A/N: Well, here we are at last: Cotterdam, the ep some of you have been looking forward to/dreading. It's a monster in more ways than one, but I hope you will enjoy my take on it, with thanks as always to my readers and reviewers for their patience and support (and their reviews!).
The promise of a long summer is shattered when the warm weather comes to a sudden end at the start of August, with the arrival of lashing rain and a cold front seemingly straight out of Siberia. I find such changes of weather difficult; people rush to bring out their warm clothes and coats from summer storage, and the air in Thames House becomes tinged with the acrid stink of naphthalene fumes, while at home Mother insists on turning up the central heating for the first time since May. I go from room to room with the radiator key, bleeding air from the ageing system and listening to the gurgling of water in the pipes as it follows me throughout the house. My nose twitches constantly, and my throat itches and my eyes water whenever I find myself trapped in a lift with someone in a damp, musty overcoat or shoes mildewed from the unremitting rain, and my asthma plays up, leaving me feeling tired and out of sorts. I spend as much time as possible in the clean, cool respite of the sterile air in the server room, or shut away from others in the tech suite. No one notices, or if they do, they don't comment on my absence from my usual workstation on the Grid.
Ms Meyers simply doesn't care, Adam is struggling to maintain a semblance of normalcy as he tries to convince Harry that he doesn't, in fact, need another stint at Tring, Zaf is busily breaking Jo's heart, going by the ever-increasing number of S-24 forms he has been downloading from the HR resources page, and Ruth… it seems to me that Ruth is slipping away more and more often into her own world, in much the same way as she disappeared behind invisible walls in the weeks following Danny's death. She does her job as efficiently as ever, but there's a superficial quality to her interactions with others, an aloofness and abruptness that I've never seen before. She no longer asks Adam about Wes, or offers to help Jo with a tricky bit of analysis; if I have to speak to her, she replies in as few words as possible, never meeting my eyes, and it's only with Zaf that she seems to be anything like her usual self. I had returned to work fully intending to ask her about my Aeneid, but she is so unforthcoming that after one or two failed attempts to engage her attention, I decide to wait for a more propitious time.
As for Harry, he has been spending his days in Whitehall, dealing with the aftermath of Havensworth, which is considerable, and making only the briefest of appearances in his office. At least, that's the official version, but I suspect this is only partly true, a plausible excuse for avoiding Ruth. It's a good thing, too, for whenever they're in the same space, the tension is palpable, a dark undercurrent of repressed longing that threatens to swamp the rest of the team, or at least those of us who are sensitive to the emotional climate. I miss Colin's steadiness terribly at times like this, his ability to remain focused on a task and not become distracted. The fact that we are experiencing a rare quiet spell doesn't help, for mine is not a brain which does well if it is idle. I try to spend my time productively, attending to the server stacks, repairing kit and creating patches to improve the latest Office software upgrades, but these are routine jobs that don't command my full attention, and my mind frequently wanders to other, less logical problems, such as what to do about Jo.
I am increasingly concerned for the junior officer, not only because of her growing infatuation with Zaf, but because of the changes I have observed since the night that Kallis almost killed her. Outwardly, she remains the bright, confident young woman Adam recruited last November; but there is a watchfulness about her now, an involuntary stiffening of her spine if a man passes behind her unexpectedly, a certain way of holding herself in a crowd, that worries me deeply. I have seen it before in field officers who have faced death at close quarters, and while on the one hand it often makes them better operatives, if they are unable to relax when in non-threatening situations, a host of stress-related complications can arise. I know it's not my place to say anything; rather, it's Adam's job to look after the welfare of his team, but he is only just managing to hold himself together, and his inhumanly cold second-in-charge is utterly uninterested in the personal lives of her colleagues. Harry is hardly ever here, and Ruth may as well not be; although she tries to hide it, all her attention is still focused on him, as if the rest of us were no more than the Greek chorus in a drama of her own making.
I finally see an opportunity to broach this delicate subject when Jo invites me to join her on her morning pilgrimage across the river to the Airstream café. It's still early, and when we step onto the Golden Jubilee footbridge, a light mist of rain hangs over the river, blurring the familiar landmarks and creating the appealing illusion of walking into a Turner painting. Very few people are out and about, so when a jogger, his attention focused on the music pounding from his earbuds, brushes against Jo he goes past, she freezes, clutching the handrail as if it was a weapon, and does not move again until I say her name. "Jo? It's all right; it was just a clumsy chap out for a jog." Her eyes flick to mine, and in them I read confusion and fear. "Jo?" I try again, softly, and one by one her fingers uncurl from the railing. "Sorry, I'm a bit jumpy today. I'll have to get a decaf latte," she jokes weakly, and I smile reassuringly at her as we resume crossing the bridge. "It's not just today, though, is it?" I venture, and Jo turns towards me sharply, blue eyes narrowed.
"What d' you mean?" she fences, as we turn off the bridge and head down onto the South Bank. Sighing, I begin, "Jo, I've been doing this for a long time now." She watches me warily as I continue, "And I think you'll allow that I've seen a few things in my time. Certainly I've seen enough to know that when someone has been through a traumatic experience, the trauma rarely ends when the experience does." She stops dead, jamming hands that are still trembling into the pockets of her mac. I hold my black umbrella up to shield us both from the rain, and plunge on, "I've been worried about you ever since Ka…" "DON'T!" she snaps, startling me with her ferocity, "Don't say that name. I don't want to hear it. I'm fine, really, just leave me alone, OK?" "Jo, please," I counter gently, "We both know that's not true. For weeks, I've watched as you've flinched away from even the most casual, unintentional physical contact, as you've gone into yourself, as you've tried to behave as if nothing happened, and I'm worried for you. I hope that you consider me enough of a…a friend, to feel that you can talk to me, if you need to."
Jo says nothing for a moment, as she studies me intently with those big blue eyes, before she replies in a carefully casual voice, "Thanks for your concern, Malcolm, but there's really nothing to talk about. It happened, and then Ros and Adam turned up. End of. I don't want to talk about it because no one talks about this sort of thing. Look at Adam. He's been through hell, but you don't hear him going on about it. I love my job, and I want to do well." I understand, then, and my heart aches for her. She's learned it well, the unwritten rule of the security services: as Colin used to say, the first rule of Five is you don't talk about Five. Unconvinced by Jo's breezy dismissal, I try again. "Jo, I assure you that Adam, yes, and even Harry, have had their share of sessions at Tring. I'm no psychiatrist, granted, but I am a good listener, and I can keep a secret." Jo smiles at me at last, a genuine smile as bright as the sun shining through clouds. "You're a very sweet man," she tells me, "and perhaps I'll take you up on your offer one day." Still beaming, she adds, "Enough of the deep and meaningful stuff now, OK? I'm dying for my latte." "Decaffeinated," I remind her, as we set off again, and she chuckles, "I was only joking. Since when has anyone on Adam's team ever drunk decaf anything? We're adrenalin junkies, us!" She has a point there, and I'm so pleased to see her smiling again, I happily buy not only our coffees, but a hot, crispy, fragrant bacon and egg roll apiece, without so much as flinching at the thought of all that cholesterol and sodium coursing sluggishly through my veins.
The rain starts falling again in good earnest as we walk back across the bridge, and Jo notes, "This'll play havoc with the morning commute. There'll be delays on the tube; there always is when the rain's chucking it down, which is strange when you consider that most of the tube is underground…" She swipes her pass to activate the left hand pod into the Grid, but just as I'm about to do the same to enter the other pod, Harry comes barrelling through it, with a look in his eyes that I have only ever seen in connection with bad news about one or the other of his children. The look is comprised of equal parts fear, concern and worry, and to the best of my knowledge, there's only one person in the country that could inspire such a reaction in the hard-bitten head of Section D: Ruth. I turn to stare after Harry, now stumping rapidly towards the front entrance of Thames House, his driver hot on his heels. Something must have happened, something terrible… a dozen different scenarios flicker through my mind. We haven't been red-flashed, so it's not likely to be terrorism-related, even though after the dreadful events of 7/7, this is the first, and worst, possibility that occurs, necessitating a quick dose of Ventolin as I try to order my thoughts and ignore the staccato tattoo that my heart is drumming against my ribs. Ruth has not yet arrived at work, and I know on a wet day like this, she would choose to travel by tube rather than bus, taking the Northern line to Embankment. Hastening to the tech suite, I hack into the Central Control System for London Transport, with fingers that are slightly less steady than I consider ideal for such precise work.
And dear God, there it is: the CCS schematic is lit up like Oxford St at Christmas, showing delays all across the network as updates scrolling down the right hand side of the screen confirm what my roiling innards are telling me. Major delays on the Northern line… Kennington station closed due to a fatality… Emergency services are in attendance… No. No. Not Ruth, not like this; it doesn't make any sense. Except that it does, as I think back over the last few weeks, and the way in which Ruth has disengaged from the rest of Section D, and the strange air of apathy, or resignation, which has enveloped her recently… I can't, I won't, accept it, even as the screens before me blur and waver and that old hot, prickling sensation afflicts my eyes and a lump the size of a cricket ball bobs painfully in my throat. Swallowing hard, I look for the station's CCTV feeds, only to find that the system is down. No, no, no… I need to know for certain that hers is not the body lying mangled on the tracks. It's just professional concern; I would feel this way about any member of Section D, I tell myself, as I try for the umpteenth time to access the CCTV system. This time, I get in, and send a tiny prayer of thanks heavenwards as I pore over those few minutes of grainy, black and white images.
The front of house camera captures Ruth entering the station, drenched from the earlier downpour that Jo had remarked on, and then leaving again fourteen minutes later in a great welter of milling, confused commuters. Frowning, I search for footage from the platform cameras, but the technical issues seem are not yet fully resolved. All I can find is a long static shot timecoded at 7:48, showing the northbound platform crowded with commuters heading into central London; nothing unusual there for a Thursday morning, then. As I watch, Ruth, conspicuous in her off-white wool overcoat, makes her way onto the platform and pauses, apparently looking for something or someone, before the feed cuts out abruptly. I check again, but still no red flash, no urgent team meeting, nothing to suggest that anything is out of the ordinary, and yet every instinct honed over sixteen years in the security services is telling me that something is very wrong indeed. Where has Harry gone, and why? What's happened to the CCTV at Kennington station, and who is the fatality that has thrown this morning's commute into chaos? I need answers, and I stride onto the Grid in search of some, feeling sure that Harry must have said something to Adam, at least, before rushing off.
He hasn't; no-one knows anything. Ms Meyers doesn't even deign to look up from the glossy magazine she is flicking through as she shrugs a discourteous reply; Zaf and Adam are both at an offsite meeting, and Jo's only suggestion is to ask Ruth when she gets in. "She always knows where Harry is, it's like she's got a sixth sense or something," she tells me with an arch expression on her face. Well, quite, I think, choosing to ignore the sarcastic emphasis Jo places on something, as I go back to the tech suite, hoping to find out more by scanning the police and ambulance radio frequencies as well as monitoring the CCS. The backed-up tube network is finally starting to move again, although Kennington station remains closed, as I pick up on two ambulance officers calling back to base. "Yeah, yeah, we're on our way back now from St Thomas'. We had a few fainters to drop off at A&E. What? Yeah, it was a jumper. It was all over by the time we were at the scene. Why he did it, I'll never know. No thought for the likes of us, that's for sure." Nauseated, I slump back in my chair, hands covering my face in a futile attempt to control my churning emotions. So it was definitely a male, then, is my first thought, with a brief pang of compassion for him, and for whatever family he has just left behind, before sheer relief that it's not Ruth hits me with dizzying effect, forcing me to admit that no, my reaction would not be quite the same had it been anyone else. Oh, Ruth…
"Malcolm?" My head snaps up at the sound of her voice, and there she is, white-faced, her hair still damp at the ends from the rain, her hand unsteady as she proffers a ten pound note. "Ruth!" I exclaim, feeling as if I have fallen down the rabbit hole and into some strange parallel universe where people simply materialise if I wish hard enough. "A...are you all right?" In an oddly flat voice, she replies, "Yes, I mean…yes. I'm fine, but I need you to take a look at this." As I get up to go towards her, Ruth's eyes shift, taking in the unmistakable London Underground schematics displayed on my screens, and swift understanding flashes across her face. "How…did Harry…oh, never mind. Here." She blanches even more, and I get up quickly, ready to catch her should she faint, but she grips the doorframe fiercely as she waves her tenner at me. "Just take it, and see what you can find. Please, Malcolm, it's important, but I can't tell you why right now." I extract a small zip lock bag from my jacket pocket, holding it open as Ruth drops the note inside. "I'll go over it with a fine tooth comb," I promise her, carefully sealing the bag to avoid any further contamination, "but you look as if you could do with a sit down. How about a cup of tea?" She straightens up, wrapping her arms tightly around her torso, and shakes her head, smiling to herself at the mention of tea. "No thanks, I just had one." Just for a moment, those extraordinarily beautiful eyes meet mine, blazing with a fire I haven't seen in months, and against my better judgment my heart flutters at this tiny glimpse of the old Ruth, the passionate, brilliant woman I had fallen in love with, before she turns away, saying, "I'd better go and find Harry; I'm already late." Of course: it's always Harry bloody Pearce with her, first, last and always. She leaves without a backward look, and with a heavy sigh, I take the note through to the chemistry lab in Section C, and begin preparing it for analysis, all the while wondering what I am meant to be looking for. Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken. I decide that Jane Austen, that incomparable observer, would have fitted right in at Five.
Several hours later, I have run every test I can think of, and all the results point to the same conclusion. Ruth's tenner is nothing more, nor less, than a slightly crumpled, common-or-garden variety ten pound note. I've scanned it in half a dozen ways, put it through a battery of chemical tests, scrutinised it under UV and black light, and done everything except set fire to it: nothing. The DNA test results will take days, not that it's likely to be of much use, given the myriad hands a banknote passes through in its life. There's been nothing further regarding this morning's tragic events, either, which is mildly surprising, considering the number of people who must have witnessed what happened at Kennington tube station. I've been monitoring the news networks and the usual social media channels, but it's as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Granted, the notorious Northern Line was involved, but even allowing for this, I would have expected some noise from the chattering classes. There's something odd about the whole thing, yet strangely familiar too, as if it were in fact one of our own operations… My mobile phone beeps, announcing a text from Jo. Whr RU? Conf rm, now! I reply to let her know I'm on my way, relieved that finally, a briefing has been called: perhaps now I'll find out what's going on.
Cotterdam Prison, it transpires, is what's going on; or, rather, the recent fire there, which took seven prisoners' lives. At first, I don't give Adam my full attention, being preoccupied with silent gratitude that Ruth is sitting within arm's reach, alive and well, and not in a body bag headed to a morgue after being scraped up off the tracks like poor Mik Maudsley, the very dead former head of security for South East Prisons, of which Cotterdam is one. It's a super-max facility, designated for the worst of the worst, including convicted terrorists from the extremist Islamist group, Acts of Truth. The seven who were killed were all members, and I begin to sit up and take notice as Adam explains that the Special Branch report into the fire is a work of fiction. This is one of the things I hate most about the world I work in, the murky politics that frequently blur the line between politicians' agendas and the Civil Service's obligations, and which have forced far worse outcomes than a doctored report, distasteful and dishonest though this undoubtedly is. The heinous things that went on at Five and in Whitehall at the height of The Troubles come to mind… hastily, I refocus as Harry gives a bio of Maudsley, and Ruth avoids looking at the image of the man who gave her a tenner this morning at the ticket machine, and then jumped in front of a train. She shudders involuntarily, and Harry's eyes cut to her, concern evident beneath the hawkish look, as he gives Ms Meyers and Zaf their orders, which are to access Cotterdam's computer systems onsite in order to find out who visited on the day of the fire. Although he doesn't say it, this will be a job for me too, and as soon as the briefing is over I head to the tech suite to prepare, already considering possible approaches, factoring in the well-known paranoia of HM Prison Service, and wondering if they have implemented the latest round of security precautions yet.
Not long after I arrive at work the next morning, I hear a soft "Hi," from the doorway of the tech suite; glancing round, I see Ruth framed there. Picking up the well-tested ten pound note, I trot over to hand it back to her. "Nothing on it, sorry." I've begun to suspect that I'm being deliberately kept in the dark, and I don't like it one little bit. Ruth takes the note, her eyes searching my face. "Oh, are you sure?" she asks, not quite as innocently as she'd like. What is she up to? "I've scoured it, put it through a scanner. There's nothing at all, it's just an ordinary tenner." She frowns slightly, turning it over. "There's no other tests you can run?" With a touch of asperity, I add, "Well, I could blow it up if you like, set light to it?" There's a tiny glimmer of humour in her eyes, quickly suppressed, as she says, "No, it's OK, thanks." I decide to try being direct with her, even though I know it's not likely to help. "I still don't understand how it links to our investigation." I return to my seat, and she looks down and away as she murmurs, "It's just routine." Well, and what did you expect, Wynn-Jones? Harry has obviously told her to say nothing… "Oh, OK," I return blandly, unable to stop my eyes from rolling with annoyance at being lied to so blatantly. Deciding I've had enough of her games, I focus back on my screens, painfully aware that she is still hovering at the entrance to the tech suite. After half a minute of awkwardness, Ruth announces in her normal tone of voice, "I need another favour from you, actually," and I groan inwardly, dreading her next words. Here we go: what does she want now?
Not trusting myself to speak, I turn round to face her, my arms crossed tightly across my chest, instinctively wary as I fix her with a questioning gaze; it's called self-preservation, I believe. What she says next leaves me nonplussed as I try to make sense of her request. "Have you still got your contact at the mortuary?" Blinking in surprise, I ask, "Why?" only for her to ignore the question completely as she studies her feet and waits for me to reply. "Erm, he was Colin's contact, really," I hedge, wondering why she wants to know, but she stays silent, slowly twisting and untwisting her hands together in what I recognise as a nervous gesture… or a guilty one, reminiscent of Lady Macbeth's incessant hand-washing. Realising that she is not going to say anything further, I sigh, "If you go across to St Thomas' and ask for Dr Rajesh Singh, they'll take you to him." Her eyes meet mine for the merest heartbeat, the expression in the glittering aquamarine depths as inscrutable as a cat's, and then she is gone.
A few minutes after Ruth's departure, Jo strides into the tech suite. "I'm here to help," she announces brightly, and I gaze at her, puzzled, my mind still on Ruth, and the peculiar look that had flitted across her face as she turned to leave. Jo prompts, "With tech backup for Ros and Zaf," and belatedly I recall that they have been tasked with gaining access to Cotterdam's computers, and I need to issue the gear they'll need from the cage. "Right, right. Come with me, and we'll get them kitted out. Their IT inspectorate legends, I think?" The junior officer nods. "Yes, that should do it." We head down to the tech cage, and out of habit I reach up to the top shelf to check that the Tessina is still there, which it isn't. I experience a heart-lurching moment of sheer frustration – how the hell does she do it?! – before recalling that I put the tiny camera into my home safe after finding it in my dressing gown pocket a week ago, and I haven't yet brought it back. "Are you OK?" Jo wants to know, looking round from the requisition she is filling out, and I realise that I must have made a noise of some sort. "It sounded like you were muttering something about hell under your breath," she probes, and I blush hotly, embarrassed. "Sorry, just thinking aloud, wondering where the hell I'd moved the IT technician's toolkit." Jo regards me solemnly as she holds up a small black case of precision instruments, pocket-sized and soon to be in the possession of Stephen Bhan, software engineer and Zaf's identity for this op. Ms Meyers will be Angela Webber, senior system analyst, and together they will present at Cotterdam as a spot check team from HM Prisons' IT Inspectorate.
"I've already got it, plus a tracker, and their earwigs. Sign them out for me?" she asks sweetly, indicating the clipboard with the chit she's filled out, and I duly comply. "I'll ask Registry to send up the lock-boxes," Jo continues, referring to the electronically secured boxes in which the physical ID and bits of wallet litter, as well as each legend's back-story and family history, are stored. An army of fictitious ghosts haunts the lower levels of Thames House, for even after a field officer has left or been decommissioned or died in the line of duty, their legends remain the property of the Ministry. Sometimes I go down to the Catacombs, as these subterranean storage vaults are known, and wander amongst them, all those identities which lived only while they served an operational purpose, and were then consigned to miles of dusty shelves forevermore. All those men and women, decades of them, their backgrounds carefully crafted, their identity documents lovingly forged (a good many by myself, I might add), their stories abandoned once the operation concluded; and yet, the Service never forgets, and neither can I. Perhaps it's my Celtic blood, but I never feel as if I'm quite alone down there; all those voices, all those fictional characters, somehow seem just as real as the people who once relied on them for their protection, even for their very lives.
"Malcolm, are you sure you're all right?" I come back to myself to realise that Jo is staring at me, only for an instant she's not Jo at all, she's Zoe, or Helen Flynn, or… Shaking myself free of the mental cobwebs, I apologise. "Sorry, I didn't sleep very well last night, so I'm a bit silly today, I'm afraid." Jo continues to look at me, her gaze candid. "You're the least silly person I've ever known, and besides, I've seen you go close to three days on a few hours' sleep, and still be sharper than the rest of us. There must be something in the water, the way people have been behaving lately round here. I've just come across Ruth and Harry stuck in the hallway, staring into each other's eyes, and Adam's really beginning to worry me with the whole 'I'm OK, you're OK' thing he's been doing ever since he got back from being shot, and now you, standing there like you're in a game of Statues. Thank god Zaf's the same as ever, and Ros." I blink at this, and try on a smile that doesn't quite fit. "You don't miss much," I reply, choosing my words cautiously, "but do be careful, Jo, whom you favour with the results of your observations. The watchers don't like being watched, you know." She returns my smile as she opens the door of the tech cage. "I know, but it's the journo in me; I can't help wanting to pull at every little loose thread to see what mysteries I might unravel. I'll take these up to Ros, she's keen to get going." I step out of the cage after her, locking it behind me, and head back to the tech suite to set up for what should be a straightforward op, and yet I can't help but feel uneasy as Jo's words circle in my head like birds looking for a place to perch. Rampant curiosity in an officer of the Security Services is all very well and good, as long as it's turned to the right purpose; curiosity for curiosity's sake, however, is a recipe for disaster, and Jo is still very young and finding her way in the vast world of secrets and lies that is Five.
I tell myself I'm just getting old, and everything I've seen over the years has made me much more risk-averse than the field staff, whose job it is to take risks every day, but I keep seeing the look on Harry's face as he rushed past me yesterday morning, and I can't help wondering what rough beast is even now slouching towards Bethlehem to be born, with a frisson of fear that ripples down my spine like ice water. Before Jo rejoins me, I breathe a quick prayer of supplication: Heaven help us all, but I'm afraid for what's coming.
For something is coming, of that I'm sure.
A/N: Malcolm's line of Austen comes from 'Emma', by that author; and he is paraphrasing the last stanza of W.B. Yeats' 'The Second Coming' in the last sentence.