In the heart of London – Surveillance at a glance…

Emma and Jake knew that letting Alistair, the MI5 Mole (The Rook), walk free would be catastrophic. He wasn’t just a compromised asset; he was the source code for decades of successful SVR infiltration. His escape would guarantee the survival of the Russian operation and put every current MI5 agent’s life at risk. The threat of the bomb was immense, but the threat of Alistair’s freedom was permanent.

“We don’t let you walk, Alistair,” Emma said, her voice steady despite the adrenaline. “The agency is more than its servers.”

“A fatal idealism,” Alistair sneered, raising his weapon slightly. “You choose a temporary blast over a guaranteed future threat? Foolish.”

The Decoy and The Split

Jake realised they couldn’t simply shoot him; Alistair was too well-placed to ensure the explosion would trigger instantly upon his death or incapacitation. They needed to force his hand and secure the bomb’s detonator before he could activate it manually.

“He’s stalling, Emma,” Jake said, his eyes scanning the schematic of the cooling vents on Alistair’s desk, which glowed faintly through the chaos. “He wants to confirm his escape window, not trigger the bomb here. The Dead Man’s Switch is only a threat if we shoot him; the manual detonator is the key.”

Jake seized the moment, slamming his shoulder into the heavy oak door, causing it to rebound loudly. The sudden, localised noise would be a brief distraction.

“Go, Emma! The vents!” Jake yelled, simultaneously drawing his weapon and lunging for the lamp on the desk, plunging the immediate area into shadow.

Alistair reacted instantly, firing his pistol at the sound, narrowly missing Jake. The flash of the muzzle momentarily blinded him. Emma didn’t wait; she knew the location of the charges was in the ventilation shafts leading off the main corridor, exactly where the schematics had indicated.

Emma’s Race Against Time

Emma sprinted out of the office. She grabbed a small, specialised kit from her vest—a signal dampener and a miniature fibre-optic camera. She found the nearest vent access panel, located just twenty feet from Alistair’s office, and tore it open.

The vent shaft was narrow and dark, filled with cold, rushing air. She scrambled inside, moving with desperate speed. The camera confirmed her worst fear: an intricate array of specialised charges, each linked by thin wires. In the centre of the array was the central receiver box for the detonator signal.

A small, high-pitched ping indicated the signal was active—Alistair was preparing the manual detonation.

Emma had mere seconds. She positioned the signal dampener, a small silver cube, directly onto the receiver box. The dampener’s job was to scramble the frequency, preventing Alistair’s remote trigger from working, but it wasn’t foolproof, and it wouldn’t disarm the charges.

“Dampener is active!” Emma gasped into her comms.

Jake’s Final Confrontation

Back in the darkened office, Jake was engaged in a brutal, silent struggle with Alistair. The Mole was older but possessed a chilling, trained strength and knew every pressure point. Alistair used the darkness to his advantage, manoeuvring Jake toward a large filing cabinet.

“You should have left when you had the chance!” Alistair hissed, his hand gripping Jake’s throat.

“And let you win?” Jake choked out, managing to twist free.

Jake used the darkness and his knowledge of Alistair’s predictable SVR training to his advantage. He anticipated the older man’s moves—the reliance on classic counter-intelligence takedowns. Jake faked a feint, drawing Alistair into a heavy kick, and then pivoted, delivering a hard, precise blow to Alistair’s temple, forcing the handler to drop his weapon.

Alistair stumbled back, his eyes wild with fury and panic. He slapped the desk, frantically searching for the hidden manual detonator, now frustrated by the dampener Emma had deployed.

“You can’t stop me!” Alistair roared, seeing his decades of work crumble. He lunged back toward the desk.

Jake tackled him again, smashing Alistair’s hand onto the desk, pinning it to the exact spot where the detonator was concealed.

“Where is it, Alistair?!” Jake demanded, his weight pressing down on the Mole’s hand.

Alistair merely let out a strangled cry of rage and defeat.

Securing the Mole

Just as Jake was about to force Alistair’s hand open, Emma returned, emerging from the vent, dust-covered but alert. She saw the struggle and the glint of plastic beneath Alistair’s pinned hand.

“He’s on it, Jake! Don’t let him move!”

Emma moved to the desk, her movements swift and precise. She used the blunt end of a security probe to pry open the hidden panel, revealing the sleek, modern detonator—a simple device with a single, glowing red button. With steady hands, she inserted a thin wire into the detonator’s internal circuit board, immediately cutting the power source and disarming the whole array.

The threat was over. The building was safe.

Jake immediately snapped cuffs onto a now-defeated Alistair. The Mole, stripped of his power and his final weapon, looked simply exhausted.

“You chose the risk,” Alistair whispered to Emma, his eyes reflecting the cold fluorescent light. “You chose the chaos of the clean-up.”

“No,” Emma corrected, looking down at the traitor who had orchestrated years of terror. “We chose the truth. You were never going to stop us, because you always underestimated what we were fighting for.”

The MI5 internal security teams finally arrived, led by a stunned and horrified Alistair’s second-in-command. The immediate threat was neutralised, but the fallout—the exposure of the decades-long SVR mole—would rock the foundations of British intelligence for years to come.

Emma and Jake, bruised and exhausted, looked at each other. They had risked everything, but they had saved the agency. Their break was officially over.