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Chapter Eleven: Forgiveness

Once more, giving his father the slip was easy for Leon. When he returned to the hallway where the Policeman was waiting, he found the man where he left him: half in shadow, standing near the front door. He looked like darkness made substance. Only now, he was talking in low tones to someone on his mobile. Making no effort to listen in, Leon fetched his jacket from the stand in the front room and checked he had his wallet and keys. By the time he was done, so to was the Policeman's call. They regarded each other in silence for a long moment. The older man's piercing blue eyes seemed to be searching him, weighing him up by the ounce. His expression unnervingly blank, but it was clear that below the surface a small storm of conclusions were being raced towards.

Leon tried to think of something to say, but as he looked up into the man's inscrutable face, he lost his nerve. Everything seemed inadequate. Instead, he tried to reach for the door latch to let them both out. But the Policeman wouldn't budge. He continued to stare at Leon in silent appraisal. After a few moments that felt like hours, he reached into his inside jacket and held an ID card up for Leon to look at.

"Take it," he said, his voice a low rumble.

He did so, reading the details there. Whatever name the Policeman had given him when he first opened that door, it wasn't Lucas North. And the Policeman was no Policeman, he was a "Senior Case Officer" from MI-5. A few hours before, he would have been relieved. But now, his apprehension steadily increased. He handed back the ID card, muttering a stammered thanks.

"And your name is?" Lucas North prompted him.

"Oh, sorry. It's Leon."

Now that their real identities had been cleared up, Leon was finally led out of the house. Outside, it was a stark contrast to the gloomy hallway. It was still bright and sunny; so much so, it hurt Leon's eyes and he blinked rapidly as he adjusted to it. Meanwhile, he was being led to a sleek, black car on the opposite side of the road. He went to open the back door to get in, but Lucas' hand shot out and gripped him by the wrist.

"I'm sorry," Leon blurted out, trying to take a step back.

Even in broad daylight, Lucas North had a permeable air of menace about his being. Leon wondered if Lucas knew Lucile Adams, which would at least explain the situation. Maybe, he thought, he was about to be taken for a swimming lesson in the Thames in armbands of concrete? But when the other man spoke, he sounded mildly apologetic.

"Sit in the front with me," he said. "The back seat's covered in rabbit shit."

At first, Leon thought he had misheard, but he thought it best to simply go with it. "Oh," he replied. "Okay. Er, that's fine."

Lucas had gripped his wrist so hard, there were red marks there after he let go. But Leon said nothing as he moved round to the other side of the car and got into the passenger seat. Before Lucas got in, he made another quick phone call that Leon couldn't hear. While he waited, he glanced over his shoulder, where a half-eaten carrot lay among the aforementioned mess. A ruck sack was also on the backseat, on its side and open, covered in loose rabbit fur. There had to be more practical ways of transporting pets, he thought. He was snapped out of his snooping when the car door opened and Lucas joined him. He started the car immediately, but before he pulled away, he looked over at Leon, once more apologetic.

"It was late; I didn't have time to clean it up," he explained, giving a nod to the backseat.

"No, really, it's fine," replied Leon. "So, am I under arrest now?"

It felt so strange to have the Officer apologising to him that Leon thought it a good time to remind the man of why he was there. But Lucas simply pulled out into the road.

"I can't arrest you," he finally answered. "MI-5 are not a secret police."

"Oh, so are you taking me to the Police?"

Lucas smiled a lop-sided smile. "Why on earth would I do that?"

Stunned at the question, Leon faltered before answering. "Well, because of the dead people, perhaps? One of them was your colleague."

The smirk on the spy's face remained intact. "If you go to the police, they'll just throw you in prison," he stated, while navigating his way through traffic. "But if you come to us, you'll work with us and your whole organisation will be taken out, root and stem. You'll continue to work with us, just on the off chance that they feel like a comeback. Our way makes much more sense."

Now that Leon had started talking, he began to worry that he was talking too much. The other man didn't invite further conversation; he kept his gaze fixed firmly on the road ahead. So Leon turned to the passenger window, watching the city pass in a rapid blur. But all the while, a hundred and one questions raced through his mind: 'what next?' was chief among them. For now, he would have to wait.

As soon as the call from Lucas ended, Ruth got back to work. Harry and Ros had returned from the Home Secretary's over half an hour previously, but she didn't say anything to them. She didn't say anything to anyone. Taking the scrap of paper on which she had written Leon Shelley's name and another scrap with Lucile's code on it, she headed for the empty meeting room. Firstly, she wrote the numbers on the whiteboard, separating them into individual groups. Secondly, she wrote Leon Shelley's in the space above the first eleven digits. They fit. The Ls and the Es all had the same number, and Ruth now had a sample with which she could figure out the method and get the final part of the encrypted message. It was just one word, with one L and an N.

Soon, the whiteboard was smeared green and red from where she was making mistakes and smearing over them with an old rag left at the side of the board. She wrote over and over it in black, trying to make the new text stand out as the equations Lucile used to get the numbers finally fell into place. The final word revealed itself, one number at a time: "Catalonia."

Once done, Ruth took a step back and looked at the whole message. They would never have got it if the kid hadn't voluntarily come forwards, but Catalonia meant nothing to her. Strangely dejected, she sat down in the seat at the head of the table that was normally occupied by Harry. In the absence of the others, with the smart screen dark and silent, it seemed especially lonely in the meeting room. But she wasn't left languishing for long, before Harry entered bearing fresh tea for her.

"I hope you don't mind," he said. "But I saw you coming in here and wondered what you were up to."

He sat to her left, in front of the whiteboard so he had to turn around to see it.

"The Secretary of State's son," she said, quietly. "Who would have thought it?"

Despite the sombre atmosphere, Harry raised a pained smile. "Oh, all the best activists come from nice wealthy families," he said, lightly. "Who was that rich, powerful – and not to mention English – socialite who joined the IRA in 1916? She actually led a contingent of men into the Easter Rising."

"Countess Markievicz," Ruth answered. "At least she was a grown woman when she joined. Leon Shelley's just a kid."

"Oh, come on Ruth. Surely you had dreams of the revolution when you were that age?" Harry retorted, making it sound like a challenge.

Ruth smirked. "I might have done, but I refuse to believe you ever did!"

He winked at her. "Classified."

"Tease!" she shot back, giving him a nudge under the table with her foot.

His eyes widened, their gaze meeting across the table. "Now who's a tease?" he demanded. "Anyway, I have to go. Don't wait for me tonight, I'll be sitting in on Lucas' chat with Mr Shelley."

"Then why don't I go to yours and make the dinner?" she suggested.

"Sounds good," he agreed, getting up and kissing the top of her head before returning to the Grid. "I'll call you when we're done."

Ruth watched him leave. Out of some old fashioned sense of propriety, she waited for a few minutes until after he had left before going leaving the room herself, lest anyone should get the wrong impression.

Lucas still didn't know what to make of Leon. He watched the kid carefully, unashamedly staring across the table in the interview suite. But Leon didn't look up; something on the surface of the table seems to have grabbed his attention, because he stared and started at it with a furrowed brow. He should be out chasing skirt, or playing football at the weekends before getting falling down drunk on cheap cider and smoking weed. If Lucas remembered rightly, that was a rough approximation of what he was doing at that age. But then, he was someone else back then. Literally.

A jug of water was on the table, next to a Dictaphone that would be activated as soon as Harry arrived. There were also three of their finest plastic cups nabbed from the water cooler on the Grid. Lucas filled two of them and nudged one over to Leon. The boy murmured his gratitude, but didn't touch the cup. He merely looked at it, his black eyes glittering dully in the overhead strip light as he briefly looked up at Lucas. Then he returned to that spot on the table, frowning intently like he bore the weight of the world on his shoulders, chewing at the nail of his middle finger so much he was drawing blood. Even when Harry entered the room, Leon remained locked in his own little world.

"Sorry I'm late," he said, getting settled into the chair at Lucas' side. "Shall we begin?"

He paused there, glancing at their guest before switching on the Dictaphone to record the whole interview. When the red light flashed on the device, Leon finally snapped out of his trance and looked at Harry as if he'd never seen another living soul before.

"We meet again," Harry said to Leon. "Well, what have you got for us?"

Stunned by the sudden spot light, Leon seemed dumbstruck for a moment. Nervously, he sipped at the water Lucas had given him before choking on his own words. Harry was leaning back in his chair, his gaze never wavering from Leon, making the teen even more nervous. Lucas noticed he was shaking, in a mental tailspin as he tried to find his own starting point.

"Tell us first, how Black Flag knew about the bunker in Suffolk," Lucas suggested. "Then tell us how you got in there and what happened to our Operative, Mrs Lucile Adams."

Given a solid starting point, Leon finally found his tongue. In a quiet, flat voice he told them about the listening devices in his house, the meeting where the arrangements for the Minister's tour were thrashed out and how he came to know about it. He admitted to stealing his father's documents and making illegal copies of them. His voice was so weak that Harry snapped at him to speak up, making the teen flinch as if he'd been slapped. But both Lucas and Harry listened in silence as Leon recounted Lucile's final hours. The ambush in the dark woods, deliberately disorientating Lucile and blocking all her escape routes. It was so simple, and so effective.

"They told me to sit with her in that dormitory," he explained. "I recognised her from when she was round my Dad's house, so I took off my mask and talked to her…"

Lucas wanted to interject, to start asking the rush of questions in his head. But they had to let Leon tell his side of story unimpeded. The cross-examination could wait. Meanwhile, Leon looked up at them, his gaze flitting between both Lucas and Harry as he explained the attempted escape through feigned illness, the waterboarding and final moments of Lucile's life. Those last minutes the most painful to listen to: a lone woman up against six attackers, all masked and armed; locked in a place where no one would hear her screams.

It made Lucas feel sick to his stomach; even Harry's silence was strained as he took it all in. In the end, Harry suddenly shot to his feet and began pacing the short length of the room in agitation. If Leon was just a little older, a little move evenly matched, Lucas knew he would have been met with a few accidents by now. Alas, both he and Harry had to restrain themselves and endure. When Leon explained to them how Emma Richards killed Lucile, his words finally trailed off into a loaded silence.

Harry had come to a rest by the back wall, behind Lucas. He looked at Leon through narrowed eyes. "So you did not kill Lucile?"

Leon returned his gaze imploringly. "No, Sir. But it was me who supplied the information that led to her being discovered and killed. Her … and the Minister."

Slowly, his gaze lowered and he began gnawing at his fingernail again. Brow furrowed, Leon could no longer look at either of the spies in the room and seemed to be increasingly shrinking into himself. A tortoise in retreat, but had no shell hard enough from what Lucas could see. Something inside Lucas stirred against the teen's reactions; a dark, shifting something in the pit of his belly. It made him shift in his seat and cast about for a distraction that came in form of sorting he papers in front of him.

"When you supplied this information to Black Flag," Lucas said. "You didn't realise they would use it to kill both our Operative and the Minister?"

"No, sir," replied Leon, now turning to look at the Senior Case Officer.

At the rear of the room, half in shadow, Harry was incredulous. He swooped down on the table, fists slammed on the table right beside Leon, making him jump out of his skin. "What did you think they would do with it, you idiot? Throw a surprise party for her?"

Harry's voice reverberated round the small space, each word seeming to hit the teen like a physical blow. The Section Head was unmoved, he continued to loom over Leon like a cat pawing its prey before ripping it to shreds. The look in his eyes was unlike anything Lucas had seen in him since Adam Carter was killed. As for Leon, he was scared out of his wits now. Fear that could be suffocating.

"I didn't think they would do anything with the information about the bunker," he said. "I just thought it would be useful for them to know; not to act upon. And for the Minister: I thought they would organise a protest along the routes." He paused, shoulders slumped in defeat and drew a deep breath. He had blurted everything out in a rush, but now Leon calmed himself and continued more slowly:

"Emma does this thing with tennis balls. She cuts them open and fills them with match heads. Just the little red tip, nothing else. Thousands of them; then seals them to they look like ordinary tennis balls again. Then she throws them against a wall, or bounces them hard against the ground. They ignite with a loud bang – like a bomb – and ignite with a bright pink flare. I thought she would make a load of those and take them on a protest, or something. She has lots of little things like that: they make a lot of noise, cause a lot of disruption – but don't kill anyone."

Harry remained in place, louring over Leon like a thundercloud about to burst. But the angry colour had drained from the Section Head's face. Now, he just looked incredulously down at Leon, silently weighing up the pros and cons of giving him a smack round the head. Again, Lucas felt the uncomfortable truth squirm inside him, like a living thing he thought long dead. Desperately, the Senior Case Officer tried to pick holes in Leon's story.

"That still doesn't explain why you passed on details about Lucile, in the bunker," he said, firmly. "You must have known they would do something with it."

"In truth, sir," replied Leon. "I wanted to prove myself to them. I wanted to show them that I could access top level information that they could use. But, I never thought for a moment that they would kill people-"

"But what did you think they would do with it?" Harry's temper had snapped again and he bellowed the words almost directly into Leon's ear.

"Sabotage!" the teen retorted, growing desperate. "Like I said before: Emma has lots of tricks. I was told we were a protest movement. Not a kill squad. I thought we would be limited to stuff like the hoax poisoning at that factory."

Harry continued to glower at Leon, who was breaking piece by piece and Lucas could only watch. "Are you that fucking naïve?"

Leon looked away from Harry, his expression crumpling as he struggled to hold back the tears. He swallowed the last of his water, gulping down hard to try and regain control of himself, managing quite admirably under the circumstances.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice once more low and cracked.

"That's not what I asked!" Harry insisted, waspishly. "I asked: are you that fucking naïve?"

With his head hung low, Leon bit heavily into the rim of the plastic cup as the first, fat tears dripped down his face. He quickly swiped at them with the sleeve of his jacket in the hope that no one noticed, but Lucas could tell he had crossed the point of no return now.

"Harry," said Lucas, his voice barely above a whisper.

The two men looked at one another for a second, before Harry nodded towards the door.

Outside, they could see onto the Grid through a set of double doors, but it was empty and darkened now. Lucas hadn't realised how long the interrogation had lasted. They stood in bewildered silence for a minute, while Harry composed himself and took a few deep breaths. For a second, Lucas even wondered whether he should nip into the boss' office and get the man a double whiskey. Once Harry was calm again, Lucas gave him the benefit of his opinion.

"He's just a kid, Harry. How many of the hardened killers and terrorists you've dealt with over the years burst into tears, after being just shouted at a bit?"

Harry sighed heavily. "I have to admit, that's the first." He paused, all his anger replaced with a strange defeated sorrow. "Sadly, he's far from the first whose interrogation has lasted long past their bedtime." He raised the ghost of a smile. "Mind you, it could just be us getting older, rather than them getting younger."

"Speak for yourself!" Lucas laughed. It was hollow, but a laugh all the same. "Seriously though, Harry, he's just a stupid, naïve kid who got in way out of his depth. Prison will kill him; going undercover will probably do the same. But that's the choice he has."

Harry leaned back against the wall, his face half-buried in his hands. He was thinking things through, weighing up the options. So, Lucas left him to it while he went to glance over the empty Grid. His earlier assessment had been incorrect: Ros was still there, with her jacket on but still sat at her station. When she saw him, her face lit up and she came dashing across the Grid towards them. Lucas held the door open for her, but she didn't come into the passageway that led to the interview suite. She stopped and leaned against the doorway and addressed them both.

"Listen, that boy tried to stop me earlier today," she said, looking at Harry. "You remember? The one I said I accidentally closed the door on."

Harry frowned, strode over to them. "Are you sure?"

Ros nodded. "Positive. He is uniquely skinny and scruffy. Definitely him. He might have been trying to give himself up."

"We better get back in there," Lucas said. But, before he left, he turned back to Ros and waited until Harry had gone inside again. Once he had, he looked Lucas closed in on Ros. "Can you go back to mine?" he asked, sotto voce. "I don't think I want to be alone after this."

Immediately, her expression registered her concern. "Lucas," she whispered, her gaze meeting his. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head. "It's just, you know, heavier than expected."

Ros brought her hand to his face, cupping his cheek gently. "Are you okay? Do you want me to take your place?"

"No," he replied, adamantly. "No, I'm fine; he just reminds me of someone I once knew. But if I knew you were waiting back at the house for me, it'd make it so much better."

Ros' lips curled into a smile. A rare natural smile. "Don't forget Starsky, too."

They both laughed. "How could I forget him?"

Stealing a kiss, they both went their separate ways: Ros to the pods and Lucas to the interview suite.

Once inside again, Lucas got settled back into his seat. Leon seemed to have composed himself again, but had taken to gnawing nervously at the rim of his cup. He had shredding the top of it like Starsky shredded his unwanted lettuce leaves. Harry was watching him in exasperation. The Section Head checked the Dictaphone and recommenced the interview.

"Where were you at roughly two o'clock this afternoon, Leon?"

He put down the shredded cup, thinking about it. "I think I might have been just outside this place."

"We know you were," Harry replied. "Another Agent just confirmed it. What did you want?"

"Mrs Adams told me to come here and ask for Lady Lazarus," he said. "I didn't know who that was, and I didn't know how to get inside. I tried to ask a lady who I saw coming in, but she'd already got inside before I caught her up. I didn't want to get in anymore trouble."

When he mentioned the name "Lady Lazarus" both Harry and Lucas exchanged a loaded look. They both knew her as Ruth Evershed; it was not a name Leon could have plucked out of thin air. It was Lucile who turned the boy, lending more weight to the story he gave about trying to rescue Lucile at the last minute. Once more, Lucile had delivered the goods from beyond the grave: a prize asset.

"So," said Harry. "You want to work with us to bring Black Flag down now?"

Leon nodded. "Yes, sir."

Lucas breathed an inward sigh of relief before turning to the business end. "You'll be wanting something in return, no doubt?"

Enough cash to sink the economy of a small island, a yacht and round the world tickets to go with immunity from prosecution for life. That was the way it usually went. But Leon merely cast his forlorn gaze downwards and said just one word that made even Harry soften like butter in the sun:

"Forgiveness."

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