Broken | Lucas North - Spooks/MI5 Story [Featured]

Chapter 22

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of Kudos and BBC. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.

>>><<<

“Can't trust people.
Won't do any good.
They'll kill you every time.
They'll kill each other.
They'll kill every one.” 

-Haruki Murakami

Long after the medical personnel wheeled Mikhael and Eddie into surgery, Harry only heard the same four words again and again.  Even as Ros went through how she knew the woman was not a doctor by the shoes she had worn - black boots while everyone else on the floor seemed to wear identical nursing shoes - and about how Eddie saw the woman’s companion disappear into the power room, the gun with the silencer attached to its muzzle revealed as his white coat flapped as he walked by, Harry barely heard her.  

And even after they’d arrived back at Thames House and were faced with the latest dilemma that awaited them, Harry only heard the same four words echoing inside his head.

Nathaniel George is alive.  

But how could it be?  He’d watched the man slowly die, his once healthy frame turning into skin and bones by the time the four months went by as cancer slowly claimed him.  Harry still remembered how he had visited Nathaniel as much as he could, even staying with Alexa and Liam, then only a few months old whenever Nathaniel seemed too ill to be good company.

When Nathaniel passed away at his home, Harry had been in Cumbria with Alexa, who had wanted to see where her rescuer in Russia had grown up.  She knew that Lucas was the man she’d met in Moscow, even though he’d called himself Dimitri then.  And through her father, she had known that he’d grown up in Cumbria, and it would be there that Harry would end up taking her and Liam when Nathaniel asked his friend to take his daughter for a trip out in the country.  

“She needs to get away from seeing me like this, Harry,” Harry remembered Nathaniel telling him.  “It breaks my heart.  She’s been through so much already, and with having to carry some bastard’s child - even though I love that baby very much - I’m sure I’ve become a burden to her.”

“Don’t say that, Nathaniel,” Harry said.  “Alexa loves you dearly.  She wants to help you, take care of you.”

“She has Liam to take care of now,” Nathaniel said.  “Not some an old man like me, dying like this.  I want her to remember me as I once was.  Strong and smart, and healthy.”

Nathaniel, in the end, succeeded in convincing him.  And on a Saturday morning, Harry packed up mother and child and drove them to Cumbria, fulfilling Alexa’s wish to see the place where her rescuer had grown up at, knowing that he was breaking MI5 rules.    But then, was there a rule that said no one could visit Cumbria at all?

He received the call about Nathaniel’s death from Fred Mortensen, Nathaniel’s attorney and best friend the following day.  But by the time Harry had managed to return to London, delayed when Liam had a very high fever that required a few hours at the local hospital for observation, Nathaniel’s body had been brought to the mortuary and cremated.  The memorial was set the following week which had been well-attended, and Harry, Fred and even Jools were there to extend their condolences to Alexa, and to speak at the service.

Nathaniel George, by all accounts, had died.  Each year, Harry, Alexa and Liam visited his grave on his death anniversary.

But as caught by cameras at Thames House that night, Nathaniel George was alive and well.  He had also just kidnapped his grandson, Liam, brazenly signing the logbook with his real name even after he’d identified himself as Dr. Gordon Meeks, a doctor whose body had just been found two blocks away from the hospital where he worked, a bullet to the head.