False Omen

[JHyde]

Possible spoilers for Season 8.

This will be a multi chapter fan fic, mainly told through Ruth's character. It assumes that Season 8 is resolved without Ros dying and uses the team as it exists after 8.3.

It will mainly be a thriller style fic, but there will be some Harry and Ruth angst and romance in there too. I need Harry and Ruth.

I would really appreciate constructive criticism, either in this thread or via PM.

Ruth ploughed through the final rating on the morning's watchlist summary, inwardly groaning at the prospect of her next assignment for the day. Tariq was a fine officer, but still not entirely confident when it came to certain morning tasks, so that she was taking certain parts of it upon herself. The humdrum job of cross referencing the daily chatter from GCHQ with MI-5's reports from the last 24 hours was too much like her old, old work at Cheltenham and sometimes it felt like she was running in circles with nowhere to go.

Speaking of circles....where was Harry? - her own personal hoop if there ever was one. Since returning under circumstances that were less than good, they had continued to orbit each other, the revolution unbroken by the years she'd been gone. Sometimes though, it felt a little heavy, as though George was watching her watch Harry from across the Grid.

But there was no watching Harry this morning. He simply wasn't there to watch. Ruth glanced at her watch - it was almost unheard of for Harry not to beat her in on Tuesday mornings. She usually let herself sleep in until 6am after choir on Monday nights, the one concession she'd made since returning to this job that was all consuming. Some semblance of normality, she'd promised herself. But sleep had once again eluded her. This break in her normal routine, no Harry in his office at 7am, had her more worried than she would care to admit, lumped on her already nervous state excerbated by too much caffeine too early. The old twinge of fear that could only be associated with worry for Harry....

"Morning, Ruth."

Harry brushed past her, wrestling with his umbrella. He stopped to smile briefly, noticing how pale she looked. She'd lost weight since coming back. He was paid to be observant, he reminded himself. He wasn't doing anything a boss wouldn't do for any of his employees.

"Harry. Morning."

Her careless greeting, delivered also with a smile, belied the relief spreading through her at the sight of him. It was just like any morning, really, except that there were ghosts standing between her and him and everything they had ever dared hope for.

Harry continued to his office and Ruth returned to her work, thankful she could now concentrate on what was important. There was a code used on a phone yesterday that was worrying her, they were still searching for a face to match the voice from the clip GCHQ had passed along. The translation from Urdu to English was murky, but it seemed to be a veiled kill command. She pushed it out of her mind for now, knowing it was down to Tariq and his new toys. Her part would come later.
-----

The cross referencing task took her all the way up until the daily briefing at 8.30am. Ros obviously wasn't sleeping well either, the tell tale black circles under her eyes spoke of continuing trouble over Jo's death. It was a hard time for all of them, Ruth mused, and as Harry strode into the meeting room it appeared there was enough trouble to go around.

"Let's have it, then."

Harry's clipped demand wasn't so much the words he chose, but the way he delivered them. It was as though he knew trouble was in a myriad of boxes just waiting. Waiting for them to open one and turn their backs, so that another would spring open. Nasty jack-in-the-box habit of home-grown terrorists. It was as though they had knowledge of when another group might keep the Services occupied. A rota for distracting, while another got their crack at mass destruction. One week on, one week off.

Ros summarised the meeting with the Royal Protection Unit she had sat in on yesterday, not bothering to disguise her contempt, followed by Lucas' succinct appraisal of the current suspects under observation by Section ___. There seemed nothing too extraordinary about any of it, nothing to foreshadow the horror which was to unfold.

Ruth quickly added her analysis of the previous day's threats and Tariq flicked through some problems the system was having with security and hurried on to the new face matching software he was excited about.

"In particular", he was saying, "it can magnify images so much better than the old program, and you don't need to re-start the program if the system locks down."

Harry cleared his throat.

"But there is something I'd like to show you all," he rushed on, seeing an interruption was imminent. "The resolution on this isn't great, but I think we have a match for the voiceprint Ruth caught yesterday from GCHQ, the one side of the conversation of the man in Urdu, with the not so veiled threat to kill someone? It was given to this guy," he paused to click the remote at the screen, "Amir Essam. He's a business owner, and a good one too it seems, he has three grocers on his payroll."

"But who's he been tasked to kill?" asked Lucas.

Ruth took over as Tariq looked at her expectantly. "What we have of the other man's side of the conversation, conducted in Urdu, the phrase used is "an ocean of blood churns around me". It's originally by Mizra Ghalib, the Persian poet, writing as Delhi fell to British rule. But it's also used as a kill command by Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen members in Pakistan".

"The Pakistani Pan-Islamists?" Harry queried. "I thought they only had funding here, not active members."

"We haven't had evidence of any active cell here as yet, but you know that doesn't mean anything, Harry. They've had active cells in the States since they started in the early nineties. It could be our way into finding out how much of a foothold they have here", Ruth replied.

Her earnest blue eyes sought contact with his rich, toffee coloured ones, and once again both experienced the surreality of having their respective stomachs free-fall, despite the need to concentrate on the present danger.

The call to consciousness came from Ros, in typical acerbic fashion.

"Do we know who was the target yet? Or will we find out after GCHQ passes that along too?"

"We don't hear anything else from the person on the end of the phone. The next part of Essam's side of the conversation is simply this: 'Good news dies quickly, then. It shall be done on Wednesday morning, when my wife returns from her mother's in Hampshire. I shall do it myself.' The call ends there. Perhaps now we know who he is, we can discover who "good news" might be." Ruth inwardly prayed this might be the case.

"And Tariq, find out who was on the other end of that phone, would you? I'd like to know who our intermediary is between the grocer and the extremists," said Ros.

"On it," said Tariq, getting to his feet. "No hits as yet, but I have a few things I can try. I'll send you Essam's file, Ruth, maybe you can figure out who the target is and establish whether he's tied to this group."

Ruth grabbed the file tossed her, and exited quickly. Despite the fact they seemed to have a small window of time, she knew she had to find a money trail in order to take this to Ros with a recommendation. Frankly, she was still holding out that Essam really liked Urdu poetry and his returning phrase was a witty colloquialism of which she was unaware. But deep down, she knew it wasn't the case. It was a classic call and response code.

She brought up Essam's file on her screen, hastening to check his personal details. Married, one child, good financial record, second generation Pakistani after his father and mother came to Britain in the sixties. No political affiliations she could find. Now the family....

The photo came up promptly and Ruth gasped. It had been years, but she still looked exactly the same, albeit without her customary smile in her drivers' license photo. An icy chill settled over Ruth's heart as the realization hit her. The woman in the photo was the target.

"Ros," she squeaked. "I think I know what good news is going to die tomorrow morning."

Ros made her way over from where she and Lucas were arguing softly.

"Ruth?"

"His wife. Her name is Bushra, which also means good omen, or good news. He'll kill her when she comes back from Hampshire in the morning."

"That was bloody fast, Ruth," said Ros, reaching for the phone.

Ruth swallowed. They would know sooner or later.

"I know well what Bushra means, Ros. You see, she was at school with me. We studied Arabic together and practiced conversation in the afternoons. She was my friend."