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Chapter Seven: Fight the Good Fight
"It's not on the map, Ruth." Harry glanced sidelong as she flipped the A-Z on its head. Ruth had always had many qualities, but map reading would never be among them even if their destination was on one. Quickly turning back to the road, he slowed down as they neared a hairpin bend and the entrance to the farm seemingly sprang up from nowhere. It was why this place was chosen, all those years ago. You never noticed the entrance unless you were purposefully looking for it and only a large white stone marked the opening of the driveway- some sort of makeshift gatepost. "You know the maps upside down, don't you?"
"Of course!" she retorted, colouring slightly. "I'm studying the locale from an alternative perspective."
"The upside down perspective," he pointed out. "It won't magically reveal itself and I do know where I'm going. Trust me."
It had been a while. She was in Cyprus the last time he came here. He looked up the driveway, to where the farmhouse veered into view. The barns and sheds had been abandoned for so long now that the elements had brought down the roofs. Loose gravel crunched under the wheels of the car- a detail he remembered from his last visit. The porch was as he recalled it, too. Net curtains and a beige welcome mat by the door. A wind chime in the window and coloured glass beads. Homely looking, like any other farmhouse. But for the chemical and biological warfare bunker that was hiding in the basement.
He shut off the engine, parking to the hard left to leave room for the others as and when they arrived. "We never did feed the pigs."
"What?" asked Ruth, half-way through unbuckling her seat belt. "What pigs?"
He couldn't explain why the realisation of pig neglect made him feel so sad. "Connie kept pigs while she was here. It was all part of the front. But we forgot to feed them after she left this place. You know, when she came back to work for us."
Or were Connie's wretched pigs merely a front for her? Her betrayal still burned, when he thought about it directly. Harry could no longer tell. But they both stepped out of the car and breathed in the brisk, autumn air. All around them, the Surrey countryside rolled off into the distance, the trees burning amber as summer faded into autumn.
"Pigs are actually very intelligent animals, Harry. If no one fed them the chances are they managed to find a way out of their pens and went in search of food of their own volition," Ruth assured him, rounding the car and linking her arm through his. "Shall we wait for the others or take a walk around? I wouldn't mind seeing the place."
Harry quite agreed. Fastening his coat up, he set off around the side of the farmhouse and followed a beaten earth track. There was a tractor left rusting in a field, adding to the pretence that this was just another farm. It was always the little details that made the MoD's ruses so authentic, even if that same tractor had been rusting in that same spot for the last forty years.
"I wish we had a place like this." Ruth sounded wistful.
"What? Your own personal MoD Biological warfare bunker disguised as a hovel?"
"Don't be silly, Harry, you know very well what I mean," she chided. "Somewhere out of London. Somewhere in the open, like this."
"I want somewhere close to the sea, to be honest," he mused. Of all the places he had ever lived, none had been close enough to the coast.
They passed the sheds and barns, now devoid of animals. No bones, either. Maybe the pigs had escaped in time. Either that, or Connie had blasted the bunker's existence to her Russian friends and they had rescued them. It had crossed his mind that she had revealed its location. But from what he could tell no one had taken the blindest bit of interest in the place. Everyone else who knew about officially was now dead. These days, all the farm was was another Cold War relic rotting and forgotten, hidden in the placid English countryside.
Ruth's phone rang, cutting through Harry's inner thoughts and bringing their walkabout to a premature close. While she answered, they both turned back toward the farmhouse. But as he turned, he thought he saw a beady-eyed pig watching him from the bushes nearby.
"It's Nathan," she whispered to him, before returning to the call. "Where are you now? Okay, well keep going for about another two miles and you reach a sharp bend in the road-"
"Say's she who was holding the map upside down," Harry interrupted, loud enough for Nathan to pick him up. "You might want to upend those directions!"
"Shut up, Harry! No, Nathan, listen it wasn't upside down-"
"No, she was studying the locale from an alternative perspective," he cut in again.
Ruth said nothing, but fixed him with the coldest of death stares. "Nathan, you're almost here," she continued, firmly. "You'll reach a field with two horses in it: one white and one black. That's opposite a big white stone, about the same size as a badger. Turn left there, and you'll come to a long, narrow driveway. You'll see the farmhouse there."
She hung up the phone as they neared the farmhouse, the locks of which Harry had yet to pick.
Harry was looking at her askance. "I shudder to think where he's going to end up."
Ruth glowered. "It's not on a map, is it? It's not bloody signposted, either. Horses and badger sized stones were best markers I could come up with."
Secrecy had its drawbacks. But while the Grid was off limits, this was the best they would get. In the back arse of nowhere, no one would be watching them, no one would be thinking of them and, even if they were, they would never find this place. Meanwhile, as they reached the front porch again, Ros was pulling up in the driveway and leaning out of the driver window.
"Sorry, I got lost on the way here," she said. "Bloody Connie could have torched the place for all I knew."
"Everyone else is lost too, I think," Harry replied. "Jo has Tariq and Beth with her. But Nathan's on his own and could well end up in Timbuktu for all the directions he has."
While he talked, he picked the locks with a kit retrieved from his car. Only when the deadlock clicked back did he shoulder open the door and let them all in, just as Jo and her passengers finally appeared in the driveway. He breathed a sigh of relief, but opted not to wait around. Instead, he led Ros and Ruth inside.
Colder than the crypt, it was roughly as Connie left it – confirming his suspicion that no one really had bothered to check this place. There was an old newspaper folded on the arm of an armchair. He picked it up and checked the date. November, 2006. The crossword hadn't been finished and he still recognised Connie's handwriting, even after all these years. Photographs of her and her fictional family still adorned the mantelpiece over the hearth, where the ashes of a long dead fire still sat in the grate. Like the rest of the house, it really was just a shell.
"Hello!" A cheery voice called from the hallway outside, followed by a light knock on the front door.
"In here, Jo" Ruth called back.
They settled at the table in the dining room, or what passed for a dining room. Harry had tried the lights, but the electricity was off. There was a generator in the bunker down below so, despite his reluctance to go down there, he realised he had no choice. That just left the last man to arrive, the one working off the dodgiest of directions.
"Did anyone pass Nathan on their way here?" Harry asked the room at large. A question met with blank looks.
"We can't start without him," said Ros, taking her place at the table. "And we can't wait too long or it'll start to get dark."
But they needn't have worried. Nathan arrived last, almost half an hour after Jo, looking grouchy and huffing. "That stone was not shaped like a badger!"
Ruth sighed heavily. "I said badger sized, not badger shaped."
Ros forced a smile. "Well, now we've cleared that up I suggest we get down to business."
"I quite agree," Harry concurred, relieved to have them altogether at last. Only Lucas was missing and that was unavoidable. But, before he continued, he looked down the length of the table. It was as though the Grid's meeting room had been grafted onto his grandmother's lounge. He opened the proceedings with the understatement of the century. "I realise this is far from perfect, everyone. But under the circumstances, this is the best we can do. There is nobody outside this room who knows about this place. Jo and Ros, you've been here once before so that's something. Does Lucas know it's no longer safe to contact the Grid?"
To Harry's left, Ros nodded. "I managed to get word to him and the message was flagged as read. But he didn't reply to it."
"So, I take it we aren't sitting at home and casually waiting for the results of this investigation to come through?"
It was Jo who had asked the question, smiling and already armed with the answer. Harry couldn't help but applaud the timing of her return. He almost laughed.
"Bollocks to the investigation," Nathan chipped in. "We expose John Carlton and Securitech's dodgy dealings, we clear Lucas' name by default. So why don't we stick with the original plan and keep the company under surveillance?"
"We need to do more than that," Ros added. "We need to flush the bastards out. But how can we do that with no access to the Grid. Harry, can't you speak with the Home Secretary again? Get him to see reason. He can't just shut you out."
As if he hadn't already tried to make the Home Secretary see reason. He knew they had no choice but to go forwards under their own steam. Recalling Ros' paper trail leading them to Lucas' old home, he formulated another plan.
"Ros, you try to contact Lucas and the pair of you stake out the house in Cumbria. I want photographs of everyone who comes and goes from there. Tariq, I'm calling in on old friend and together you're going to be working on cracking the hard drives Nathan obtained from Suleiman's house. Nathan and Jo, I want you both to tail Carlton wherever he goes. Stay safe, both of you."
That was the problem with surveillance teams. They were still visible, wherever they went. No one was see through. The trickiest part was to remain unnoticed because being seen was a grim inevitability. And as disinclined as he was to keep working on the Home Secretary, Harry was forced into a corner. Towers was the only way out.
Finally, it was Ruth who concluded matters. "If anything happens, we regroup here. As far as we know, it's the safest place open to us. I know it's hard to find, but you need to memorise it. If we do need to regroup here again, make sure you're not being tailed."
It was routine stuff, but they needed everyone to be sure. "Any questions?"
Harry glanced around the table one more time, satisfied that they were at least inching forward.
Six months after quitting smoking John Carlton found himself lighting up again. It's only the one, he thought to himself. But it was always just the one. Just the one suspect deal to keep the company's head above water, but fate found a way to send another wave to drag them back under. Now he was out in the rain, smoking with the office girls and huddling under the corrugated tin roof like a social outcast. His hands trembling as he struggled with a lighter, so much so one of the other puffing outcasts had to step in and help.
"Thanks," he mumbled, inching toward the back of the hut.
Even this was against regulations. There wasn't meant to be any smoking in any covered space which could be construed as "indoors".
"Fuck it," he said aloud. The comment drew strange looks from his employees, thinking he was talking to himself. Well, he had just talked to himself. He drew a deep breath, flushed in the face, and hastily apologised. No one offered any further discussion points, so he directed his gaze out over the car park at the rear of Securitech's HQ. A maroon Land Rover pulled up alongside the security barrier and the unseen driver flashed his ID card to the man in the booth.
Joseph Weston. Long time, no see. He had two choices: run inside and pretend he hadn't noticed the other man's arrival. Or, stick it out with the smokers and see what he wanted. The spineless part of him that yearned for a quiet life begged him to go with the former. The newly emerging dominant side compelled him towards the latter. This was survival, after all. He knew, in his heart of hearts, he would never have a quiet moment ever again.
Dodging through the huddle of employees, he stepped out into the drizzle to meet Weston half way.
"I've been trying to get hold of you all day," Weston greeted him.
"I've been busy," he replied through a stream of smoke. "Come this way; we can talk in private."
He led the way through to the back of the building, where the furnace and boiler rooms were. The Caretakers weren't around at this time of the day and none of the other employees had any business being there.
"It's good news, John. Not only have we dislodged a troublesome Spook for you, we've managed to take out his entire back up team."
Carlton frowned. "How did you manage that?"
"I didn't," Joseph confessed. "The Home Secretary did it for us. It seems Section D was on borrowed time all along. But don't think they've gone away. They'll still be gunning for you, wherever they are."
Carlton looked up, meeting Weston's gaze for the first time. "You make it sound like they'll have snipers lined up on the rooftops. Maybe it was better when they had them all grouped in one place. Maybe this has already gone much too far."
Even though they were alone, he kept his voice down. After one last heavy drag on the cigarette, he flicked it down a nearby drainage hole.
"You're not chickening out on me, John?" asked Weston, one brow raised sceptically. "You know one of them had been speaking to Suleiman before we got to him."
Carlton rolled his eyes. "Surely they won't take the word of a terrorist over the word of a respected businessman? Suleiman's dead, your boys saw to that-"
"But the other one, the one we saw him with, isn't and you can guarantee he's among those tossed out of MI5 on his arse," Weston cut in. "This isn't over yet, John. I promise you."
Carlton sighed heavily, looking through the dismal weather to where his car was parked near the perimeter gate. It always started out as something simple. Just the one. He always seemed to forget the past had a way of coming back to bite you.
"I made a mistake-" he cut himself off, realising too late how lame he sounded.
"Look, my sources inside the security forces tell me they're interested in some house in Cumbria. Lucas North's father once owned it. I'm going to send some of my people there too, just to keep an eye on things. In the meantime, keep an eye on things here. They're bound to be after you."
Carlton shrugged, shaking his head dejectedly. "Whatever you say."
Unable to take it anymore, he turned and trudged back towards the building. Business never stopped, even when it was thin on the ground.
"I'll be in touch, John," the other man called after his retreating back.
He didn't bother turning around.
Nathan brought the car to a crawl as he passed the company's HQ again. He took his eye off the road for just a fraction of a second to get a good look at it. Large, imposing and grey was the only impression he could really form from this distance. He wouldn't be able to blag his way inside, nor access the internal communications. He wouldn't even be able to sneak a quick tap on the phone and listen in from a distance. Deprived of the Grid and all its technological wonders, it felt like they were sailing down shit creek without a paddle. He drew to a halt in a layby opposite the headquarters and slumped down in his seat.
"We might as well just go home and lay in bed all day," he grumbled to Jo. "For all the good we're doing here today."
"Do you always give in this easily? You're supposed to be a spy," she replied, her smile taking the sting from her rebuke. "Look, there's a van load of cleaners pulling up in the driveway now. What do you think of them?"
Nathan watched them hopping down from the open rear downs of a large van. Their blue pinafores were highly visible in the fading light and drizzling rain. Some wheeled floor buffers, others carried mops and buckets. The one in charge wore a huge ring of keys at his hip. Keys both Nathan and Jo eyed hungrily.
"Oh, I like that," said Nathan. "But we haven't got time to sweet talk one of them into working for us."
"Mmm," replied Jo. "One way in is hitching ourselves on to that lot. They're cleaners; casual labourers that even the supervisors rarely try to keep track of."
"And they're invisible," Nathan added, leaning back in the driver's seat. "Well, at least no one pays them the blindest bit of attention."
"Exactly. I can do it. All I need to say is that I'm a new mum looking to return to work, preferably in the evenings to suit baby time and casual. It's within a hair of the truth, but not quite there."
Nathan smiled as he listened to her advice. "If that fails, everyone has their price I suppose."
"It won't fail and we've got to try. For Lucas' sake, if not the whole team's."
Either way, they wouldn't be able to do it that evening. He started up the engine again and pulled out of their parking spot, making a note to return there again in the morning. Their plan needed refining, if they were to make the most of their only opportunity.
"You look tired, Harry." Ruth's voice was full of concern. She had that look in her eyes; that silent pleading.
"I need more wine," he replied, reaching across the dinner table for the bottle.
He felt almost nostalgic for the times he had been booted off the Grid and had to rely on stolen meetings for contact with Ruth. But that was before they were married; when they were just colleagues tip toing around each other. Looking back now, it felt like a different lifetime. Now, if he was under surveillance, she would be too and it would raise no particular eyebrows.
"Do you remember that time I met you on the bus?" he asked, half smiling. "It was years ago, now."
Her smile matched his own. "How could I forget that? You're a bit more than just my boss now, though."
She put down her own wine glass, nudging her empty dinner plate away as though it were an obstacle between them. The lamplight was low, unobtrusively nudging aside the darkness of the night. It was that precious hour when they had each other all to themselves, with no Grid business getting between them.
Meanwhile, Harry was still thinking back to that night on the Grid. That same wistful longing closed over him once more. Did he know then that what he felt for her extended beyond just 'colleagues'? He could no longer remember, but a softness had opened up in him. A softness that could yield a little further, allowing her to discreetly inch her way inside and take up residence beneath his skin.
"I think I knew I loved you by that night," he said. "But I can't pinpoint the exact moment I knew. Maybe that's awful, but it's true."
"Why would it be awful?" she asked, brow creasing. "It's the best thing that ever happened to me."
"But you could have it so much better," he stated. "What you were saying this morning, when we went to that farmhouse: about wanting somewhere quiet to live."
Now that he'd brought it up, she looked bashful and apologetic. "I wasn't dropping hints, Harry-"
"I know that. I know you were just making conversation; opening up possibilities," he quickly clarified. "But don't you think it would be perfect? If we were no longer doing this? Forgive me if I sound bitter, Ruth, but I have devoted my life to the protection of this nation. Willingly, I might add. But right now I'm feeling all our efforts are a little under appreciated."
On the way back from the bunker come farm, he found himself wondering what the bloody point was. What was the point of him risking other people's lives if the precious intel they gathered was simply going to be cast aside and ignored whenever it suited. It wasn't just his ego, it was his morals and ethics and principles that no longer seemed relevant.
Ruth laughed. "You couldn't retire, Harry. What would you do all day? You'd be bored out of your skull and if I followed suit we'd tearing each other's hair out."
"But, I'm being serious. Why should I go on fighting the good fight if all that's going to happen is people die and I provide the scapegoats? It's futile and pointless and if my people are going to die, then I want better reasons than that."
While he vented his frustrations at the situation, Ruth had turned serious again. "But it's times like these that keep you going. You know that, really. It's what drives you; it's what's kept those fires burning. Like a student who's never lost that sense of righteous idealism. Do you think you can let that go, at your age, and resign yourself to digging the bloody garden for the rest of your days?"
The image of their back yard flashed through his mind. The overgrown grass, the blank bits where the previous owner grew some form of bush or plant. He tried to picture himself hunched over some similar form of bush, pruning and digging while not giving a flying fuck whether any of it blossomed or not. Knowing she was right only made him even more depressed.
"The looked on your face says it all, Harry," she pointed out. "Just keep on fighting the good fight. The alternatives just don't bear thinking about."
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