The Assassin Drone, Part 1
Title: The Assassin Drone
Fandom: Spooks
Rating: T
Timeline: AU for Series 7
Disclaimer: Spooks, Lucas North, and all recognizable characters belong to BBC and Kudos, I am simply borrowing them with no intent to profit.
Summary: Lucas North goes undercover to find out who has kidnapped the young son of an engineer in order to blackmail her into smuggling a top secret government drone out of the company where she works.
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Any minute now, Lucas thought, leaning back in his chair and watching Lina put the entire spoonful of ice cream in her mouth. It was a hot Saturday afternoon in June, and many establishments in London, including ice cream parlours, had put tables and chairs outside on the pavement. For their weekly date, Lucas had suggested that Lina come savour a cold treat to combat the unusually sunny weather. Now she slowly and luxuriously sucked the ice cream from the spoon, and when it was empty, she dipped it again into the glass bowl. Lucas followed her movements with anticipation. She hadn't yet found the treasure, and there wasn't much ice cream left. Any minute … now!
"Ewww!" Lina ripped the spoon from her mouth, bent over, and, to Lucas' horror, spat the mouthful onto the pavement. The diamond ring that he had so carefully arranged to be included in her ice cream sundae landed in a wet, unappetizing blob between two tables, where a passing customer promptly stepped on it.
"That is disgusting!" Lina cried, spitting again. Her Russian accent became more pronounced, as it always did when she was excited or upset. "Somebody dropped their wedding ring in my ice cream and I put it in my mouth!"
Alarmed by her words, everyone around them stopped eating, staring first at Lina and then down at their own gelato creations as though expecting used jewelry, or worse, to rise up from the depths. Lucas leaned over and plucked the ring from the pavement. "No, Lina, stop. You've got it all wrong."
Lina pressed her serviette to her mouth. "I think I am going to be sick!"
"Lina, listen to me, please. This wasn't an accident." Straightening up, Lucas used his other hand to fumble for his own serviette. "I put the ring there."
Staring at him, Lina said, "What?"
"I put the ring there." Lucas repeating, knowing that his unintended audience was hanging on his every word and watching closely as he wrapped the ring in the serviette. He hesitated, unsure whether he should keep it now or present it to Lina anyway. "It was supposed to be a romantic gesture, a way of asking you … if you'd marry me. Again."
They'd been married once before, but after Lucas had been captured as a spy and held in a Russian prison, Lina had divorced him. Lucas gave her a hopeful smile which faded quickly as Lina frowned and murmured, "Oh, Lucas."
Sensing that this was not going to be a kodak moment, most of the customers politely turned their attention elsewhere, but a few remained spellbound. Lucas attempted to salvage the situation by saying, "I'm sorry. It's too soon. I understand."
The thing was, though, it wasn't too soon for him. It had been six months since Lina's second husband had been killed, and they had seemed like an eternity to Lucas. He still loved her, and now that she was free again, he wanted her back. Six months ago, he'd accepted Lina's suggestion that they only meet once a week – Lina called it dating, though Lucas sometimes secretly referred to it as limited visitation rights – but now he found himself chafing to move on, to become closer again.
"It's not only too soon – it's – Lucas, what if I had swallowed this? Where on earth did you come up with such a silly idea?" Lina asked, and Lucas hesitated in the act of stuffing the ring into his pocket just long enough for Lina to correctly guess the answer. "Don't tell me it was Aleksander Dmitrovich."
Lucas didn't respond. Switching to her native Russian, Lina leaned forward and asked quietly, "And it never occurred to you that doing something suggested to you by the man who kept you in prison for eight years was not a good idea?"
"He made it sound funny," Lucas said, then realized he was not only defending himself, but also his jailor. He lapsed into silence, remembering. After the torture sessions had finished, after he'd revealed everything about the world of espionage and MI-5 that he knew, Lucas been kept in solitary confinement, except for Aleksander Dmitrovich Kuznetsov. The older man had come every two weeks, and each visit had started with a question, one simple question that would determine whether Aleksander Dmitrovich would offer him a cup of coffee, or whether he'd be displeased with Lucas' answer and only give him lukewarm water to drink. That time, the question had been, "How did you ask your wife to marry you, Lucas Alexandrovich?"
Deliberately not staring at the coffee pot on the table, Lucas had answered truthfully, "It was a Sunday morning. I'd just come home from an undercover assignment that went wrong, and Lina was still in bed. I'd been shot at, and the bullet had gone right by my head, so close I could feel the wind. I knew I could have been killed, and it made me think of all the things I hadn't done yet in my life. So I knelt down next to the bed, shook her awake, and asked her if she'd marry me."
"Just like that?" Aleksander Dmitrovich had asked, his eyes twinkling.
"Just like that," Lucas had replied.
"Did you have a ring to give her?"
"No," Lucas had admitted. "We went out later and bought one together."
"Hmph," Aleksander Dmitrovich had said, and there'd been a long pause. Lucas had waited, trying not to show any impatience, knowing it was part of the routine. At last, Aleksander Dmitrovich had reached for the coffee pot and poured a cup for Lucas. While sliding it across the table, he'd said, "Well, that was not a bad story, but let me tell you how I proposed to my wife."
Then he'd told of how he'd arranged with a friend to slip the ring into her ice cream, and how she'd pretended to swallow it, how she'd asked how far he was willing to go to get it back, and how he'd proclaimed he would do anything for her, including letting his fingers do the walking even in the sewer, if she would only marry him. Lucas remembered laughing with Aleksander Dmitrovich, but now he couldn't decide if the story had truly been funny, or whether his emotions had come from the fact that he was sipping coffee instead of water, and actually talking to another person instead of being alone in his cell.
Lucas came back to the present and saw Lina staring at him. He thought she might have said something, but he had no idea what, so he simply replied, "I'm sorry."
It seemed to be the right answer, as Lina's expression softened. "Come on," she said. "Let's walk."
Lucas had already finished his own ice cream by then, and so he had no regrets about standing up and following her away from the parlour. When they had gone two or three streets, they came across an open square with an empty bench. Lina steered him over, they sat down, and she took his hand in both of hers.
"I'm going to say no," she said, but before Lucas could do more than give her a hurt look, she continued, "And one of the reasons is because of the way you asked. I refuse to be manipulated by an idea that Aleksander Dmitrovich came up with." She spat the name out with loathing. "I hate that man, for hurting you. And sometimes I hate you, whenever you talk about him as though he were your friend!"
Stung, Lucas opened his mouth to respond, then shut it again. She was right – sometimes he did think of Aleksander Dmitrovich like that. For eight years, Aleksander Dmitrovich had been the closest thing he'd had to a friend. The Russian had been the only person he'd spoken to in that time, and despite the pain Aleksander Dmitrovich had put him through at the beginning of his imprisonment, Lucas still remembered many of their later conversations with fondness. It hadn't all been bad, but Lina couldn't see that, because she had found someone to hate and to blame in Aleksander Dmitrovich. Or maybe she just didn't want to see it. Lucas understood – he himself found it hard to admit that there could have been anything loveable about Lina's second husband.
"I still love you," Lina said. "I still care about you, and it hurts me every time I see how you've changed, because of him. Every time I see the scars you have, because of him. But nothing hurts me more than whenever you say something nice about him."
Lucas knew how she felt. He felt the same way whenever she said anything nice about her second husband, and especially whenever he realized she was truly grieving. Oh, maybe not for the man himself, but for what she thought she'd had, what he'd made her believe in. But that grief was coming between Lucas and his goal, and it not only hurt, it was starting to make him angry. However, because Lucas hated seeing Lina hurt in any way, for any reason, he didn't mention the man, just said again, "I'm sorry."
"So am I," Lina said. She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. "You've been hurt so much already, I'm sorry every time I have to hurt you even more."
Lucas bent his head to their clasped hands and gave her knuckles a quick peck, then lifted his lips to hers for a longer, more intimate kiss. It was almost worth being rejected, he reflected in that part of his mind that was still capable of reasonable thought, if he got such a kiss out of it. Lina didn't always let it go this far. And indeed, she was the one who broke it off, pulling gently away long before Lucas was ready to stop, then putting her fingers on his mouth to keep him from following.
Lucas kissed her fingertips, and she smiled, then lowered her hand.
"So … if I asked you in another way …" Lucas said, digging into the pocket of his jeans. Before he could get the ring out, however, Lina's expression changed, and she looked away.
"No, Lucas," she said firmly. "Maybe later, but just … not now."
Impatience, frustration, and anger washed over him, and Lucas removed his hand from his jeans, clenching it to a fist. With a look of pity, Lina took it and began to uncurl his fingers. "I'm sorry I can't always give you what you want."
Gritting his teeth, because he hated being pitied by anybody, even Lina – especially Lina – Lucas removed his hand from hers, and switched back to English. "Yeah, well, sorry never stopped the Soar from flowing, did it?"
Lina gave him a calm look and a tolerant smile, so different from the puzzlement she'd showed the first time he'd ever said that to her. She hadn't known then that the Soar was the river that flowed through Leicester where he'd grown up – Lina's grasp of the geography of England outside of London had still been a bit sketchy in those days. He wondered vaguely if it had improved since then. It must have, in the … how many years had she been living here now? Fourteen, he calculated. And they'd only been married for three of them. It wasn't enough.
"Well, speaking of soaring," Lina said, expertly changing the subject. "How is training?"
"'S'good," Lucas grunted, accepting the new topic with relief, but wondering how on earth Lina had found a connection between the two words. Perhaps she thought he was simply soaring above the training that he was having to go through a second time in order to prove himself qualified to get his old job back, but that wasn't true. There had been times, especially at the beginning, when the course had seemed even harder than it had been the first time around. Lina waited patiently for more details, and Lucas added, "I've just had my last psychological evaluation, and training is almost finished now. One more week."
Lina's face lit up. "And you're sure you will pass?" When Lucas nodded, she cried, "That's wonderful!"
She was so obviously pleased that Lucas felt his own spirits rise. "It'll be good to get back."
"Do you know which department you'll be working at, once you get back to MI-5?" Lina asked.
"The same one," Lucas told her. "Counterterrorism."
Most of the joy drained abruptly out of Lina's face, though she tried to hide it. Lucas could see her forcing her smile to stay put, and could hear her trying to sound unconcerned as she asked, "Will it be a desk job or will you be out in the field?"
"Out in the field, as far as I know," Lucas said, wondering why the prospect was making her unhappy. She hadn't reacted that way when they'd been married. "I'm capable, Lina, I've done it before and I can do it again. I'm not an invalid, I don't need to be confined to some desk somewhere because I'm scared of my own shadow!"
"I know," she replied, sounding false again, and Lucas narrowed his eyes at her. "Lina. What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she said blithely. "Nothing."
"I can always tell when you're lying," he reminded her.
"You're too good at your job," she said, and Lucas thought he heard a touch of bitterness in her voice. It confused him. A moment ago, she'd been delighted to hear that he was going back to work, but then he'd mentioned mentioned getting out in the field again – oh.
"You don't have to be frightened for me, Lina," he told her. "They're not going to let me out of the country again very soon. I won't be arrested a second time."
"I know," Lina said with a sigh. "I know."
She gave him another forced smile, and Lucas returned it with a genuine one. It was good to know she cared enough about him to worry like that. It was very good indeed.
Part 2
Fandom: Spooks
Rating: T
Timeline: AU for Series 7
Disclaimer: Spooks, Lucas North, and all recognizable characters belong to BBC and Kudos, I am simply borrowing them with no intent to profit.
Summary: Lucas North goes undercover to find out who has kidnapped the young son of an engineer in order to blackmail her into smuggling a top secret government drone out of the company where she works.
+++++
Any minute now, Lucas thought, leaning back in his chair and watching Lina put the entire spoonful of ice cream in her mouth. It was a hot Saturday afternoon in June, and many establishments in London, including ice cream parlours, had put tables and chairs outside on the pavement. For their weekly date, Lucas had suggested that Lina come savour a cold treat to combat the unusually sunny weather. Now she slowly and luxuriously sucked the ice cream from the spoon, and when it was empty, she dipped it again into the glass bowl. Lucas followed her movements with anticipation. She hadn't yet found the treasure, and there wasn't much ice cream left. Any minute … now!
"Ewww!" Lina ripped the spoon from her mouth, bent over, and, to Lucas' horror, spat the mouthful onto the pavement. The diamond ring that he had so carefully arranged to be included in her ice cream sundae landed in a wet, unappetizing blob between two tables, where a passing customer promptly stepped on it.
"That is disgusting!" Lina cried, spitting again. Her Russian accent became more pronounced, as it always did when she was excited or upset. "Somebody dropped their wedding ring in my ice cream and I put it in my mouth!"
Alarmed by her words, everyone around them stopped eating, staring first at Lina and then down at their own gelato creations as though expecting used jewelry, or worse, to rise up from the depths. Lucas leaned over and plucked the ring from the pavement. "No, Lina, stop. You've got it all wrong."
Lina pressed her serviette to her mouth. "I think I am going to be sick!"
"Lina, listen to me, please. This wasn't an accident." Straightening up, Lucas used his other hand to fumble for his own serviette. "I put the ring there."
Staring at him, Lina said, "What?"
"I put the ring there." Lucas repeating, knowing that his unintended audience was hanging on his every word and watching closely as he wrapped the ring in the serviette. He hesitated, unsure whether he should keep it now or present it to Lina anyway. "It was supposed to be a romantic gesture, a way of asking you … if you'd marry me. Again."
They'd been married once before, but after Lucas had been captured as a spy and held in a Russian prison, Lina had divorced him. Lucas gave her a hopeful smile which faded quickly as Lina frowned and murmured, "Oh, Lucas."
Sensing that this was not going to be a kodak moment, most of the customers politely turned their attention elsewhere, but a few remained spellbound. Lucas attempted to salvage the situation by saying, "I'm sorry. It's too soon. I understand."
The thing was, though, it wasn't too soon for him. It had been six months since Lina's second husband had been killed, and they had seemed like an eternity to Lucas. He still loved her, and now that she was free again, he wanted her back. Six months ago, he'd accepted Lina's suggestion that they only meet once a week – Lina called it dating, though Lucas sometimes secretly referred to it as limited visitation rights – but now he found himself chafing to move on, to become closer again.
"It's not only too soon – it's – Lucas, what if I had swallowed this? Where on earth did you come up with such a silly idea?" Lina asked, and Lucas hesitated in the act of stuffing the ring into his pocket just long enough for Lina to correctly guess the answer. "Don't tell me it was Aleksander Dmitrovich."
Lucas didn't respond. Switching to her native Russian, Lina leaned forward and asked quietly, "And it never occurred to you that doing something suggested to you by the man who kept you in prison for eight years was not a good idea?"
"He made it sound funny," Lucas said, then realized he was not only defending himself, but also his jailor. He lapsed into silence, remembering. After the torture sessions had finished, after he'd revealed everything about the world of espionage and MI-5 that he knew, Lucas been kept in solitary confinement, except for Aleksander Dmitrovich Kuznetsov. The older man had come every two weeks, and each visit had started with a question, one simple question that would determine whether Aleksander Dmitrovich would offer him a cup of coffee, or whether he'd be displeased with Lucas' answer and only give him lukewarm water to drink. That time, the question had been, "How did you ask your wife to marry you, Lucas Alexandrovich?"
Deliberately not staring at the coffee pot on the table, Lucas had answered truthfully, "It was a Sunday morning. I'd just come home from an undercover assignment that went wrong, and Lina was still in bed. I'd been shot at, and the bullet had gone right by my head, so close I could feel the wind. I knew I could have been killed, and it made me think of all the things I hadn't done yet in my life. So I knelt down next to the bed, shook her awake, and asked her if she'd marry me."
"Just like that?" Aleksander Dmitrovich had asked, his eyes twinkling.
"Just like that," Lucas had replied.
"Did you have a ring to give her?"
"No," Lucas had admitted. "We went out later and bought one together."
"Hmph," Aleksander Dmitrovich had said, and there'd been a long pause. Lucas had waited, trying not to show any impatience, knowing it was part of the routine. At last, Aleksander Dmitrovich had reached for the coffee pot and poured a cup for Lucas. While sliding it across the table, he'd said, "Well, that was not a bad story, but let me tell you how I proposed to my wife."
Then he'd told of how he'd arranged with a friend to slip the ring into her ice cream, and how she'd pretended to swallow it, how she'd asked how far he was willing to go to get it back, and how he'd proclaimed he would do anything for her, including letting his fingers do the walking even in the sewer, if she would only marry him. Lucas remembered laughing with Aleksander Dmitrovich, but now he couldn't decide if the story had truly been funny, or whether his emotions had come from the fact that he was sipping coffee instead of water, and actually talking to another person instead of being alone in his cell.
Lucas came back to the present and saw Lina staring at him. He thought she might have said something, but he had no idea what, so he simply replied, "I'm sorry."
It seemed to be the right answer, as Lina's expression softened. "Come on," she said. "Let's walk."
Lucas had already finished his own ice cream by then, and so he had no regrets about standing up and following her away from the parlour. When they had gone two or three streets, they came across an open square with an empty bench. Lina steered him over, they sat down, and she took his hand in both of hers.
"I'm going to say no," she said, but before Lucas could do more than give her a hurt look, she continued, "And one of the reasons is because of the way you asked. I refuse to be manipulated by an idea that Aleksander Dmitrovich came up with." She spat the name out with loathing. "I hate that man, for hurting you. And sometimes I hate you, whenever you talk about him as though he were your friend!"
Stung, Lucas opened his mouth to respond, then shut it again. She was right – sometimes he did think of Aleksander Dmitrovich like that. For eight years, Aleksander Dmitrovich had been the closest thing he'd had to a friend. The Russian had been the only person he'd spoken to in that time, and despite the pain Aleksander Dmitrovich had put him through at the beginning of his imprisonment, Lucas still remembered many of their later conversations with fondness. It hadn't all been bad, but Lina couldn't see that, because she had found someone to hate and to blame in Aleksander Dmitrovich. Or maybe she just didn't want to see it. Lucas understood – he himself found it hard to admit that there could have been anything loveable about Lina's second husband.
"I still love you," Lina said. "I still care about you, and it hurts me every time I see how you've changed, because of him. Every time I see the scars you have, because of him. But nothing hurts me more than whenever you say something nice about him."
Lucas knew how she felt. He felt the same way whenever she said anything nice about her second husband, and especially whenever he realized she was truly grieving. Oh, maybe not for the man himself, but for what she thought she'd had, what he'd made her believe in. But that grief was coming between Lucas and his goal, and it not only hurt, it was starting to make him angry. However, because Lucas hated seeing Lina hurt in any way, for any reason, he didn't mention the man, just said again, "I'm sorry."
"So am I," Lina said. She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. "You've been hurt so much already, I'm sorry every time I have to hurt you even more."
Lucas bent his head to their clasped hands and gave her knuckles a quick peck, then lifted his lips to hers for a longer, more intimate kiss. It was almost worth being rejected, he reflected in that part of his mind that was still capable of reasonable thought, if he got such a kiss out of it. Lina didn't always let it go this far. And indeed, she was the one who broke it off, pulling gently away long before Lucas was ready to stop, then putting her fingers on his mouth to keep him from following.
Lucas kissed her fingertips, and she smiled, then lowered her hand.
"So … if I asked you in another way …" Lucas said, digging into the pocket of his jeans. Before he could get the ring out, however, Lina's expression changed, and she looked away.
"No, Lucas," she said firmly. "Maybe later, but just … not now."
Impatience, frustration, and anger washed over him, and Lucas removed his hand from his jeans, clenching it to a fist. With a look of pity, Lina took it and began to uncurl his fingers. "I'm sorry I can't always give you what you want."
Gritting his teeth, because he hated being pitied by anybody, even Lina – especially Lina – Lucas removed his hand from hers, and switched back to English. "Yeah, well, sorry never stopped the Soar from flowing, did it?"
Lina gave him a calm look and a tolerant smile, so different from the puzzlement she'd showed the first time he'd ever said that to her. She hadn't known then that the Soar was the river that flowed through Leicester where he'd grown up – Lina's grasp of the geography of England outside of London had still been a bit sketchy in those days. He wondered vaguely if it had improved since then. It must have, in the … how many years had she been living here now? Fourteen, he calculated. And they'd only been married for three of them. It wasn't enough.
"Well, speaking of soaring," Lina said, expertly changing the subject. "How is training?"
"'S'good," Lucas grunted, accepting the new topic with relief, but wondering how on earth Lina had found a connection between the two words. Perhaps she thought he was simply soaring above the training that he was having to go through a second time in order to prove himself qualified to get his old job back, but that wasn't true. There had been times, especially at the beginning, when the course had seemed even harder than it had been the first time around. Lina waited patiently for more details, and Lucas added, "I've just had my last psychological evaluation, and training is almost finished now. One more week."
Lina's face lit up. "And you're sure you will pass?" When Lucas nodded, she cried, "That's wonderful!"
She was so obviously pleased that Lucas felt his own spirits rise. "It'll be good to get back."
"Do you know which department you'll be working at, once you get back to MI-5?" Lina asked.
"The same one," Lucas told her. "Counterterrorism."
Most of the joy drained abruptly out of Lina's face, though she tried to hide it. Lucas could see her forcing her smile to stay put, and could hear her trying to sound unconcerned as she asked, "Will it be a desk job or will you be out in the field?"
"Out in the field, as far as I know," Lucas said, wondering why the prospect was making her unhappy. She hadn't reacted that way when they'd been married. "I'm capable, Lina, I've done it before and I can do it again. I'm not an invalid, I don't need to be confined to some desk somewhere because I'm scared of my own shadow!"
"I know," she replied, sounding false again, and Lucas narrowed his eyes at her. "Lina. What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she said blithely. "Nothing."
"I can always tell when you're lying," he reminded her.
"You're too good at your job," she said, and Lucas thought he heard a touch of bitterness in her voice. It confused him. A moment ago, she'd been delighted to hear that he was going back to work, but then he'd mentioned mentioned getting out in the field again – oh.
"You don't have to be frightened for me, Lina," he told her. "They're not going to let me out of the country again very soon. I won't be arrested a second time."
"I know," Lina said with a sigh. "I know."
She gave him another forced smile, and Lucas returned it with a genuine one. It was good to know she cared enough about him to worry like that. It was very good indeed.
Part 2