After the GLAIVE ORMER clusterfuck, nobody was outside suspicion. None of the former cell were allowed contact with each other. Everything they did was triple-scrutinised, analysed for hidden meaning.
Latimer stayed quiet, almost shell-shocked, for a long time, shuffled to a safehouse for safekeeping.
The first thing, eventually, was a cheap art print tacked to the wall. No way for it to be visible to the outside, no obvious political or subversive meanings; a still life, fruit in a bowl. A little colour, in a relentlessly beige and shabby space. Possibly even a promising sign of psychological health.
The second thing was a fired clay paperweight. Handmade, small enough to fit in a palm, glaze-washed. Not a credible weapon. Covertly removed, x-rayed, core sampled, and replaced when Latimer was out of the safehouse for a debrief.
Little touches. Splashes of colour. Nothing to them. And a while after the small, plain glass vase, occasional flowers to go in it. A long enough while, staggered through the other little touches, that the single overworked agent tasked with analysing her movements for covert meaning gave them a cursory glance and reported them as uninteresting and unrevealing, like everything else she did; the quality that had made her an asset to begin with. Boring, boring Latimer, not worth a second glance.
The vase is visible, using binoculars, from certain windows on the top floor of a specific building some distance away. Slowly, quietly, the flowers send a message.
