Ruth's Diary - No.23 (4.4)

[JHyde]

A shorter entry than usual about episode 4.4. Also includes Harry's 50th.

Please review!

**************************


[11th October 2005]

We all knew it was only a matter of time before Juliet really started throwing her weight around. We lured Mohammad Yazdi, a known Al Kahf bomber, to Britain in the hopes of turning him as a double agent for us and revealing the Al Kahf cell we believed did exist among us. But it was all a trap, an intricate trap, laid by Yazdi himself, so that he might be put in a room with Prince Hakim (the heir to the Behar throne), whom he claimed was masterminding the whole affair. But it was really so that Yazdi might have the means and opportunity to kill him.

Which is what happened, ruthlessly and in the most brutal way possible. Yazdi murdered the Prince with his own glasses, removed only for a moment. It was positively grotesque.

It was Juliet who ordered the Prince be interrogated by Yazdi, who we believed had been turned double agent for us. In fact it was Juliet who ordered us into the mission in the first place, one which surely stepped on the toes of Six while we were at it. The only really successful thing about the mission was the breaking open of an illegal immigration ring that was run by the Prince and that's not even within our purview.

Yazdi has fundamental Muslim objections to sheikhs who live one way at home and then another in Britain. Hakim was his sole target. It was as much a slap in the face of Britain's alliance with the regimes these men represent. We're now cleaning up the mess but this one wasn't easy to hide.

Adam was a huge part of this operation. He was the one who suggested going in undercover to try and turn Yazdi. It was a risk that we originally thought had paid dividends and for Harry the prospect of recruiting a double agent was too much to turn down. Adam can be very reckless but I think a big part of the reason he went in on this one was that he's an eternal optimist, despite everything he's seen and done in this line of work. That's really something to admire. I know Fiona worries about him terribly - he's always the one to take on the risky assignments, there's a real pride he gets from it. But Danny's fate makes me tremble.

The main thing that worries me from this last mission was what Yazdi would have done without us to bring him in it. His sole objective would surely have remained the Prince, I wonder how he would have gained access to him without us giving him a free pass into the interrogation room. We've had a look at security for all Arab dignitaries in the last 24 hours, I would hate to think there are more attacks like this one to come. We're not responsible for them, yet it will fall to us to safeguard them from men like Yazdi.


[21st October 2005]

I did some digging on Juliet today. Harry upgraded my security clearance for a few hours to do something completely different and after everything that happened a few weeks back I decided to be disingenuous and check out her history. I wanted to understand her better.

I wasn't prepared to discover that she and Harry had an affair more than 25 years ago. I wasn't prepared for that at all.

I gave Harry the intel he had asked me to look for and he was very pleased as it proved him right about something Mace is up to. I can't remember the last time he was so pleased about something and he had me come with him to brief Juliet and I couldn't look her in the eye. It's difficult enough to do that at regular times without finding out this stuff on her just beforehand.

Juliet's good looking and clever and ruthless and I suppose it's not really all that surprising. It all happened around a mission of dubious worth and origin and perhaps it was all just an escape for him.

But still. An affair. With Juliet.


[1st November 2005]

It was Harry's fiftieth birthday today and I gave him four bottles of Glenlivit with the letters of my name spelled out on the bottles. I would have liked to give him something more personal but perhaps that would be inappropriate. Well, more inappropriate than what it was. As well as the fact that Harry is difficult to get to know that closely.

He smiled his thanks to me in the conference room later on, in much the same way I thanked him for his gift back in April. It's a strange dynamic we have going for us, here at work. I never quite know what to think.