All right, then. I've come to ask for your help. I know I've no right, especially not here, but this is really important. There's a major operation coming up at the end of the month, one which is going to need a huge amount of technical support and surveillance, and we need you, Malcolm. No-one else has half your experience, and Adam's really worried about how we're going to cover everything without…" but I've heard enough, and I interject, "Without the geeks, you mean? Without me, and Colin?" She blinks at my tone of voice, and crosses her arms defensively. "I've said I'm sorry about Colin, and truly, I am, but this operation is huge, and it has to succeed. I can't tell you any more right now, but the technical aspects are very complex, and Adam says you're the only officer who can handle it."
"Does Adam?" I reply in a tone of bored indifference, "Well, that's kind of him to say, but I'm sure that there are plenty of other technical officers he can call on, and I've done enough, Ruth. More than enough." She stares at me in confusion, and then understanding dawns on her face. "Oh, my God, you're going to leave the Service." She says it as a statement, rather than as a question. I shrug my shoulders, dismissing the shock I can see on her face. "And what if I am? I've given sixteen years of my life to this job, and what's been my reward for all those years of devoted service, crammed into surveillance vans and practically living on the Grid for weeks at a time? A sleep debt that not even Morpheus himself could repay, heartbreak, the loss of more colleagues than I care to enumerate, and the brutal murder of my best friend. Even by the law of diminishing returns, that's not much of a result. So I'm certain that you'll understand if I do decide to cut my losses and retire from this morally bankrupt profession of ours. After all, I can afford to; I can afford to do anything I want." I turn away to go up to my room, unable to bear the look on her face any more.
I don't get very far, though, before my way is blocked; Ruth has raced round to stand in front of me, her eyes flashing with indignation and anger. "How dare you! How dare you stand there, and say that what we do is morally bankrupt. We save lives, Malcolm, and our work has a noble purpose: regnum defende, remember?" I've heard enough of her cant, though, and I move to step around her, heading for the staircase; she sidesteps smartly, and locks eyes with me. "We need you, Malcolm, even Harry…"she trails off, and her face pales; she knows she has overstepped the mark. "Excuse me," I say icily, and this time she stands still as I move away. Ascending the staircase, I think I hear her mutter something, and I turn around. "What did you just say?" I ask, my voice shaking with barely-contained anger, but her expression is defiant, her eyes glittering with unreadable emotion as she hurls words at me like spears. "I said, I don't know who you are any more. The Malcolm I know puts the safety of others first, and duty above all, because he loves his country, and because it's the right thing to do." She spins on her heel and stalks out the front door with a final flick of her hair; I watch her go, and then, exhausted by the unexpected encounter, I trudge wearily up the stairs. Unbeknownst to me, the door leading off the hall to the clinical suites swings open, and Diana Jewell peers towards the front entrance, frowning…
She tells me that she had accidentally overheard us the following morning, at our next clinical session. "I don't approve of unscheduled visitors, but I know it's not your fault. I'll ring Harry, tell him to keep better discipline." I chuckle cynically, "Oh, I wouldn't bother. He probably doesn't know Ruth was here – or if he does, it's because he sent her himself." Diana regards me with concern, and I shrug, "Ruth might do things her own way, but she always operates under his aegis." The psychologist asks, "And how does that make you feel?", but I don't want to discuss Ruth, or Harry, or my feelings. "I've been here almost a week, Diana, and I still don't know what I'm going to do," I tell her, changing the subject. "Yes, you've got a big decision to make. Is there anything I can do to help?" I wish there was, I think wistfully, and shake my head. "Not unless you've got a crystal ball, or a time machine." She smiles back at me, "Well, I don't have either of those to hand, but if some professional insight would help, you're very welcome to it." I sit back and look at her enquiringly, and she taps her pen on her clipboard. "If you want my honest opinion, I think if you act on your emotions and walk away now, you will eventually regret it. You're only forty-eight, and you're at the top of a very technical and demanding profession. You really are the best STO in the security services – I've seen the performance assessments to prove it – and what you do saves many lives, there's no doubt about it. I understand that you may not necessarily want to keep doing the same job, though, given your recent history, so this is what I propose: I'll certify you as fit to return to normal duties, and you'll go back to Section D for a month, and see how it goes. If, at the end of that time, you still feel the same way, you can either transfer out of D, or leave Five altogether. I'll support your decision, whatever you choose to do. How does that sound?"
It sounds eminently reasonable, and yet my stomach clenches at the thought of walking back onto the Grid, and having to face them all again. Ruth, Harry, Adam, Zaf… Jo. Kind, considerate Jo, who brings me food when I've forgotten to eat all day, who doesn't ask awkward questions, who always has a smile for me. Jo, who is so young, and has so much to give, and so much more to lose. Who will watch over her on ops, if I'm not there? Who will explain to her the finer points of Five's surveillance procedures, or make sure that she has the right field gear? I try to convince myself that it doesn't matter, that no-one is indispensable, that Jo will be fine whether I'm there or not, but it's no good: I can't escape my wretchedly overdeveloped sense of responsibility towards the newest, youngest member of the team. Ruth's parting words ring in my ears as I tell Diana, "One month, and then I walk away if I still feel the same way about it." She gazes at me for a long moment, grey eyes searching mine, and then nods. "Agreed, as long as you're sure this is what you want." I'm not sure if it's what I want, or something I need to do, and I have no idea if I'll still be there in a month's time, but I know now that I have to return to Section D; it's the only honourable thing to do. I explain as much to Diana, and she listens patiently. "All right, then, but I have one condition." She tears off a piece of paper on which she writes something before pushing it towards me. I glance at it, then up at her in dismay. "Is this really necessary?" She stands up, signalling that the session is at an end. "Yes, I'm afraid so. You might not acknowledge it, but you're clinically depressed, and I think you have been for a long time. Try these, and see if they help. The script is from Sally Chapman, and we'd like you to take them for a month, and then report back. Drive safely, and do take care, Malcolm. It's been a pleasure to have you here." And with a firm handshake and a kind smile, I am discharged from Tring, and readmitted to the world.
Two days later…
The pod door slides open smoothly, and I step through, and onto the Grid. The cold, dry scent of highly filtered air greets me, and I twitch at my suit jacket nervously as I take in the familiar scene. It's very early, and no one else seems to be here yet; no one, that is, but Harry, if the light in his office is any indication. Setting my shoulders, I walk purposefully towards the inner sanctum, and knock. There's a flurry of movement from behind the door before it rolls back, and Ruth looks at me in surprise, her face unbecomingly red. "Malcolm! I…we…you're back, then." She looks behind her, where Harry is sitting at his desk, rapidly fastening the top two buttons of his shirt and knotting his tie. "Thank you, Ruth, you can go," he instructs in clipped tones, and she slips past, careful not to make contact. "Sit down, then," he tells me. "How is Diana?" I give him a polite smile, and continue to stand, hands behind my back. "She's very well, and so am I." He leans back in his tall leather chair, laces his hands behind his head, and fixes me with a hawkish eye.
"Good, good. So, you're ready to re-enter the fray? We've certainly felt your absence. The replacement from Section C was less than satisfactory, shall we say. Wet himself the first time he was out on an obs shift, and someone gave the side of the van a bit of a bang, and a child could have found the bugs that he placed. As a matter of fact, I believe one did…but never mind that now. See Jo, she'll get you up to speed on the Waterfall op. Zaf's gone undercover with an Al Qaeda cell in East London. It's a tricky situation. Need to keep our wits about us." There's something in the way he says that last sentence that I don't quite like, but he's watching me expectantly. "Right. I'll talk to Jo. Is that all, then?" I ask, making as if to leave, and his expression shifts, becoming opaque. "Not quite; there is one more thing. You're not going to like it," he adds. "Adam felt it was time to fill Fiona's old spot, and so he offered it to Ros." I look at him uncomprehendingly – Ros who? – and he explains with relish, "Ros Meyers, from Six. He turned her during that coup attempt, and she starts today." I can't help it: I stare at him, aghast. "But…she's awful! And she's a traitoress, or the next thing to it. What on earth was Adam thinking?" I can't imagine why he would have offered Fiona's job to that dreadful creature. There is a definite glimmer of sardonic amusement in Harry's eyes at my discomfiture as he says, "No doubt he was thinking that she's awfully good at her job, and has any number of attributes, personal and otherwise, that could be leveraged to our considerable advantage." I open my mouth to protest, or resign on the spot, but my head is swimming, filling me with a strange sensation of disconnectedness, and I can't focus my thoughts enough to remember why I feel so outraged about Ms Meyers… Harry's voice cuts sharply into my disoriented reverie. "Did Diana Jewell really give you the all-clear?" Blinking owlishly at him, I nod, and he says, "Are you up to knocking together a few facts and figures on thermobaric bombs? Ruth needs them for the nine a.m. briefing. We think it's what this cell is trying to get its hands on." And with that, his phone rings, and he turns away to answer it, dismissing me with a curt nod of his head.
Out in the cool, dimly lit corridor, I lean against the wall and wait for the dizziness to subside. The patient information on the drug manufacturer's website had warned that there could be side-effects like this, until my body adjusted to the drugs. Dizziness, mood swings, suicidal thoughts, dry mouth, changes in eating and sleeping habits… the list of possibilities had been long and alarming, and reading it, I had wondered if the cure wasn't worse than the condition. I still can't quite believe that I have been prescribed anti-depressants, and am utterly determined that no one should know. Not Mother, nor Aunt Emily, and certainly none of my colleagues. As soon as I arrived home, Dr Chapman had sent round a month's supply in a small brown bottle, labelled 'multi-vitamins'. I had looked up the pharmaceutical markings, and found that she hadn't, as I had hoped, given me a placebo. Certainly, the way I've been feeling since starting to take the little yellow pills would seem to back this theory up.
After a minute, I start to feel slightly more normal, and I head back out onto the Grid, where I encounter Jo. "Malcolm!" she exclaims, jumping up and throwing her arms around my neck, much to my surprise, "You're back! Oh, I've missed you, things have been mental around here lately." Wincing at her use of the word mental, I gently return her embrace. "It's good to see you too, Jo." I mean it, too; I've missed her smile and her wry sense of humour. I glance towards Colin's desk, and flinch, for there is a large, shiny, black handbag parked squarely on it. The handbag is studded all over with silver spikes; it can only belong to one person. I look back at Jo, and she rolls her eyes. "I suppose Harry told you about her." Indignantly, I ask, "Why there? Why Colin's desk? It's not even near where Adam and the rest of the field staff sit." Jo nods, "Exactly. She came stalking in here yesterday and slung her bag onto that desk, and before anyone could say anything, she glowered round at us all, told us she was not to be disturbed, took her iPod out of her bag, plugged it into her ears, and sat there with her feet on the desk and her eyes closed until Harry arrived." Interested in spite of myself, I wait to hear Jo's account of that meeting, but Ruth is waving at me impatiently from the doorway, and I recall that I'm meant to be doing something about thermobaric bombs for this morning's briefing. Excusing myself, I make my way over to my desk, resolutely ignoring both Ruth and the aggressive-looking handbag on the desk next to mine, and log on.
Two hours later, I am sitting in the briefing room, as far away from Ruth as possible, and watching with a sort of detached curiosity as she shoots little looks of dislike at Ms Meyers while describing the likely effects of a thermobaric bomb blast on London. Ms Meyers, for her part, stares back at Ruth, as unblinking as a snake watching a mouse: the tension between them is palpable. When Ruth is finished talking about the simulation that I've put together, I can't help adding, "Put one of those in a theatre of operations and it'll take out pretty much everything that moves." Ruth takes aim with, "Shame, when that theatre of operations happens to be a city of civilians." Adam clears his throat to speak, but Ros remarks coolly, "Sometimes you have to destroy the haystack to find the needle," and quick as a flash, Ruth snaps back, "And sometimes you have to stop hiding behind metaphors." Uncomfortably, I glance round the table: Ros looks bored, both by Ruth's behaviour and the operational situation; Jo is concentrating on making notes on her jotter, Adam's gaze is shifting between all the women uncertainly, and Harry is wearing a wary look as he begins, "It's complex…" but before he gets any further, Ruth cuts across him angrily. "No, it's simple. A thermobaric bomb is a weapon of mass destruction, the purpose of which is to kill indiscriminately. Now, given that, we can hardly be surprised that Al Qaeda want one of their own, or bleat at their inhumanity in using it." She's in a proper huff, all right, as Colin would have said, and for the first time I wonder if she could possibly feel threatened by the icy Ms Meyers. I tuck that thought away to consider at leisure, as Harry growls, "Well, it would appear that they are on the brink of obtaining one, and I don't intend to let them even the score in one of our cities." He frowns in Ruth's direction, and she drops her challenging gaze, but mutters something under her breath, too low to hear. After some more talk around the table, Adam proposes that we purchase it ourselves, and to my surprise Harry doesn't dismiss it out of hand. The meeting breaks up; Jo has been told off to brief Ros on Waterfall, and I give her an encouraging smile as she makes a face at the idea. "Find me, afterwards, and you can fill me in on it, too." She smiles back, "Deal. We've got to stick together, right?" and then she is loping off along the corridor, graceful as a gazelle.
I have hundreds of emails to sift through, and I spend the rest of the morning busily sorting, saving and discarding them; next, I move onto a fortnight's worth of server performance reports and requisitions for field gear, all sitting in an untidy pile in my inbox, left by the substitute from Section C. They're mostly complete, which is a small mercy, but as I glance through the performance reports, I note a number of anomalies which are concerning; I have been away too long, and without Colin's expertise in my absence, the servers are suffering. They're not the only things that are performing below par; the requisition chits show that earwigs have gone missing, a pair of night vision glasses has broken, and two of the jackets that Colin and I carefully sewed tiny transmitters and microphones into for field officers' use haven't been returned. I've got my work cut out for me, and no mistake, I tell myself, compiling a list of actions. I'm so focused on this task that at first I don't hear her.
"You there. Mallard, Michael, whatever your name is." I turn around at this imperious address to see Ms Meyers leaning against the edge of her desk, drumming her fingers with impatience. "Oh, I'm Malcolm, Malcolm Wynn-Jones," I correct her, as she stares at me. "I need a car," she drawls, and I explain, "Then you'll want to go down to the car pool and sign one out. Their office is in the first level of the garage." She continues to stare at me. "No, I don't think I want to do that at all. Isn't it your job to take care of this sort of thing?" Her voice is full of disdain, and getting out of my chair, I indignantly draw myself up to my full height, stung by her attitude. "I am the Senior Technical Officer for this section. If you require field gear, surveillance back-up, custom-made equipment for operations, or perfectly forged documents, see me. The rest is up to you; you're not at Six now, you know." She straightens up, flicks an invisible particle of dust from her left lapel, and purrs silkily, "You're quite the little helper, aren't you? And thank you so much for reminding me that my career's just gone round the S-bend." She stalks off to the pods without another word. Shaking slightly, I sit back down, wondering at my unexpected outburst; and as I do, I see Harry leaving the Grid and heading for the lifts. A few minutes later, Ruth follows him. I bet they're bound for a rendezvous, I think sourly, and the idea of this disturbs me so much that I decide to take myself off to the cool, sane, sterile safety of the server room.
As soon as the door sighs shut behind me, I lean up against the nearest stack and try to compose myself. Out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of a yellow tag, with the next regular service date scrawled on it in purple marker, in Colin's achingly familiar hand; and before I can stop them, hot tears are trickling fatly down my cheeks, and a vice-like headache is clamping around my cranium. Oh, Colin… Stumbling between the stacks, I make my way blindly to the little makeshift workstation we had rigged up in the heart of the server room so long ago, and sink onto a chair. This is ridiculous: when I had read that mood swings could be a possible side effect of the medication, I hadn't expected it to be like this. I hope it won't last for long; I feel positively menopausal, which is the only analogy I can think of, shuddering as I recall that very trying decade of Mother's life. Perhaps I've come back to work too soon; maybe I should have stayed at Tring a little longer, where it was peaceful and there were no thermobaric bombs, or haughty new field officers, or ex-lovers moving onto our boss before my very eyes. Dabbing away tears with my handkerchief, I turn to the monitor and begin scrolling through the cascade of data that shows the status of each server, and get to work; after a few minutes, I spot a large file, and open it curiously, to find that the tiny tracker Colin installed on the Tessina has been very active over the last few weeks. There are reams of records showing the camera's comings and goings, and I quickly launch a program that matches the GPS references with a satellite grid map, waiting impatiently while the computer does its work.
The picture that the program builds is an interesting one: the Tessina has been all over London, but most of the references occur in the same places. Thames House, Claridge's, Ruth's home near Kennington, and, more surprisingly, regular visits to GCHQ at Cheltenham. There are also several trips to our sister service at Vauxhall Cross, one overnight excursion from London to the village of Kingham in the Cotswolds, and a number of references in and around Whitehall. At present, occurring to the tracker, the Tessina is currently on the Grid; the GPS system doesn't narrow it down any further than that, so I decide to check the tech storage cage. I need to take stock of the situation anyway, given the list of broken and missing items on my desk, and it isn't long before I am standing in the cage, and reaching up to the topmost shelf, to the little box where the Tessina is stored: it is not there. I systematically work through the cage, collecting things to repair, and feeling singularly unimpressed by the fact that nothing is in the right place any more. When I'm finished, I still haven't managed to find the Tessina, and decide that it must be in Ruth's possession, perhaps in her bag, or stashed somewhere in her desk. The temptation to look for it would be almost overwhelming, except that a gentleman never, ever, searches a lady's handbag, nor rifles through her desk; I simply cannot bring myself to breach my own standards of decency, even where Ruth is concerned. Besides, to do so would be to admit that I know she has been taking the camera, if I were to be caught; I might never find out what she's been doing with it for so long. And I desperately want to know. Still turning the problem over in my mind, I pick up the box of broken equipment, and step out of the cage, locking it carefully as I go: I'm finding that I'm having to pay close attention to everyday tasks, or later I have difficulty in remembering whether I did them or not. It might be an effect of grief, or of the medication. I'm not sure which it is, but I don't like the sensation of my mind fogging over, like a mirror in a room full of steam.
As I walk along the corridor back towards my workstation, Jo comes up to me, takes hold of my sleeve, and tows me into an empty meeting room. She shuts the door, leans against it, and declares, "What a bitch!" I don't need to ask who she is referring to, and she soon leaves me in no doubt as she tells me about her attempt to brief Ms Meyers. "She's arrogant, she's rude, she thinks she knows everything… I don't understand what Adam sees in her." Ah, Jo, there is still so much you have to learn about this world. "She sounds like the perfect senior field officer, then," I observe calmly, when Jo stops for breath. She stares at me, hurt, and I hasten to explain. "I'm not saying that I agree with his choice, or that I much care for her myself – far from it – but Adam knows what he's doing." Jo frowns, "But she's such an evil cow, no-one wants to work with her. Fiona might have been fierce, but at least she was a team player." Privately, I agree with her, but it won't help matters if I tell Jo this. We're stuck, it would seem, with the unlovely Ms Meyers. All I can hope is that she doesn't know about my mother and her father, or she could make my life a living hell; she seems the type to hold a grudge and act on it. "I know it's hard, but give it time. Either she'll prove herself on the first couple of ops, or she won't. Until we've seen her in action, we don't really know how she'll be to work with." Jo snorts, "I can make a bloody good guess, though. She'll be out to save her own skin, and to hell with the rest of us. Did you know that she's got a civilian banged up in the interrogation rooms? She's been in there for hours; Ros just took her off the streets." I hadn't known this, as the look on my face must convey, for Jo rushes on, "It's true. I told her about this ex-girlfriend of Michael Johnson's, this Leigh Bennett, and the next thing she's got her downstairs, and then she leaves her in there, yelling about wanting a lawyer, while she's gone off to meet with Zaf."
Now it's my turn to frown, for I don't approve of such methods. "Does Adam know?" I enquire, and Jo shrugs, "If he does, he must be condoning it. I don't have a good feeling about it; I think she's going to use this girl as some sort of cat's paw." Her gaze drops to the box of broken things I'm holding, and she adds, "Poor Malcolm, you've come back to find such a mess; we missed you, you know." I clear my throat, which has suddenly grown tight, and try to blink the hot itchy feeling out of my eyes. "I noticed that two of the wired jackets were missing. A man's black overcoat and a woman's olive-green parka. D'you know if anyone had them out recently?" Jo colours slightly as she says, "Oh, sorry. I've got the parka, I'll bring it back tomorrow. I don't know about the overcoat, though. Did you want me to bring you up to speed on Waterfall now?" I do, and she spends the next ten minutes telling me about the operation, finishing apologetically with, "I'd better get back to it; Adam wants to talk to me about something. See you later, OK?" She opens the door, and just as she is about to leave, she looks back at me. "Malcolm?" I give her the ghost of a smile in response. "Thanks for listening, you always know just what to say."
Blushing with pleasure, I glance down at the box of broken things; when I look up again, she has slipped out silently. Sighing, I carry the box out to my workstation, and soon become so engrossed that I almost jump out of my skin when Harry appears, cheerfully whistling the Drinking Song from La Traviata, and grinning fit to beat the band. I regard his behaviour with deep suspicion, for Harry only whistles when he is truly happy; the last time he whistled, it was when we discovered the Foreign Minister and the French Ambassador in flagrante delicto in a Knightsbridge hotel room, and both of them married men. When Ruth settles herself back at her workstation half an hour later with a pretty flush of colour in her cheeks, her eyes sparkling, and a secretive little smile playing around her mouth, my suspicions only grow stronger, fuelled by the words to the famous song that Harry persists in whistling loudly for the rest of the day.
Libiamo, libiamo ne'lieti calici
che la bellezza infiora.
E la fuggevol, fuggevol ora
s'inebrii a voluttà
Libiam ne'dolci fremiti
che suscita l'amore,
poiché quell'occhio al core onnipotente va...
I go home very late, with Verdi's irritatingly catchy tune looping endlessly in my head, and blackest foreboding clutching at my heart. It's one thing to suspect that something is going on between one's former lover, and one's boss, but quite another to be presented with irrefutable proof of it.
I decide to double the dose from the little brown bottle.
A/N: The verses Malcolm is thinking of from the Drinking Song from Act One of La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi are:
Let's drink, let's drink from the joyous chalices
that beauty so truly enhances.
And may the brief moment be inebriated
with voluptuousness.
Let's drink for the ecstatic feeling that love arouses.
Because this eye aims straight to the heart, omnipotently…