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.

>>> <<<

 The Grid never seemed to sleep.  Throughout the day and night, there were always people sitting in front of computer screens, transcribing conversations, or reviewing surveillance videos and files.  As the hours ticked by, with the nights fading into day, the Grid would wake up, running on its a circadian rhythm that never stopped for anyone.

Jo Portman sat in front of her computer screen, her eyes bleary from too little sleep and too many tears.  A junior case officer, she had recently returned to the Grid after taking six months off to recuperate from a hostage situation that had gone awfully wrong.

It was difficult to sleep, her mind constantly seeing one man’s face slipping in and out of her consciousness.  What he had done to her was imprinted deep under her skin and though she’d tried everything she could think of to shake him off, his face, his words, and his touch still lingered in her thoughts each and every day.  He seemed to be her only companion, whether she wished it or not.

But today, as she sat at her desk in the Grid, coffee was her only companion.  That, and the file of Arkardy Kachimov, the man responsible for Adam Carter’s death.  She’d been staring at his three-inch file for the past three hours now, hoping she could easily wish death on the man from where she sat.

Adam’s death loomed over Section D, not only because he had barely been dead less than thirty-six hours, but because he had been the section’s pulse.  His presence inspired people, motivated them into doing what needed to be done, even to the point of pushing them beyond what they normally would never have thought they’d been able to do.  That was the power Adam held over his people.

They trusted him.

But now he was dead.

And the man responsible for his death was somewhere in London, alive.  Arkady Kachimov, FSB resident in London, was now the property of MI5, primarily because he was a huge catch for them, a well of information just waiting to be uncovered.

Jo clenched her fists, fighting back the tears that threatened to spill down her face again.  She closed her eyes and began to take deep breaths, fighting to take a hold of herself.  Adam would not have wanted to see her this way, she thought.  If she couldn’t do this job, then Adam would have died in vain.

She turned her attention to a group of photographs that she had recently printed out from a group of recent surveillance photographs.  Kachimov walking alongside a burly man with long blonde hair that was secured in a ponytail, their hands in their pockets.  Another photograph of Kachimov again, this time taken on a different day, speaking to the same man, and as she stared at Kachimov’s companion, Jo suppressed a shiver.

He looked absolutely scary.  His face was scarred, its features almost grotesque.  She had scoured the database for matches that would lead her to his identity but had come up empty.  But now, she also had something of interest in her hands.  She’d come across a phone call Arkady had made just last night, at a time she thought Arkady would have been under escort by Harry and Ros.

Around Jo, people began filtering into the Grid, settling themselves in front of previously empty desks, sipping coffee or tea from ubiquitous coffee cups that seemed to populate the office every hour of the day and night.

Harry walked in, and with a brief nod towards Jo, slipped quietly into his office.  He looked preoccupied, dark circles under his eyes.  Jo wondered if he, too, thought it a huge mistake to keep Arkady alive.

Within a few minutes, Ros, the newly appointed chief of Section D, walked in, her eyes widening as she spotted Jo.  The guard at the front desk had informed her that Jo was already at her desk, having arrived before three that morning.  Still, Ros asked the question.

“How long have you been here?”

“A few hours,” Jo replied.  “I forgot to return Kachimov’s file last night,” she lied.  She had come in to dig up as much information as she could find on the man in an effort to convince Harry that the man did not deserve to live.  Not after the way he had fooled MI5, and most of all, causing Adam’s death.

Ros’ face hardened at the mention of the Russian’s name, but she caught herself and glanced at the thick file that sat in front of Jo.  “I don’t think you have to worry about Kachimov anymore, Jo.”

Jo studied Ros’ face, narrowing at an unspoken implication in the tall woman’s tone of voice.  “Are you sure?” She asked, her voice shaking.

Ros’ face remained unreadable.  “He’s paid the price, just like I promised,” she whispered as Jo’s shoulders slumped down and she leaned back on the chair, breathing a sigh of relief.  But as soon as Jo’s eyes alighted on the photographs in front of her, she drew her body forward and punched a few keys on the screen.

“Kachimov made a phone call last night, while you and Harry were escorting him.”

Ros frowned.  “That’s impossible.  We were with him the entire time.”

“Were you with him in the toilet, too?”  Jo asked as Kachimov’s voice floated in the space between them, the image of sound waves dominating Jo’s computer screen.  The words were in Russian, the sound of the tap running in the background almost muffling his words.

Harry stepped out of his office and walked towards them, Kachimov’s voice seeming like a voice from the grave, as if luring him.  Ros glanced at him, their eyes acknowledging each other briefly, before turning their attention to the sound crackling over the computer speakers.

Arkady, they both knew, was dead.

Arkady’s words echoed within the walls of the bathroom where he must have been during the time of the call, a location that served only to amplify his words as he spoke.  The three of them watched the screen as the translation appeared below the sound waves dancing in an enclosed box.

Kachimov: The phoenix is coming home.

Caller: And the girl. What of the girl?

Kachimov: She’s yours, if you want her.”

Caller:  You owe me at least that.  You know that’s all I want.

Kachimov:  You are on your own now.  I shall not be available for some time.

Caller:  I understand.

It was a brief call, designed so that its sources would be difficult, if not impossible, to trace.  Harry straightened up, frowning.  “Did you try to match the voice against anyone in our database?”

Jo nodded.  “Yes, since early this morning, but it does not match anyone we have.  Malcolm is on it right now.  Maybe he’ll have more luck.”

Malcolm Wynn-Jones was Section D’s chief analyst.  He looked up from his computer screen, his fingers busy tapping away at his keyboard effortlessly.  “I’m almost there.”

Harry and Ros hurried over to Malcolm’s desk, standing behind him as he continued to tap away at his keyboard, faces and voices moving past them on the screen as the voice repeated itself again and again, trying to find its match.  And the girl.  What of the girl?

“Jo wasn’t able to have any luck with the people we already have in our database.  But I’m running the voice against a new crop of individuals that haven’t yet been incorporated into the main files,”  Malcolm was saying.  “Newcomers, mostly within the last month.”

“How long do you think it will take?” Harry asked.

Before Malcolm could answer, the computer beeped and he clicked the mouse, stopping the search.  One face stared at them from the computer screen, the words repeating again.  This time, the voice matched.

Malcolm read the printed words below the image on the screen, his face impassive, as if he were reading a passage from a Shakespeare play.  “According to his passport, the man’s name is Viktor Sarkissian.  He arrived in London one week ago, and we have photos of him meeting with Kachimov three times since he arrived.”

At Malcolm’s last sentence, Jo handed Harry the pile of photographs she had just printed out.

The face that stared at them was scarred and cold.  One half of his face, from  the skin below his left eye to his jaw was filled with scar tissue that made it look as if his face had simply melted away. 

“Sarkissian is such a common name,” Ros murmured as she looked at Harry.  “It will take some time before we can even narrow it down to a reasonable number of people, granted that it's even his real name.  Who is this ‘phoenix’ they’re referring to?”

“Kachimov used to call me his phoenix,” Lucas said and the four of them turned their heads to see him standing behind them, surprised.  They  hadn’t heard Lucas walk in.  He glanced at the face on the screen from behind Ros and Harry, the color leaving his face.  “It was something he began calling me towards the end of my..."  Lucas paused, and his adam's apple bobbed as she swallowed anxiously before continuing.  "He started calling me phoenix just before my release.”  

The last word was spoken bitterly, as Lucas cocked his head to the side, the way he always did when he had to say something that seemed to require a lot courage.  He glanced at the computer screen, nodding towards the face that looked back at all of them.  “And that’s Mikhael Lubienko, not Viktor Sarkissian.  Though I remember him looking more human than he does now.” 

Harry frowned as he glanced at the man's face again.  He'd heard that name before, a long time ago.  But he chose not to say anything.  They first needed to know why Mikhael Lubienko was in London. 

As Lucas continued to stare the screen, his mouth turned dry.  The image of the man bending down on one knee to tie a shoelace came back to Lucas.  Lucas cursed loudly and everyone turned to look at him.  

Lucas could see Harry watching him, waiting for him to say something but he couldn’t.  How could he even begin to tell Harry that he was sleeping with Alexa?  Without saying a word, Lucas turned to leave.  

“Lucas, what is it?” Harry asked and Lucas paused, forcing himself to turn around to face Harry and the rest of the team who, just only yesterday, had thought him to be a double agent.  He'd fought so hard to get back their trust. He could not afford to lose it again.

The thought of Alexa came back to him, asleep on the bed when he had left her.  He could have protected her.  Instead, he was here instead of being with Alexa right now.

"What is it, Lucas?"  Harry asked again.

“That man was in front of Alexa’s flat this morning.” 

>>><<<

Harry was unable to think.  He fought hard to keep himself present as he now sat next to Lucas, as they sped through the streets of London towards Alexa’s flat. Ros and Jo had gone ahead of them, both women sensing that Harry and Lucas had some catching up to do.

Harry had first known about Mikhael through Lucas' reports nine years earlier.  Lucas had detailed the man's life on paper when he'd first met him and Harry had kept track of the man up to six years ago, when  it was certain that Mikhael would spend the rest of his life in jail.

There had been another report that had been filed, though this one was not filed by Lucas himself.  But that report would have to be reviewed at another time, Harry told himself.  This was not the time to cross-check time stamps and diaries, as he should have done so and should have completed nine years earlier. 

If Harry had only kept himself abreast of Mikhael's life, he would have learned that Mikhael had received a pardon, a rare thing in Russia.  After six years in prison, he had returned to Moscow to build up the empire he had lost, hoping to regain that initial spark that had made him so powerful.  This time, he wasn't about to make the same mistakes.

This much, Harry knew and documented about Mikhael's life since he was sentenced to life in prison for the kidnapping and assault of an ambassador's daughter, drug trafficking and human trafficking:

While Mikhael had started his life in jail with the respect accorded to him because of his status in the crime world, it was one drunken mistake that would cause him to fall down to the lowest status in the world of the Russian prison system, though in reality it had all been a perfectly crafted lie meant to destroy Mikhael.

In a game of cards, it was said that Mikhael had drunkenly offered a daughter he had with one of his prostitutes as collateral, thinking he wasn't going to lose.  He had had a great hand and knew he couldn't lose.   But he was as drunk as he'd ever been, his thinking clouded by too much vodka.  Mikhael lost the bet and the men allegedly collected what was owed to them, the eleven year old girl taken by force in the little village where she lived, Mikhael's hometown just six hours from Moscow.  Interestingly, the girl’s name, according to the report, was named Alexandra.

That Mikhael had never expected any of this to happen, his fall from grace was inevitable.  His denials about such a bet went on deaf ears.

His alleged action had sickened the ruling prison group to the core, and they wanted to show him just how far he had fallen from grace.  They caught him and held him down by force, tattooing hateful words on his left cheek and a pair of eyes on the bones of his pelvis so that anyone who'd see him with his shirt off would see those eyes and know what he was.  Though Mikhael had many tattoos that showed his high rank in the prison system, the pair of eyes negated everything else.  They had marked him among the lowest of men in the prison class system. 

And all this, Harry had learned and believed to be the last that he'd ever hear of Mikhael Lubienko.  It was vengeance served cold, all done without even lifting a hand of his own from across the pond for what he had done to Alexa.  

It almost read like a novel, with such intricate details, that Harry almost wondered if such a report had been fabricated or not.  But he really did not care.    The man had gotten what he deserved.

And so Harry had closed Mikhael Lubienko's file six years earlier, assuring Alexa that the man who had continued to haunt her dreams was now as good as dead, imprisoned forever and living the life equivalent to the rats that populated the prison floors.  It had given Alexa a chance to move on and Harry couldn't have been more pleased.

Had Harry kept up his reports on Mikhael, no matter how sparse they had been, he would have learned that Arkday Kachimov, years before he'd be assigned in London, had visited the prison and offered Mikhael a chance for freedom, a pardon for the one crime he had committed against Arkady. 

In exchange, Mikhael would do the dirty work Arkady needed that did not require the skills of his own spies, but that of a criminal like Mikhael - for that was what he was now.

But Mikhael's allure to Arkady had nothing to do with his criminal life before prison, when he ran a string of clubs throughout Moscow.  Arkady himself had been a regular patron for years, finding among Mikhael's own stable, one that he would call his favorite for he himself had ordered the girl's abduction.  Alexa George. 

It was such a small world, Arkady realized, when he was able to find yet another thread that linked Mikhael to one of Arkady's own prized prisoners, Lucas North.  So he promised Mikhael that when the time came, arkady would give him the man who was responsible for sending him to prison and toppling his empire.

And Harry would never know, until it was too late, that Arkady had also uncovered something else of value that proved such a strong draw for Mikhael to do everything Arkady asked of him. 

Arkady also promised to give him Alexa George.

 _______________________

AUTHOR'S NOTE:   If you like this chapter, please consider giving it a vote.