Moscow Rules Part IV

[Silktie]

6 November 1979, late evening
East Berlin, KGB offices

Elena was putting together yet another report on the bombing of the German Minister’s car earlier that day. The demands from Headquarters were becoming increasingly strident, but she had no new information to report, not really. At this stage all evidence pointed towards this being the work of the Red Army Faction, and were it not for Elena’s doubts about their ability to pull an operation like this off with such military precision, she might have believed it. She was keeping one ear on the West German news reports on the radio, and among the German media there seemed to be a suspicion that British Intelligence was somehow involved. However, these suspicions were not backed by proof, and the German authorities would only act on facts. Already there was belligerent talk about a crackdown on the far left groups, and Elena knew this would seriously harm the Stasi and KGB’s attempts to infiltrate West Germany.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the radio operator bursting through the door. She looked up expectantly, hoping that one of their agents in West Germany had reported in, but then she saw the expression on his face.
“Comrade Polyakova, the Stasi has reported that two people have been shot in West Berlin one hour ago; a man and a pregnant woman.”

Elena jerked awake. It took her a moment to realise that it had been a dream; that she wasn’t in East Berlin, but in London, in a hotel close to Thames House. She stared up at the ceiling, thinking back to that day again. She should feel a sense of satisfaction in knowing her instincts had been right; that it hadn’t been the RAF behind the bombing. Instead she felt only anger and irritation towards her former Stasi comrades. Had they shared all the information at their disposal with her back then, she would have had Harry Pearce in her sights years ago.
“I have you now, you bastard,” she murmured softly before getting up and starting her preparations for the day.

* * *

Monday, 18 April 2011
London, Thames House

To her immense frustration, Ruth had to wait for the information from her German contact until after the weekend. As soon as the disk was delivered she took it into the forgery suite, away from prying eyes, where she opened it on a small hand-held device she had smuggled in for this purpose. Better not to leave any trace on her official computer, as she knew that Harry was more technologically savvy than most people gave him credit for. She was sure that he would be able to check what she’d been doing if he wanted to. It took her about ten minutes to speed-read through the information, and when she reached the end there was a note stating that the Stasi files would take a few more days to reach her. Ruth called her contact and informed him that she would pick it up at the German embassy, and that there was no need to send it on to Thames House for her.

Once she was finished, she slipped the device back into her pocket and thought about what she’d read. The couple had moved to Berlin only a month before they had been shot and was not well known to their neighbours, who all proclaimed them to be ‘quiet, but very nice.’ On the face of it they appeared to be a normal German couple, but something about them bothered Ruth. She wasn’t sure, however, whether that was because there really was something off about them, or whether she desperately wanted there to be something suspicious. This uncertainty made her realise that she could not trust her instincts as much as she normally would; her actions and decisions would have to be based purely on the facts available to her. She could not afford to be blinded by her feelings towards Harry.

Her thoughts went back over the last few days. They had been awful; truly the worst she had ever experienced since starting to work for MI5. She had hated every moment, as she observed Harry’s comings and goings and reported regularly to Towers. The situation reminded her of her initial ‘double agent’ role when she had first started in Harry’s section and had reported their activities to Amanda Roach in the Office of the Exchequer. Whilst she’d found the whole double agent thing rather exciting back then, Ruth reflected soberly that she did not find it exciting this time around. Not at all. It was appalling, and heart-rending, and she despised herself for doing it. She had to fight down the urge to corner Harry and confess all every time she saw him. Deep down she still couldn’t believe he would do this, and she wanted to beg him to make her understand, to explain his actions. Perhaps she would have thrown caution to the wind and done it if there weren’t such a chasm between them at present. But they were farther apart than ever, and she could sense Harry withdrawing more with each day that passed. The rational part of her mind told her that this was another indication of his guilt. It prevented her from acting on her impulse to confront him and conversely strengthened her determination to get to the truth of her own volition.

As she exited the forgery suite, she ran into Dimitri.
“I looked into Catherine Townsend, like you asked. I sat on her all weekend, and I am one hundred percent sure that she is clear. No-one is watching her, and she isn’t sneaking around having clandestine meetings. She is exactly what she claims to be; a documentary maker.”
This seemed to be bad news to Ruth, which perplexed Dimitri. He did not get a chance to ask as she walked off swiftly, throwing a distracted thank you over her shoulder.

* * *

Harry looked up as Ruth walked past his office. She seemed troubled and once again it gave him pause. Although her work remained of the same high standard it had always been, he had discerned a distracted mood from her the last few days. It also saddened him that she hadn’t seemed to notice that he’d been purposefully withdrawing from one-on-one contact with her. Perhaps it was time to let her go, to give up on the dream of a future with her. Soon that might not be an option in any case, and he scolded himself for getting distracted by thoughts of her. He had to focus on what had to be done now. It was time to start planning a strategy for Medvedev. He was not going to wait for the Russians to prescribe the method for him; he would plan ahead. The problem was the surveillance he was under. It was imperative that the Russians shouldn’t find out about his plans. There was only one way to achieve this: he would have to revert to the old school methods.

As per usual he got home after eight in the evening. He greeted Scarlet and pottered around in the kitchen, talking to the little dog as was his wont.
“Damn, Scarlet. We have no bread. Fancy a walk down to the shop, hmm?”
Scarlet barked excitedly as Harry clipped the lead to her collar.
“Okay,” he said patiently, “we’ll go by the park first.”
They covered the two blocks to the park at a brisk pace, and Harry was aware of a shadow following him at a discreet distance. He turned into the park and made for his usual bench. As he settled on it, he admonished Scarlet, “Just for a little while, all right?” before unleashing her. She bounded off into the darkness and Harry sat back. Although it was early Spring the evenings were still quite cold, and soon his nose started running. He rummaged in his coat pocket for his handkerchief but dropped it on the ground accidentally. Cursing under his breath he reached down, feeling for it in the dark. A few seconds later he straightened up and wiped his nose, then wiped something off his right hand glove carefully, before deciding that Scarlet had had long enough.

“Scarlet!” he called as he got up and went after her. She was scrabbling after something in the underbrush, barking excitedly.
“Scarlet! Come girl,” he called again and rounded the clump of bushes she was under, but she refused to budge. In the end he was forced to get on his haunches, reach under the bush and haul her out by her collar. Berating her in stern tones, he put the leash back on and dragged her off towards the street. They went home via the shop, where Harry bought a loaf of bread and a treat for Scarlet and paid Melvin with a ten pound note. By the time he closed his front door behind him again, the shadow was still there, following him, watching him go through the same routine as he had done on many other nights.

* * *

Tuesday, 19 April 2011
London, park near Harry’s house

At the same time as Harry was ensconced in a fractious meeting with the Home Secretary, the Foreign Office, MI6 and Elena Polyakova to discuss British/Russian cooperation in the Middle East, Mavis Brown took the dog for its habitual morning walk in the local park. As she ambled along the well-kept footpath she noticed a cleaner moving along, picking up trash. Being of a friendly nature, she approached him.
“Morning, love. I thought you normally cleaned this park on Mondays and Thursdays.”
The man straightened up and smiled tentatively. “You’re right, but the schedules have been adapted to accommodate the Easter holidays.”
“Ah, I see.” Her blue eyes observed him keenly from a wrinkled face. She thought that his accent sounded a bit posh for a cleaner, but who knew what people had to resort to in order to earn a living in these difficult economic times? So she nodded and let the dog drag her off. Looking back she noticed him bend down to pick up an empty crisps packet lying next to the foot of a bench, on which she had earlier noticed a single arrow in yellow chalk.

Once the old lady was out of sight, the cleaner straightened up and methodically moved towards a clump of bushes nearby, picking up trash as he went. When he reached the bushes he squatted down and peered underneath, before clucking his tongue in annoyance.
“Bloody smokers! Throwing their trash everywhere…” As he crawled underneath the bush to retrieve an empty cigarette pack wedged between two branches, a passerby guiltily picked up the stub he had just thrown on the ground before walking on. The cleaner dumped the carton in his refuse bag and moved back along the path he had come. He sat down on the same bench and bent down to fasten his shoelace, before working his way towards the gate.

Twenty minutes later Mavis returned along the path. She sat down on the bench the cleaner had vacated earlier, and noticed that there was now a second yellow chalk line drawn low down on the foot. She rested on the bench for a few minutes, idly rubbing her shoe against its foot, before getting up and calling to the dog.
“Scarlet! Time to go love.”
As they moved off, the yellow marks were no longer visible.

* * *

Wednesday, 20 April 2011
London, German Embassy

Ruth left work a little earlier than usual, citing a dentist appointment that she had actually made but which she had no intention of keeping. She took a circuitous route to the German embassy, all the while acknowledging to herself that these precautions were an attempt to allay her own fears and was unlikely to fool anyone wishing to follow her. Especially Harry, but he had been in a meeting with Erin when she slipped out, so hopefully he was otherwise engaged. At last she found herself in front of the embassy, and announced her arrival to reception. She was asked to wait and hovered in the foyer for a few minutes before the local BND representative came down to meet her. He informed her that they were in the process of digitising all the Stasi files, and luckily for her they had completed those for the time period she was interested in. However, the files were extensive and contained a large amount of surveillance photos, so they had put it on an external hard drive for her. Ruth thanked him and tucked the device into her vast handbag before heading for home.

Resisting the urge to start on it the minute she walked through the door, she made herself dinner first before settling down with her laptop and a large glass of wine. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, which made the process rather difficult. After flicking through the reports randomly, she decided to start with written reports for the day of 6 November 1979. There were hundreds, and she scanned through them cursorily until she found those pertaining to both the bombing of Minister Bergen and the shooting of the two German civilians. It gave her a perverse sense of satisfaction that in neither case could the Stasi prove any involvement by British Intelligence, or had any idea about Harry specifically being there. However, that didn’t bring her any further in her investigation.

With a sigh she opened the folder containing the Stasi surveillance photos. They were organised in batches, according to the week in which they had been taken. Ruth opened the relevant file and noticed to her dismay that it contained thousands of images, and that you had to open each of them to find the date they were taken on. It would take her days to work through them all. She took a deep breath and started at the beginning.

* * *

Friday, 22 April 2011
London, Ruth’s house

She finally found it on Friday evening. The Stasi habitually monitored the comings and goings at West Berlin’s main rail station, and had captured the Heuer couple as they left the station. In the background, his eyes firmly fixed on the two people in front of him, was Harry. The next photo focused on him, and Ruth stared at his young face for long seconds. Who was he back then? Was he the same principled man that she had gotten to know? These questions only raised others. What went through a person’s mind when they were about to kill an innocent human being in cold blood? Did Harry even consider other alternatives as he followed them? There was another photo showing Harry following the couple down the street once they’d left the station. This must have been what the Russian woman had shown him. Then, repressing her heart screaming at her not to do it, she picked up the phone and called Towers.

* * *

She met the Home Secretary at his house. He took her into the study and she laid out the information she was able to gather, culminating in the Stasi surveillance photos.
“Dear God.” Towers tossed the photos back on the desk and turned towards the window. “So he really did it.”
“I don’t think there’s any question, no.” It killed Ruth to say it.
“Which means he’s probably going ahead with the Medvedev assassination,” the Home Secretary said glumly.
Ruth said nothing, and Towers studied her face for a moment.
“You don’t agree?” he challenged, and Ruth looked away.
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” she admitted.
Towers was not amused. “We can’t proceed on feelings here, Ruth. The evidence seems damningly clear.”
“I know that! I just can’t reconcile the evidence with the man I know and lo…” She stopped, realising what she was about to say.

The Home Secretary regarded her more sympathetically. “I’m sorry. This must be hard.”
She almost laughed at the massive understatement, before finding herself making a final plea. “Please think about it, Home Secretary. Harry has never done anything purely to protect himself or his reputation. With the Albany file, for instance, he immediately confessed to you that he had given it to Lucas North. Is this the actions of a man that would assassinate another Head of State purely to save himself?”
Towers sank into his chair and stared at the photos scattered across his desk. “I don’t see that we have any choice. We have to work on the worst case scenario. Something that Harry taught me incidentally. So, what are our options? Do we bring Harry in? Prevent Medvedev from attending the wedding? Arrest the whole bloody FSB delegation?”

Ruth thought about it, then slowly shook her head. “We can’t do any of those things. It will only alert the FSB that we’re onto them and they will have time to make alternative arrangements. We have to let it play out and stop the assassination on the day of the wedding.”
The Home Secretary allowed himself a small, satisfied smile. “I’m sure that’s what Harry would have said, had the circumstances been different.”

* * *

Monday, 25 April 2011
London, the Grid

Harry stood in his office, watching Elena and Erin discuss an operation to bring some of the Libyan opposition figures to London for discussions. He had peremptorily delegated this task to Erin, both as a way for her to get experience in planning and running an operation from beginning to end, as well as to put some distance between him and the Russian woman. Polyakova had not been impressed by this move but had no standing on which to question him in front of his officers, and had to accept it grudgingly. The ringing of his phone interrupted his thoughts, and as he answered he saw Ruth coming through the doors, looking wan and tired. Harry wondered whether she was coming down with something and felt a surge of sympathy, before remembering that he was supposed to keep his distance. However, all of these thoughts swiftly fled from his mind as he listened to the person at the other end. He was able not to betray his emotions over the phone only through a supreme effort, and sat down slowly behind his desk, never taking his eyes off Ruth. As his gaze burned into her back, he terminated the call and immediately made another one.
“Ruth, can you come to my office?”
She answered in the affirmative, and he tracked her every move as she walked over. His focus never left her, even after she came to a stop in front of his desk.

When he spoke, his voice was calm, but it was the deadly calm tone that Ruth had come to know could not mean anything good.
“I just had a call from the local BND representative. He wanted to know whether you found the information he’d provided useful.”

They stared at each other, and there was a hint of panic and fear in both pairs of eyes.

tbc

[Sparky]

Another cracking update! I'm hoping Harry and Ruth have a bit of a 'heart to heart' soon and can help each other!

[pookster]

Poor Ruth and Harry. Both in an impossible situation. But like Sparky, I'm wanting to see Ruth have the talk with Harry. Terrific story and looking forward to where you're going with this.

[richliga]

Ok when does the next chapter come out? this is tooo exciting...

[Tea Lady]

Tee Hee, Ruth's been caught

She probably just wants to melt away into that vast handbag of hers

Really looking forward to the next chapter.

[Aria]

Very tense, loving all the intrigue and old spy stuff from Harry. Keep up the great work.

[jackbristow]

Great fic, can't wait for next chapter.

[DogSoSmall]

This is so riveting. Really hoping for an update today!

[A Cousin]

Hmmm...what do you have up your sleeve?

Who was that couple Harry gunned down?
What is Harry's "plan" for the assassination?
Who's following him and why?
What was the dead drop?
What was that posh cleaner picking it up?
Who is the Mavis Brown and why did she erase the arrow?

Geez, Silktie, more questions than answers at the moment. I can only hope that Harry will give Ruth the answers she needs very soon.