fic: the greater good, part four.
notes | part one | part two | part three
- - -
PART FOUR
Beth left a long pause after Dimitri finished explaining. "So you think... what exactly? A schoolgirl is bringing about the downfall of MI5, one unexpected resignation at a time?"
Dimitri put the three photos in front of her, one on top of the other - the three clearest views of the girl. "I think it's more than a coincidence."
"If that were true every time someone said it, there would be no coincidences," Beth said, but she picked up the photos and examined them closely. They were at a cafe a few streets from Thames House, at the intersection of Dimitri's impatience and Beth's insistence they not be seen together. Dimitri didn't think any spies would stoop so low as to frequent a place with such terrible coffee. Or any discerning members of the public, either. It was accordingly quiet.
"Marie Shepherd's house," he pointed to the photo, "Mark Cheng, and Erin. All resigned within the last month. I think there's at least one more but I couldn't find photos." He paused. "Marie resigned after her nephew asked her what would happen to him if she died too."
Beth didn't look up. "She's Nathan Shepherd's sister? Isn't that a fairly normal question for a kid to ask after his father's just died?"
"Not when he was just repeating a question someone else had asked him."
"Who asked him?"
Marie Shepherd had thought nothing of it; she had only told Dimitri after he'd suggested openly that perhaps someone else had put ideas in the boy's head. It was nothing, she'd said over a cuppa, just a bully at the school gates, asking him if he was an orphan now. No, Simon didn't know him, but he used to get bullied a lot after his mother ran off with that banker, and the older kids must've found out that his father had died. You know how kids are. Nothing suspicious. Just a kid in a baseball cap. Did you work closely with Nathan? He never mentioned you.
Dimitri pointed to the boy in the photos. Beth looked closer. "Who is he?"
"I don't know. But he's helping her. What the hell is she up to?"
"Like I said," Beth repeated. "Bringing about the downfall of MI5, one unexpected resignation at a time." She paused to take another experimental sip of her coffee, having added three sugars to counteract the bitterness, and pulled a face. "Good luck to her."
There was a smug note of satisfaction in her voice, and Dimitri threw up his hands in disgust.
"Don't you see? There's someone behind this! How the hell does she know where Erin lives? Where all these agents live? There's a bigger picture here, Beth." Erin could still be in danger, he stopped himself from saying.
"Who's behind it, then?"
Dimitri leant forward over the table. "My guess? Tom Quinn."
"Oh no, no way. I told you."
"You're certain?"
"He's the biggest control freak perfectionist in the entire British Isles. I should know, Dimitri, I'm the second biggest. And he's an old-fashioned chauvinist to boot. There's no way he let this girl anywhere near what he does for a living."
Dimitri put his head in his hands. "Fine. Okay. But it doesn't make any sense. They're all working in different Sections, on different cases. They didn't even know each other. Different roles - Erin's a Section Chief, Marie Shepherd was barely above admin. What links them? Why would someone want to take them out of play?"
"Maybe they're random."
"Nothing is random."
Beth flicked through the photos again. "The boy. He's not just hanging out with her. He's watching too. How old do you think he is?"
Dimitri had to admit that he'd hardly looked at the kid. "Don't know," he said again. "Ten, eleven?"
Beth shook her head. "What's she doing hanging around with an eleven-year-old while she enacts her big conspiracy? He's older. And he's important."
"Okay, great. Maybe she'll tell us who he is if we ever actually get to speak to her." Dimitri checked his watch. "Do you think she's home from school by now?"
"She never was at school."
"Yes, but her mother thinks she was, and with a mother like that the last thing she wants to do is make her suspicious." He scooped up the photos and his wallet. "Let's go."
It took him a moment to notice Beth wasn't right behind him. "What?"
"You haven't called this in, have you?"
"Of course not. I don't have enough evidence. I don't know who's behind this or what their endgame is."
Beth gave an impatient sigh. "But you've been running across London all day, chasing after this girl. Where does your Section Head think you are?"
"I don't know. I don't care."
"Don't be stupid. You should at least report in and pretend you're - "
"Beth," he said slowly, "I don't care. Are you coming or not?"
This time the doorbell was answered almost before Dimitri had finished ringing it. Ellie Simm was still barefoot and messy-haired, looking even more deranged than she had before. "Where is she?"
Once again Dimitri was left backfooted on the doorstep. Luckily Beth had the presence of mind to get them in the door before Ellie continued. She waved her phone at them like a weapon. "Where the fuck is she? I want to speak to Tom."
Dimitri put up his hands. "I'm sorry, I don't - "
"She wasn't at school. I thought she'd sneaked off to see Jess but her phone's off and Jess hasn't seen her. Not today, not last week, not Saturday the twenty-eighth, not for months. She never turns her phone off, never, she knows I - Jesus, where the fuck is Tom? What's he got her involved in? I'll kill him, I swear it - "
"We don't work for Tom," Beth interrupted.
"Oh please don't patronise me, you think I can't recognise you people? Are you telling me you're not MI5?"
"We're MI5," Dimitri said, seeing no need to complicate things with Beth's recent dismissal. "Tom Quinn is not."
"Tom's not a spy any more?"
"Not for years."
Ellie physically struggled to absorb this information. "Then I want Zoe. Danny."
Dimitri looked at her blankly. She practically roared with frustration.
"I swear I'm not lying to you," Dimitri said hurriedly. "I don't know those people."
"It's been a long time since Tom left the service," Beth added. "People move on quickly."
"Fine. Then I'll ask you again. Where the fuck is my daughter?"
He and Beth shared another look. She clearly knew nothing of where Maisie had been spending her time for the last few months, and somehow Dimitri didn't think this was the time to tell her she'd been playing spy all over London. "We don't know."
"Don't lie to me! Coming round here pretending to be cops, pretending you'd forgotten it was school hours - "
"We knew she wasn't at school," Dimitri admitted. "We tried there first, then we tried here, that's all."
"What do you want with her?"
"That was the truth," Beth cut in smoothly. "We've reason to believe she saw something - perhaps she didn't even realise it, perhaps she took a photo on her phone. We identified her on CCTV because she's on Service records."
"She saw something? Then is she - ?"
"We've no reason to believe she's in danger," Beth said. Despite addressing most of her remarks to Dimitri, Ellie seemed to listen more closely to Beth, and they adjusted their roles accordingly. "Are you normally home this time of day?"
"No," Ellie admitted.
"Then she has no reason to think you'd be worried. She could be anywhere - shopping, hanging out with friends, whatever kids do when they don't want to go to school."
"It's not like her to - oh, I don't know."
Beth threw Dimitri a meaningful glance, but he'd recognised it too - the crack in Ellie's anger and their way in. He showed her the photo of the boy. "Do you recognise him?"
"No."
"He was with her on the twenty-eighth," Dimitri said. "Could she know him from school, maybe? A friend's younger brother?"
"I don't know." Ellie shook her head again. "I don't know - her friends. Not any more."
"A boyfriend's brother?" Beth suggested. "If she's been evasive about where she's been spending her time..."
"She doesn't have a boyfriend," Ellie snapped, then faltered. Dimitri could clearly see the guilt-fired anger turning back inwards. He'd seen it in Erin's anger too, that extra layer of fear that this was somehow her fault. If I'd been home more - if I'd paid more attention -
"We know what happened with Tom," Beth said quietly. "It's understandable you'd be worried."
Ellie looked from one to the other and back again, then spun around to the kitchen, facing the wall. Her arms were folded tight around her chest.
Dimitri stepped forward. "Maybe we could see her room?"
Ellie looked like she was about to refuse, then she nodded, tight-lipped.
Maisie's room was a mess. Clothes half-out of suitcases, boxes of books against the wall. "When did you move in?" Dimitri asked.
"End of March. But she's been back and forth to Manchester since half-term, to finish her GSCEs. She has, I know, because she's been staying with my sister and I have the arguments and the school reports to prove it, okay?"
"Okay." Dimitri turned on the desktop; it wasn't password-protected. "Are there any other people you can call who might know where she is? Your sister, maybe?"
Ellie nodded stiffly. Dimitri felt the tension in the room drop slightly as she left. They continued the search in silence. Dimitri didn't have much experience with teenage girls' rooms - or at least not since the late nineties - but Maisie's seemed pretty ordinary. Postcards from friends on the walls, photos of people smiling with their arms around each other, posters from films. Nothing on the computer but half-finished essays, pictures of celebrity actors. Email web-based and logged out, cache cleared. Facebook left logged in but no recent posts, hundreds of unread notifications. That was the extent of Dimitri's knowledge of computer forensics.
"Dimitri, look at this."
Beth was standing on a chair to look at the top shelf of the bookcase. Dimitri examined the dust with a finger. "Fake," he confirmed.
"Was she hiding something up here?"
Dimitri shook his head. "From her mother? She said she never comes in here, state of the place I believe her. And the computer's unlocked."
Beth didn't need to say it. If it wasn't Maisie herself hiding things, then it was someone hiding things from her. Someone had been in her room, and covered their tracks with professional skill and resources.
"What were they looking for?"
"They'd've put it back, if they didn't want her to know they were here."
Dimitri dragged stuff out from under the bed. A bag of old soft toys. A flute, dusty with disuse. A box of postcards. He flicked through them, handed one to Beth. "Tom?"
Beth frowned and shook her head. "Service, though. Look at that postmark."
"And they're hidden away in a box, not up here with the others." Dimitri laid the postcards on the bed, in rough chronological order. Sent from Edinburgh, Dresden, Devon - to Bristol, the Cotswolds, Manchester - quoting everything from Shakespeare to Auden, and spanning almost ten years. It didn't make any sense.
"What we need," said Beth slowly, "is someone who knows the handwriting and reading habits of every agent of MI5, past and present."
"Ruth's not Five any more. She was poached by the Home Office."
Beth scooped up the postcards. "But I know where she lives. And I still have a key."
- -
Maisie was back in the cupboard under the stairs. Dim light, shouting, the musty sour smell of old clothes and years of dust.
Once the front door was shut behind them the hall was in darkness. The jogger with the green headphones twisted Maisie’s wrist neatly and held her up against the wall with one hand while she locked the door with the other. Shouting was coming from somewhere in the house, muffled by more doors, drawn curtains.
Her cheek was pressed into someone’s old coat. She knew better than to fight. The jogger was saying something short and sharp to someone deeper in the house. The shouting, incoherent and terrible, finally stopped.
The hand on her wrist changed grip. “Right. Let’s move.”
She directed Maisie down the darkened hallway. She wasn’t rough, but her control was utterly unequivocal. Maisie got a glimpse of a front room with brown leather couches, a man on the phone standing at the window, pale blinds drawn. The house smelled like it hadn’t been aired since the late seventies.
Another locked door. Maisie found herself in a gloomy bedroom, the door shut behind her, and it was only then that she recognised the shouting.
“Wes. Wes.”
He barely glanced at her. He was pacing up and down the narrow strip of carpet between bed and curtained window, fists clenched. She had a detached moment to notice how much taller he’d grown lately, limbs lengthening, shoulders hunched. He couldn't pass for an innocent kid much longer.
“Stupid,” he was muttering, “stupid, stupid, stupid, how could we be so stupid.”
“Wes,” she said again. She’d heard the door lock but she tried it anyway; the handle didn’t even turn. “Who are these people? What’s happening?”
Wes ignored her. “Stupid,” he raged. “So busy focusing on our own targets we didn’t even think to look for tails. As if running an op is only about being vigilant in one direction - criminal not to have looked behind - ”
“Wes, stop it.”
She crossed the room and threw open the curtains. She was rewarded with a brick wall a few feet away, high enough that she couldn’t see the sky. An upturned bucket and a fold-out clothesline, tangled in dead ivy. The house had been empty for long enough for ivy to grow and then to die.
“Op’s blown,” Wes was saying. “All our fault, all our fault.”
“Stop it. What are you talking about? Wes, we weren’t running an op, we were playing a dumb game."
He seemed to notice her for the first time. "A game?"
"Yes," she said, more frightened now than she'd been in the car, when she didn't know where they were taking her or where Wes was. "A game. Wes, there was no enemy. Stop it."
She grabbed him by the arm. He spun around with such violence that she hit him, expecting him to strike her back, but he stared at her dumbfounded, face white with shock, then stepped back against the wall and sunk to a crouch in the shadows.
Maisie finished her survey of the room. The security mesh on the window was screwed in tight and there was nothing in the drawers or under the bed. She sat down on the floor next to Wes, facing the door. Her eyes were still adjusting to the gloom. It was only then she noticed the blood on his jeans.
“Jesus. What happened? Did they hurt you?”
Wes shook his head. For a minute she thought he wasn’t going to explain, then he said, “Tried to run, didn’t I, like a moron. Tripped.”
“Oh,” she said awkwardly. “Nice one.”
A long silence. She listened, but if the man was still on the phone or the jogger was giving further orders, she couldn’t hear a thing.
She had no idea where they were. She knew London by tube stations, not motorways, and by the time she'd recollected her senses enough to look properly at the industrial estate they were driving through, she was ashamed to admit she didn’t even know if they were east or west of the city. From the middle of the car she could see no horizon, no landmarks.
The creep had taken her phone in the car. She guessed it was about three pm. Ellie would have gone to work thinking Maisie still at school, wouldn’t be home until two or three in the morning.
“What time would your grandparents expect you home?”
Wes shrugged. “They think I’m at the Grammar.”
Of course. How long would it take for Wes’s housemaster to see through whatever deception he’d cooked up? And realise that it was more than his usual truanting routine?
“Wes? None of this bullshit about enemy ops. Do you know who these people are?”
“No," he said shortly.
“Do you know what they want?”
“No.” He shifted his gaze. “Do you?”
“Not a clue,” Maisie said. “Right then. I guess we wait.”
- -
Dimitri was back on the six-til-midnight surveillance, and again, nothing was happening. There'd been some kind of shit going down at Section C when he'd returned to the grid, something to do with the investigation into Tariq's death; he'd caught the code-word Tourmaline. In the days after the funeral, which he hadn't been allowed to attend, he'd fantasised about killing the people who'd done it, but now that somebody else had the honour he found it didn't matter. Tariq would still be dead.
He'd been staring at his phone for half an hour. Finally he made the call. There was a clatter before someone answered. "Hello Rosie speaking!"
Dimitri smiled. "Hello, Rosie Speaking. May I talk with your mum?"
He could hear Erin's smile as she came on the line. "She's just found out there are ferries to Ireland from Pembroke. I've never seen her so excited. She thinks that fairies live there."
"When are you heading off?"
"Wednesday, hopefully. We thought the traffic would be better mid-week."
Dimitri laughed. "Mid-week? How's it feel not being at work on a Wednesday?"
"Really weird, to be honest. I'm not cut out to be a full-time mum, D, I tell you. It's exhausting."
Dimitri's heart leapt. "You're thinking of going back to work?"
"Of course. Always was. I've picked up some advisory work in the town, it should fit around my study, might even move to full-time once I've graduated. It'll be good to get back to it. How are you?"
"I'm fine." He swallowed. "Listen, there's something I have to tell you."
"Get off, Rosie, goodness, you're getting heavy. Sorry, D. What's up?"
Dimitri could see Beth approaching from the corner. He glanced up at the apartment window, as a matter of rote: Golyubev hadn't moved. Dimitri was fairly certain men of his age couldn't.
"Dimitri?"
"I, er." What was the point? "I'll miss you," he said finally.
There was a short silence. "I'll miss you too," Erin said. Her voice was warm. "You can come visit us, you know. Whenever you want."
"Thanks. That'd be great. Sorry, I - I have to go."
"Speak soon."
Beth put out her cigarette as she got into the car. She handed Dimitri a takeaway coffee cup, which he took gratefully before realising it was nearly empty. "Thanks," he said dryly.
"You're welcome. Malcolm Wynn-Jones."
"He wrote the postcards?"
Beth nodded. "Ruth had it in three seconds flat, barely even read the first one. He's old school, been at Section D since before it was called Section D. Retired a few years back."
"What does he do now?"
Beth ignored the question. "She recognised the boy too. Wes Carter. Son of Adam and Fiona Carter, deceased, also ex- of Section D."
Dimitri breathed out. "You want to tell me again that this is all a coincidence?"
Beth lit another cigarette. Dimitri opened his mouth to remind her exactly what Bernard did to people who returned his pool cars smelling of smoke, but stopped himself at her stony expression.
"What does he do now?" he asked again.
Beth blew smoke out of the side of her mouth nearest the window, which Dimitri supposed he was meant to be grateful for. "He really is retired, apparently. But according to Ruth he does a little freelancing. For, among others, Tom Quinn and his American wife."
Dimitri hesitated. "Then they could be - "
"I know, I know, I fucked it up, didn't I. Thought I could read people but apparently all I can do is make quick decisions and carry a big gun. I should've known Tom would have someone doing tech on the nationalist job, of course he'd be enough of a paranoid megalomaniac to make sure we never crossed paths." She paused. "Ruth can't get in touch with Malcolm, or Tom. Number disconnected. Both of them."
"You said the number you had for Tom was - "
"Single use, yes. Different for every op. But Ruth had his personal number, one he's had for years. Malcolm's too." She took another furious drag on the cigarette. "Anything on the girl?"
"Nothing." Dimitri paused, assessed, made a decision. "I'm going to call this in."
"Like hell you are."
"Like hell I am," he agreed, reaching for his phone.
Beth grabbed his wrist and snatched the phone with a neat little manoeuvre that left Dimitri's hand and ego slightly bruised. "And pretend like I was never here? Bullshit, Levendis. You'll be out on your arse before you can say paranoid."
"If we're going to find them we need resources. If she's in danger..."
"What's the likelihood she is? Sounds to me like whoever's behind this - Malcolm, Tom, whoever - skipped town as soon as they realised we were on to them, and took the girl with them. There's no way we're going to find them if they don't want to be found. They were best of the best, and that was when they were constrained to moderately legal methods. All you'd be achieving by calling it in would be getting yourself fired for running an off-the-book op with a blacklisted agent."
"I told you, Beth, I don't care about the job."
"Don't be such a fucking idiot! Do you want to end up like me?"
Dimitri was startled into silence. Beth got out of the car, slamming the door behind her, and he watched as she stormed down the street towards the river. After a minute he recovered his phone from the floor of the car and made to call the grid, then stopped. Beth was right. Peter Eames would never believe him, not with such scant evidence, and even if he did there were no dead bodies or imminent threats to public order to justify an investigation. And even if there was, what more would an official investigation achieve than the pooled resources of Dimitri, Beth, Calum and Ruth - and Cerys, if he asked her? They were as good a team as any still on the grid. What would Dimitri getting fired do to help the situation, other than leave Calum the sole person capable of securing information from Registry or the mainframe?
Beth was leaning on the railing of the embankment when Dimitri approached. "What do you mean, end up like you?" he asked.
She was throwing little stones into the water. "Taking whatever job comes your way. Doing - dirty things, for the highest bidder."
"I think we've both done dirtier things in the name of Queen and country than we could ever do for money," Dimitri said quietly. "At least the money's honest about it."
"Don't give me that bullshit. What do you do your job for, if not for the greater good?"
Dimitri shrugged. "I've been asking myself the same question. I think I used to do it for the people I worked with, but not any more."
Beth made an indistinct sound. She lit up another cigarette from the butt of the old one. Dimitri gestured for one and she passed him the pack without a word. The smoke felt good in his lungs. It brought with it the brackish taste of rusted holds and men living in close quarters; salt and sweat.
"Do you remember how we met?" he asked presently.
Beth tapped ash over the railing. "Didn't Tariq challenge all us newbies to arm wrestling in the George and you chickened out?"
"I was straight from the Navy, remember," Dimitri protested. "I was a proper gentleman."
Beth snorted. "You knew I'd kick your arse. Just like all the women in the Navy had."
Dimitri didn't acknowledge that at least the second part was true. "I meant the first time we met. On that pirate ship, when I was a dodgy Greek captain and you were a dodgier Russian prostitute."
"That was meant to be a Greek accent? No wonder you were blown."
Dimitri sighed. "It's - different now. Since Erin left, and Section D was disbanded. I spend most of my day behind a desk, or on shitboring surveillance. I thought Harry was overly paranoid about Russians, but at least he could pick the right ones."
Beth muttered something that sounded like at least you still have morals, but he could tell there was no venom left in it. Dimitri wasn't naive - he'd long come to terms with the ease with which he could justify to himself the horrible things he sometimes had to do. His blindness was in thinking other people had the same reasons.
"I lied," Beth said some time later. "What I said about school."
Dimitri wasn't listening. "What?"
"I didn't skive off once. I was a goody-two-shoes, always had the right answer, always worked the hardest. I had the teachers eating out of the palm of my hand. Everyone else hated me."
"Doesn't sound like you."
"Doesn't it? All that time in South America and the Middle East pretending to be a rebel without a cause. Section D was my homecoming, Dimitri. That's who I really was, the earnest little teacher's pet, happy to do terrible things as long as some rulebook was behind it. Then I went and fucked it up."
Dimitri sucked down the last of the smoke, then ground the butt under his heel. "I think we both need a holiday," he declared.
"Bloody right," Beth muttered to the river.
"First though, are we at least going to attempt to find this girl?"
Beth squinted sideways at him. "You know it won't bring Erin back. Or make your desk job any more exciting."
"I know. But if we've got one thing in common it's an unhealthy curiosity, yes?"
Beth turned back to the river and gave it her coy little smile.
- -
Maisie had no idea how long it was they waited. Long enough for her to work through the small amount of Othello she remembered from the double Lit she was missing, and the passages of Eliot she was already forgetting from her GCSEs.
“Wes? What plays have you done at your whacky school?”
Wes snorted. “Can do the Lord’s Prayer and the first six psalms.”
Maisie couldn’t, at least not past hallowed be thy name, but she was saved from having to ask Wes to teach her by the sound of the key in the lock. They stood, together.
The jogger, now dressed in black and grey. She took them down the hall one hand on each arm. Maisie telepathically urged Wes not to try anything stupid. Into the sitting room where they were positioned side by side in front of the fireplace like naughty children.
“Well well well. Mister Carter, Miss Simm. A pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. You have been busy, haven’t you?”
How could Maisie ever have confused this man’s words for Malcolm’s or Tom’s? He was elegant, slender, a sharply-made suit and sharper features. He spoke kindly, but there was a smooth menace to him that chilled Maisie to the bone.
“What do you want?” Wes demanded. The frightened child was gone - this man fitted squarely into Wes's game. Maisie stepped back, almost involuntarily. The fireplace, behind her, was bricked in, a little electric heater sitting in the narrow recess, thick with dust.
The man arched an elegant eyebrow. “What do I want? Ultimately, you. Getting one past Five is something of a national pastime these days, but your audacity is to be applauded. You’ll be a welcome addition to the ranks across the river once you grow a little.”
“You’re MI-6,” Wes accused.
“Correct. Something of a homecoming, hmm? Your father and mother were in my service when they weren’t much older than you.”
“Your service killed my father and mother.”
The Six man pulled a face as if he'd smelt something mildly distasteful. "Please, no need for dramatics. Miss Simm, you’ll be pleased to know we aren’t just an old boys’ club these days, and you’ll be welcome too, once you’ve finished with Othello and Marx.”
“What do you want?” Wes said again, through gritted teeth. She had no doubt he'd take this man, and the jogger and the creep in the next room, height and age disregarded, if they so much as spoke a single word of disrespect against his parents.
“Ah yes, I am speaking a little long-term, aren’t I? Short-term things are different. Quite simply, I’d like for you to stop your little game. It’s been very amusing, all the more so for Five’s stupendous inability to give you the credit of noticing. But it’s gone on long enough.”
Maisie saw Wes stiffen, hands clenched into fists. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said.
"Yes yes, very good. Keeping an eye out for unusual personnel movements is of paramount importance for national security, did you know that? Apparently Five don't, bless their hearts. But we do."
From the depths of Maisie's numbness, her blood boiled. Was all this - the snatching, the safehouse, the hours locked in a darkened room - just an elaborate telling off? But even as she felt Wes’s anger, something held her tongue, kept her silent, waiting. Later, she didn't know if she’d actually recognised the bigger game, or if she was just numb with shock.
She was never quite sure what happened next. She felt it like a blow, sending her back against the wall, elbows knocking against the edge of the fireplace, but in her logical recollection the sounds were quick and muffled and Tom opened the door quite calmly.
“Don’t fucking touch them.”
The Six man put up his hands in mock horror. His eyes were all snake. “Come now, young Tom, as if I’d harm a child.”
It took Maisie a long moment to realise that Tom was holding a gun. Behind him, in the hall, she could see the creep who’d followed her across London doubled up from a punch to the guts.
Tom didn’t reply. He flicked his eyes to Maisie, and she nodded I’m fine, sick to the stomach at the cold fury in his face. “Then we’re leaving.”
“So soon? I'm glad you got my note; it's been such a long time, hasn't it? How’s business?”
“I’m retired from the service, Siviter,” Tom said tiredly, but there was warning there too. He didn’t lower the gun. The shadow of the jogger moved behind the glass door to the dining room; stilled at a quick gesture from Siviter.
“Tom, Tom. I understand you’re retired from the service, but yourself and Ms Dale found yourself unemployed with, how should I say, a rather specific skill set. Understandable that you’d want to keep using it, once Harry cut you loose.”
At Maisie's side, Wes made a small movement. She reached out and grabbed his wrist with a strength she didn't know she had. He twisted away, scowling, but stayed where he was.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about."
“Do you know,” Siviter continued, as if Tom hadn’t spoken, “I was reminded of the oddest thing the other day. Right after the death of that BNP candidate - terrible accident, wasn't it - I found myself thinking of the assassination of the US Chief of Defence, oh it must have been almost ten years ago now. Do you remember?”
“That was a setup. As you well know.”
“Yes, of course it was. I don't know what it was made me think of it.”
"Do you have any evidence to back up your case of déjà vu?"
"Regrettably, no."
Tom set his jaw. “Then we’re leaving.”
“We didn’t need rescuing,” Wes muttered as they got into the car. It was low enough that Tom could pretend not to have heard.
“I need to call Mum,” Maisie said, hearing her own voice from far away.
“I just did,” Tom said gently. “She knows you’re safe.”
They drove in silence. This time, Maisie tried to pay attention to where they were, but it was dark and the lights and street signs were hazy with rain. She couldn't look at Wes - she was furious with him, so much so that she feared she might hit him if he so much as opened his mouth.
"I'll call you later," he mumbled as he got out of the car at his grandparents' house. She nodded in response, but didn't know if he'd seen.
Tom watched him inside the house, then turned to face her. She couldn’t look at him either.
“What the fuck did you think you were doing?”
“You’re not my father,” she retorted, seeing him flinch in surprise out of the corner of her eye.
“How old is he, fourteen? He’s a child, Maisie. What were you thinking, letting him take things this far?"
"I didn't let him do anything - you think I can control what he does?"
"Running around the city pretending to be spies - ”
“It was his idea!”
“Then you should’ve stopped him.”
Maisie opened her mouth to explain - that Wes wasn’t a normal fourteen-year-old, he was a genius, perhaps the cleverest person Maisie had ever known - but she remembered his pale face, furious tears, all that wild talk about enemy ops, and she fell silent. She needed to apologise to him, she realised, though he would scorn her. I'm sorry I fell for the same act everyone else has been falling for, from your Uncle Harry to Malcolm to your schoolmasters, and maybe even back to your parents. I'm sorry you're so fucking clever that you think the rules of grief don't apply to you.
Tom quietly pulled the car back into traffic.
“They followed me, didn’t they,” she said in a small voice. “They sent that postcard knowing I’d think it was from you, and they followed me right to your door.”
“Yes,” Tom said.
How had they known about the postcards? The same way they knew that she was studying Othello and Marx. They’d been in her room. They’d been through her things, looking for a way to get to Tom. Because she’d attracted their attention, her and Wes and their stupid little game.
“The fire...”
“Took out everything it was meant to. There was nothing important left for Siviter’s men to find.”
“But you can’t go back there.”
“No. We’ll have to find somewhere else. We have before. England is full of hidey-holes.”
“What about all your things?”
“Things are unimportant.”
“What about the dog?”
“The dog’s unimportant.”
“Jesus, do you ever listen to yourself?”
Tom sighed. “I’m sorry, Maisie. I should never have let you come.”
“You should never have trusted me, you mean.”
He shook his head, eyes on the road. “I should never have been so complacent. I knew they were searching for me. If it hadn’t’ve been through you they would’ve found another way.”
“What do they want with you? What are you, an anarchist? A terrorist? Destabilising the government on behalf of the CIA?”
Tom smiled, with no humour. “I think they want me to work for them.”
“Seriously? Then why the hell don’t you? They’re pretty persuasive.”
Tom, of course, didn’t answer. He changed down gears as they stopped at a red light. “What do you want to do when you finish school, Maisie?”
“Go to university,” she snapped.
“Then what?”
She folded her arms and stared out the window.
“I don’t mean to be patronising. God knows it took me long enough to work it out. But you’ll come to realise, it’s not what you do that’s important, it’s who you do it for.”
“Great, thanks for the advice.” She decided to sit out the rest of the journey in silence, but then something else crossed her mind. “Does Mum know? About the game?”
“No. Are you going to tell her?”
Maisie snorted. “I don’t think so.”
“You should. She doesn’t like secrets.”
“You have no fucking idea what she likes.”
She’d provoked him into silence again. Hot tears burned in her eyes, but she held them at bay with an iron will. Damned if he was going to make her cry ever again.
“So you were convincing people to resign?” Tom said presently, as if asking about the weather.
Maisie waited a long time before deciding to reply. “Only ones that didn’t really need convincing.”
“How many?”
She hesitated. “Four.”
Tom’s cheek twitched.
“It would never have worked with you,” she said. “You never loved us enough to give up the job for us.”
“No,” Tom said patiently, looking at the road. “But I loved you enough to give you up.”
Then he caught her eye in the mirror and smiled at her, Jesus, his fucking smiles. Maisie, if only so she didn’t burst into tears, smiled fiercely back.
- - -
Alternate fic title: the one I've been writing since SEPTEMBER 2011.
I'm... not quite sure what to do now?
*collapses*
- - -
PART FOUR
Beth left a long pause after Dimitri finished explaining. "So you think... what exactly? A schoolgirl is bringing about the downfall of MI5, one unexpected resignation at a time?"
Dimitri put the three photos in front of her, one on top of the other - the three clearest views of the girl. "I think it's more than a coincidence."
"If that were true every time someone said it, there would be no coincidences," Beth said, but she picked up the photos and examined them closely. They were at a cafe a few streets from Thames House, at the intersection of Dimitri's impatience and Beth's insistence they not be seen together. Dimitri didn't think any spies would stoop so low as to frequent a place with such terrible coffee. Or any discerning members of the public, either. It was accordingly quiet.
"Marie Shepherd's house," he pointed to the photo, "Mark Cheng, and Erin. All resigned within the last month. I think there's at least one more but I couldn't find photos." He paused. "Marie resigned after her nephew asked her what would happen to him if she died too."
Beth didn't look up. "She's Nathan Shepherd's sister? Isn't that a fairly normal question for a kid to ask after his father's just died?"
"Not when he was just repeating a question someone else had asked him."
"Who asked him?"
Marie Shepherd had thought nothing of it; she had only told Dimitri after he'd suggested openly that perhaps someone else had put ideas in the boy's head. It was nothing, she'd said over a cuppa, just a bully at the school gates, asking him if he was an orphan now. No, Simon didn't know him, but he used to get bullied a lot after his mother ran off with that banker, and the older kids must've found out that his father had died. You know how kids are. Nothing suspicious. Just a kid in a baseball cap. Did you work closely with Nathan? He never mentioned you.
Dimitri pointed to the boy in the photos. Beth looked closer. "Who is he?"
"I don't know. But he's helping her. What the hell is she up to?"
"Like I said," Beth repeated. "Bringing about the downfall of MI5, one unexpected resignation at a time." She paused to take another experimental sip of her coffee, having added three sugars to counteract the bitterness, and pulled a face. "Good luck to her."
There was a smug note of satisfaction in her voice, and Dimitri threw up his hands in disgust.
"Don't you see? There's someone behind this! How the hell does she know where Erin lives? Where all these agents live? There's a bigger picture here, Beth." Erin could still be in danger, he stopped himself from saying.
"Who's behind it, then?"
Dimitri leant forward over the table. "My guess? Tom Quinn."
"Oh no, no way. I told you."
"You're certain?"
"He's the biggest control freak perfectionist in the entire British Isles. I should know, Dimitri, I'm the second biggest. And he's an old-fashioned chauvinist to boot. There's no way he let this girl anywhere near what he does for a living."
Dimitri put his head in his hands. "Fine. Okay. But it doesn't make any sense. They're all working in different Sections, on different cases. They didn't even know each other. Different roles - Erin's a Section Chief, Marie Shepherd was barely above admin. What links them? Why would someone want to take them out of play?"
"Maybe they're random."
"Nothing is random."
Beth flicked through the photos again. "The boy. He's not just hanging out with her. He's watching too. How old do you think he is?"
Dimitri had to admit that he'd hardly looked at the kid. "Don't know," he said again. "Ten, eleven?"
Beth shook her head. "What's she doing hanging around with an eleven-year-old while she enacts her big conspiracy? He's older. And he's important."
"Okay, great. Maybe she'll tell us who he is if we ever actually get to speak to her." Dimitri checked his watch. "Do you think she's home from school by now?"
"She never was at school."
"Yes, but her mother thinks she was, and with a mother like that the last thing she wants to do is make her suspicious." He scooped up the photos and his wallet. "Let's go."
It took him a moment to notice Beth wasn't right behind him. "What?"
"You haven't called this in, have you?"
"Of course not. I don't have enough evidence. I don't know who's behind this or what their endgame is."
Beth gave an impatient sigh. "But you've been running across London all day, chasing after this girl. Where does your Section Head think you are?"
"I don't know. I don't care."
"Don't be stupid. You should at least report in and pretend you're - "
"Beth," he said slowly, "I don't care. Are you coming or not?"
This time the doorbell was answered almost before Dimitri had finished ringing it. Ellie Simm was still barefoot and messy-haired, looking even more deranged than she had before. "Where is she?"
Once again Dimitri was left backfooted on the doorstep. Luckily Beth had the presence of mind to get them in the door before Ellie continued. She waved her phone at them like a weapon. "Where the fuck is she? I want to speak to Tom."
Dimitri put up his hands. "I'm sorry, I don't - "
"She wasn't at school. I thought she'd sneaked off to see Jess but her phone's off and Jess hasn't seen her. Not today, not last week, not Saturday the twenty-eighth, not for months. She never turns her phone off, never, she knows I - Jesus, where the fuck is Tom? What's he got her involved in? I'll kill him, I swear it - "
"We don't work for Tom," Beth interrupted.
"Oh please don't patronise me, you think I can't recognise you people? Are you telling me you're not MI5?"
"We're MI5," Dimitri said, seeing no need to complicate things with Beth's recent dismissal. "Tom Quinn is not."
"Tom's not a spy any more?"
"Not for years."
Ellie physically struggled to absorb this information. "Then I want Zoe. Danny."
Dimitri looked at her blankly. She practically roared with frustration.
"I swear I'm not lying to you," Dimitri said hurriedly. "I don't know those people."
"It's been a long time since Tom left the service," Beth added. "People move on quickly."
"Fine. Then I'll ask you again. Where the fuck is my daughter?"
He and Beth shared another look. She clearly knew nothing of where Maisie had been spending her time for the last few months, and somehow Dimitri didn't think this was the time to tell her she'd been playing spy all over London. "We don't know."
"Don't lie to me! Coming round here pretending to be cops, pretending you'd forgotten it was school hours - "
"We knew she wasn't at school," Dimitri admitted. "We tried there first, then we tried here, that's all."
"What do you want with her?"
"That was the truth," Beth cut in smoothly. "We've reason to believe she saw something - perhaps she didn't even realise it, perhaps she took a photo on her phone. We identified her on CCTV because she's on Service records."
"She saw something? Then is she - ?"
"We've no reason to believe she's in danger," Beth said. Despite addressing most of her remarks to Dimitri, Ellie seemed to listen more closely to Beth, and they adjusted their roles accordingly. "Are you normally home this time of day?"
"No," Ellie admitted.
"Then she has no reason to think you'd be worried. She could be anywhere - shopping, hanging out with friends, whatever kids do when they don't want to go to school."
"It's not like her to - oh, I don't know."
Beth threw Dimitri a meaningful glance, but he'd recognised it too - the crack in Ellie's anger and their way in. He showed her the photo of the boy. "Do you recognise him?"
"No."
"He was with her on the twenty-eighth," Dimitri said. "Could she know him from school, maybe? A friend's younger brother?"
"I don't know." Ellie shook her head again. "I don't know - her friends. Not any more."
"A boyfriend's brother?" Beth suggested. "If she's been evasive about where she's been spending her time..."
"She doesn't have a boyfriend," Ellie snapped, then faltered. Dimitri could clearly see the guilt-fired anger turning back inwards. He'd seen it in Erin's anger too, that extra layer of fear that this was somehow her fault. If I'd been home more - if I'd paid more attention -
"We know what happened with Tom," Beth said quietly. "It's understandable you'd be worried."
Ellie looked from one to the other and back again, then spun around to the kitchen, facing the wall. Her arms were folded tight around her chest.
Dimitri stepped forward. "Maybe we could see her room?"
Ellie looked like she was about to refuse, then she nodded, tight-lipped.
Maisie's room was a mess. Clothes half-out of suitcases, boxes of books against the wall. "When did you move in?" Dimitri asked.
"End of March. But she's been back and forth to Manchester since half-term, to finish her GSCEs. She has, I know, because she's been staying with my sister and I have the arguments and the school reports to prove it, okay?"
"Okay." Dimitri turned on the desktop; it wasn't password-protected. "Are there any other people you can call who might know where she is? Your sister, maybe?"
Ellie nodded stiffly. Dimitri felt the tension in the room drop slightly as she left. They continued the search in silence. Dimitri didn't have much experience with teenage girls' rooms - or at least not since the late nineties - but Maisie's seemed pretty ordinary. Postcards from friends on the walls, photos of people smiling with their arms around each other, posters from films. Nothing on the computer but half-finished essays, pictures of celebrity actors. Email web-based and logged out, cache cleared. Facebook left logged in but no recent posts, hundreds of unread notifications. That was the extent of Dimitri's knowledge of computer forensics.
"Dimitri, look at this."
Beth was standing on a chair to look at the top shelf of the bookcase. Dimitri examined the dust with a finger. "Fake," he confirmed.
"Was she hiding something up here?"
Dimitri shook his head. "From her mother? She said she never comes in here, state of the place I believe her. And the computer's unlocked."
Beth didn't need to say it. If it wasn't Maisie herself hiding things, then it was someone hiding things from her. Someone had been in her room, and covered their tracks with professional skill and resources.
"What were they looking for?"
"They'd've put it back, if they didn't want her to know they were here."
Dimitri dragged stuff out from under the bed. A bag of old soft toys. A flute, dusty with disuse. A box of postcards. He flicked through them, handed one to Beth. "Tom?"
Beth frowned and shook her head. "Service, though. Look at that postmark."
"And they're hidden away in a box, not up here with the others." Dimitri laid the postcards on the bed, in rough chronological order. Sent from Edinburgh, Dresden, Devon - to Bristol, the Cotswolds, Manchester - quoting everything from Shakespeare to Auden, and spanning almost ten years. It didn't make any sense.
"What we need," said Beth slowly, "is someone who knows the handwriting and reading habits of every agent of MI5, past and present."
"Ruth's not Five any more. She was poached by the Home Office."
Beth scooped up the postcards. "But I know where she lives. And I still have a key."
- -
Maisie was back in the cupboard under the stairs. Dim light, shouting, the musty sour smell of old clothes and years of dust.
Once the front door was shut behind them the hall was in darkness. The jogger with the green headphones twisted Maisie’s wrist neatly and held her up against the wall with one hand while she locked the door with the other. Shouting was coming from somewhere in the house, muffled by more doors, drawn curtains.
Her cheek was pressed into someone’s old coat. She knew better than to fight. The jogger was saying something short and sharp to someone deeper in the house. The shouting, incoherent and terrible, finally stopped.
The hand on her wrist changed grip. “Right. Let’s move.”
She directed Maisie down the darkened hallway. She wasn’t rough, but her control was utterly unequivocal. Maisie got a glimpse of a front room with brown leather couches, a man on the phone standing at the window, pale blinds drawn. The house smelled like it hadn’t been aired since the late seventies.
Another locked door. Maisie found herself in a gloomy bedroom, the door shut behind her, and it was only then that she recognised the shouting.
“Wes. Wes.”
He barely glanced at her. He was pacing up and down the narrow strip of carpet between bed and curtained window, fists clenched. She had a detached moment to notice how much taller he’d grown lately, limbs lengthening, shoulders hunched. He couldn't pass for an innocent kid much longer.
“Stupid,” he was muttering, “stupid, stupid, stupid, how could we be so stupid.”
“Wes,” she said again. She’d heard the door lock but she tried it anyway; the handle didn’t even turn. “Who are these people? What’s happening?”
Wes ignored her. “Stupid,” he raged. “So busy focusing on our own targets we didn’t even think to look for tails. As if running an op is only about being vigilant in one direction - criminal not to have looked behind - ”
“Wes, stop it.”
She crossed the room and threw open the curtains. She was rewarded with a brick wall a few feet away, high enough that she couldn’t see the sky. An upturned bucket and a fold-out clothesline, tangled in dead ivy. The house had been empty for long enough for ivy to grow and then to die.
“Op’s blown,” Wes was saying. “All our fault, all our fault.”
“Stop it. What are you talking about? Wes, we weren’t running an op, we were playing a dumb game."
He seemed to notice her for the first time. "A game?"
"Yes," she said, more frightened now than she'd been in the car, when she didn't know where they were taking her or where Wes was. "A game. Wes, there was no enemy. Stop it."
She grabbed him by the arm. He spun around with such violence that she hit him, expecting him to strike her back, but he stared at her dumbfounded, face white with shock, then stepped back against the wall and sunk to a crouch in the shadows.
Maisie finished her survey of the room. The security mesh on the window was screwed in tight and there was nothing in the drawers or under the bed. She sat down on the floor next to Wes, facing the door. Her eyes were still adjusting to the gloom. It was only then she noticed the blood on his jeans.
“Jesus. What happened? Did they hurt you?”
Wes shook his head. For a minute she thought he wasn’t going to explain, then he said, “Tried to run, didn’t I, like a moron. Tripped.”
“Oh,” she said awkwardly. “Nice one.”
A long silence. She listened, but if the man was still on the phone or the jogger was giving further orders, she couldn’t hear a thing.
She had no idea where they were. She knew London by tube stations, not motorways, and by the time she'd recollected her senses enough to look properly at the industrial estate they were driving through, she was ashamed to admit she didn’t even know if they were east or west of the city. From the middle of the car she could see no horizon, no landmarks.
The creep had taken her phone in the car. She guessed it was about three pm. Ellie would have gone to work thinking Maisie still at school, wouldn’t be home until two or three in the morning.
“What time would your grandparents expect you home?”
Wes shrugged. “They think I’m at the Grammar.”
Of course. How long would it take for Wes’s housemaster to see through whatever deception he’d cooked up? And realise that it was more than his usual truanting routine?
“Wes? None of this bullshit about enemy ops. Do you know who these people are?”
“No," he said shortly.
“Do you know what they want?”
“No.” He shifted his gaze. “Do you?”
“Not a clue,” Maisie said. “Right then. I guess we wait.”
- -
Dimitri was back on the six-til-midnight surveillance, and again, nothing was happening. There'd been some kind of shit going down at Section C when he'd returned to the grid, something to do with the investigation into Tariq's death; he'd caught the code-word Tourmaline. In the days after the funeral, which he hadn't been allowed to attend, he'd fantasised about killing the people who'd done it, but now that somebody else had the honour he found it didn't matter. Tariq would still be dead.
He'd been staring at his phone for half an hour. Finally he made the call. There was a clatter before someone answered. "Hello Rosie speaking!"
Dimitri smiled. "Hello, Rosie Speaking. May I talk with your mum?"
He could hear Erin's smile as she came on the line. "She's just found out there are ferries to Ireland from Pembroke. I've never seen her so excited. She thinks that fairies live there."
"When are you heading off?"
"Wednesday, hopefully. We thought the traffic would be better mid-week."
Dimitri laughed. "Mid-week? How's it feel not being at work on a Wednesday?"
"Really weird, to be honest. I'm not cut out to be a full-time mum, D, I tell you. It's exhausting."
Dimitri's heart leapt. "You're thinking of going back to work?"
"Of course. Always was. I've picked up some advisory work in the town, it should fit around my study, might even move to full-time once I've graduated. It'll be good to get back to it. How are you?"
"I'm fine." He swallowed. "Listen, there's something I have to tell you."
"Get off, Rosie, goodness, you're getting heavy. Sorry, D. What's up?"
Dimitri could see Beth approaching from the corner. He glanced up at the apartment window, as a matter of rote: Golyubev hadn't moved. Dimitri was fairly certain men of his age couldn't.
"Dimitri?"
"I, er." What was the point? "I'll miss you," he said finally.
There was a short silence. "I'll miss you too," Erin said. Her voice was warm. "You can come visit us, you know. Whenever you want."
"Thanks. That'd be great. Sorry, I - I have to go."
"Speak soon."
Beth put out her cigarette as she got into the car. She handed Dimitri a takeaway coffee cup, which he took gratefully before realising it was nearly empty. "Thanks," he said dryly.
"You're welcome. Malcolm Wynn-Jones."
"He wrote the postcards?"
Beth nodded. "Ruth had it in three seconds flat, barely even read the first one. He's old school, been at Section D since before it was called Section D. Retired a few years back."
"What does he do now?"
Beth ignored the question. "She recognised the boy too. Wes Carter. Son of Adam and Fiona Carter, deceased, also ex- of Section D."
Dimitri breathed out. "You want to tell me again that this is all a coincidence?"
Beth lit another cigarette. Dimitri opened his mouth to remind her exactly what Bernard did to people who returned his pool cars smelling of smoke, but stopped himself at her stony expression.
"What does he do now?" he asked again.
Beth blew smoke out of the side of her mouth nearest the window, which Dimitri supposed he was meant to be grateful for. "He really is retired, apparently. But according to Ruth he does a little freelancing. For, among others, Tom Quinn and his American wife."
Dimitri hesitated. "Then they could be - "
"I know, I know, I fucked it up, didn't I. Thought I could read people but apparently all I can do is make quick decisions and carry a big gun. I should've known Tom would have someone doing tech on the nationalist job, of course he'd be enough of a paranoid megalomaniac to make sure we never crossed paths." She paused. "Ruth can't get in touch with Malcolm, or Tom. Number disconnected. Both of them."
"You said the number you had for Tom was - "
"Single use, yes. Different for every op. But Ruth had his personal number, one he's had for years. Malcolm's too." She took another furious drag on the cigarette. "Anything on the girl?"
"Nothing." Dimitri paused, assessed, made a decision. "I'm going to call this in."
"Like hell you are."
"Like hell I am," he agreed, reaching for his phone.
Beth grabbed his wrist and snatched the phone with a neat little manoeuvre that left Dimitri's hand and ego slightly bruised. "And pretend like I was never here? Bullshit, Levendis. You'll be out on your arse before you can say paranoid."
"If we're going to find them we need resources. If she's in danger..."
"What's the likelihood she is? Sounds to me like whoever's behind this - Malcolm, Tom, whoever - skipped town as soon as they realised we were on to them, and took the girl with them. There's no way we're going to find them if they don't want to be found. They were best of the best, and that was when they were constrained to moderately legal methods. All you'd be achieving by calling it in would be getting yourself fired for running an off-the-book op with a blacklisted agent."
"I told you, Beth, I don't care about the job."
"Don't be such a fucking idiot! Do you want to end up like me?"
Dimitri was startled into silence. Beth got out of the car, slamming the door behind her, and he watched as she stormed down the street towards the river. After a minute he recovered his phone from the floor of the car and made to call the grid, then stopped. Beth was right. Peter Eames would never believe him, not with such scant evidence, and even if he did there were no dead bodies or imminent threats to public order to justify an investigation. And even if there was, what more would an official investigation achieve than the pooled resources of Dimitri, Beth, Calum and Ruth - and Cerys, if he asked her? They were as good a team as any still on the grid. What would Dimitri getting fired do to help the situation, other than leave Calum the sole person capable of securing information from Registry or the mainframe?
Beth was leaning on the railing of the embankment when Dimitri approached. "What do you mean, end up like you?" he asked.
She was throwing little stones into the water. "Taking whatever job comes your way. Doing - dirty things, for the highest bidder."
"I think we've both done dirtier things in the name of Queen and country than we could ever do for money," Dimitri said quietly. "At least the money's honest about it."
"Don't give me that bullshit. What do you do your job for, if not for the greater good?"
Dimitri shrugged. "I've been asking myself the same question. I think I used to do it for the people I worked with, but not any more."
Beth made an indistinct sound. She lit up another cigarette from the butt of the old one. Dimitri gestured for one and she passed him the pack without a word. The smoke felt good in his lungs. It brought with it the brackish taste of rusted holds and men living in close quarters; salt and sweat.
"Do you remember how we met?" he asked presently.
Beth tapped ash over the railing. "Didn't Tariq challenge all us newbies to arm wrestling in the George and you chickened out?"
"I was straight from the Navy, remember," Dimitri protested. "I was a proper gentleman."
Beth snorted. "You knew I'd kick your arse. Just like all the women in the Navy had."
Dimitri didn't acknowledge that at least the second part was true. "I meant the first time we met. On that pirate ship, when I was a dodgy Greek captain and you were a dodgier Russian prostitute."
"That was meant to be a Greek accent? No wonder you were blown."
Dimitri sighed. "It's - different now. Since Erin left, and Section D was disbanded. I spend most of my day behind a desk, or on shitboring surveillance. I thought Harry was overly paranoid about Russians, but at least he could pick the right ones."
Beth muttered something that sounded like at least you still have morals, but he could tell there was no venom left in it. Dimitri wasn't naive - he'd long come to terms with the ease with which he could justify to himself the horrible things he sometimes had to do. His blindness was in thinking other people had the same reasons.
"I lied," Beth said some time later. "What I said about school."
Dimitri wasn't listening. "What?"
"I didn't skive off once. I was a goody-two-shoes, always had the right answer, always worked the hardest. I had the teachers eating out of the palm of my hand. Everyone else hated me."
"Doesn't sound like you."
"Doesn't it? All that time in South America and the Middle East pretending to be a rebel without a cause. Section D was my homecoming, Dimitri. That's who I really was, the earnest little teacher's pet, happy to do terrible things as long as some rulebook was behind it. Then I went and fucked it up."
Dimitri sucked down the last of the smoke, then ground the butt under his heel. "I think we both need a holiday," he declared.
"Bloody right," Beth muttered to the river.
"First though, are we at least going to attempt to find this girl?"
Beth squinted sideways at him. "You know it won't bring Erin back. Or make your desk job any more exciting."
"I know. But if we've got one thing in common it's an unhealthy curiosity, yes?"
Beth turned back to the river and gave it her coy little smile.
- -
Maisie had no idea how long it was they waited. Long enough for her to work through the small amount of Othello she remembered from the double Lit she was missing, and the passages of Eliot she was already forgetting from her GCSEs.
“Wes? What plays have you done at your whacky school?”
Wes snorted. “Can do the Lord’s Prayer and the first six psalms.”
Maisie couldn’t, at least not past hallowed be thy name, but she was saved from having to ask Wes to teach her by the sound of the key in the lock. They stood, together.
The jogger, now dressed in black and grey. She took them down the hall one hand on each arm. Maisie telepathically urged Wes not to try anything stupid. Into the sitting room where they were positioned side by side in front of the fireplace like naughty children.
“Well well well. Mister Carter, Miss Simm. A pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. You have been busy, haven’t you?”
How could Maisie ever have confused this man’s words for Malcolm’s or Tom’s? He was elegant, slender, a sharply-made suit and sharper features. He spoke kindly, but there was a smooth menace to him that chilled Maisie to the bone.
“What do you want?” Wes demanded. The frightened child was gone - this man fitted squarely into Wes's game. Maisie stepped back, almost involuntarily. The fireplace, behind her, was bricked in, a little electric heater sitting in the narrow recess, thick with dust.
The man arched an elegant eyebrow. “What do I want? Ultimately, you. Getting one past Five is something of a national pastime these days, but your audacity is to be applauded. You’ll be a welcome addition to the ranks across the river once you grow a little.”
“You’re MI-6,” Wes accused.
“Correct. Something of a homecoming, hmm? Your father and mother were in my service when they weren’t much older than you.”
“Your service killed my father and mother.”
The Six man pulled a face as if he'd smelt something mildly distasteful. "Please, no need for dramatics. Miss Simm, you’ll be pleased to know we aren’t just an old boys’ club these days, and you’ll be welcome too, once you’ve finished with Othello and Marx.”
“What do you want?” Wes said again, through gritted teeth. She had no doubt he'd take this man, and the jogger and the creep in the next room, height and age disregarded, if they so much as spoke a single word of disrespect against his parents.
“Ah yes, I am speaking a little long-term, aren’t I? Short-term things are different. Quite simply, I’d like for you to stop your little game. It’s been very amusing, all the more so for Five’s stupendous inability to give you the credit of noticing. But it’s gone on long enough.”
Maisie saw Wes stiffen, hands clenched into fists. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said.
"Yes yes, very good. Keeping an eye out for unusual personnel movements is of paramount importance for national security, did you know that? Apparently Five don't, bless their hearts. But we do."
From the depths of Maisie's numbness, her blood boiled. Was all this - the snatching, the safehouse, the hours locked in a darkened room - just an elaborate telling off? But even as she felt Wes’s anger, something held her tongue, kept her silent, waiting. Later, she didn't know if she’d actually recognised the bigger game, or if she was just numb with shock.
She was never quite sure what happened next. She felt it like a blow, sending her back against the wall, elbows knocking against the edge of the fireplace, but in her logical recollection the sounds were quick and muffled and Tom opened the door quite calmly.
“Don’t fucking touch them.”
The Six man put up his hands in mock horror. His eyes were all snake. “Come now, young Tom, as if I’d harm a child.”
It took Maisie a long moment to realise that Tom was holding a gun. Behind him, in the hall, she could see the creep who’d followed her across London doubled up from a punch to the guts.
Tom didn’t reply. He flicked his eyes to Maisie, and she nodded I’m fine, sick to the stomach at the cold fury in his face. “Then we’re leaving.”
“So soon? I'm glad you got my note; it's been such a long time, hasn't it? How’s business?”
“I’m retired from the service, Siviter,” Tom said tiredly, but there was warning there too. He didn’t lower the gun. The shadow of the jogger moved behind the glass door to the dining room; stilled at a quick gesture from Siviter.
“Tom, Tom. I understand you’re retired from the service, but yourself and Ms Dale found yourself unemployed with, how should I say, a rather specific skill set. Understandable that you’d want to keep using it, once Harry cut you loose.”
At Maisie's side, Wes made a small movement. She reached out and grabbed his wrist with a strength she didn't know she had. He twisted away, scowling, but stayed where he was.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about."
“Do you know,” Siviter continued, as if Tom hadn’t spoken, “I was reminded of the oddest thing the other day. Right after the death of that BNP candidate - terrible accident, wasn't it - I found myself thinking of the assassination of the US Chief of Defence, oh it must have been almost ten years ago now. Do you remember?”
“That was a setup. As you well know.”
“Yes, of course it was. I don't know what it was made me think of it.”
"Do you have any evidence to back up your case of déjà vu?"
"Regrettably, no."
Tom set his jaw. “Then we’re leaving.”
“We didn’t need rescuing,” Wes muttered as they got into the car. It was low enough that Tom could pretend not to have heard.
“I need to call Mum,” Maisie said, hearing her own voice from far away.
“I just did,” Tom said gently. “She knows you’re safe.”
They drove in silence. This time, Maisie tried to pay attention to where they were, but it was dark and the lights and street signs were hazy with rain. She couldn't look at Wes - she was furious with him, so much so that she feared she might hit him if he so much as opened his mouth.
"I'll call you later," he mumbled as he got out of the car at his grandparents' house. She nodded in response, but didn't know if he'd seen.
Tom watched him inside the house, then turned to face her. She couldn’t look at him either.
“What the fuck did you think you were doing?”
“You’re not my father,” she retorted, seeing him flinch in surprise out of the corner of her eye.
“How old is he, fourteen? He’s a child, Maisie. What were you thinking, letting him take things this far?"
"I didn't let him do anything - you think I can control what he does?"
"Running around the city pretending to be spies - ”
“It was his idea!”
“Then you should’ve stopped him.”
Maisie opened her mouth to explain - that Wes wasn’t a normal fourteen-year-old, he was a genius, perhaps the cleverest person Maisie had ever known - but she remembered his pale face, furious tears, all that wild talk about enemy ops, and she fell silent. She needed to apologise to him, she realised, though he would scorn her. I'm sorry I fell for the same act everyone else has been falling for, from your Uncle Harry to Malcolm to your schoolmasters, and maybe even back to your parents. I'm sorry you're so fucking clever that you think the rules of grief don't apply to you.
Tom quietly pulled the car back into traffic.
“They followed me, didn’t they,” she said in a small voice. “They sent that postcard knowing I’d think it was from you, and they followed me right to your door.”
“Yes,” Tom said.
How had they known about the postcards? The same way they knew that she was studying Othello and Marx. They’d been in her room. They’d been through her things, looking for a way to get to Tom. Because she’d attracted their attention, her and Wes and their stupid little game.
“The fire...”
“Took out everything it was meant to. There was nothing important left for Siviter’s men to find.”
“But you can’t go back there.”
“No. We’ll have to find somewhere else. We have before. England is full of hidey-holes.”
“What about all your things?”
“Things are unimportant.”
“What about the dog?”
“The dog’s unimportant.”
“Jesus, do you ever listen to yourself?”
Tom sighed. “I’m sorry, Maisie. I should never have let you come.”
“You should never have trusted me, you mean.”
He shook his head, eyes on the road. “I should never have been so complacent. I knew they were searching for me. If it hadn’t’ve been through you they would’ve found another way.”
“What do they want with you? What are you, an anarchist? A terrorist? Destabilising the government on behalf of the CIA?”
Tom smiled, with no humour. “I think they want me to work for them.”
“Seriously? Then why the hell don’t you? They’re pretty persuasive.”
Tom, of course, didn’t answer. He changed down gears as they stopped at a red light. “What do you want to do when you finish school, Maisie?”
“Go to university,” she snapped.
“Then what?”
She folded her arms and stared out the window.
“I don’t mean to be patronising. God knows it took me long enough to work it out. But you’ll come to realise, it’s not what you do that’s important, it’s who you do it for.”
“Great, thanks for the advice.” She decided to sit out the rest of the journey in silence, but then something else crossed her mind. “Does Mum know? About the game?”
“No. Are you going to tell her?”
Maisie snorted. “I don’t think so.”
“You should. She doesn’t like secrets.”
“You have no fucking idea what she likes.”
She’d provoked him into silence again. Hot tears burned in her eyes, but she held them at bay with an iron will. Damned if he was going to make her cry ever again.
“So you were convincing people to resign?” Tom said presently, as if asking about the weather.
Maisie waited a long time before deciding to reply. “Only ones that didn’t really need convincing.”
“How many?”
She hesitated. “Four.”
Tom’s cheek twitched.
“It would never have worked with you,” she said. “You never loved us enough to give up the job for us.”
“No,” Tom said patiently, looking at the road. “But I loved you enough to give you up.”
Then he caught her eye in the mirror and smiled at her, Jesus, his fucking smiles. Maisie, if only so she didn’t burst into tears, smiled fiercely back.
- - -
Alternate fic title: the one I've been writing since SEPTEMBER 2011.
I'm... not quite sure what to do now?
*collapses*