Primeval fic: Everybody's Got a Story Part 2/3
Title: Everybody's Got a Story
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: Don't own nothin', not makin' any money neither.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Christine Johnson succeeds at taking over the ARC in the middle of S3. Then Connor plays along with her, revealing a side of himself he'd thought he'd never have to revisit.
AN: I hope at least someone didn't see this coming. Fast enough for you aunteeneenah? Also, also, for some reason, I can't find transcripts of the episodes online, which means that, lacking the DVDs as well, I'm working purely off memory for the scenes in this. Any inaccuracies of things that are supposed to be taken directly from the episode are strictly a matter of my imperfect memory.
******************************
Connor had just finished the final trail of electronic breadcrumbs into Tina's past when he heard Becker ask Tina, "Shouldn't we be reporting this to the minister? Lester always kept him fully informed on operational decisions."
He knew how Tina'd always reacted to being asked for constant updates. As far as she was concerned, if she was competent to do the job, if anyone was competent to do their job, you left them to it and let them report when they were done. She was entirely uninterested in the process. Of course, this was only amplified by her near-constant desire for plausible deniability, but she also just didn't want to hear about it until it was done. This sort of request was generally met by scorn and derision.
He wasn't disappointed. "Let me worry about the minister, he'll find out what I choose to tell him."
As they came clattering down the stairs, he caught a glimpse of something in Becker's hand. It was actually one of the toys Connor kept around his desk. He never used the little voice recorder for notes, for all that he'd told Abby he would, he just liked using it and playing things back. Connor suppressed his giggle of utter glee when he saw that little LED and Tina say, "The minister is an imbecile, he can barely blow his own nose. Do you think I'm going let a white hall glove puppet with the IQ of a root vegetable tell me how to do my job? Now find Quinn for me."
"Oh, has Danny broken out?" Connor asked with great interest. He'd been 'helping' Sarah work on the artefact, which meant pretending to be too bored by the whole process to do anything useful and pretending to miss that she was taking notes and still working on it. Really, he'd had to tell Tina he was getting entertainment out of Sarah's pitiful attempts at subterfuge.
"Yes," she grated out. "Jake, would you be so kind as to join the search along with Captain Becker?"
He sighed loudly, and said, "If I must. Really, the captain's more than competent for the job, you know."
"And I would rather the certainty of overkill," she said sternly. "And I want you off the system for a while."
"You don't trust me?" he asked, knowing she didn't trust anyone, but him more than most. "I promise, Tina, I haven't done a thing you'd dislike to the ARC's systems."
She just rolled her eyes at him, knowing better than most he would have been playing with her hacks and back doors and pointed to the door. He sighed and trailed after Becker. The car ride was silent until he found that Becker was pulling up to Lester's town flat. "Really? Lester? I'm pretty sure Danny's got more sense than to run straight to Lester of all people," Connor said.
Becker raised an eyebrow at him. "I will not play the since-only-an-idiot-would-do-this-I-won't-check-it game. We'll check every place he might have gone to ground. Systematically."
"Right," Connor replied and forcibly controlled his breathing. Lester, unlike most of the rest of the ARC was good with words. Whatever he was going to say would hurt. And Connor was going to have to make sure it rolled off his back to all appearances.
"To what do I owe this distinct displeasure?" Lester asked as he opened the door.
There was the barest hint of a flash of movement behind him, and Connor said, delighted to have a real excuse not to put up with Lester's wit, "Well, unless Sid and Nancy have started growing red fur, I think we've already found what we were looking for," and darted down the stairs to intercept Danny. Because Danny was the best at break-ins, target practice and leadership, but Connor was better at fighting dirty.
And he did catch up with Danny, hoping all the while that whatever Becker was up to, he'd have enough time to do it with Lester before Connor came back. A tackle around the knees, taking Danny down, spin, avoid the other man's kick, slide back, in, around, and he was kneeling on the former copper's back, pinning him down and with a knife to the throat again. "Nice," Danny snarled from under him. "You been playing us all, all this time? I thought you were a nice kid, Connor, I guess you're just one of Johnson's thugs."
Johnson's SFs caught up to them and pulled Danny to his feet, keeping his arms pinioned and their guns aimed at him. "Oh, I'm so much more than a thug, Danny," he said, grinning through the hurt. "I'm her pet project, protege if you will. Tina and I go way back." As they dragged Danny off, he added, "And she's a lot prettier to look at than you, Danny." He trotted up the stairs, finding Lester fighting to keep Sid and Nancy inside the flat. When they spotted Connor, they lunged past Lester and right to him.
In spite of himself, Connor caught the pair, cuddling them close and softly muttering into Sid's back. "I missed you two."
"Give those back at once," Lester demanded, snatching the pair away. "Honestly, you two. You don't know where he's been at all."
"Oh, I promise that I showered this morning, Lester," Connor replied, virtually on autopilot. He couldn't crack now. It was too close and there were too many variables that might give him away.
"And I suppose that would make up for any viruses or bacteria you'd picked up from your recreational activities," Lester sneered right back.
He forced the grin wider. "Is that supposed to hurt?" he let a lascivious smile cross his face. "Because she's really quite picky about who she lets in, you know."
"Now that you both have what you came for, would you get away from my flat?" Lester asked, suddenly sounding tired.
"Of course," Becker said politely.
"Ta!" Connor replied, faking cheer with everything in him. "Really," he said as they headed down the stairs to the car, "I'd've thought Danny had more sense than that. After all, he's just got Lester in trouble now too." Becker didn't reply, and Connor hoped that whatever scheme it seemed the other man was working to would work. Because he was going to have to report this to Tina, and she'd react to it with her usual efficiency. "If you don't mention this, I'll have to, you know. So . . . I'll give you a few hours, right?" Connor offered.
"Your generosity's overwhelming," Becker said dryly.
***************************
On getting back to the ARC, Becker's palms were sweaty and he had the nervewracking wait for whatever it was Lester would do with the recording. From everything he'd heard about the Minister, Lester should have no trouble getting Johnson ousted with her own words indicting her. The real question left now was, would Connor turn out to have been playing a game all this time? Because it was rather in doubt now. If he truly was Johnson's protege, as he claimed, however sarcastically, it could mean that everything from the very start had been a lie.
Had Connor Temple been a front the whole time? If he was, it was impressive, but disheartening. Only Lester's move to get Johnson out would tell.
The whole team were gathered in Lester's office, Johnson choosing to lord her supposed victory over them, Jake seated on the corner of the desk, smirking at the lot of them while Danny nearly trembled with rage, Sarah glared and Abby just looked lost. Lester came in then, "Oh, Christine, I do believe I informed you that this wasn't over," he said. "I do believe you're sitting in my chair."
"What?" she asked, sharply.
Lester smiled back as sharklike as ever Johnson had been, and said, "The Minister, in his wisdom has chosen to reinstate me." He held up the little recorder filched from Connor's desk and played back Johnson's own words. The sense of triumph Becker felt was as much a rush the second time as the first."
"The minister is an imbecile, he can barely blow his own nose. Do you think I'm going let a white hall glove puppet with the IQ of a root vegetable tell me how to do my job?"
"He seemed rather upset actually," Lester said contemplatively. "Wanted to speak with you quite urgently."
She glared, eyes snapping, and said, "You're quite right James. This isn't over." Then she turned to her supposed protege. "Jake?"
Becker wondered if the slight hitch he saw in the other man's eyes was only his imagination as Jake gracefully stood, took Johnson's hand as though he were a gentleman taking a lady into a ball, and said, "We've both come back from worse, love." As they walked out together, Jake whispering something in her ear, he tossed over his shoulder to the team, "See you around!"
The victory they'd just earned felt hollow, and it was a subdued group who applauded Lester his success and went back to work.
***************************************
Tina was angry, and it showed, because the moment they got back to her flat she'd stormed off to change, then came flying out of the bedroom, demanding a spar by the expedient of trying to maim him. Because for all that she was sophisticated, educated, sly, cunning and a brilliant hacker in her own right, deep down she was still the girl picked up by a criminal concern for her ability to bring a knife to a gunfight and still win.
And she'd taught him most everything she knew.
He dove out of her way, rolling and coming up with his own knives out, blocking her lunges with his own, because there was no way to play a defensive game with her. And part of him had missed this. Because from the age of fourteen to seventeen he really had been her protege. She'd taken that awkward teenager, moulding Connor Jacob Temple-Thompson into Jake Thompson.
"You know," he offered, "You could work your temper out on my hide in a way that doesn't risk us both being sliced to pieces." He slipped under her guard to score a thin line on her shoulder that cut the strap on her sports bra as he did so.
He paid for that with a shallow slice along his ribs, but he admitted to himself, she really was too good to play those sorts of games with. At least, while she was angry enough to damage him. "Ruining my clothing will not put me in a better mood," she snapped, a few broad cuts from her forcing him to dive and roll out of her way.
"Maybe," he said with a smirk, "But it makes the game more fun for me." It was. It was fun. nearly a decade, all the guilt and fear and self-hatred engendered by what he'd done, but he was still what she'd made him, and it was nice not to hide anymore, nice not to have to be Connor Temple to the hilt anymore. He closed with her, trying to pin her, but she was fast, evading him and scoring what would have been a hit on his back if he hadn't been wearing a leather jacket over the red and black t-shirt underneath.
She looked gorgeous in the spandex workout clothes, and he'd done this before, letting her wear out her fury in the fight before working off the rest of the excess anger in sex. He let himself think about it, letting her know he was thinking about it, and only a short time later she took advantage of his distraction to get him pinned. "You're letting your libido get away from you," she said, tracing the knife over him. For the most part she wasn't particularly creative, but she'd left scars on him from mixing knifeplay with sex.
A flick of her wrists and they'd landed with a thud in the target on the other side of the room, and she was rocking her hips over his. The cut across his chest stung, but he relegated it to that part of him where he could ignore it, and paid more attention to arching up into each downward stroke of her hips.
Just as he was reaching for her breasts, the door to the flat slammed open. "Christina Malvern, you are under arrest for theft, aiding and abetting criminal acts by terrorist organisations, aiding and abetting criminal acts by international criminal organisations, trespassing, assault, murder in the first degree, murder in the third degree . . ." the list was a long one, some of the things even Connor wasn't aware of. Then again, she'd been doing it for years before he came along, and had clearly been doing a lot more since. "Identity theft, falsification of government records . . ." he'd wondered about that, and how she'd become Christine Johnson, and it looked like they were finally coming up on the last few charges, which had to do with him, ". . . sexual activity with a child and causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity."
She was pulled up and dragged off snarling defiance. He braced himself for what he knew was coming. He might yet get out of this, he might not. There were some wheels he'd put in motion to get himself out, but it wouldn't necessarily be with the efficiency that Lester might have achieved. He certainly couldn't rely on Lester for this. All he could do was hope that his few contacts came through. "Connor Temple-Thompson, you are under arrest for theft, trespassing, murder in the second degree, murder in the third degree, aiding and abetting . . ." He let it roll over him. He'd heard the charges before once, when he was a terrified seventeen-year-old. But things were different now, and he was too old to play sobbing innocent.
He was bundled off into a separate car, indicating he understood the rights as read to him, and settling back for an uncomfortable wait. At the police station he was tossed into an interrogation room, mirrors and uncomfortable furniture and all. It brought back the memories of being in one before, with Duncan, Stephen and Cutter. Even further back, when he was just a teenager, terrified of what he'd become and where everything was going.
Left cuffed to the table in the mirrored room, he sighed, leaned back and began to go through dinosaur species starting at the phylum down. He vaguely wondered what the people no doubt watching were going to make of that. Out of boredom he threw in "Chordata, Aves, Galliformes, Phasianidae, Meleagridinae, Meleagris, Gallopavo," wondering if it would be noticed.
An angry-looking policewoman stormed in. "You know, I don't care what deal you cut with MI5 when you were a kid, we've done the work, we've caught the pair of you, and I will be damned if I let some government operatives who think they're too good for the likes of me let you waltz off with a slap on the wrist."
He hadn't expected such a rapid response to the feelers he'd sent out. It had been years, he'd been sure what little pull he had left from turning state's evidence would have mostly evaporated. "They've been making themselves unpopular around here?" he asked her.
"You're going to shut up and answer my questions," she snapped. "And then you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison for helping get a bunch of people killed that never did a thing to anyone."
He took a closer look at her. "You lost someone to one of our clients," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Clients," she snorted. "Fancy way to describe a pack of bloody monsters."
"They were our clients," he said calmly, "They paid us for our services, we did the job. And I am sorry."
The door opened and a new voice broke in. "I'll thank you to stop interrogating my agent, detective."
So, that was why the rapid response. "Yates, I've told you before, I'm not your agent. I just wanted out."
"And I told you before, Thompson, we could use someone like you," Lucas Yates said. "Let me put this another way. You're going to prison unless you let me sign you on. Consider it blackmail. You know you won't last a week before you find yourself killing someone in self-defense."
"You're not taking him anywhere!" snapped the detective.
Yates sighed. "I do hate doing this, but what he and Malvern got into of late is above your pay grade. It's above mine, actually, but since I was one of the people who brought in the bulk of the group last time, I've got the chance to wrap up my case once and for all." Then he turned to Connor. "Look, we've wanted you since you were seventeen. You're damned good and what you did here, making up a trail for us to track down Ms Malvern is exactly the sort of thing we need. Jake-"
"It's Connor," he said firmly.
***********************************
"I don't bloody believe it," Danny said, staring at the computer in front of him.
"What?" Sarah asked from where she'd been fiddling with a pen.
Becker was just leaning against the wall, wondering if the ARC would ever feel right again, now that Connor had turned out to be some sort of rat-mole for Christine Johnson all along, Cutter was dead and Abby was drifting around like the ghost of herself. Not that he could blame her. If he'd lost his entire team the way she had he'd be pretty lost himself.
Danny continued, "I just got an email from one of my mates back on the force. He remembered Con -- Jake," they'd all taken to differentiating between who they'd thought the young man was and who he'd turned out to be, "And it seems he and Johnson have just been brought in on a bunch of charges, everything from helping the Mafia and IRA to murder to trespassing and . . . statutory rape?" Danny finished, sounding a little odd. "Seems she got her claws into Connor early. He was fourteen."
"Fourteen?" Sarah said, hurrying over to read over Danny's shoulder. "God, do you suppose . . ." she trailed off.
Abby looked oddly hopeful. "Maybe it's like Stephen and Helen," she said, joining them. "Helen got her hooks into Stephen and sort of . . . confused him."
"What assurance do I have that you weren't to blame?"
"You know quite well I was in too deep for that."
"I'm not sure of that, Abby," Becker said cautiously. "If he'd been in this for that long, I'm not sure you could even really expect he's got a normal perspective on ethics."
Danny looked sad. "You see it sometimes. Kids who could've been good, but they never got a chance because someone got to them."
"I just . . ." she looked close to tears. "He said he loved me once. I was going to fall, and he wouldn't let go. Even when he knew that I was going to pull him over with me, he didn't care and he said he loved me. And then I walked away, acting like being his girlfriend would be the worst thing in the world."
Sarah hurried to her. "Oh, Abby, don't start thinking this was your fault."
As the day passed, though, Becker wondered. Because Connor or Jake or whoever he was, didn't add up. If he'd been Johnson's pet the whole time, the anomaly mission should have had her at the helm from the beginning. It would have been too easy at the start for that to happen. So why hadn't it? Of course, Connor had said something about thinking she was dead, but the role he'd played all this time didn't make sense unless he was sort of playing at sleeper agent.
But what Abby had said, and he had no reason to disbelieve her, that Connor had been willing to be pulled over a cliff rather than let Abby fall, which was the sort of thing he'd seen time and again from the techie, didn't tally either with Jake Thompson. Those risks had had no calculation to them. There'd been nothing Becker could see that would be an ace in the hole. And during the mess with the mould, he could have taken Johnson's side then, got her in, made her coup so much more legitimate and thorough, and instead he'd been busy giving himself hypothermia to kill the thing. But he could have been biding his time, unsure of making his move.
Every argument either way had a counterargument, and he simply had no way of knowing whether Jake was real or Connor. They'd both seemed equally real, and entirely different, save for those flashes he'd seen from time to time of one in the other. Connor's affability in Jake when they'd sparred, Jake's sharpness and slightly amused smirk when they'd gone to rescue Rex together. Connor's intensity at his devices appearing on the trail of the terror birds, Jake's deadly intent making a showing a few times when Connor had shot something about to take a bite from someone.
They were the same person, and damned if he could tell which one was more real than the other.
****************************
Connor may never have wanted to work for MI5, but he wanted to go to prison less, and he knew Lucas was right that if other prisoners put his back to the wall, his first instinct would be to gut them. More than all that, he liked Lucas, trusted him and owed him for the help he'd had when he'd finally realised what he was involved with.
It was one of the rare days that he was put into the field. He'd been sent out as the on-site expert to crack the codes getting the IRA members into the warehouse the guns were being stored. It all went to hell when one of them, not used to covert operations, more used to drive-by shootings, decided he fancied a stroll about the warehouse, rather than the swift in and out they needed. More than that, he was rattling around, making noise and generally faffing around instead of doing his job.
A quick consultation with Tina and he'd left his post, pissed off that this might go pear-shaped because the client was stupid, and then they wouldn't get paid. "What the hell are you doing?" he snapped softly at the man as he hummed and poked at things.
"What?" he said in a far-too-loud voice, "It's not like there's anyone about to hear a thing, stop stressing yourself. You're too young for that."
He hated being called young. Like it was a reflection on his hard-earned skill. Jake snapped his blades out and slammed the man into the crates behind him, holding the idiot at knifepoint. "You will shut up, get back in the van and stop risking the whole operation with your bloody stupid-" He stopped. To do what he'd done had left them pressed against each other, and he felt it. Jake pulled back, bringing the knife around and slicing open the shirt the man was wearing.
There was tape there. A wire. Someone was listening.
It was instinct. He yanked the recorder off, smashing it to stop it transmitting. He whirled on the man who'd yet to quite process what was happening and made one quick, sharp movement forward. His aim was perfect, sliding through the muscles of the chest, between the ribs to a perfect shot to the heart. Fred O'Brien died instantly. Jake pulled out his walkie-talkie. "Tina, pull everyone out, it's all gone pear-shaped. We've got a mole or something."
With brutal efficiency he sliced off the fingertips and brutalised the face and mouth to slow down identification. He stripped the man down, collected everything, wrapping it all in the bloody clothes and directing his supposed fellow IRA members to grab the body for disposal. The important thing was to get everyone out and slow down the police so they could have time to muddy the trail.
He'd gone home to visit his mum, and faced with her at the door, smiling and asking how his job at the imaginary conglomerate that wanted an extra IT worker had been going, something in him reeled. He barely made it to the bathroom before he was vomiting up what felt like everything he'd ever eaten, then after that, everything he had in his gastrointestinal system. He'd felt even worse when she'd insisted on tucking him into bed, making him broth and thinking he'd picked up a flu somewhere.
Finally Jake couldn't stand it anymore. "Mum, I need some sleep, I think."
"Of course, love. See you in the morning."
Jake hadn't cried so much since his dad died. He'd been on field ops before that, he'd even killed before, but it had been in the heat of the moment, self-defence, some angry Mafia don blaming him for the ineptitudes of his own people. Kill or be killed. This was . . . cold. Cold and complete and ruthless. And Tina had smiled at him. Had been turned on.
For a week he wibbled, not knowing what to do, knowing that he didn't want to lose Tina, didn't want to lose the respect he got, respect he didn't get anywhere else, but also knowing deep in his bones that everything they were doing was wrong. His mother's belief that her son would never do a bad thing finally pushed him over that line.
Jake created a tangled set of lies, leaving everyone thinking he was somewhere else, took himself to the authorities and turned himself and everything he had in. He'd expected prison. He'd expected a lot of things. What he got was Lucas Yates.
Lucas was a pragmatist. He saw Jake as a chance to get to the whole organisation and then some. Jake had the skills and the conscience and the want to fix things, and he was easy enough to bribe in the end, because a promise of ongoing government support for his mum, something to keep her living in the style to which she'd become accustomed, was all that was needed to bring him onside.
"I'll admit, I thought it'd take longer for you to agree," Lucas said as he swung by Connor's bright new office with its five computers and stacks of casefiles.
Connor glared. "No one but the rest of the office is going to see me, is there some reason I can't be the eccentric tech with the funny clothes like on the telly?"
"Because that's only on television programmes, and the people with more seniority than us both can drop by any time and they'll get all snippy if I let you run around in your waistcoats," Lucas said with good humour. They'd had that argument before, eight years before when Connor had been briefly attached to MI5 to hack for them in exchange for not pressing charges or making him show up as a witness. Connor hadn't liked wearing the suit then, either.
"Lester didn't make me," Connor grumbled.
Lucas was frowning. "Lester?"
"You know, you made a big deal with the detective about how they'd raised your clearance and all so you could deal with Tina and me," Connor said, curious now. "Lester runs things for . . . them." He'd nearly said 'us'.
"I actually don't know anything at all, but that your organisation was run out of the Home Office and that it's called the ARC. No one even explained what A-R-C stood for," Lucas admitted. "It was on a need-to-know level, and it seems I didn't need to know."
Well, if he didn't know, then there was no need for Connor to tell him. More than that, now that he was attached to MI5 as he was, it looked like he wasn't going to have the chance to rejoin the ARC, either. "You really don't want to," he told Lucas. "There were times I wished I didn't." He sighed. "I'll miss the people, but I might as well make a clean break of it. I can't go back now that I'm here, anyhow."
"What happened anyhow?" Lucas asked. "I mean, of what you can tell me. You seemed to indicate that Malvern had used her position to take over the program, but you didn't go into any detail."
Sighing, Connor leaned back in his chair. "Basically, Tina wanted the research we'd been doing there for her own purposes. When she took over, it was kind of a thing where she went over Lester's head to the Minister and stuff. Thing is, we knew she'd been playing in our sandbox for a while, but couldn't do anything about it. I saw the chance to get into her systems and whatnot, get her taken out of play once and for all." He closed his eyes, remembering the looks on everyone's faces. "I was a berk. I as much as told everyone I'd been working for her all along. Then when Becker and Lester got her tossed out, I was too far in, too close to getting her caught to back out."
"And you think you don't belong here?" Lucas asked. "You're one of the best operatives we've ever had, and you've only done two ops with us." He put a companionable hand on Connor's shoulder. "Give it a little time, okay? You're too brilliant to go to waste in some dead-end job teaching first year students the differences between a brontosaurus and a diplodocus."
"For one thing," Connor told him dryly, "Brontosaurs are effectively fictional."
"Cute, Temple."
With nothing left but his work, Connor buried himself in codes and hacking, sometimes getting to go on field operations with sneering MI5 agents who didn't much like the untrained interloper.
********************************
It was a month after the eviction of Christine Johnson from the ARC, followed by her arrest that Becker found himself escorting a serious-looking and suited man up to Lester's office. He stood at parade rest, waiting to the side at Lester's nod. "You would be the Agent Yates from MI5?" Lester asked.
"And you would be James Lester?" the man replied with equal sangfroid. Then he said something that made Lester's eyebrows shoot up to his hairline and surprised Becker equally as much. "As long as I'm here, can I at least ask after the health of, what are their names? Sid and Nancy. Connor never did tell me what they are, just that he misses his pets and he's hoping they're happy."
"What does Mr. Temple have to do with this meeting, Agent?" Lester asked, choosing not to answer the question.
The man sighed. "Rather a lot. I'd been trying to recruit him since he was seventeen, but he just wouldn't have it. He's brilliant, you know. One of the best operatives we never had. Helped us close down so many organised crime groups over the course of just two years, then up and changed his name and vanished. Took us a year to find out he'd gone off to do his first year at uni."
The word spilled out before Becker could stop himself. "Operative?"
Yates turned to look at him. "You must be Becker. He was very complimentary of you, especially what he said was a flawless performance as an obedient soldierly flunky. Connor was impressed with it, let me tell you."
"Was his whole time with us a matter of an MI5 operation?" Lester asked sharply. "Because if it was, I am greatly impressed myself."
Shaking his head, Yates said, "No. In fact, he'd been trying to stay out of MI5 for most of the last eight years. We kept tabs on him, but he'd done what we asked, and he'd certainly earned the right to leave everything behind."
"You recruited him when he was a teenager?" Lester was narrow-eyed, and Becker suddenly recalled that the man was a father. He tried for a moment to picture being so cold-blooded that he would bring a kid into a government operation like the one Yates was describing and felt sick.
"I'm explaining this badly," Yates said. He sighed heavily. "You'd have to pry the whole of the story from Connor, but basically, his father was dead and his mother was ill and they were simply not getting by. So he took to hacking places, stealing small amounts of money from large corporations." He chuckled. "He didn't get caught by us, either. He got caught by Malvern," he paused, looked at them and said, "Christine Johnson to you. She caught him and had him brought into her little criminal gang. Connor was fourteen at the time."
"He said he was her protege," Becker murmured.
Lester shot him a look, and Becker flushed. He was supposed to be an invisible guard, not a participating presence.
Yates looked at him, amused, and continued. "When he was sixteen he killed someone. It wasn't the first time, but it was the first time it wasn't self-defense. He had a crisis of conscience and pretty much flung himself on the mercy of the law."
"You used him to get the group and as many of their connections as possible," Lester said slowly, nodding as the story became clear.
"I wanted him at MI5 after that," Yates reiterated. "He's the best when he puts his mind to it. He didn't want it, though, and he'd cut a deal with us. Our own fault we left some loopholes in the contracts that he exploited." A wry grin, amused, drifted over the man's face. Then he became serious again. "We all thought Malvern -- Johnson -- was dead. There was an explosion in a warehouse filled with munitions being sent to the so-called Real IRA. She was in there, or so we thought."
There was a reason Lester was who and what he was. "Johnson got into the ARC and Connor saw the chance to deal with her."
"Exactly," the agent said, nodding sharply. "But in the process he raised a few flags that he shouldn't have. I was able to cut a deal to keep him out of prison, if he worked for us."
That was when Danny fell out of the ceiling, landed with a thud on the floor and stared gormlessly up at Yates. "Connor's a spook?"
"Captain, if you wouldn't mind taking Danny somewhere else that isn't the ventilation system?" Lester asked, jerking his head at Becker.
Annoyed, because thanks to Danny he wasn't going to hear the rest of the conversation, Becker hauled him to his feet, then took a sort of mean pleasure in frog-marching him into the main part of the ARC. "Okay, okay! I'm sorry!" Danny said. "I get it, you wanted to hear the rest of it."
"If you didn't feel the need to wander about the ventilation shafts-"
Sarah was laughing, as she usually did at their antics. "What's going on that Danny interrupted?" she asked.
"Where's Abby?" Danny demanded instead of telling her. "I mean, we should tell her too."
Abby was where she usually was lately when she didn't have anything else to do. Curled up with Sid and Nancy, talking to them and looked lost and lonely. She looked up, putting on the spunky mask she used to face the world, and asked, "What's going on?"
"I don't know," Sarah told her. "Danny didn't want to say anything until you were there."
"Well, I'm here," Abby said. "So?"
So they told her. When they were finished, there was a spark in her eyes that had been missing since they'd thought Connor had turned traitor. She turned to Danny. "Want to break into the MI5 offices?" she asked.
"Could be fun," Danny said faux-contemplatively.
Becker shook his head at them. "This is a very bad idea."
"Live a little Becker," Sarah said, taking his hand and pulling him along.
He let her because obviously someone sane needed to be along for the trip. "This is still a very bad idea," he told them.
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