Remote Surveillance

Harry stood on the empty quayside, bereft. His face still burned where her icy fingers had clasped his cheeks as she kissed him for the first time. She'd been radiant, her lucid, grey eyes blazing, exhilarated with the freedom of moment – just how he'd dreamt she would be. Next he was reeling from the heart-stopping, breath-taking horror of knowing that this first kiss was goodbye, forever. Ruth kissed him lightly again, and once more, and then she was gone.

Harry fought to catch his breath, he was stunned, the life knocked out of him by her leaving. He felt like his lungs had been compressed to nothing, like a free-diver's in the ocean depths; he felt he might never breathe again, and now he didn't really care. But her sacrifice – her life, her work, her whole rasion d'etre would only have meaning if, somehow, he could keep going, pull himself together like he always did, and get on with fighting the rot that was spreading through the heart of the service.

Harry pulled his overcoat tighter around him and trudged away disconsolately.

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By the time she reached Ostend, Ruth was numb with cold – Ros's coat didn't fasten and she had no gloves. She was chilled to the core, but she glowed inside from the memory of her boldness. For once her courage had held fast, and she'd seized the moment, but all too late. She'd have plenty of time for regret later. Unseen, she stepped lightly off the barge and vanished into the sea-mist like a wraith.

The tram took her along the seafront to St Idesbald and the Delvaux Museum – her rendezvous with Adam's contact, Jos Van Daam. The museum was a truly surreal experience after 48 hours straight without sleep. On that November afternoon, she seemed to be the only visitor. The lighting was low, the walls a deep slate grey. Despite herself, Ruth was entranced by the luminous figures who haunted the eerie, dreamlike canvasses.

Her solitary reverie was broken by a man's voice, deep and husky, in the too-perfect English of the low countries. "Rachel. Rachel Evans…" It was good of Zaf to make her a legend with her own initials, she mused. She'd stumble into it easily, with a little practice, but she'd secretly hoped for something a little more…sophisticated.

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Six months on and she'd grown accustomed to her new life as Rachel. She was talented, she was plausible, and she'd faked some highly convincing references, securing herself regular employment as a tutor in one of the city's many language schools. It was a different challenge from her all-engrossing work as an intelligence analyst, but a challenge nonetheless.

By no means wealthy, her material needs were catered for quite adequately. With funds diverted from who-knows-what MI5 contingency fund, Jos had arranged a comfortable flat for her in Bruges – small but not without character, down a quiet side street near St. Gilliskerk. With judicious distribution of leftovers, she'd even managed to procure a timeshare in a couple of elderly cats, whom she liked to think of as strays, although they were far too portly to be true vagrants. She still missed Fidget and Alfie… best not to think about them, or their adoptive owner.

Her life as an exile was tolerable, better than expected. Anonymity was second nature to her, and at least now it was a choice, a mission even. It's so easy, she reflected not without a touch of bitterness, for an unremarkable, middle-aged, middle-class woman to go completely unnoticed by the authorities. She didn't need to go far to disappear, not like the lovely, unforgettable Zoë. And there would be no one looking for Ruth – she was dead and gone, officially. Harry had seen to that.

Try as she might, she couldn't stop thinking about Harry. It still astonished her that a man like him had been ready to give up everything to save her from prison – career, reputation, liberty. But she couldn't have let him do that, she loved him, and everything he stood for, far too much. The life sentence he couldn't save her from was that they must never meet again. Ruth just couldn't put into words the sheer agony of being apart from him, forever.

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In her classes, she was focused, professional as ever, but after hours her thoughts always strayed towards Harry. Where would he be? What would he be doing? Was he feeding her cats properly? Did he ever think of her? The temptation to find out was overwhelming, and one of Ruth's many talents was finding things out.

She longed to call him – to hear his voice just for a moment – but she knew that was impossible. And besides, what would she say? It was futile even to think about it. She was desperate to see him, but knew they could never meet. She didn't even have a picture, except in her mind's eye.

Too much ingenuity, too much time on her hands… an irresistible idea formed in her imagination. It would be so simple – she could have her wish, if only for a moment. And no one need ever know, if she chose the right time.

Ruth sat in her favourite Internet café, sipping a vanilla café latte. A Friday evening, there were only two or three other customers, tapping away indolently. She fingered the battered keyboard with a heady sense of anticipation. Not exactly the state-of-the-art kit she'd been used to, but she relished the challenge of her work nonetheless – gaining access unseen, adeptly breaching the defences of one system after another, swiftly tracing a meandering, inconspicuous route towards her target.

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It was Friday night and The Grid was silent. Without Ruth's soothing presence, working late into the night had lost its charm for Harry. But charm or no charm, he was stuck at his desk until he'd finished checking the quarterly report for the JIC.

It went without saying that he missed her personally, but Ruth would have been secretly pleased to know that she was sorely missed in her professional capacity too. Only once she'd gone did Harry really begin to appreciate how much Ruth had done for Section D. Not only the stunning research results that she'd somehow present with a flourish, in the nick of time, but the meticulous attention to detail and the rigorous method that she brought to the team. Her kindness, her sixth sense for other people's feelings. Not to mention her stamina for sheer, hard slog. No one could replace her.

The remnants of Harry's concentration were shattered by a sudden movement from the office beyond. Harry was astonished to see Malcolm – supposedly working overtime to complete an overdue audit of the archival procedures – running across the darkened room. Malcolm, of all people, running. During an audit. Whatever next? Harry had a feeling that things were about to get even more bizarre.

Malcolm burst into Harry's office, panting slightly with the unfamiliar exertion. Typically one to conform to the convention of knocking first, Malcolm's haste was surprising. "Harry, there's something very… peculiar going on… I'm not sure what to make of it." Harry tried to conceal his nascent curiosity by affecting indifference, "What could be so objectionable about the archives that you need to race over here…"

"It's nothing to do with the audit – there's another user on the network," Malcolm blurted out.

"That's impossible, there's only you and I here." Harry wouldn't usually contradict Malcom on technical matters, but he was utterly confident The Grid's defences were solid.

"I know, but there's definitely another user online."

"Well what the hell are you doing, standing here telling me about it? Shouldn't you be stopping them from finishing whatever mayhem they're creating?

"That's just it, Harry. I.. don't think there's any ..err… hostile activity." Usually so fluent, Malcolm was agitated, evidently struggling to express himself.

"Explain," said Harry curtly. "And spare me the geek-speak while you're about it."

"It's not a hacker job, not in the classical sense. It was the correct password, first time, no spoofing. They've used D-72."

Harry looked dumbfounded. Scenario D-72 was a top-secret emergency protocol, designed to allow the authorities to regain control of the network in the event of a hostile take-over of The Grid. It was an undetectable back door, of unprecedented stealth and robustness. Colin had considered it the masterwork of his career. The idea of some spotty hacker…

Malcolm's words cut through Harry's growing irritation: "It was a valid login, Harry. No one alive, outside this room, could know it."

Colin had completed the design and build unassisted and, because of the sensitive nature of the project, Malcolm and Ruth had performed the testing. Harry knew the details, of course – he'd authorised the work and he'd been the one to seal the files and consign them to the vault, never to be recalled, he hoped.

Malcolm sighed inwardly. Hints and suggestion had failed; he was going to have to spell it out for Harry. "There isn't any hostile activity. The unauthorised user hasn't actually done anything… apart from set up a video stream from the CCTV cameras. …From one specific camera, actually – to be precise, the one in this office. That's how I know it's Ruth. She's watching you." Harry's astonishment was something to behold – he'd never been stalked by a woman before, particularly not one who was supposed to be dead. Malcolm thought he should do the decent thing and began to back towards the door, "Don't want to be a gooseberry," he quipped, exiting as abruptly as he'd arrived.

Absurd as it seemed, Harry felt sure Malcolm was right – other than Malcolm and Harry himself, only Ruth knew how to initiate the D-72 access. Harry felt a shiver of excitement run down his spine as he realised that, wherever she was, whatever she'd been doing since they parted, now in this moment she was just watching him. He was so accustomed to the continual surveillance of The Grid that he was hardly ever aware of the cameras. But now, it felt slightly unnerving to know that he was the object of her scrutiny.

Leaning back in his chair, Harry fixed his gaze wistfully on the unblinking lens above, and smiled. It wasn't the slightly forced smile he'd been using around The Grid of late, or the acid-bath smile that he'd flashed to the operative who'd had the dubious pleasure of informing him of Mace's disgraced departure. It was the warm, indulgent smile of old, that no one had witnessed since Ruth's departure.

She couldn't stop him this time. He hoped Security would never have any reason to see today's footage. He hoped she could lip-read. He leant forward, shot a smouldering look at the camera, and mouthed the words, "I… love… you".

This virtual contact had done nothing but twist the knife in his heart. But now he knew he had to find her and tell her again, this time face to face…