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 young woman watching Alexa as the train started didn’t get this far in the game without using everything that nature gave her.  She’d always known that she was smart, though everyone who saw her could hardly get past the beautiful face long enough to find out that she knew more than she pretended not to. 

It paid to play dumb in a game that was run by people in positions of power and as far as she could tell, she was still in the game.  The man who had sent her on a one-way ticket to London for a chance of a new life, however, was dead.  

He’d been shot by Jools Siviter’s men two nights earlier and the woman knew that the final phase of the game had begun.  This time, there was no turning back and as she glanced at the man sitting in the same train car with Alexa, pretending to read a paperback, she also knew that he, and the man in the next car, belonged to Jools as well.

There had been too many distractions, she thought.  Ever since her arrival in London two years earlier, with her first stop at a club in Tottenham, in North London, it had been a struggle to maintain her focus - the real reason for her being here - Alexa George.

>>><<<

“I will give you a new life in England, if you want,” the older man said to her one night, when she’d been sent as a “present” to cheer him up by the man called Arkady Kachimov, a senior FSB operative.  

There was no sex or dancing on this night.  The man wanted none of that.  He had only wanted to talk.

“Are you familiar with Hamlet?” Nathaniel George asked her that first night as she sat down on the sofa.  “‘Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.’”

She nodded, suspicious at first.  She’d had her share of madmen in her line of work and it was always the ones who started out the the nicest who ended up being of the worst kind.  But there was a kindness to this man, a sadness even.

“‘That I essentially am not in madness, but mad in craft,’” the old man continued, his eyes looking out at the darkness outside the window.  He lived in an expensive apartment, but one that the woman knew was paid for by FSB.  This man was under heavy guard and she was surprised that there was no one else in the room with them.  But maybe the whole place was bugged, she thought.  

Then there would be no need for a guard.

Nathaniel rose from the sofa and turned on the stereo, the strains of classical music that she could not identify filling the room.  He beckoned for her to sit next to him and she did.

“Do you know what those words mean?” He asked her.  “What I just said?”

She shook her head.  She was familiar with Shakespeare and knew what the lines meant, but in what context, she only wanted to hear it from him first.  She knew him as Sergei Fenix.  That was the name that Arkady had given her.

“It means that sometimes someone’s madness isn’t pure madness at all, but a calculated move to make people see one way and not the other.”

“Their madness is an act then?” 

Nathaniel nodded.  “Precisely.”  His Russian was perfect, his English accent barely recognizable.  “Do you think I am mad?”

She frowned.  This was not going well, she thought.  But she was going to play along - for now. 

“It depends on how you define the word ‘mad’, Sergei.”

“Call me Nathaniel,” he said, grasping her hand in his.  “It’s time to drop the masks and speak the truth - at least for me.  My time is running out, you see.”

“You are not well?”

He shook his head.  “No, but it does not matter.  The madness I speak of has to do with someone else - my daughter.”

“Is she here?  In Russia?”

“She is in London.  But like me, she is a prisoner.  She has to pretend that she is mad, that she has no knowledge of things that she really knows about.  She has to do it if I am to stay alive, just as I have to do things here for the Russians just to keep her alive.”

That night, Nathaniel told her the truth.  Maybe it was out of desperation, she thought.  He could have been talking to a spy but it seemed that he was beyond caring.  He was dying slowly, he told her, and his daughter had finally come out as the face of a foundation that provided support services to victims of human trafficking - as if as a taunt to her her former captors that yes, she knew what had happened to her.  

Their time, hers and his, was running out, he said.  But he understood her reasons.  Just like him, she had probably gotten tired of playing the game - of playing the role of someone afflicted with a madness that had to be so calculated that it probably sapped her of everything she had to maintain it day after day.    

Would she help him?  He had asked her.  She would make it out of Moscow on a one-way ticket to London, and there, he would make arrangements for her to be able to stay permanently.  To have a new life.

“Promise me you will complete your task.”  He had asked of her, never once laying a hand to touch her in a way that most men did, but only looked and talked to her as if he were talking to her - his own daughter.

And so she promised him.  Yes, she would do it.

But the distractions had been endless, the woman thought, with a few of them almost costing her her own life.   

The train stopped at the next station, and the woman got up and walked through the open doors.  Whether Alexa followed her or not, the woman did not turn her head to see.  She only continued walking, following the rest of the people as they made their way out of the Underground and onto wherever they were going.

She quickly veered towards the ladies’ lavatory and entered, slipping her hand into her purse as she did so, her fingers touching the cool metal handle of a gun.  She stood just behind the door and as the door opened, Alexa walked in. 

>>><<<

At the Grid, Harry’s section was overstretched.  Half of his people were already involved in a surveillance operation involving a Muslin cleric, with junior operative Ben Kaplan in the midst of it, having infiltrated the sect two days ago as a new convert.  How long his undercover would go on was indefinite but Harry had allotted the operation a minimum of four weeks with half of his men already in various stations throughout the apartment building where Ben lived with a fellow convert, and the mosque.

Yet now the other half of his section was involved in Alexa’s own operation, one that Harry had no knowledge of.  It irked him to have witnessed how smoothly she had made her move at the hospital.  Everything he thought he knew about his god daughter - no, his daughter - surprised him.  Now he had to answer to the hospital administration as to why one of their nurses had been assaulted.

Harry realized as he had watched the CCTV cameras both at the street level just outside the hospital and along the Underground station, that Alexa knew what she was doing.  But what irked him the most was that he had no idea what she was planning on doing, and why.

There were no cameras in the station itself and so he was operating blindly, but as soon as Malcolm announced that he had picked up Alexa leaving Victoria station, Harry’s sprang into action.  He’d sent Jo to pick up Lucas and Liam at St. Barnabas but only Lucas had emerged from the headmaster’s office.  

“Lucas, where’s Liam?” Harry had demanded, struggling to keep the panic from his voice.  “Why isn’t he with you?”

“He insisted he wanted to return to his classroom,” Lucas replied.  “With his friends.”  

“Are you serious?”

Lucas laughed drily.  “I’m afraid we aren’t high on his list at the moment of ‘cool’ people, Harry.  Even Headmaster Jones agreed that Liam was right.  At least he’ll stay in school till the weekend when he plays his usual rugby game with his friends.”  Lucas paused.  “I do hope this crisis ends by then.”

“Liam chose to stay in school instead of waiting to see his mother?” Harry asked.  "Since when did eight year old boys choose school over days off?"

Lucas’ voice turned serious as he spoke, his voice lowered.  “I think Liam knows something is going on with Alexa.  He told me last night that sometimes the monsters came for her.”

“Monsters?”

“Letters in the mail that would change Alexa’s behavior from sweet loving mum to panicked scared woman.  Phone calls from people who hung up when she answered,” Lucas replied.  “Harry, someone was threatening her all these years.  Alexa was living in fear.”

Harry nodded, his eyes drifting towards Ros’ empty desk. 

Ros had gone to Alexa’s flat to look for something though she’d refrained from telling Harry what it was until she found it.  Ros had insisted that whatever she was looking for would lead to something she had discovered in one of the surveillance photographs of Alexa.  

“And it’s big, Harry,” Ros had said just before she left an hour earlier.  

Harry signaled to Malcolm to have the phone call on the speakerphone as he approached Malcolm’s desk.  “Malcolm just spotted her emerging from the Victoria station, Lucas.  You should be close by.  Go get her and bring her back here.”

“She’s going south on King’s road, north of Cheltenham,” Malcolm said.  “She's on foot.  I’ve got her in the CCTV cameras and it’s definitely her.  She’s still wearing the medical scrubs under the jacket from the hospital.  There are two men following behind her, Harry, and they’re definitely not ours.”

Connie stood next to Harry as she, too, watched the CCTV cameras from many different vantage points on Malcolm’s computer screen.  “I just talked to my contact in the FSB, Harry, and he tells me that their business with Alexa is over.  Those men aren’t theirs.”

“Then whose then?” Harry asked to no one in particular.  Though he heard himself ask the question, something deep inside of him already knew the answer.  

“They’re closing in on her,” Malcolm said nervously.  “How close are you, Lucas?”

“We just passed Duke of York Square,” Lucas mumbled on the line.  “One more street --”

Harry could hear Jo saying something in the background to Lucas.  “We’ve got her, Harry.”

Harry held his breath as he listened to the sound of the car brakes screeching on the line, the car doors opening as, he assumed, Lucas had run out to grab Alexa.  He heard Lucas shout Alexa’s name, then something that sounded like a scuffle as the car door slammed shut, and the sound of wheels screeching as Jo stepped on the gas pedal.  

Suddenly Lucas cursed.

“Lucas, what is going on?” Harry demanded.  “Is she alright?”

They heard someone exclaim in Russian, to which Lucas responded in kind, his voice livid before he called Harry’s name.  “Harry, they made the switch at the Underground somewhere.  We don’t have her.”

“What do you mean?  Who the hell do you have?”  Harry demanded.

“Nadia Ravin.”

>>><<<

“For someone who’s running out of time, you can be quite slow,” Nadia said slowly in Russian as Alexa entered the toilet.  “Get in the stall.”

Alexa wasn’t used to seeing Nadia like this, dressed in a black cropped jacket over a tight red top and a pair of designer jeans.  She’d always come to work in conservative suits, though Alexa was well aware of Nadia’s history as a prostitute caught in a human trafficking ring in the middle of London.

“Since when did you start telling me what to do, Nadia?” Alexa snapped, irritated.

“Since your father asked me to help rid you of your madness, Alexa.  For just like Hamlet, it no longer becomes you,” Nadia replied, her response catching Alexa off-guard.  She stared at Nadia in disbelief.  

“Get in the stall now and start undressing,” Nadia ordered.  “Just pray that you haven’t gained any weight between now and the last time we saw each other three days ago.  I think I’m a size smaller than you.”

Within four minutes, both women emerged from their respective toilet stalls in each others’ outfits.  Alexa sighed, attempting to pull the jacket closed in front of her, but it was apparently too small to even be buttoned completely.

“Who wears these things?” She mumbled.  

“They’re the latest in style,” Nadia replied as she slipped the baseball cap over her hair.  “I can’t say much about the medical scrubs though.”  

She handed Alexa her handbag.  “Your father hired me a year and a half ago to help you get over the ‘madness,’ as he called it.  He said you had to pretend to be mad in order to fool everyone else, but he grew tired of waiting for you to wake up and give the Russians what they wanted.”

“You could have told me when we first met,” Alexa said, her mind trying to comprehend what Nadia had just said.  Nadia knew her father, she thought.  Alexa would have given anything just to have been able to speak to him again - before the events that had taken place two nights earlier.  

“No,” Nadia said.  “I couldn’t tell you anything, Alexa, and even you know why.  Everything up to this point - from the time I met you up to now, was planned by your father.”

Nadia's face clouded as she thought of what she had just said, knowing that there had been distractions and unplanned developments.  No matter how meticulous Nathaniel's plans had been, someone else seemed one step ahead of him.

For even though everything that led Alexa to the brothel where she found Nadia had been planned, Arkady finding Nadia there hadn’t. 

Arkady had managed to track Nadia down after Alexa had discovered her - a revelation that had been well arranged by Nathaniel’s London contact - and Arkady had used the connection to his advantage, forcing Nadia to spy on Alexa.

It had been Alexa’s solicitor, Fred Mortensen, who had suggested that Nadia work for Alexa at Found Hope, as the young Russian girl was extremely intelligent, he said.  And after a few interviews and a friendship that had struck between both women, Alexa had taken Nadia under her wing almost immediately.

Though it had all been planned, the woman’s friendship with Alexa was something that Nadia cherished most of all for God only knew how much Alexa needed it.  The woman was like a loose buoy in a stormy sea, adrift wherever the current took her and never one who was in control of her own life.  

Even her own uncle, Harry Pearce who headed Section D of MI5, ran her own life, especially when it came to Liam’s care.  It was as if no one trusted Alexa’s own judgment in anything, and for that Nadia felt sorry for her.  

For even Nadia, though she’d been a poor farmer’s daughter in a village four hours north of Moscow, had some control over her own life.  She was able to live in her own little flat, choose to work for a woman she admired, and care for a boy she loved - Liam.  All on her own terms.  

Alexa meanwhile had all the trappings of someone wealthy and able to control her own life, but that was nothing but an illusion.  She had absolutely no control of her own life, and whatever little control she had over Found Hope, she passed on to a board of trustees a few months earlier, choosing instead to work behind the scenes after being the face of the foundation since it started.

Even Nadia was forced to admit that Nathaniel was right.  

Alexa had set up Found Hope as a warning to the men who had stripped her of her own power since returning from Moscow that she did know what was going on, that she did remember the truth even though she’d been tortured for three days at Vauxhall Cross - right under Harry’s nose - to convince her not to remember.  

“You didn’t know who to trust then, and you still don’t know who to trust now - even though people have been in your corner all this time.”

“And who is in my corner, Nadia?” Alexa asked bitterly.  “Everyone’s got an agenda.  They always have.”

“Harry Pearce, for one.  And Lucas North,” Nadia replied.  “Did you know he risked his parents’ lives to find you and contact you?”

Alexa shook her head.  “He planned all this?  Getting together with me?”

“I don’t know if it was, but it was bound to happen sooner or later,” Nadia replied.  “You both have a history together -  you both have Liam.  And Nathaniel wasn't Arkady's only prized prisoner.  Lucas was his favorite.  Your father tasked Lucas to find you before the Russians lost their patience with you and Tiresias.  He was willing to take Tiresias away from you and be branded a traitor for doing so because his time - and yours - was running out.”

“Just before Lucas was returned to London," Nadia continued.  "I received a message from Nathaniel instructing me to move his parents to one of your father’s properties in Cumbria.  And that’s where they still are - until all this is over.”

“It’s not over until Arkady is dead,” Alexa said bitterly.  "Do you know the things he did to me?"

“Arkady is dead,” Nadia said as she headed for the door.  They had taken too much time already, she thought.  The men following Alexa would have gotten suspicious by now.  

Suddenly the door burst open and they froze, Alexa’s hand dipping into the handbag, her fingers wrapping around the handle of the gun.  It was a mother pulling a young five year old girl behind her and as they rushed into one of the stalls, Nadia heaved a sigh of relief.  

“Your godfather took care of Arkady,” Nadia said.

“How do you know that?” 

“Your father told me on the night he died.  He thought maybe you could finally move on with your life knowing he’s dead.  And that now, you only have to worry about the chess master himself,” Nadia said as she made her way towards the door.  “You do know who he is, don’t you?”

Alexa said nothing, confused by what she had just heard.  She’d never suspected Nadia of being anything but a hapless Russian girl caught in the web of human trafficking, she thought.   

But before Alexa could say anything, Nadia dashed out of the toilet, heading towards the direction of the station exit.  As Alexa’s heart beat wildly inside her chest, she leaned against the wall, trying to process the information that the younger woman had just given her.  

Alexa waited for a few minutes, allowing the mother and daughter to leave the toilet before her before taking a deep breath and opening the door.  She looked both ways to make sure that the two men who had followed her earlier were gone.  She waited for a crowd of people heading towards the trains walk past her and slipping quietly behind them, allowed herself to blend in.  

Of course Alexa knew who the chess master was, she thought.  She could finally allow herself to think of him, now that Arkady was gone.  For although it meant that her life was still in danger, it somehow made her memories more bearable knowing that the monster who had scarred her back and tortured her was gone.  

It left only one more man to worry about, she thought - the one man who was more dangerous than Arkady - the chess master who