fic: a book of myths, chapter 4
A Book of Myths
Spooks :: Silent Witness :: the end of the world
By londonsophie & belantana.
Chapter 4 of 8 (complete). Link to earlier chapters: 1 | 2 | 3
- - -
Gone are the days when midnight on the grid was Malcolm's private sanctuary. His late night shift tonight is accompanied by the gossiping and complaining of two girls who can't be older than twenty, sifting through GCHQ chatter for a morning report. Having failed at shutting them up with disapproving glares, Malcolm has resorted to blocking them out as best he can.
It must be the hundredth time he's played through the transmission. The worst thing about it - or the best thing, depending on his mood - is that tracing it is so complex precisely because the transmission is so low-tech. It's simply a pattern repeated from dozens of different places. Picking which one is the source might as well be a random guess.
He stops for a moment to ease his aching back. Too old for this, he thinks miserably, which cheers him up a fraction. He is surprised to notice it's nearly one in the morning. Jo will be at the cordon by now, though he doesn't know if she's planning on entering the city under cover of darkness or waiting for the morning. It's right, of course, that he doesn't know the operational details, but it does nothing to make him less worried.
The noisier of the two girls has given up and gone home. The other, who Malcolm remembers is called Rebecca, stretches at her desk and rolls her eyes elaborately. Malcolm suddenly warms to her.
"I think she's forgotten the spiel we got at training," she apologises. "You know, the 'not nine to five' thing."
Malcolm nods. "Yes. It's rarely that."
"What are you doing?"
"Working," says Malcolm.
Rebecca grins at him. "Sorry. Nosy. Got to be more interesting than this GCHQ rubbish."
"It's not all rubbish."
"That's the point, isn't it? One bloody little thing in here could be a tip-off to something going boom, and the only way to find it is to sift through all the rest. It'll be the tiniest thing, too." She looks at the reams of recordings she still has to listen to with something approaching fondness. "Got to love the needle-in-a-haystack approach."
Malcolm finds a smile twitching at the corner of his lips.
"You're old guard, right? You were here before the bombs?"
"Actually," Malcolm says, "I was retired."
She pulls a sympathetic face. "I was a Communications student. I thought spying would be exciting. But Lucas and Jo seem to be the only ones off doing anything interesting, and we don't even get told what."
Malcolm stiffens, but there's no malice in her tone. Something is tugging at the edge of his thoughts. Something she said earlier. She looks at him as if expecting a reply, but when he remains silent she sighs and puts on her headphones again. "Better get back to it. That needle isn't going to find itself."
The tiniest thing. "Rebecca," he says suddenly.
She pulls off the headphones, surprised. "Yes?"
"Why would someone repeat a transmission through many different locations?"
"To hide the source?"
"Aside from that."
She frowns. "Well, to amplify the signal perhaps. If the original transmission was too weak to be heard."
Malcolm turns to his screen, starting to type. "The weakest signal," he mutters, almost to himself. "It has to be the weakest one."
"What are you looking for?"
He pulls up the original analysis, finding the weakest threads which he'd discarded and starting to narrow them down. It takes a few false starts and ten or so minutes of searching, but when he finally sits back in his chair Rebecca is still watching him.
"The source," he answers belatedly.
"And have you found it?"
Malcolm stares at his screen, hardly daring to believe it. "I think I have," he says quietly.
- -
Zaf spends a restless night in a tiny motel room, assessing his options. He has no ties to Lucas and no reason to help him, but he can't shake the feeling he was involved somehow. Was Lucas in trouble for meeting him? Had the two men been shadowing them the whole time, listening to their conversation?
He dismisses this idea countless times. He hadn't hidden himself that well in the crowd and no one was scanning faces looking for him. He thinks of the other meeting, the anonymous number in Lucas's phone, the coded messages.
At six he gives up trying to sleep and heads out into the freezing morning. He is angry now, blaming Lucas for it. He has enough problems of his own without having to worry about other people's. When the signal comes back he'll call Jo, that's what he'll do. He'll get to Edinburgh somehow. Get himself un-dead, sweep the whole last five years into a box, and make himself useful. That's what he came here to do.
Having made the decision, he now has an excruciatingly unspecified length of time to waste. He eats, not remembering what it tastes like, and sees a movie, not remembering what it is. People stare at him with open suspicion and he nearly laughs.
There's no river here. He walks around meaningless streets for a while, doubling back as if trying to lose a tail. He's been trying all day to picture Jo but her face is infuriatingly distant in his memories. He remembers what he said to Lucas, I hope she's married with children, and for an instant he can picture her long-haired and massively pregnant. It's enough to make him smile. That's more than he should have hoped for, isn't it? They could've all been gone, everyone he used to know, his life, Thames House, the street he grew up on. But there's Jo.
It's the most morbid and desperate of comforts, but Zaf's learned to take what he can get. He checks his watch. It's nearly ten. He is already heading for Lucas's meet before he admits it to himself that it's more than just curiosity.
It's five-past before he spots the waiting man, taking far too long with a coffee in the chill wind which has picked up. Ten-past before he's certain. He approaches, one hand still tight around the phone in his pocket. The man's gaze skates over him blankly before Zaf's path is too direct to be ignored.
"I'm sorry, but - "
Zaf sits on the bench next to him. "I saw what happened yesterday," he says without preamble.
"Saw what?"
Zaf has a moment in which to decide whether the man was instrumental or ignorant. He hasn't survived this long without trusting his gut feeling.
"A car," he explains succinctly. "Two thugs in suits, professionals, not sure whose. A gun although I can't be sure. No way I could follow them."
The man stares at him for a long second. "Who the fuck are you?" he asks coolly, as if he hasn't heard Zaf speak.
"A friend," Zaf says, fairly certain he wouldn't be introduced as such. He slides Lucas's phone across the bench in offering. The man checks the messages, pausing as he recognises his own. No signal, Zaf sees upside-down.
"He gave you this?"
His voice is different now, eyes narrowed, a hard edge as he assesses the consequences of Zaf's story.
"The message was from you, wasn't it? I think with this news she may reconsider. What news? Who's she? Who was it took Lucas?"
The man is furious at the questions, and more than a little disgusted Zaf thinks - at his own carelessness or at Lucas's he can't be sure. Zaf didn't expect answers but he knows now he can't leave without getting them. He remembers the vintage of the code.
"I know Malcolm," he says quietly. "Harry. I worked under him for three years."
"Good for you." The reply is mechanical but a flash of the eyes give him away.
"And Ruth Evershed," Zaf presses. "Adam Carter. Colin, and Sam. Have I hit any buttons yet?" Knowing he's hit every single one.
- -
In the event, crossing the cordon is absolutely without incident. Jo and Harry zip themselves up into bodybags, wedge themselves into the cardboard that does for coffins now, and wait in the van. It's driven in by men who apparently do it often enough to laugh, and smoke, and joke about the stiffs, and not check the back once. The roadblock waves them through with a shout and thump on the side which makes Harry jump.
After an uncomfortable hour, he feels the van being parked, the ratchet of the handbrake, and the drivers go off, yelling instructions at each other. He hears Jo sit up and unzip herself, and before his numb hands can fumble for the pull, she's opened the bag over his face and she's smiling at him.
"Did you fall asleep in there?"
He sits up. "Not exactly."
Jo laughs and turns around, trying the back door of the van. It is locked, and Harry watches her pick it expertly, twenty seconds, maybe thirty, and then the lock snaps back. She looks over her shoulder and grins at him, and he realises incredulously that she is enjoying herself.
"You like this," he says, trying to disentangle the bodybag from around his waist.
"So should you." She starts turning the door handle, carefully.
"What?"
"Empathy for your patients."
"They're not exactly patients," grumbles Harry, dragging the bodybag from one foot and then the other.
"Are you ready?"
"All right, all right." He comes to stand next to her.
She opens the door slowly, a crack first, a look, then a little wider and another, longer look.
"Well?"
She looks as though she is about to speak, and then she shrugs her shoulders, and pushes the door wide.
"See for yourself."
- -
They move around for a while, until the man is sure they aren't being tailed. Zaf's attempts at finding out what's going on are resolutely ignored, but he follows with grim determination. He's owed an explanation and persistence is the only way he knows to get one.
Eventually it pays off. The man whirls round, all cold anger and reminding Zaf suddenly and painfully of Adam. "Why the fuck would I tell you who I am? If Lucas has been arrested it's because of the information I've been passing him. The next thing they're going to do is find his source. Me. I don't intend to let that happen and it'd be a lot fucking easier if you pissed off."
With that he turns pointedly back and keeps walking.
"Oh come on," Zaf says idly. "I already know your name is Tom Quinn."
That gets a response. Just a tiny hesitation, but enough for both of them to know that there's no point denying it. For a moment Zaf thinks Tom is going to hit him.
"Did Lucas tell you?"
"No," Zaf says, with the impression that Lucas definitely shouldn't have. "You used to be Section D. You didn't accuse me of being dead when I told you my name, so you've been out of the service a long while. And I used my amazing powers of deduction to work out that you probably aren't Zoe."
Tom starts walking again, calmer suddenly, or perhaps just thinking of ways he can kill Zaf. They're heading to quieter streets, and Tom obviously has a destination in mind. Zaf keeps following.
"I suppose they're all dead now," Tom says presently, as if the conversation of earlier never ended. "Section D."
Zaf is silent for a moment, unsure if the truce is real, and considering how much news is his to share. "Malcolm's alive. I don't know about the others. But Ruth got out years ago. Out of the service, I mean. Out of England. She's safe."
"Your information's old. Ruth was back."
Zaf could have kicked himself. Tom has been in contact with Lucas - of course he would have already asked what has happened to his old Section.
"Well," Zaf says neutrally. "Who knows then."
"You said you were Five."
The anger of before is gone, but Zaf's sharp enough to recognise an interrogation when he hears it. "I've been away a long while," he explains, with a trace of bitterness. "I've just been re-recruited."
A lie, but there's nothing to disprove it. To his surprise Tom laughs.
"Lucky you. They didn't want me."
Somewhere in the back of his mind Zaf realises how small his own chances must be, despite Lucas's promises to try. "Why?" he asks.
"I broke some unwritten rules. Lucas deigns to take my information but he won't have me on the books."
I think with this news she may reconsider. She being the Service, of course - old-fashioned and pompous enough to irritate Zaf. "What have you found out?" he asks again.
Tom shakes his head, still smiling, but with no humour. "That was for Lucas."
"Well, I'm all you've got."
No response. This isn't the kind of spying Zaf expected to be doing on his return, but really, what did he think it would be? The glorious good old days, him and Adam and Jo and the only targets were on the other side?
Tom stops suddenly, producing a set of keys and unlocking a car parked on the side of the street. Zaf gets in uninvited, and they drive slowly out of the centre, checking periodically for a signal.
"The army," Tom says after nearly ten minutes of silence, "are running a lot of operations into London."
He's undercover in the army - that, Zaf thinks, makes a lot of sense. They obviously shared none of Five's reservations in enlisting people with shady pasts, but then he supposes Tom Quinn's legend and invented rank means he doesn't have a shady past any more. It must be child's play to create a legend these days. Initial suspicion quickly excused when the usual avenues of investigation are gone - records destroyed, personnel lost.
"I thought London was cordoned off," Zaf says, playing resolutely dumb. "Ring of steel, radiation zone, certain death beyond, do not cross."
"Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred pounds," Tom continues, deadpan. "Don't be stupid. They man the cordon. They know where the bombs went off and where the radiation zones are."
Zaf holds a pause. "What kind of operations?"
"Oh, the investigation. Collecting evidence, bodies. Apparently they'll be starting the cleanup soon. But there are more than that. Vague things. Unrecorded, or repeats of what's already been done."
"What do you suspect?"
"A cover-up," Tom says simply.
"Covering what up?" Zaf can't think of a single answer to his question which wouldn't be bad news.
Tom pauses. "I don't know," he says at last.
"But you suspect."
"You really don't know when to shut up, do you?"
"There's no point keeping me half-informed."
"It might save your irritating neck."
"I'm pretty good at looking after my neck," says Zaf. "Trust me."
"I've told you what you need to know."
Zaf knows when he is beaten. "Well, if you got the information to Thames - to Five, then. Once they know, there's no point taking us out."
Tom dismisses this with a quick gesture. "I think they already know. Or at least someone high up knows. You saw what happened to Lucas."
Things start falling into place in Zaf's head. "You think that was someone in Five? Because of information Lucas got from you?"
Tom shrugs, aggressive, silent. "Five, Six, army. The military umbrella is back up, isn't it? All united for the security of the nation."
"Well, we need to get to Edinburgh ourselves then. Contact Jo, Malcolm. They'll listen."
"It'll put them in danger."
"So what's your plan, strolling in to London and finding out single-handed?"
"Something like that."
Zaf snorts incredulously. "But you said yourself that whoever took Lucas will be looking all over for his source now. Your cover's blown."
"Not yet." Tom pulls into a side street and stops the car. "It's been nice reminiscing. The central station's a block that way. Go home to Five. Do what you can about Lucas but I doubt you'll get far. Say hi to Malcolm for me. I need to do this alone."
He hands back Lucas's phone, and Zaf takes it with barely concealed anger. "You think I want to be in on your ridiculous suicide plan? You'll be found out before you even reach London."
Tom shrugs again, somehow back in his impenetrable calm. "Things have changed. News travels slowly."
"You'd better hope it does," Zaf says as he gets out of the car. He clenches his fist around the phone in his pocket and is halfway to the station before he thinks to check it again.
There's a signal. He stares at it for a moment before finding Jo's number with shaking fingers.
Network busy. Of course it is. He tries again, hurrying on to the station, and it seems every person around him is suddenly on the phone. Most are cursing recorded messages and glaring at the few who have been inexplicably granted access. Zaf is just about to shout at them all in the name of national security when he sees the new voicemail messages.
There's no password required after all, and the messages reflect it, anonymous and vague. He skips the first two unfamiliar voices. Jo's voice, even as he is half-expecting it, is enough to make him need to lean against the nearest wall.
Lucas, I can't get through to you obviously. It's Thursday afternoon. Thought you'd be back by now. She sounds frightened, trying to be casual. I'm going home for a while. See you when I get back - I hope you get this.
Going home. She means London, Zaf realises immediately, she means London. He doesn't even think. He just turns around and starts walking back the way he's come.
- -
Malcolm has a graphic on his screen reminiscent of the early nineties, with mains power, phone networks and data connections overlaid across the country in large brightly-coloured pixels. He watches the phones flicker back online in the Midlands as the broadband connection dies in the east.
His phone rings. "Lucas," he answers, trying not to sound too relieved.
"Not quite, Malcolm, sorry."
Malcolm holds the phone a little tighter. "Zaf."
There's a startled pause, as if Zaf was expecting a long task of convincing. Then he laughs. "Hello. How've you been?"
"I knew it was you," Malcolm says joyously. "I knew it! Where are you? Where's Lucas?"
"I need to speak to Jo."
Malcolm's heart sinks, but he's used to happiness being short-lived. "She's not here."
"She's already gone? I got her message."
"Yesterday afternoon," Malcolm confirms. "I've no way to get in touch with her until she - finds a way."
"What's she doing there? What's happening?"
Malcolm pauses, and Zaf is suddenly guarded. "Can you talk?"
Malcolm looks at the graphic on his screen again. Even he couldn't get a trace in that mess. "Yes." He sighs. "She's been getting information from someone with the official investigation, if on rather an unofficial tangent. And then I picked up a transmission. Lucas said he'd - is he with you?"
"What transmission?"
Malcolm closes his eyes. "I couldn't trace the source. I think I have now but it still doesn't make sense."
"Malcolm, what transmission?"
"I think it's from Thames House," Malcolm says finally, reluctantly. "But I can't understand why it would need to be amplified. None of the systems I set up there are responding. I've no way to contact Jo - Where are you, Zaf? What do you need to tell Jo?"
There is a long pause. Malcolm wonders if he's lost the connection.
"The army are covering something up," Zaf says slowly. "I think there are people alive in London." He sounds like he's just realised it, and isn't yet sure whether it's good or bad.
Malcolm assimilates this for a minute, then opens his mouth and closes it again, and finds he isn't sure if it's good or bad either.
- -
Jo and Harry wait inside a restaurant for the army men to return. There is broken crockery all over the floor, a rotting smell from the kitchen, and Jo wrinkles her nose, wondering that they couldn't've picked a better place to hide. But she'd prefer that the smell is rotting food rather than rotting anything else.
Presently they hear voices and watch the van driving away, loaded with bodies. "Now what?" she asks.
"Now I find some bodies from places they've been instructed not to take them from," Harry says with purpose. "Then I find out how they died."
"What are you looking for? Are you going to tell me yet?"
"I'll tell you when I've found it. If I find it."
She follows him around for a bit, through deserted streets and into the odd house or shop or building he decides by some secret sign is of interest. Everything is curiously intact, as if the whole population has upped and left - which, of course, is exactly what happened. But there are children's bicycles on front steps, groceries in cars. As if people expected to come back. Jo almost wishes they could go to the bomb sites, just so she can see some damage to justify the silence.
Their roles seem to have reversed now that the danger of discovery is past and only gory dissection is ahead. For all that she's been close to death and destruction, Jo can't be comfortable with it the way Harry is. She suspects he is enjoying getting to show her up.
"You'll do," he says cheerily, when he has examined and discarded the few bodies they find. He glances up at Jo. "I'm going to cut him up. Do you want to watch?"
"This might surprise you," Jo says, "but I'd rather not." She checks her watch. "How long will you be?"
"A few hours. There are some other locations I want to check out."
"I'm going to Thames House."
"Is that where your people were?"
She is momentarily surprised that he doesn't know the building, but she supposes the Security Services really are off the radar for most people. She arranges a time for them to meet and points out Thames House on the map. There's something about his complete lack of fear that makes her nervous.
"Call me if there are any problems." She lays one of the tiny radios Malcolm has given her in front of him.
"What's this?"
"Radio. White button for on, black button to transmit. Because of the phone networks."
"They should be fine here."
Jo understands what he means. The phone networks up North have not been able to cope with the influx of evacuees. But here there is blast damage, and the thought of being out of contact with Harry makes her cold with anxiety. She looks at her phone. No bars. She holds it in front of Harry, who is already laying out his things, a neat row of saws and scalpels.
"Use the radio."
"All right," says Harry absently.
"Remember the safe zones."
"Yup."
Jo gives up on him, scans the street briefly and makes off in the direction of the river.
"Be careful," he calls to her back.
"You too." She looks back at him, crouched on the pavement.
"Be more careful than me," he says without looking up from his work. "You promised to get me out, remember?"
"I remember," Jo says, turning abruptly away.
- -
It isn't difficult to pick up Tom's trail. After he's made a few requests of Malcolm, Zaf has a fairly good idea of how the army are running the cordon, and of the operations centre in Watford. "Everything goes through there," Malcolm had explained. "They're storing all the evidence for eventual decontamination." It is, quite clearly, where Tom is headed.
Zaf ditches the phone, though it is difficult to part with the recording of Jo's voice. He imagines Adam giving him a severe talking-to for letting sentimentality compromise good operational practice - Adam who used to call his wife in earshot of his target, using his cover as an excuse to be sleazy.
It makes him smile. He's stopped himself from thinking of Adam and Jo for so many years, frightened he would start blaming them for abandoning him, or that he would dream of them and give something away in his sleep. Now Adam is dead and Jo is in danger but in Zaf's head, it is as if they have come to life after five years of silence.
He steals a car, and then another phone. It would nearly be enjoyable if not for the purpose. He calls Malcolm.
"Have you found anything on Lucas?"
"No one will talk to me," Malcolm says. He sounds disapproving, as if he had thought Zaf was making up the story of Lucas's arrest and is blaming him for it being true. "He's been arrested under one of the new laws, but no one will tell me which one, or under what charge, or where he is."
"Keep trying."
Zaf makes a few more requests, having to constantly remind himself that Malcolm is in fucking Scotland and not behind his old desk at Thames House, with Harry's office just over there and a million government record systems at his beck and call. "Any requests for me?" he finishes, slightly apologetic.
"Yes," says Malcolm. "Look after Jo, please."
- - -
Chapter 5
Spooks :: Silent Witness :: the end of the world
By londonsophie & belantana.
Chapter 4 of 8 (complete). Link to earlier chapters: 1 | 2 | 3
- - -
Gone are the days when midnight on the grid was Malcolm's private sanctuary. His late night shift tonight is accompanied by the gossiping and complaining of two girls who can't be older than twenty, sifting through GCHQ chatter for a morning report. Having failed at shutting them up with disapproving glares, Malcolm has resorted to blocking them out as best he can.
It must be the hundredth time he's played through the transmission. The worst thing about it - or the best thing, depending on his mood - is that tracing it is so complex precisely because the transmission is so low-tech. It's simply a pattern repeated from dozens of different places. Picking which one is the source might as well be a random guess.
He stops for a moment to ease his aching back. Too old for this, he thinks miserably, which cheers him up a fraction. He is surprised to notice it's nearly one in the morning. Jo will be at the cordon by now, though he doesn't know if she's planning on entering the city under cover of darkness or waiting for the morning. It's right, of course, that he doesn't know the operational details, but it does nothing to make him less worried.
The noisier of the two girls has given up and gone home. The other, who Malcolm remembers is called Rebecca, stretches at her desk and rolls her eyes elaborately. Malcolm suddenly warms to her.
"I think she's forgotten the spiel we got at training," she apologises. "You know, the 'not nine to five' thing."
Malcolm nods. "Yes. It's rarely that."
"What are you doing?"
"Working," says Malcolm.
Rebecca grins at him. "Sorry. Nosy. Got to be more interesting than this GCHQ rubbish."
"It's not all rubbish."
"That's the point, isn't it? One bloody little thing in here could be a tip-off to something going boom, and the only way to find it is to sift through all the rest. It'll be the tiniest thing, too." She looks at the reams of recordings she still has to listen to with something approaching fondness. "Got to love the needle-in-a-haystack approach."
Malcolm finds a smile twitching at the corner of his lips.
"You're old guard, right? You were here before the bombs?"
"Actually," Malcolm says, "I was retired."
She pulls a sympathetic face. "I was a Communications student. I thought spying would be exciting. But Lucas and Jo seem to be the only ones off doing anything interesting, and we don't even get told what."
Malcolm stiffens, but there's no malice in her tone. Something is tugging at the edge of his thoughts. Something she said earlier. She looks at him as if expecting a reply, but when he remains silent she sighs and puts on her headphones again. "Better get back to it. That needle isn't going to find itself."
The tiniest thing. "Rebecca," he says suddenly.
She pulls off the headphones, surprised. "Yes?"
"Why would someone repeat a transmission through many different locations?"
"To hide the source?"
"Aside from that."
She frowns. "Well, to amplify the signal perhaps. If the original transmission was too weak to be heard."
Malcolm turns to his screen, starting to type. "The weakest signal," he mutters, almost to himself. "It has to be the weakest one."
"What are you looking for?"
He pulls up the original analysis, finding the weakest threads which he'd discarded and starting to narrow them down. It takes a few false starts and ten or so minutes of searching, but when he finally sits back in his chair Rebecca is still watching him.
"The source," he answers belatedly.
"And have you found it?"
Malcolm stares at his screen, hardly daring to believe it. "I think I have," he says quietly.
- -
Zaf spends a restless night in a tiny motel room, assessing his options. He has no ties to Lucas and no reason to help him, but he can't shake the feeling he was involved somehow. Was Lucas in trouble for meeting him? Had the two men been shadowing them the whole time, listening to their conversation?
He dismisses this idea countless times. He hadn't hidden himself that well in the crowd and no one was scanning faces looking for him. He thinks of the other meeting, the anonymous number in Lucas's phone, the coded messages.
At six he gives up trying to sleep and heads out into the freezing morning. He is angry now, blaming Lucas for it. He has enough problems of his own without having to worry about other people's. When the signal comes back he'll call Jo, that's what he'll do. He'll get to Edinburgh somehow. Get himself un-dead, sweep the whole last five years into a box, and make himself useful. That's what he came here to do.
Having made the decision, he now has an excruciatingly unspecified length of time to waste. He eats, not remembering what it tastes like, and sees a movie, not remembering what it is. People stare at him with open suspicion and he nearly laughs.
There's no river here. He walks around meaningless streets for a while, doubling back as if trying to lose a tail. He's been trying all day to picture Jo but her face is infuriatingly distant in his memories. He remembers what he said to Lucas, I hope she's married with children, and for an instant he can picture her long-haired and massively pregnant. It's enough to make him smile. That's more than he should have hoped for, isn't it? They could've all been gone, everyone he used to know, his life, Thames House, the street he grew up on. But there's Jo.
It's the most morbid and desperate of comforts, but Zaf's learned to take what he can get. He checks his watch. It's nearly ten. He is already heading for Lucas's meet before he admits it to himself that it's more than just curiosity.
It's five-past before he spots the waiting man, taking far too long with a coffee in the chill wind which has picked up. Ten-past before he's certain. He approaches, one hand still tight around the phone in his pocket. The man's gaze skates over him blankly before Zaf's path is too direct to be ignored.
"I'm sorry, but - "
Zaf sits on the bench next to him. "I saw what happened yesterday," he says without preamble.
"Saw what?"
Zaf has a moment in which to decide whether the man was instrumental or ignorant. He hasn't survived this long without trusting his gut feeling.
"A car," he explains succinctly. "Two thugs in suits, professionals, not sure whose. A gun although I can't be sure. No way I could follow them."
The man stares at him for a long second. "Who the fuck are you?" he asks coolly, as if he hasn't heard Zaf speak.
"A friend," Zaf says, fairly certain he wouldn't be introduced as such. He slides Lucas's phone across the bench in offering. The man checks the messages, pausing as he recognises his own. No signal, Zaf sees upside-down.
"He gave you this?"
His voice is different now, eyes narrowed, a hard edge as he assesses the consequences of Zaf's story.
"The message was from you, wasn't it? I think with this news she may reconsider. What news? Who's she? Who was it took Lucas?"
The man is furious at the questions, and more than a little disgusted Zaf thinks - at his own carelessness or at Lucas's he can't be sure. Zaf didn't expect answers but he knows now he can't leave without getting them. He remembers the vintage of the code.
"I know Malcolm," he says quietly. "Harry. I worked under him for three years."
"Good for you." The reply is mechanical but a flash of the eyes give him away.
"And Ruth Evershed," Zaf presses. "Adam Carter. Colin, and Sam. Have I hit any buttons yet?" Knowing he's hit every single one.
- -
In the event, crossing the cordon is absolutely without incident. Jo and Harry zip themselves up into bodybags, wedge themselves into the cardboard that does for coffins now, and wait in the van. It's driven in by men who apparently do it often enough to laugh, and smoke, and joke about the stiffs, and not check the back once. The roadblock waves them through with a shout and thump on the side which makes Harry jump.
After an uncomfortable hour, he feels the van being parked, the ratchet of the handbrake, and the drivers go off, yelling instructions at each other. He hears Jo sit up and unzip herself, and before his numb hands can fumble for the pull, she's opened the bag over his face and she's smiling at him.
"Did you fall asleep in there?"
He sits up. "Not exactly."
Jo laughs and turns around, trying the back door of the van. It is locked, and Harry watches her pick it expertly, twenty seconds, maybe thirty, and then the lock snaps back. She looks over her shoulder and grins at him, and he realises incredulously that she is enjoying herself.
"You like this," he says, trying to disentangle the bodybag from around his waist.
"So should you." She starts turning the door handle, carefully.
"What?"
"Empathy for your patients."
"They're not exactly patients," grumbles Harry, dragging the bodybag from one foot and then the other.
"Are you ready?"
"All right, all right." He comes to stand next to her.
She opens the door slowly, a crack first, a look, then a little wider and another, longer look.
"Well?"
She looks as though she is about to speak, and then she shrugs her shoulders, and pushes the door wide.
"See for yourself."
- -
They move around for a while, until the man is sure they aren't being tailed. Zaf's attempts at finding out what's going on are resolutely ignored, but he follows with grim determination. He's owed an explanation and persistence is the only way he knows to get one.
Eventually it pays off. The man whirls round, all cold anger and reminding Zaf suddenly and painfully of Adam. "Why the fuck would I tell you who I am? If Lucas has been arrested it's because of the information I've been passing him. The next thing they're going to do is find his source. Me. I don't intend to let that happen and it'd be a lot fucking easier if you pissed off."
With that he turns pointedly back and keeps walking.
"Oh come on," Zaf says idly. "I already know your name is Tom Quinn."
That gets a response. Just a tiny hesitation, but enough for both of them to know that there's no point denying it. For a moment Zaf thinks Tom is going to hit him.
"Did Lucas tell you?"
"No," Zaf says, with the impression that Lucas definitely shouldn't have. "You used to be Section D. You didn't accuse me of being dead when I told you my name, so you've been out of the service a long while. And I used my amazing powers of deduction to work out that you probably aren't Zoe."
Tom starts walking again, calmer suddenly, or perhaps just thinking of ways he can kill Zaf. They're heading to quieter streets, and Tom obviously has a destination in mind. Zaf keeps following.
"I suppose they're all dead now," Tom says presently, as if the conversation of earlier never ended. "Section D."
Zaf is silent for a moment, unsure if the truce is real, and considering how much news is his to share. "Malcolm's alive. I don't know about the others. But Ruth got out years ago. Out of the service, I mean. Out of England. She's safe."
"Your information's old. Ruth was back."
Zaf could have kicked himself. Tom has been in contact with Lucas - of course he would have already asked what has happened to his old Section.
"Well," Zaf says neutrally. "Who knows then."
"You said you were Five."
The anger of before is gone, but Zaf's sharp enough to recognise an interrogation when he hears it. "I've been away a long while," he explains, with a trace of bitterness. "I've just been re-recruited."
A lie, but there's nothing to disprove it. To his surprise Tom laughs.
"Lucky you. They didn't want me."
Somewhere in the back of his mind Zaf realises how small his own chances must be, despite Lucas's promises to try. "Why?" he asks.
"I broke some unwritten rules. Lucas deigns to take my information but he won't have me on the books."
I think with this news she may reconsider. She being the Service, of course - old-fashioned and pompous enough to irritate Zaf. "What have you found out?" he asks again.
Tom shakes his head, still smiling, but with no humour. "That was for Lucas."
"Well, I'm all you've got."
No response. This isn't the kind of spying Zaf expected to be doing on his return, but really, what did he think it would be? The glorious good old days, him and Adam and Jo and the only targets were on the other side?
Tom stops suddenly, producing a set of keys and unlocking a car parked on the side of the street. Zaf gets in uninvited, and they drive slowly out of the centre, checking periodically for a signal.
"The army," Tom says after nearly ten minutes of silence, "are running a lot of operations into London."
He's undercover in the army - that, Zaf thinks, makes a lot of sense. They obviously shared none of Five's reservations in enlisting people with shady pasts, but then he supposes Tom Quinn's legend and invented rank means he doesn't have a shady past any more. It must be child's play to create a legend these days. Initial suspicion quickly excused when the usual avenues of investigation are gone - records destroyed, personnel lost.
"I thought London was cordoned off," Zaf says, playing resolutely dumb. "Ring of steel, radiation zone, certain death beyond, do not cross."
"Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred pounds," Tom continues, deadpan. "Don't be stupid. They man the cordon. They know where the bombs went off and where the radiation zones are."
Zaf holds a pause. "What kind of operations?"
"Oh, the investigation. Collecting evidence, bodies. Apparently they'll be starting the cleanup soon. But there are more than that. Vague things. Unrecorded, or repeats of what's already been done."
"What do you suspect?"
"A cover-up," Tom says simply.
"Covering what up?" Zaf can't think of a single answer to his question which wouldn't be bad news.
Tom pauses. "I don't know," he says at last.
"But you suspect."
"You really don't know when to shut up, do you?"
"There's no point keeping me half-informed."
"It might save your irritating neck."
"I'm pretty good at looking after my neck," says Zaf. "Trust me."
"I've told you what you need to know."
Zaf knows when he is beaten. "Well, if you got the information to Thames - to Five, then. Once they know, there's no point taking us out."
Tom dismisses this with a quick gesture. "I think they already know. Or at least someone high up knows. You saw what happened to Lucas."
Things start falling into place in Zaf's head. "You think that was someone in Five? Because of information Lucas got from you?"
Tom shrugs, aggressive, silent. "Five, Six, army. The military umbrella is back up, isn't it? All united for the security of the nation."
"Well, we need to get to Edinburgh ourselves then. Contact Jo, Malcolm. They'll listen."
"It'll put them in danger."
"So what's your plan, strolling in to London and finding out single-handed?"
"Something like that."
Zaf snorts incredulously. "But you said yourself that whoever took Lucas will be looking all over for his source now. Your cover's blown."
"Not yet." Tom pulls into a side street and stops the car. "It's been nice reminiscing. The central station's a block that way. Go home to Five. Do what you can about Lucas but I doubt you'll get far. Say hi to Malcolm for me. I need to do this alone."
He hands back Lucas's phone, and Zaf takes it with barely concealed anger. "You think I want to be in on your ridiculous suicide plan? You'll be found out before you even reach London."
Tom shrugs again, somehow back in his impenetrable calm. "Things have changed. News travels slowly."
"You'd better hope it does," Zaf says as he gets out of the car. He clenches his fist around the phone in his pocket and is halfway to the station before he thinks to check it again.
There's a signal. He stares at it for a moment before finding Jo's number with shaking fingers.
Network busy. Of course it is. He tries again, hurrying on to the station, and it seems every person around him is suddenly on the phone. Most are cursing recorded messages and glaring at the few who have been inexplicably granted access. Zaf is just about to shout at them all in the name of national security when he sees the new voicemail messages.
There's no password required after all, and the messages reflect it, anonymous and vague. He skips the first two unfamiliar voices. Jo's voice, even as he is half-expecting it, is enough to make him need to lean against the nearest wall.
Lucas, I can't get through to you obviously. It's Thursday afternoon. Thought you'd be back by now. She sounds frightened, trying to be casual. I'm going home for a while. See you when I get back - I hope you get this.
Going home. She means London, Zaf realises immediately, she means London. He doesn't even think. He just turns around and starts walking back the way he's come.
- -
Malcolm has a graphic on his screen reminiscent of the early nineties, with mains power, phone networks and data connections overlaid across the country in large brightly-coloured pixels. He watches the phones flicker back online in the Midlands as the broadband connection dies in the east.
His phone rings. "Lucas," he answers, trying not to sound too relieved.
"Not quite, Malcolm, sorry."
Malcolm holds the phone a little tighter. "Zaf."
There's a startled pause, as if Zaf was expecting a long task of convincing. Then he laughs. "Hello. How've you been?"
"I knew it was you," Malcolm says joyously. "I knew it! Where are you? Where's Lucas?"
"I need to speak to Jo."
Malcolm's heart sinks, but he's used to happiness being short-lived. "She's not here."
"She's already gone? I got her message."
"Yesterday afternoon," Malcolm confirms. "I've no way to get in touch with her until she - finds a way."
"What's she doing there? What's happening?"
Malcolm pauses, and Zaf is suddenly guarded. "Can you talk?"
Malcolm looks at the graphic on his screen again. Even he couldn't get a trace in that mess. "Yes." He sighs. "She's been getting information from someone with the official investigation, if on rather an unofficial tangent. And then I picked up a transmission. Lucas said he'd - is he with you?"
"What transmission?"
Malcolm closes his eyes. "I couldn't trace the source. I think I have now but it still doesn't make sense."
"Malcolm, what transmission?"
"I think it's from Thames House," Malcolm says finally, reluctantly. "But I can't understand why it would need to be amplified. None of the systems I set up there are responding. I've no way to contact Jo - Where are you, Zaf? What do you need to tell Jo?"
There is a long pause. Malcolm wonders if he's lost the connection.
"The army are covering something up," Zaf says slowly. "I think there are people alive in London." He sounds like he's just realised it, and isn't yet sure whether it's good or bad.
Malcolm assimilates this for a minute, then opens his mouth and closes it again, and finds he isn't sure if it's good or bad either.
- -
Jo and Harry wait inside a restaurant for the army men to return. There is broken crockery all over the floor, a rotting smell from the kitchen, and Jo wrinkles her nose, wondering that they couldn't've picked a better place to hide. But she'd prefer that the smell is rotting food rather than rotting anything else.
Presently they hear voices and watch the van driving away, loaded with bodies. "Now what?" she asks.
"Now I find some bodies from places they've been instructed not to take them from," Harry says with purpose. "Then I find out how they died."
"What are you looking for? Are you going to tell me yet?"
"I'll tell you when I've found it. If I find it."
She follows him around for a bit, through deserted streets and into the odd house or shop or building he decides by some secret sign is of interest. Everything is curiously intact, as if the whole population has upped and left - which, of course, is exactly what happened. But there are children's bicycles on front steps, groceries in cars. As if people expected to come back. Jo almost wishes they could go to the bomb sites, just so she can see some damage to justify the silence.
Their roles seem to have reversed now that the danger of discovery is past and only gory dissection is ahead. For all that she's been close to death and destruction, Jo can't be comfortable with it the way Harry is. She suspects he is enjoying getting to show her up.
"You'll do," he says cheerily, when he has examined and discarded the few bodies they find. He glances up at Jo. "I'm going to cut him up. Do you want to watch?"
"This might surprise you," Jo says, "but I'd rather not." She checks her watch. "How long will you be?"
"A few hours. There are some other locations I want to check out."
"I'm going to Thames House."
"Is that where your people were?"
She is momentarily surprised that he doesn't know the building, but she supposes the Security Services really are off the radar for most people. She arranges a time for them to meet and points out Thames House on the map. There's something about his complete lack of fear that makes her nervous.
"Call me if there are any problems." She lays one of the tiny radios Malcolm has given her in front of him.
"What's this?"
"Radio. White button for on, black button to transmit. Because of the phone networks."
"They should be fine here."
Jo understands what he means. The phone networks up North have not been able to cope with the influx of evacuees. But here there is blast damage, and the thought of being out of contact with Harry makes her cold with anxiety. She looks at her phone. No bars. She holds it in front of Harry, who is already laying out his things, a neat row of saws and scalpels.
"Use the radio."
"All right," says Harry absently.
"Remember the safe zones."
"Yup."
Jo gives up on him, scans the street briefly and makes off in the direction of the river.
"Be careful," he calls to her back.
"You too." She looks back at him, crouched on the pavement.
"Be more careful than me," he says without looking up from his work. "You promised to get me out, remember?"
"I remember," Jo says, turning abruptly away.
- -
It isn't difficult to pick up Tom's trail. After he's made a few requests of Malcolm, Zaf has a fairly good idea of how the army are running the cordon, and of the operations centre in Watford. "Everything goes through there," Malcolm had explained. "They're storing all the evidence for eventual decontamination." It is, quite clearly, where Tom is headed.
Zaf ditches the phone, though it is difficult to part with the recording of Jo's voice. He imagines Adam giving him a severe talking-to for letting sentimentality compromise good operational practice - Adam who used to call his wife in earshot of his target, using his cover as an excuse to be sleazy.
It makes him smile. He's stopped himself from thinking of Adam and Jo for so many years, frightened he would start blaming them for abandoning him, or that he would dream of them and give something away in his sleep. Now Adam is dead and Jo is in danger but in Zaf's head, it is as if they have come to life after five years of silence.
He steals a car, and then another phone. It would nearly be enjoyable if not for the purpose. He calls Malcolm.
"Have you found anything on Lucas?"
"No one will talk to me," Malcolm says. He sounds disapproving, as if he had thought Zaf was making up the story of Lucas's arrest and is blaming him for it being true. "He's been arrested under one of the new laws, but no one will tell me which one, or under what charge, or where he is."
"Keep trying."
Zaf makes a few more requests, having to constantly remind himself that Malcolm is in fucking Scotland and not behind his old desk at Thames House, with Harry's office just over there and a million government record systems at his beck and call. "Any requests for me?" he finishes, slightly apologetic.
"Yes," says Malcolm. "Look after Jo, please."
- - -
Chapter 5