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Chapter Ten: Chin Up
Ruth stopped nervously twisting her wedding ring round her finger only to accept a cup of tea. She called it a cup of tea in her head; but the reality was that it was a plastic beaker full of heated ditch water that had been spat out by a suspicious looking machine in the hospital waiting room. Jo tried to smile at her as she handed it over, but she still looked menacing while covered in someone else's blood. It was clear she had tried to wash it out in the ladies toilets, but only succeeded in spreading the stains around, lending it a gruesome water colour effect.
"Thanks, Jo," she said. Ruth sipped the tea, but only for show and had to suppress a grimace.
She only accepted because it gave the other woman something to do. Now Jo resumed her pacing, back and forth and wearing a hole in the already patchy lino. In between steady footfalls, she could just hear Harry's voice talking in low tones to someone outside. She looked up, towards the door, but the waiting room they were in was an ante-room away from the main bustle of the accident and emergency ward. Harry was out of sight.
While she waited for his return, she thought back over her time in service. Agents had died outright on unacknowledged battlefields the length and breadth of the country. She thought she should be used to it by now, she was almost angry with herself for still being so emotional. Ros wouldn't do this. Ros would hold it together and if she felt any grief at all she would use that to drive her on, to consolidate her own steely self-control. Harry was the same as Ros. Grief converted into an unyielding need to strike back and settle a score. She used to think it was heartlessness. Now, she saw it for what it was: an energy.
Unwittingly, she recalled her return from Cyprus. She returned to the Grid and found only three members of the team she had left behind still alive. Even now that realisation made her blood run cold. Still, she had resolved herself to facing any future deaths in the team with the same cold determination as did Harry and Ros, using it to driver her onwards. But she hadn't been prepared for an all-night wait while her colleague hovered between life and death. Uncertainty, it seemed, was so much worse than the hardness of facts.
Ruth's train of thought was derailed as Harry finally re-entered the room. His expression was grim, but firm set. Jo ceased pacing immediately, whipping round to face her boss. Meanwhile, Ruth got up, her expression expectant and braced for the worst.
"Well, Nathan's survived the emergency surgery," he said. "He's had a massive blood transfusion, he's lost a kidney and there was some other internal damage that needed patching up. But he's still in a coma and it's not looking good."
"If he survived the surgery then surely that's the worst of it?" asked Jo.
Ruth didn't know what to make of it. But she could see Harry had already imparted all the hope he could.
"We'll just have to wait and see," he replied. "Look, his partner's with him now and his family are on their way from Wales. We should go home and give them all peace. Jo, we'll drive you back, okay?"
Jo looked hesitant, chewing nervously at a dirty fingernail. Ruth could see the overwhelming urge to stick by a fallen comrade, but with next of kin and real family on the way sensitivity had to win out. Reluctantly, Jo followed them.
They passed him on the way out. He was shut up inside the intensive care unit, surrounded by machines and buried in a nest of wires. Ollie was already there at the bedside and gently holding an exposed hand, so at least Nathan wasn't alone. Too many of them died alone; the fact that they rarely saw their own death coming being the smallest of consolations.
The three of them stepped out into the early morning gloom. It had been raining and all the car windscreens glittered under the lights of the car park lamps. Their own was among them, parked close to the hospital exit and reflecting the building in its tinted windows. A black mirror reflecting them in negative light.
"Are you all right?" asked Harry, as they got in the front. He reached over and squeezed her hand, a gesture of reassurance. "Where there's life, there's hope."
It was his way of saying 'keep your chin up.' "Yes, I'm fine," she replied.
Jo was silent in the back seat. Exhaustion and stress had taken it out of her. But Harry took advantage of the early hour to cut some corners to get her home faster than usual. A journey conducted in near silence.
"We should go back to the house," Harry suggested, once Jo was safely home. "There's no point returning to the farm."
Ruth raised a pale smile, out of relief more than anything else. She also noted that the farm was now just 'the farm' and no longer Connie's farm. The taint of treason was slowly being erased from its very foundations.
"I won't be able to sleep at all," she pointed out. "But I don't want to go back there."
"Ros, Lucas and Tariq are there. It's not like we left Malcolm on his own." Harry sounded as if he were justifying himself. He kept his eye on the road as they made the final leg of the journey. "Besides, I think it's high time I spoke to the Home Secretary again."
Although she opted against pushing the issue, Ruth inwardly agreed with him. But she couldn't help but wonder what effect it would have. Were they backing each other into ever tightening corners? Or would the reward for Nathan's blood be a truce with the Home Office? Either way, she caught the look of calm passivity in Harry's eyes. That same glacial look that masked his hardening heart. He shut off the engine abruptly, making the ensuing silence almost heavy.
"Do you think Towers will listen now?" she asked, reaching for the door handle but then pausing. She wanted to hear his opinion before getting out.
"I'll make him listen," he answered, bluntly. "Come inside, it's late."
It was actually early. Almost six in the morning and they only had a couple of hours to get some sleep. She did as he bid, stepping against the damp concrete and listening to her heels ringing against the pavement as she joined him again. When she went to reach for his hand, he pulled his own away and placed his arm protectively around her shoulder.
"Was that Oliver you were talking to?" she asked. "Back at the hospital, I mean."
"Yes. He'd become deeply distressed after the nurses flat out refused to let him donate blood despite the desperation of Nathan's situation."
Ruth extricated herself from his semi-embrace as she unlocked the front door, a frown picking at her brow. "Surely they would set that rule aside if a man's life was in grave danger?"
"Apparently not. The poor sod even offered to undergo an HIV test there and then to prove he was free of infection. Even so, they still can't use his blood."
"But did they get the blood they needed? That's all that matters, in the end."
"Sure," replied Harry. "But it was a delay that cost them time. Now it's just that waiting game again."
Resisting the urge to open a bottle of wine, Ruth steered Harry straight up the stairs. Now that she was home, the weight of exhaustion was finally weighing her down. Her limbs felt as if they were made of lead and her mind couldn't process any more. She yawned expansively as she fell backwards onto their bed and finally closing her eyes.
While Ros and Tariq were busy, Lucas let himself into the bathroom of the farm. In a scene so reminiscent of childhood winters, there was no hot water and the cold had to be endured. But it was worth it for a shave and a proper wash, at long last. Ros did offer to boil a kettle, but the prospect of first degree burns didn't appeal much, either. There was no middle ground in old houses: the water was either lethal or freezing, no matter what you did to it.
By the time he had returned to Ros, the news of Nathan's near fatal stabbing had come through. She was on the phone, talking to the young cleaner who had found him and pretending to be a policewoman. Harry and Ruth had already set off back to London; Tariq was down in the bunker working with Malcolm. He sat on the arm of a chair, watching as Ros concluded her discussion with the cleaning girl.
"Anything?" he asked, as she hung up.
She was sat at the dining table, running a hand through her hair and looking exhausted. "Nothing. No description; nothing suspicious. We have no idea who actually did it."
"Whoever did it will probably have nothing to do with the actual Op, though," he pointed out. "What I mean is, whoever it was won't lead us directly to the heart of what's going on. He was just some cat's paw."
"Yeah, but he could still tell us who hired him," she replied. "Now he's just melted into the night and probably out of the country. Tariq's scrolling through CCTV footage but, unsurprisingly, Carlton probably knocked out the cameras in that area before he left the building."
Lucas sighed deeply. "Well then, we'll just have to find another way. We still have the images we took from dad's old house. Those people are bound to lead us somewhere."
"And we need access to facial recognition software before we can get positive identifications on them," she pointed out. "It comes to something if we have to hack into our own stations to do our jobs properly."
With that, she got up wearily and stretched out. It was some effort to wake herself up again, following their long and cramped journey south from Cumbria. Now it time was crawling into the early hours of the morning and there was no end in sight for them. She looked around the room, as though she had lost something. But all Lucas could see was old newspapers and fake photographs of a woman who turned out to also be largely fabricated.
"We should go down stairs," she suggested. "Come on. I'm sure Malcolm's forgiven you for forcing him and his mother out of their home, a few years ago."
Sometime during the intervening years he had almost forgotten that small detail. The Albany File and the ensuing chaos that had, once again, reared its head. He suppressed a groan and followed Ros as she led the way into what looked like an ordinary basement cellar. The bunker itself was in semi-darkness, forcing him to make his way along the narrow corridor by touch. But once in the right place, they found Malcolm listening intently to something they could not hear, while Tariq was glaring at the monitor of a PC. For a long time, both he and Ros went unnoticed as the other two were lost in their work. Or, Malcolm was just pretending he was not there.
"Okay," Ros broke the silence, pulling up a chair for herself. "What's been happening? Tariq, can you give me a quick briefing?"
After the darkness outside, the bright lights inside were making Lucas narrow his eyes menacingly. But he managed to follow suit, directing that same glare towards Tariq. The younger of the techies was at least looking vaguely optimistic.
"You know, before she left, Ruth had sent an email containing a virus to someone advertising themselves as an assassin on the deep web?" he recounted. Ros nodded, so he continued. "Well, whoever is behind that profile has already clicked on the email, thinking it was an offer of business."
Lucas felt his own hopes lifting. "So, you're able to gain access to the site?"
Tariq nodded, barely suppressing a grin. "We have unfettered access to his messaging system. Check this out."
Gripping the monitor from both sides and pulling it towards himself, Lucas thought he was about to kiss it. Instead, he twisted it so he and Ros could see what he was talking about. Tariq was smiling so broadly his dark eyes glittered in the neon strip lights overhead.
"This," he said, "is the fabricated chat log that was found in Lucas' file, only the names have been photoshopped out and replaced. The time stamps are the same, the dates and everything. Even the Onion URL is still the same."
Ros had the original, folded neatly in her back pocket, after Ruth had given it to her before leaving for London. But now she pulled it out so fast she almost tore it. She then held it up to the screen, beside the original so they could all compare them.
"The bastards!" she exclaimed in a rare show of emotion. "I don't know if I should even be bloody offended that they've done such a rush job of it."
"I really don't care," Lucas cut in, leaning over them all to take a screenshot of the original – undoctored – chat log. "Get this to Harry immediately, before he meets with the Home Sec tomorrow."
He had become all fingers and thumbs in his haste to get the evidence compiled, so Tariq took over. It seemed he did everything with just a few swift clicks of a mouse, and suddenly it was all being emailed to Harry. Once that was concluded, Lucas was able to get an unimpeded look at the "assassin's" website. There were other messages in there, concealed in the direct message folder that only a site administrator had access to. He pointed to them on the screen. "Make sure you get copies of all of these before you sign out. God knows what's in there and it could lead us to whoever killed Sharaf Suleiman and who attempted to kill our Nathan. I mean, it can't be a coincidence that Nathan was with Suleiman at the time of his death. I think the killer recognised him. Ros, what do you think?"
He turned to look at her, gaging her reaction. "It's entirely possible. Plausible, even. If Nathan pulls through, we'll need to get a positive identification from him. It could even be that Nathan saw him by the canal that morning but didn't register with him as suspicious at the time. But that really is if he pulls through."
But given the size of that 'if', they had to rely on other means to snare their key players. Malcolm was still listening in, but removed his headphones once Tariq got down to taking copies of their assassin's website messages.
"For my part," he began. "I've been following the trail of some large sums of money. Money paid through a shell company belonging to one John Carlton, but I haven't yet been able to find out where that money originated from or what it was for."
"And that shell company has no assets at all? It's literally just a name," asked Ros, fixing Malcolm with a beady-eyed glare. She was like a blood hound picking up the scent.
"Just a name, used purely to move one especially large sum of money," he answered.
It was a common enough tactic. But the money could just as easily be Securitech money ready for laundering as it could be for a dirty bomb produced by the same corporation. Until they traced its origins, they had no concrete evidence. Although he would have liked to have seen John Carlton and Securitech hung out to dry before morning, Lucas was still satisfied.
"That's not all," said Malcolm, jolting Lucas out of his reverie. "Nathan did manage to bug Carlton's office and those bugs are still in place now. I daresay – given that they clearly know who Nathan is and what he was doing there – the obvious bugs will be gone before the morning tea break. However, there are others in less than obvious places. Hopefully, some will survive and we'll still be able to listen in on what's going on in that office."
"But the phone tap will be gone," said Ros, her earlier eagerness now tempered. "We'll only ever get one half of the conversation."
"Unless we tap remotely," Tariq chipped in again. He half turned from his computer terminal. "We can calibrate the existing tap and back it up remotely."
Malcolm gestured towards him, smiling approvingly. "Don't despair. There's always a backup plan."
By the time they left the bunker, it was nearing seven in the morning. The early rays of dawn were just making their presence felt outside the kitchen window. Before getting some sleep, he felt they both deserved at least a strong cup of tea. While waiting for the kettle to boil, however, Lucas found himself staring out of that same window. He found the farm to be much like his childhood home, except there were no secret chemical warfare bunkers underground, to the best of his knowledge.
The steam billowed from the kettle while he was still staring into the middle distance, obscuring his view in an opalescent haze. But even though lost in his thoughts and half blinded by the steam, he still saw someone moving in the distance. Frowning, he quickly called out to Ros.
"There's someone out there," he called, firmly. "Quick, come and look. In the distance, at the far end of the paddock, where that tractor is. I definitely saw someone. Or something. The overgrowth moved as they ducked out of sight."
Ros was swiftly at his shoulder, also staring hard into the distance. But clearly she registered nothing. "I can't see anything. Are you sure you didn't imagine it? It's been a long few days and we're all exhausted."
He still felt deeply uneasy, but returned to making the tea anyway. Every ten seconds, however, he found himself checking what was going on out there. But now he saw nothing besides the bland countryside.
On the back of very little sleep, constant worry over the fate of his agent and a raging bad mood, Harry began his meeting with the Home Secretary in earnest. Under normal circumstances, he would have been cautious: gaging the man's mood first, treading carefully and acting almost like a diplomat. But, today, any effort at courtesy was more effort than it was worth.
"Home Secretary, when this Op first began with two British subjects travelling to Iraq to join ISIS, you asked me why this keeps happening," he began, meeting Tower's gaze. "I can tell you. It happens mostly because the agency is working off imperfect evidence which is exacerbated by the fact that we only have the full backing of the Home Office as and when it suits you. Anything you find inconveniently distasteful, you disregard and side line your own intelligence operatives to the mortal detriment of the vital work we do. I hope now that this answers the question for you."
Towers looked as if he'd been struck around the head. "Now, Harry, I don't think there's any need for this-"
"Oh, there's every need Home Secretary," he cut in again, opening a file on his lap. He paused for breath and to give himself time to select some of the evidence gathered by Ros and Lucas. "The need grows all the greater when one of my promising young agents is laid out and dying in a hospital intensive care unit all because you would not listen. Well, you wouldn't listen then so I'm making you see for yourself, now, what is going on right under your nose."
Giving up on selecting only the highlights, Harry pushed the whole file across the desk. All they had so far was in there: from financial transactions, to chat logs unedited and photos of people sneaking around private homes. William Towers reached for it as though it may have been booby trapped, gingerly between thumb and forefinger. While he read through it, Harry watched and tapped his foot against the carpet. He wanted out of there as quickly as possible. But while he read, Towers remained ominously silent. An act that raised Harry's hackles even further.
"That chat log you used to so casually dismiss one of my most able Senior Case Officers is in there in its unedited form," he pointed out, waspishly. "Do take a long, hard look at it while you're there."
Towers still did not look up at him, remaining buried in the file instead. But the colour was rising in his face. Whether through shame or fury Harry could not tell, nor did he much care anymore. He had been more than patient with Towers, in light of past good relations. But his good will was spent, a growing deficit in fact. He heard Towers draw a deep, shuddering breath as he tried to make head and tail of what he was looking at.
"A-and what exactly…" Towers began, then trailed off. "Jesus, Harry!"
Harry sighed impatiently. "That's one name you definitely won't find in that file, Home Secretary."
Almost as if he had not spoken at all, Towers flipped the file shut as though it offended him personally. "But why? For god's sake, Harry, why would Carlton do this? He tried to kill an MI5 operative on his own doorstep. Why?"
"I'd be able to answer that question for you, if you hadn't had myself and my entire team suspended," he snapped back. "It might not have happened at all, if we had had our full back up team."
Towers coloured again, no longer meeting Harry's gaze. However he was still prevaricating; still looking for some way to save face. But for every minute longer that he denied what was going on, Towers was only digging himself deeper into his own mess. Harry had all the time in the world to watch him doing that.
"Point taken," Towers replied, flatly. "Fine. I admit it. You were right and I was wrong."
"Given all that's happened, don't think for one moment that I glean so much as one iota of satisfaction from hearing you say that. Wake up, Towers. The time has come for damage limitation. Reinstate my team, put the brakes on this deal you're doing with Securitech and John Carlton and let us do our job."
Towers removed his glasses and buried his face in his hands, kneading wearily at his eyes. He looked like a man beaten into submission.
"Of course, I'll reinstate Section D immediately," he said, finally. "And Harry, I realise I'm not exactly your favourite person at the minute, but I do deeply regret what happened to your agent. There must be something I can do?"
There was a moment of silence during which Harry fixed Towers with his best look of withering contempt.
"He's too comatose to appreciate flowers and chocolates, Home Secretary. But if he ever regains consciousness, I'll be sure to pass him your regards. Oh, and for your sake, I really do hope he does make a full recovery."
Another moment of silence followed. This time tense as the gaze of the two men locked into each other. Expressions, impossible to read anyway, hardened before Towers remembered that Heads of Counter Terrorism never made threats. Not for one moment did Harry allow his own stance to waver.
Towers cleared his throat. "I'll see to it that he gets the best possible medical care, Harry. At the best hospital. Don't worry about that."
Not even in this mood would Harry look a gift horse in the mouth. He smiled, almost beatifically. "I'm sure his family would appreciate that very much, Home Secretary. They're travelling all the way from Wales to be by his side, in what may very well be his final days."
A flicker of dim irritation passed Tower's face. "And I'll see to it they're lodged very comfortably throughout their stay, Harry. Tell them they have nothing to worry about."
"That's very generous of you, Home Secretary," Harry replied. "Now, I must get back to work. I'm sure you understand."
They both rose stiffly to their feet, grasping hands across the polished oak table. "Oh, I understand perfectly, Harry."
"That makes a nice change, Home Secretary." Satisfied that he had had the last word, Harry turned on his heel and walked away before Towers could get another word in. The first results were in and he finally felt like he was inching ahead again.
Thanks again for reading, reviews would be lovely if you have a moment.
Incidentally, just in case anyone noticed this story vanishing for a few days: my account got hacked and a whole bunch of stories were deleted. They all had to be recovered once my security settings were refreshed. There was no major problem and things will carry on as normal. Thanks again!