CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
She hadn't meant to cry. She had needed just to know that her life was still the same, but she wasn't expecting to fall to pieces with him. As she walked toward him, Harry's face showed the concern and love he had for her, showed that she had worried him, and he looked vulnerable. The combination of what she had just experienced and the look on his face had put her over the edge, and tears had come. Now she was ashamed and upset with herself.
As Ruth sat on her sofa with him, her head in the crook of his arm, she felt safe again, but she was beginning to understand something new about this relationship. Harry had a dual nature, yes, but Ruth needed to have one as well. He had enough to cope with on a daily basis without worrying about her in the bargain. He was comforting her now and he was probably being missed elsewhere. If she wanted to be a bloody spook, she couldn't have him come to rescue her every time something happened. Would he be expected to do this with Ros, or with Jo?
She had wanted to go home, so that's where Harry took her. Harry knew that Ruth hadn't seen nearly as many deaths as he had, and he knew how empathetic she was. Her pain was very real. All she seemed to need right now was comfort, so that's what he gave. He was able to understand that she had witnessed a man go under a train, a suicide, he assumed, but he hadn't gotten much more.
She had gone in to wash her face when they'd first arrived at her house, and Harry made a quick call to a friend with the plods. He'd said he was just curious, because the tube station was only two blocks from his house. His friend said he'd call back as soon as he knew anything.
The few moments between the ring of his mobile and seeing her on the street had been agony for Harry. And as he held her there by the car, he felt again the danger of their jobs. He hadn't thought of Ruth's job as particularly dangerous, although she had certainly been in some tough spots since coming to the Grid. Certainly not like Ros or Adam or Zaf.
But in those moments he had thought she might be hurt, when he heard the sirens? He thought perhaps a bomb had gone off in the tube station, something horrible had happened, and he had felt the loss of her so acutely that he almost joined her in the tears. And Harry knew this would not do. He needed to pull himself together.
Ruth tightened her arms around him and kissed Harry on the cheek. He turned and brushed her lips with his, and then pulled back to look at her. "Better?"
She gave him a sad smile, "Much, Harry. Thank you. I didn't mean to be so fragile."
"It's never easy to see someone die, Ruth. No matter how it happens. Give yourself some time to work it through. And if you need to see Diana, I'll arrange it." He held her close to him. "I'm just glad you're safe. And I'm glad I was close by."
Ruth sat up and faced him on the sofa, her arm across the back. "I shouldn't have done that, asked you to come and rescue me that way. I want you to know that I would have been okay even if you hadn't been close by. I don't want you worrying about me." Harry was starting to say something to disagree, and she put her hand to his cheek, looking softly at him. "I'm glad to be here with you now, Harry, but I don't want to feel as if our love gives me some sort of special privileges."
He looked at her incredulously, and his voice rose, "Special privileges? I love you, Ruth. Let's go back to the banker and the shopgirl, shall we? If you, the shopgirl, watched a man kill himself before your eyes, don't you think you might call your banker to come round for a hug?" Harry smiled at her, running his fingers through her now-dry hair. "I'm glad you called me. And you are the opposite of fragile, my Ruth."
Ruth looked down at her hands, her mouth set. "I can't ask you to come running every time something upsets me. I love our work, Harry, and I want to be good at it." She looked up at him. "What you said last night about Ros? About her seeing me as a desk spook? That got me thinking. I've never thought of us as field agents or desk agents, I've thought of us as a team, all of us. But I realised when you said that, that I don't take the risks the rest do, and maybe they don't think of me as capable of it." She looked down at her hands again before raising her chin and looking back at Harry. "Maybe you don't either."
Everything that came to Harry's mind sounded disingenuous to him. She was right, and that was all there was to it. Indescribably valuable to the team, resourceful beyond measure, Ruth had allowed them, time and time again, to work through operations with successful outcomes in ways that wouldn't have been possible without her. She had saved lives, absolutely no question. But a field agent? Running about with guns? No, Harry didn't really think she had the stomach for it.
And in this split second, looking into Ruth's very sincere eyes, Harry was torn between his promise always to be honest with her, and his allowance that he may have to lie to her. And he wondered where this answer fell on that scale. He opted for somewhere in the middle, and he knew she would see through it. But it would buy him some time.
"You know your value to the team, Ruth … "
Not much time, unfortunately. "Don't do that, Harry. I know the tone you use when you don't want to say something, and that's bloody it."
Another tack. "Is that what you want? To be a field agent? I thought you enjoyed your work on the Grid."
Ruth pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows at him. "Still not an answer. Yes, I do enjoy my work on the Grid, Harry. And yes, I know you've seen my training scores, as have I. Not stellar in the area of field work, but I'd like to be given a chance to improve. Not all the time, but to be versatile enough to do some work in the field."
Ruth realised she was coming on a little strong. Poor man came to comfort her, and now she was grilling him. She willed her voice into a softer tone. "Do you remember what I did with Angela Wells? You had faith in me then, even when I didn't think I could do it. She had a detonator, Harry. For all I knew, I could say something that would have blown Thames House and all of us off the map. Wasn't that classified as field work?"
Harry remembered. A born spook. What had he meant by that? That she had a natural instinct, yes, but most of all, that she loved it. He had seen it in her eyes, and it was something that couldn't be trained. That was what he had seen that night, and he saw it in her eyes now.
"Are you asking for more assignments in the field, Ruth?"
She nodded. "I'd like to be given a chance, yes. Not all the time, but more than I have been."
He was taking her seriously, and she could feel the difference. They might as well be in Harry's office, and she appreciated his answer, "I'll take it under consideration. When it's warranted."
They sat looking at each other for a moment. Harry wanted very much to kiss her, and was fairly sure that would be inappropriate at this point. But she looked absolutely adorable. "Is our business concluded?" he asked her.
She saved him the trouble of having to ask for a kiss. Ruth put her arms around him and pressed her lips to his, tenderly. "I love you, Harry." She put her face next to his ear, pulling herself toward him. "Thank you, my banker, for the hug. The shopgirl feels better." She moved away, smiling a little, but her eyes took on the slightly haunted look Harry had seen earlier. "I still can see his face. I think it will take a long time for me to forget it."
Ruth paused for a moment, and she seemed suddenly far away to Harry. "But there was something else. I don't know, I can't describe it, Harry, but it felt like a … like a drop somehow. You know in training, how they say to look at their eyes? His eyes … I don't know … he looked as if … as if he … knew me. Or at least knew who I was."
"You're saying you think it was deliberate? That he chose you somehow? To what purpose?"
"I don't know. It happened very fast, and I was so bloody consumed with getting the change out of my wallet that I didn't see much of his face. But what I did see didn't seem random somehow."
"Did you recognise him? Had you ever seen him before?"
Ruth looked down at her hands. "No. Never. But I'll never forget him. I would recognise him if I saw a photo, certainly."
"I don't know, Ruth. It sounds like a coincidence to me. A depressed man and a coincidence. Do you still have the note? Can I see it?"
Ruth went to the kitchen, where she had left her purse on the table. She pulled out the ten-pound note and handed it to Harry. She leant back on the counter while he studied it in the light from her kitchen windows.
Harry turned it over twice, three times, and shook his head slightly. "There's nothing on it."
Ruth couldn't believe it. She had been so certain. "Are you sure? It has the feel of a classic drop."
Harry walked toward her, the note in his outstretched hand. "That's the trouble with spies, always looking for meaning in everything." Ruth took it from him, looking down at it. She knew Harry was trying to be understanding, but she could hear a lightness his voice that was telling her he thought she had imagined it.
Harry was worried about her. "Are you okay?"
Ruth saw the look that he got when he was about to put his arms around her, and she warned him back with her eyes. She was starting to think she was sounding silly, chasing ghosts. She wanted to be respected, and taken seriously. Harry saw the look, and he gave her space.
She answered quickly. " Yes."
"You certain?" He wasn't quite sure he believed her.
Ruth kept looking at the note, holding it against the wallet in her hand. "It's silly, it's just a stranger, I ... Just can't quite get the image out of my mind. It all happened so quickly, and, uh… oh, God ... Sorry."
While she was talking, Harry was aware that he needed to focus, as he was having another of those moments where he was losing himself in her. He looked at the necklace, seeing the tiny glint of silver, and he was taken back to Bath, to the kisses he had placed on her neck. If he didn't do something, he would lean down and kiss them again, and he knew that wasn't what she wanted or needed right now. He made do with a hand on her shoulder, almost touching the charms with his thumb, through the fabric of her blouse.
He definitely needed something to do with his hands. And she needed comforting. He thought of just the thing.
"Sweet tea. It's what you need." He saw the kettle, and now just had to find the tea. He moved toward the cupboard, as Ruth continued.
Ruth was still trying to describe what she had seen. "There was something in his manner."
Now, Harry thought, the question was, which cupboard? He called to her across the kitchen. "Tea bags?"
"Um, second shelf down. " She watched Harry pull out the plastic container that held the bags, but she made no move to help him. Ruth really wanted to put words to what she was feeling, what she was remembering. "His face was ... er ... gosh, I wish I could describe it. It was like he was trying to tell me something."
Now Harry was at the sink, beside her. He was looking for cups. It took him just a moment to answer her, and Ruth felt a lack of urgency from him. She thought he wasn't taking her entirely seriously. Finally, he turned to her as he pulled the cup down. "Well, he was about to kill himself. I'm not sure how much you could read from his face."
"Oh, I know." Everything Harry was saying was perfectly reasonable. Ruth was beginning to feel slightly ridiculous, but she couldn't shake the suspicion that there was more to this than Harry thought. If only there had been something on that note.
She looked over at him, watching him as he started the tea. He was looking at her now too, with concern, and she felt him wanting her to let it go. "And your imagination, especially after a shock like that. Could play tricks."
Ruth made a small, noncommittal sound, not a yes, not a no. Harry looked at her, seeing everything he loved in Ruth. And he thought, really, this was about a man who died. A man who took his own life right in front of her, and she was trying to make sense of it. Again, Harry's heart tightened. He longed to take her in his arms and make it all go away, but ultimately he knew he couldn't do that. What he could do was give her time. He said, softly, "Promise me you'll take the morning off."
Ruth didn't answer him. She was watching him now, as he measured out the sugar. She wore that smile again, the one he loved so much. The one that told him how much she loved him. "How very English," she said, looking back up at him. "Sweet tea."
As she looked at him, Ruth saw in Harry's eyes what she had heard earlier. I love you. He was doing what he could to help her through this. These were the eyes she had gotten to know so well in Bath, and the smile that he wore there. The one that said they would get through whatever faced them, and they would get through it together.
If his phone hadn't rung in just that moment, Harry would have gone to her and folded her into his arms, her need for space be damned. But it did ring, and that saved him from doing something he knew might seem patronising.
He could sense how she was feeling, and he wanted to take her seriously. He just didn't believe there was anything to it. She had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she wanted to do more work in the field. He put those two things together, and he could only come up with the belief that this was Ruth's imagination.
He nodded to her, indicating that he had to take the call, and turned away.
Harry pushed the button on his mobile. "Yes?"
It was the call he was waiting for. His friend from the police, speaking very quickly, and telling him the last thing he was expecting. "Man named Maudsley. Head of Security for Southeast Prisons. Is that what you needed?" Harry's heart sank. So, after all, more than Ruth's imagination. Harry didn't happen to believe in this kind of coincidence.
"Yes." He couldn't tell her. She was already upset, and this would only feed the fire. He would get more information, and then they would talk. He would give her a proper debrief. But for now, he would let her be, with a morning off and sweet tea.
He walked back, and stood behind her as she filled the kettle. She seemed to be doing as he asked, letting it go.
Here was the moment they had talked about in the car. It wasn't really lying, he said to himself. He was only postponing. He wanted to hold her, to kiss her goodbye, but Harry now had a vague sense of betrayal, and couldn't bring himself to do it. "I've got to go. I'm late already," he said to the back of her head. He put his hand low on her arm, and squeezed. She seemed very lost in her own thoughts and in the making of the tea.
She looked around, distracted. "I'll be fine." He had his permission. Now he could go. And he told himself he would tell her later. He was certain of it.
Harry had redone his tie, and was back to his role as Section Head as he walked through the emergency workers and found a familiar face. He showed his badge and walked up to the Special Branch Officer. Couldn't remember his name, but Harry put out his hand as if he did. The man shook it. "Harry." Obviously the man remembered him.
The officer had a sort of self-important air about him, and the familiar arrogant tone of Special Branch. "Well I suspect the Home Secretary will want this handled discreetly."
Harry would put up with him in order to get the information he needed. "Do we know any more?" He had to find out if this was indeed Maudsley.
" Formal ID hasn't been done, so..." Yes, yes, Harry thought, get on with it. Is it Maudsley, or isn't it?
"Informally?"
" Yes, it's him."
Ruth had some friends among the plods herself, and it didn't take her long to find out his identity. Now he had a name. Mik Maudsley. He was no longer just the tall man with the wool cap. He had a name and a family, and a job. Head of Security for Southeast Prisons. And that was one to ponder.
Not a butcher, or a banker, or a shopkeeper, but a man with a background in Intelligence, and a very important job. And he was dead. Now she knew it hadn't been a coincidence. He was trying to say something to her, and Ruth was determined to find out what it was. Not to be a field spook, not for the excitement of it, but because he had charged her with the task.
He had given her that mission, and Ruth knew that she couldn't just go to work, just move through her days without following it through. She would have his eyes, Maudsley's eyes, looking back at her until she figured out the puzzle. A man who was now dead, who could no longer speak for himself, had looked her in the eyes and asked her a question. She didn't know what the question was yet, but she would find out.
~~~~~
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Ruth was going on a hunch, just a feeling she had. Maudsley was Head of Security for Southeast Prisons, and one of them, Cotterdam, had just gone up in flames two weeks ago.
One phone call was all it took. Ruth had gotten to know Anna, a sweet girl, late thirties, bit of a librarian type, when she was at GCHQ. They'd shared a couple of drinks after work, "spinsters making do," Anna had called it. She wasn't really Ruth's cup of tea, but they had stayed in touch, even after Ruth had gone to MI5 and Anna had been transferred to Clerical at Special Branch. An email here, a phone message there.
Anna's task at Special Branch was to ready the reports. It had only taken a moment for her to agree to a drink with Ruth sometime later this week, just to catch up. It had taken a little longer for Ruth to convince her to let her borrow one of the file copies of the Cotterdam Incident Report, but Anna had smiled genuinely as she handed it to her at the park bench where they met. Ruth hugged her and thanked her, also genuinely, telling Anna how glad she would be to see her on Wednesday night for that drink.
Maudsley's file, which Ruth had managed to get from another contact after explaining that she was tasked to work up a profile, had told her nothing. Except that all of her senses told her this was not a man who would commit suicide. From what Ruth read, Maudsley had everything to live for.
Another phone call had gotten Ruth the link, just a slip of the tongue, really, but those were always the best kind. One of the file clerks at the Prisons Office had told her that Maudsley was at Cotterdam on the night of the fire. He knew this because Maudsley himself had mentioned over a beer, or four, how lucky it was that he'd not been there exactly when it happened.
Ruth needed to speed-read the report, but she didn't want to do it with all the prying eyes out on the Grid. As she walked through the pods, she looked first to Harry's office to see if he was in, because she wanted to share what she'd learned with him. But as she saw it was dark, she had another idea. She went to his door, and simply let herself in.
Had she ever been in Harry's office without him here? Ruth looked around, still in the dark. There was some light coming through the glass from the main room outside, but other than that, his office had the shadowy feel it always seemed to have. And it had something else, the rarefied air of an inner sanctum. Ruth took a deep breath, and was reminded of what she'd said to Harry last night, about entering his bedroom with reverence.
Harry's bedroom was infinitely more welcoming than this space, but Ruth had to admit, for all the austerity she felt here, it also had Harry in it. Standing in the dark, her back leaning on the door she had just come through, the memories washed over her. As with everything concerning Harry these days, she had to put them all in their proper place, fit them into the puzzle of the Harry she knew now, the one she had awakened with this morning.
The strongest memory was brought on by the dark of the room. She had come in to try to comfort Harry after Clive McTaggart, a man very much like him, had died. When she asked if McTaggart was married, Harry had replied that he probably considered himself married to the service. It had so clutched at Ruth's heart to think of a man, flesh and blood, seeing himself as wed to something as cold and unfeeling as the Security Services were bound by nature to be.
At the time she had thought it sounded almost like a priest, lying prostrate on the floor, giving himself to the church. Wearing the symbolic ring of marriage without the warmth of a body in bed with you each night. The joining of something warm to something cold. The inequality of it.
And then she had looked at Harry, and thought, Oh God, not Harry too? Is that how he thinks of himself? And she had just blurted out what her mind was thinking, with no pause between brain and tongue, Well, that's all right then. I was worried he died alone and lonely.
It was a horrible thing to say, and Harry had looked up with that horror on his face. Only for a split second, though, and then she saw resignation, which, to Ruth, was worse. And it had taken every ounce of strength she had not to go to him, put her arms around him there in the dark, and say, "I'm warm. I'm here. Don't deny yourself this."
But she hadn't. She'd made a feeble offer that if he wanted to talk to someone she was free, something like that. Of course, he'd said no. It was another of her regrets, one more time she should have gone to him, taken his face in her hands, and made him see her. Made him recognise who she was, how much she could give to him if he would only let her.
But now he did know. Finally, Harry knew. They held each other, body and soul, she and Harry. And the thrill of it filled her now, as she leant on his door. On the inside of his door, not on the outside of it.
And Ruth was understanding, day by day, the grey areas of their commitment to the Services. Really it was to people like Mik Maudsley that they were committed. Not to just a cold idea, but to people who can't speak for themselves. The innocents who are just going through their day, making their way to work on the bus, having lunch in an outdoor square, shopping. The ones who become targets of terror just by virtue of their numbers and by the impact their deaths could make.
For a moment, Ruth stood in Harry's office, wondering what to do. She didn't think anyone had seen her come in. She knew from years of experience that it was impossible to see anyone at Harry's desk when it was dark inside and there was light on the Grid.
Smiling like a truant child, Ruth walked over and lowered herself into his chair behind his desk. Like sitting on bloody Mount Olympus, she thought. She put her hands on either side of the desk, and now she understood why Harry liked to do that. Such a feeling of power. The Captain on his bridge. And then the power went straight to her head. Ruth simply stood up, walked over to the wall, and flipped on the light.
When she sat back down and opened the report to read, she looked up and saw Jo. There was a combination of amazement and awe in Jo's eyes, and she gave Ruth a bit of a crooked smile. Ruth remembered her thoughts in Bath, when she was wondering how long the secret could be kept. She smiled back at Jo, and then Ruth turned her attention to the report.
Harry stepped into the pod and removed his leather gloves. It hadn't even completed opening, and he was craning his neck to look at Ruth's empty station. Good, she's taken my advice, he thought, but at the same time, he felt a vague disappointment. He'd wanted to see her. He'd been worrying about her all morning.
The feeling was back. The gut feeling, his sixth sense. And it was coming more regularly since he'd seen her earlier. He'd learned to trust it over the years, to trust that although he might not know what it was saying to him, it was saying something. Harry felt with growing alarm that the dread was somehow connected to Ruth.
Right now, Harry was completely divided. If any other agent had come to him with this, he would have asked them to investigate it further. He had told Ruth to stay home and drink sweet tea. He knew he was too close to Ruth, that he couldn't be objective, but he didn't want her poking about in something that was more than she could handle. And when he heard himself say that in his head, he detested the sound of it. Patronising, superior, selfish bloody bastard.
Turning his head to the right, he saw her. Sitting at his desk. My desk?
Had anyone else ever sat at his desk? He knew Juliet had while he'd been banished from the Grid. She'd made a proper mess of things in there, but that was another story. His first thought was, Well, so much for secrets, Ruth. His second was how beautiful she looked there, completely lost in what she was studying. His third, however, was the most surprising. She looked like she could be the head of this section. She looked right somehow, as if she belonged there. And how did that fit in with the woman he so desperately felt he needed to protect?
He walked straight there and slid the door open, tilting his head at her in a question. She looked up at him, and Harry had a bit of trouble keeping his face moulded into the stern look he had planned to greet her with. He was utterly charmed by her, sitting in his office, at his desk. In truth, he loved that she continued to surprise him.
Ruth clearly had something she wanted to tell him. "Still think it's a depressive coincidence?"
Is there no stopping you, Ruth? Harry finally gave in to the smile that was bubbling at the corners of his mouth, "See you're doing what you were told, taking it easy." He took his coat off, and for a moment, wondered where he should be in his own office. He could see that it hadn't occurred to Ruth to give up his chair. Having never faced this situation before, Harry was considering, amused, how exactly he was to exert his authority.
"I've asked around, Harry ," Ruth held up a photo. "He's Mik Maudsley. Head of Security of Southeast Prisons." Harry stared at the photo, and all he could think was, Christ, she's smart. Why had he ever thought she would let this be? And why in God's name did he think that she couldn't find out what he had decided not to tell her? Harry straightened his jacket, and moved toward the front of his desk.
He looked at the photo in Ruth's hands. "Wife, family, everything to live for. Nothing to suggest he was depressed or suicidal." Harry still hadn't said anything. If she hadn't been so eager about the information she was imparting, she would have noticed. And she would have known that he wasn't saying anything because he already knew what she was telling him.
Harry walked closer to his desk. Ruth took a deep breath to give him the rest of what she had learned. "Oh, apart from this. He was at Cotterdam the night of the fire."
Harry stopped. This was a piece of information he didn't have, and his expression showed it. Now he spoke. "Cotterdam?"
"Yes, seems so. But," and here Ruth pulled out a thick report with the customary black and red cover, "No mention of it in the Special Branch Report."
Why did he continue to underestimate her? Harry frowned. "Thought that wasn't due out until later today."
Ruth held up the report. "Well, I managed to get a … sneak preview." Harry was at a loss now, speechless. She had gotten further in the last couple of hours than he had, and he had talked with more people than he wanted to admit. The woman was amazing. "It's a cover-up, Harry. It's 360 pages of fiction. It concludes the fire was an accident." So not only did she get hold of a copy of a report he couldn't get, she had already read and analysed it.
It seemed the only thing the Head of Section D could do was repeat the statements spoken to him by his Senior Intelligence Analyst. He felt somewhat helpless. "Cotterdam, an accident?" I sound like a bloody parrot.
"Exactly. And Maudsley's suicide the day the report comes out. It can't be a coincidence." Harry took the report from her across his desk. She was still sitting, he was still standing. Something had shifted here. He felt like he was on the carpet in the DG's office, not like he was her boss. But the facts were that Ruth had more information than he had, and right now he was deeply impressed with her. He had walked smugly into his office expecting to order her to go home again, and now he was asking for her analysis of the situation.
"What would be gained by Special Branch concealing the truth?" Harry leant over his desk and put his head close to hers.
"Depends what the truth is." She was absolutely right. And now Harry wanted to know what the truth was too. But first, as he was painfully aware of the numerous pairs of eyes that were gathering outside on the Grid, it really was time for him to get his chair back.
Harry stood up and simply looked at her. "Ruth, would you mind?" The look on his face was one of vague embarrassment, but he nodded toward her and raised his eyebrows, smiling. Harry pulled a chair closer to his desk and held it out for her. She didn't understand at first, but then she inhaled, smiled and shrugged, slightly abashed, and stood up as well.
"Right. Yes. Sorry. Your chair." As they passed each other by the side of the desk, she wriggled her fingers, touching his, and smiled broadly. Ruth whispered to him, "Felt good, though, Harry."
As he sat down, he concealed a smile by gazing down at his desk. "Looked good too, Ruth." Then he returned his eyes to hers, and he was wearing his Grid face. "But don't let it happen again." She could still hear the amusement in his voice, but she answered him in the most serious tone she could muster, with not a hint of a smile on her face.
"Absolutely, Harry. Inexcusable lapse of protocol. Your bed but not your chair. I'm clear now."
Harry turned quickly to look at his computer screen, and then bent to retrieve a file. Ruth noted with a smile that his shoulders seemed to be quivering just a bit. When he returned to eye level, Ruth could see that his eyes were dancing, and there was a twitch at the corners of his mouth. They needed to gain control of this situation, and they had a mutual moment of silence while they gathered themselves.
Harry was collected first. "All right. I think we'll do the debrief now, if that works for you. Considering how much more information you have than I do at this point, you are either a witch or a psychic. I need you to give me a report of everything you know about this before I go to the meeting at Whitehall in an hour."
Ruth smiled at him. "Not psychic, Harry, just a woman with contacts. People want to talk, really. You just have to give them a reason." She proceeded to tell him everything she'd learned this morning, including the fact that only seven men had died in the Cotterdam fire, and all seven happened to be members of the same terrorist group.
Harry shook his head. "And all the intelligence we would have gained, lost with them." Harry picked up the incident report. "Can you give me a short version of this?"
"Yes. It reads like it was written to sound plausible, but it's just too perfect. An accident, electrical. But an accident inside a secure unit that kills only seven of the country's most wanted men? They would have to have been rounded up somehow while all the others were evacuated. It just doesn't make any sense."
"What do you think it is, Ruth?"
"Might be something sinister, but could also be simply that no one wants this dragged through the press. Wouldn't look good."
Harry narrowed his eyes, thinking. "And you're certain Maudsley was there that night? You trust your source?"
Ruth nodded. "Completely."
Ruth had one more thing she need to get clear with him. "Harry, I still believe it was a drop."
Harry shook his head, but then seeing her eyes, said, "All right. Give the ten-pound note to Malcolm and ask him to … to … do whatever it is he does."
Ruth laughed softly. "You know, you really should learn what it is your people do, Harry. There's a whole world of spookdom that is simply lost to you."
"Yes, Ruth, in my spare time, on the week-ends, which someone has been taking quite a lot of lately." His mouth was twitching again.
Ruth smiled, but she couldn't let it go. "You're just humouring me about the drop, Harry, I can feel it. You don't believe it, do you?"
"I have to admit it still sounds far-fetched to me." Ruth began to speak, but Harry stopped her. "Look, there's obviously something going on here, and we'll find out what it is. I didn't see anything on the note, but let's wait to see what Malcolm has to say."
Harry put the Cotterdam report in his briefcase. "And log a report. Of your experience at the tube station, and what you've learned since. I'm going to ask some hard questions of Oliver Mace. I have a feeling if anyone knows what's really going on here, he will."
"You don't trust him, do you?" Ruth had never liked Oliver Mace. She wrinkled her nose as if she had smelled something unpleasant. "He has shifty eyes."
Harry said, "Not as far as I could throw him, and he's a heavy man." Harry was starting to push back from his desk. He smiled faintly at her. "And you're spot on about the eyes." Ruth stood and moved her chair back to the windows.
"Beyond the report and the note, Harry, what do you want me to do?" She turned to him, her face bright, ready for anything.
A born spook. Harry's eyes softened as he looked at her. The audience outside the glass be damned, he loved this woman. "You should continue to do what you've been doing. You are an extraordinarily talented analyst, and you have just given me exactly what I need to confront Oliver. I won't muzzle you, my Ruth. Do what you do best."
Ruth smiled at him. With her back to the Grid, she mouthed, "I love you, Harry." And to his discreet nod, she said, softly, "Yes, I know, you love me, too."
As he led her to the door, he said, "Completely."
Harry's meeting with the Joint Intelligence Committee was typically maddening. Oliver Mace had answered none of Harry's questions, and the Committee members refused to take their thumbs out long enough to give a vote of no confidence. It had accomplished one thing, though. Now Harry knew there was something they weren't being told.
He knew he had antagonised Mace, and he'd done it in front of the entire Committee. He was playing a dangerous game, but he knew Mace was hiding something. Oliver had said that Cotterdam was "unimportant." Harry thought Oliver was hiding something even bigger. Harry thought it might be very important.
He walked back on the Grid determined that he would find out what really happened. "Adam, Cotterdam Prison. I want to go back over everything concerning the fire."
Adam followed him toward the meeting room. "I thought Special Branch was taking care of that."
"So did I. It appears they've done nothing more than write what they were told to. I think those terrorists were murdered and someone's protecting their killers." Harry saw Ruth now, and needed to talk with her. He was still speaking to Adam over his shoulder as he walked toward her, "We could be sleepwalking into vigilantism. Get everyone assembled."
This was bigger than Harry had thought, and Ruth's assessment of a cover up was entirely accurate. And now he wanted to get her as far away from the situation as possible. He hadn't decided yet whether it had been a drop, but if it had been, there were numerous reasons he wanted Ruth at a distance.
It had hit him hard as he drove back to the Grid. A proper debrief of Ruth would ask the question. Why was she at that particular tube station, miles from her own home and two blocks from Harry's? Although part of him wanted the world to know that he loved her, he didn't want them to find out like this. It was such a cliché, employer and employee, sordid affairs, and he knew it would destroy Ruth. Not to mention Oliver Mace smirking in the background and going on about the Head of MI5 and his weakness for his pretty Intelligence Analyst.
Harry despised the fact that this was on his mind right now. As he walked toward Ruth, his heart was so full he could have taken her arm, pulled her into his office and bloody married her then and there, just to let her, and the world, know how permanent he wanted this to be. And Harry resolved, in the short time it took to cross the space between them, that he would make this right. And soon.
As he drove, he had thought about not only the emotional danger, but the physical danger he transferred to anyone who loved him. If it was a drop, the only logical purpose for it would be to get information to Harry. And if that was the case, Maudsley had been watching them. It chilled Harry to the bone to think of Ruth coming into the circle that was always around him, the one painted with a target.
"Ruth, have you told anyone what you witnessed this morning?" He had to move her out of that circle for now. The rest he would sort out later.
"No."
"Or logged a report, as I asked?"
"Not yet." Harry saw Ruth's defiant look, the one that told him she hadn't done it because she didn't agree with his evaluation of the situation.
Thank God. That's one thing I don't have to pull back. "Good."
Now the defiant look was gone, and she turned to him, surprised. "What do you mean, good? I thought that ... "
"Anything back from the ten pound note?" Harry needed to find out if it really had been a drop.
Now Ruth was really interested. Maybe he did agree with her. "Malcolm's still looking at it, why?"
"Let's just call it an uncomfortable feeling." They were surrounded by people on the Grid. There was nothing more he could say to her right now, so he asked her to trust him, but he did it with his eyes. "Do nothing." He was telling her that no one else should know about her experience this morning, and her fine analyst's mind went to work on it. Why didn't he want anyone else to know?
And it came to her, just as it had come to him. Of course. Oh, God, how awful that would be. All of Ruth's nightmares at GCHQ came back to her in a rush, but multiplied over and over. She knew what an official debrief was, she knew how specific it became, no detail overlooked. What that would do to Harry, to his authority. What it would do to her. Ruth looked around at everyone on the Grid, and tried to imagine how she would feel if they all knew she had slept at Harry's house, in his bed, if they knew about the week-end in Bath. Oh, God.
She watched Harry move toward Adam and was utterly grateful. She had been so consumed with Maudsley that she hadn't thought it through, but Harry had. Ruth's commitment to Maudsley was no less, but she realised she needed to be much more careful in what she did, and how she did it. Do nothing. That was no longer an option for Ruth, but do something and let no one know was.
Oliver Mace was worried. Harry Pearce was getting entirely too close in his investigation of Cotterdam. Oliver had told him he needed to stop, but Harry was like a bloody dog with a bone. They really needed to rein him in and make him a true member of the team. Unfortunately, Pearce knew where most of the bodies were buried, and practically anything Oliver could hold over his head was minor compared to what Harry had in his arsenal.
Mace had tasked his best and most devious man, Baker, to come up with something, anything, they could use. And fast. So when he appeared at his door and said, "Sir, I believe I have something. Do you have a minute?" Oliver was only too happy to oblige.
CCTV. What would the intelligence services do without it? Mace squinted at the paused image of the man in the wool cap, standing next to the woman with the brown hair. "That's Maudsley, yes? And?" Baker moved a few frames forward and pointed at the woman. Mace leant in and looked. His eyebrows made a slow journey up, folding his forehead into sharp lines in the process. "Well, well, Ruth Evershed, I believe?" Baker nodded.
Mace leant back into his chair again. "That is an interesting piece of news."
Baker said, "There's more, sir."
Mace turned to him. "Do tell."
Baker put a map in front of Mace. He pointed to the tube station. Then he pointed two blocks up. "This is Harry Pearce's house." Then he moved his hand all the way to the edge of the map. "This is Ruth Evershed's house." He looked up at Mace. "Sir."
Baker didn't think he had ever seen Oliver Mace smile quite this way. A broad smile. He actually looked happy. He only said two words.
"Oh, Harry." And then he laughed.
~~~~~
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Acts of Truth. Now the seven terrorists had a name. Bombs without warnings. Maximum fatalities. And Ruth thought again about how extraordinary this job was. She was aware, as Harry was, that even the terrorist's safety must be protected by a democracy, or the democracy can't stand.
Adam was finishing his briefing. "Someone knows why these men lost their lives, and hasn't come clean."
Harry sat, turning his pen in his hands. "And then there is Maudsley." Ruth looked over at Harry and caught his eye. It had the same warning in it. She looked down, and stayed quiet.
"He was in Cotterdam on the night of the fire, and threw himself under a train this morning." As Adam continued, Harry looked over at Ruth again. This time, she didn't meet his eyes.
Harry said, "If these seven men were murdered, Maudsley may be the only man who knew by who."
"We need to find out who visited the prison on the night of the fire." Adam assigned Ros and Zaf to go in, and the meeting ended with Harry telling them to be careful.
Ruth stayed behind, looking at her papers, and Harry noticed. He managed to be the last one out the door, but then turned back, pretending a phone call, as soon as the hallway was clear. The meeting room was easier, because it didn't face out on to the Grid. He closed his mobile and stood at the doorway, looking at her, and she saw the softness in his eyes that told her he was worried. "Ruth, are you okay? I know that was hard for you."
She looked up and smiled. "Not so hard, not once I figured out why you didn't want me to tell anyone, Harry." She looked down at her papers. "Thank you for that."
He walked over to her, wanting to hold her. He knew he couldn't, so he sat on the table next to her. At least it allowed him to touch her hand in such a way that they could pull apart if someone walked through the door. "We may still have to tell someone, Ruth. It may not be possible to keep this part of the secret."
She laced her fingers with his on the table. "I know." She gave him a small, sad smile. "I guess we're not such good spooks after all."
He shook his head. "We couldn't have known. But I have let down my guard, Ruth. And I haven't followed protocol. I was thinking about this on my way back from the JIC. You know, everyone else has to submit a form to me to socialise. You and I skipped that step, didn't we?"
Harry saw that wonderful frown of Ruth's, and it made him smile. He asked the question for her. "Who would I submit it to? Good question. Probably the DG, and I don't even want to think about it." Now he gave a low laugh. "I think if it were anyone, it would be Adam that would be my choice. So if it was a drop … "
"Harry." Zaf looked in the briefing room, and Harry quickly took his hand away from Ruth's. They knew he couldn't have seen. What Zaf did see was the discomfort they both clearly felt at being discovered, and he started thinking he might make some money on his book after all.
Harry stood quickly, and Ruth began shuffling papers. Zaf smiled. Don't need to be a spook to figure this one out. "Harry, Ros and I just wanted to run a few questions by you before we head off to Cotterdam. That okay?"
Harry looked at Zaf and nodded. "Yes. Ten minutes. My office. Will that do?"
Zaf turned and started out the door. "Cool." Harry turned to Ruth, shaking his head and smiling. She smiled back. Another of those moments, as they were transported to Harry's kitchen table, Chinese, and the profound love between them. Ruth stood nervously, so torn. Each of them wanted nothing more than to be back at that table, in the uncomplicated simplicity of who they were together. But they couldn't. Ruth sighed. "We should go back, Harry."
He looked softly at her. It was always hard for him to see her in any kind of pain. He wondered again how he was to function. All of his steel disappeared when she was like this, but he was willing it back, for her sake as much as for his. He tried to keep his voice even, unemotional, but the now-familiar gentleness was there, "I know it's hard for you, Ruth, not to tell the truth about things. That's what I came back to tell you."
They walked out the door, and into the hall. Ruth risked one more brush of his hand, and even that small touch, the brief warmth of his palm on hers, moved up her arm and through her body. They were nearing the hall that would take them to the main room now, and she pushed the feeling away, forcing herself back into the present.
As they began to round the corner, she still had a question about what he'd started to say when Zaf had interrupted them. "So you agree with me now. About the drop?"
"No, I'm undecided, either way." Harry stopped walking and turned to face her. "If there was a drop and it was targeted at you, I don't want to leave an official trail until we know what it was." Definitely no official trail. Ruth agreed with that.
"Okay." But now she wanted to be clear what he had said about Adam. "Even Adam?"
"You can tell Adam." Harry thought now he might have confused her. He had meant to let her know that Adam would probably need to be taken into their confidence anyway, but he hadn't really had time to explain before Zaf came in.
"We don't have to." Ruth was a little confused, actually, and she was trying to understand what he meant.
"It's up to you." Harry knew how devastating it could be to an op when the team is not telling each other the truth. The reality was that Harry didn't know what to do in this situation. She was asking very specific questions, and he just didn't have any specific answers. "I'm not saying you should keep things from the other members of the team, I'm just saying ... "
"Don't tell anyone."
This was his lovely, infuriating, precious, exasperating Ruth. The Ruth who took cricket analogies to ridiculous conclusions. The one who looked for black and white where there was only grey. Now Harry wasn't even certain what he meant any longer. He only knew they needed more information and he couldn't give her a proper answer until they had it. "Yes. I mean, no ... "
Finally, Ruth said, "Not until we know what it is."
Thank God. "Exactly."
"Right."
Jo walked down the hall toward them. Earlier, Ruth had asked her to look into Maudsley's finances , and Jo now had an answer. "Ruth. Maudsley was being paid by someone. Six months ago he was bankrupt and since then he's had all his debts paid off. He died with a healthy bank balance."
Harry looked at Ruth just to confirm what he suspected. "No mention of it in the Special Branch report either?"
Ruth looked back at Harry. "No." This was the final piece. He was bribed. Special Branch was covering it up. Maudsley was firmly connected, and Harry and Ruth's position, their privacy, had just become infinitely more precarious.
Harry looked at Ruth and saw in her eyes what she was feeling. And as they had begun to do so often lately, they spoke with their thoughts. They could nearly hear them, as if they were spoken, communicated through the medium of their eyes.
What Ruth told Harry was, yes, they were important, but this was bigger, and that it was okay, even if everyone had to know about the two of them. It had gone beyond the secret now. They were a part of the fabric of each other's lives, woven together and stronger for it, and whatever was to come, they would find their way together. And as she spoke to him, she said, I love you.
What Harry said to Ruth was that he sometimes regretted that he wasn't just the banker, never more than this moment. That if this came out in the open, the days ahead might be difficult, but it wouldn't change anything. That he would make things right for them. And, just as Ruth did, he said, I love you.
"No." Jo was merely answering Harry's question, but she suddenly felt as if she had walked into the most intimate of conversations, and it was being conducted only with their eyes. For a moment, she couldn't turn away. It was as if they were the only two people in the world right now, and whatever language they were speaking was one she didn't know. Then, Jo felt suddenly like a voyeur, as if she should leave them to each other. "S-sorry … am I … ?"
"No." Ruth turned, and made her way back down the hallway.
"No." Harry looked up at Jo, his eyebrows raised in surprise, and walked past her and on to the Grid.
Jo turned to go back to her station. All she could think was, If those two aren't in love, I need to bloody hang up my hat and go home.
Baker sat across from Oliver Mace and watched him think. Mace's eyes tended to move back and forth, as if he were watching an invisible tennis match. When they stopped is when one needed to be on one's toes. That's when action was required. They stopped.
"So, Baker, what would you recommend?"
Baker shifted in his chair. "Sir, the obvious would be to leak the information somehow. Cause a scandal? Pearce might back off then?"
Mace's lips pursed into somewhat of a grimace. "No. Not enough. He would survive that. He's survived worse." He tapped the ash from his cigar and took a long draw, filling the room with blue smoke. Baker just barely managed to suppress a cough. Mace squinted through the smoke. "We need to cut him. Deeply. Get him to his knees."
"Perhaps he cares for her. Perhaps we can use that, sir? If we hurt her, we could hurt him."
Oliver looked at Baker. And he smiled again. "You're earning your keep today, Baker." He nodded toward the door. "Get on with it."
Ruth continued through the hallway and past the meeting room to Malcolm's station. She stood at the door and waved at him. "Hi."
Malcolm looked up. "Ah." He picked up the note and handed it to her. "Nothing on it. Sorry."
Ruth's heart fell. She frowned at him. "You sure?" She wasn't sure what to feel now. A part of her was glad it wasn't a drop, but the other part had so hoped this would be a clue to what Maudsley had wanted to tell her.
"I've scoured it, put it through a scanner. There's nothing at all, it's just an ordinary tenner." He sat back down at his computer.
"There's no other test you can run?" Ruth still stood in the doorway, holding up the note.
"Well, I could blow it up if you'd like, set light to it."
Ruth smiled just a little. "No, it's OK, thanks."
"I still don't understand how it links to our investigation." She could hear the tone in Malcolm's voice. He knew there was more going on here than she was telling him.
Ruth looked at him, and realised that Malcolm, and no one else, knew about them. Her first reaction to this realisation was a kind of shyness, an embarrassment, as an image of the intimacy of Havensworth came back to her. Malcolm knew. For a moment, she thought about telling him everything. Why she was having him test the note, what had happened, and why she was in that place at that time.
While she was having these thoughts, Malcolm was having his own. He almost said, I know, Ruth. Let me help you. I can't help you unless you tell me what this is about.
Neither of them did. And they didn't because they both loved Harry. In very different ways, of course, but loved him nonetheless. And they couldn't betray his trust by saying those things without him here. So there was an elephant in the room with them, but neither of them had decided to give it a name.
Ruth shook her head, and said, "Just routine."
Malcolm looked sceptical, and said, "Huh. Okay."
Ruth's mind was racing. If the note wouldn't give her what she needed, she would have to find another way. The only person who could tell her what she needed to know was Mik Maudsley, and he was dead. And then it came to her. He may be dead, but maybe he could still tell her.
Ruth was motionless in Malcolm's doorway. Finally, she spoke. "I need another favour from you, actually." Malcolm turned in his chair to face her. "Have you still got your contact at the mortuary?"
Malcolm turned back to his desk and scribbled on a piece of paper. He handed it to her. "I'll give him a call and let him know you're coming."
Ruth searched for the right words. "Malcolm, I need you to … to … "
Malcolm simply took his finger and crossed his heart, then brought the finger to his lips. Ruth smiled back at him, her eyes warm on his. "Thank you. I … we … appreciate it."
That small "we" was the only acknowledgement they needed to make. But it signified something so big.
Ruth pulled back the white sheet and felt her quick breakfast threatening to return. He looked like a man who had gone under a train. Her first instinct was to pull the sheet back up and go somewhere to be sick, but not only did this feel like the test of her desire to be a field agent, but she knew his eyes would still be in her mind, asking for her help. He wouldn't go away. She needed to be able to do this.
She looked at his face, the blood still caked where it had dried, his eyes no longer looking at her. She was back at the tube station, touching his back, hearing his voice. And now this was all that was left of him. She felt tears begin to sting at the back of her eyes, and she forced herself to focus. What had they taught her in training? Ruth ran through it in her mind.
The hands first. She pulled his hand from under the sheet and inspected it. Under the fingernails, places where things could be hidden. She looked behind his ears, inside the mouth. Ruth saw a movement, and Maudsley's arm suddenly fell from his chest where she had left it, down to the table. She let out a small, soft cry and placed it back under the sheet.
His clothes. Perhaps something in there. She reached under his feet to the plastic bag on the shelf of the cart, looking through it. Finally, she just emptied it all on to his legs, spreading out the blood-soaked jacket, torn and smelling of the oil from the tracks.
"What were you trying to tell me?" she asked him aloud, desperately wishing he could simply sit up and say it. Ruth felt helpless, blind. She went through his pockets, and felt metal. His keys. She put them in the pocket of her coat.
Ruth put everything back into the bag and stuffed it onto the shelf. She took off the latex gloves and threw them in the bin. For a moment, she stood and calmed herself. She took several deep breaths and just laid her hand on his leg, feeling the coldness under the sheet. The unnatural coldness. This body wasn't still alive, but she felt him so strongly in the room. She closed her eyes and said softly, out loud, "Help me. Please. Tell me where to go."
Her other hand went to the pocket of her coat and felt the cold metal. Now she had cold beneath both hands, and she knew what to do. The keys to his house. He was still giving her clues.
~~~~~
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