“It’s an unusual-enough name,” she said, getting up, wondering if she needed a jacket to visit the deputy chief. “See what you can find.”

Gabriel Skinner called her in when she knocked. He stood in front of his window, reading paperwork, boyish in stature, hair thinning. They had been equals once, at the start of their careers, possibly even friends. But never equal at climbing the greasy pole. His office contained paintings of yachts and horses, although Taylor knew he grew up in a modest middle-class home in Reading. But he had molded himself to the role he wanted. She had always believed you needed in some way to be mediocre to devote the necessary energies to ascending the ranks of Vauxhall Cross, with all the office politics and cultivation of connections that involved. Now she wondered if she’d just been naïve. The boldness that had helped her in the field, and that she had spent years learning to perform, didn’t translate to HQ, where it seemed merely irresponsible.

“Sit down.”

Power games already. She took a seat. If they were in any kind of contest he was winning, but victory did not grant any magnanimity, in her experience. Knowledge of others’ resentment hardened the ego. He had spoken out against her receiving the South Atlantic desk—“not a departmental leader”—which hurt more than she cared to admit. It had provided a focus for her more general distaste of the man. He had made a pass at her once, a long time ago, in the artless way of cold-blooded men. She suspected that this history combined with something else aside from the standard misogyny to generate his bitterness toward her: a dislike of her time in the field; the fact that she’d recruited and run agents in Europe and North Africa whereas he’d risen through HQ. Part of the attraction of the cable op was that it had allowed her to bypass him entirely. The Vauxhall hierarchy was steep but narrow, with visibility poor both ways, and if you were clever enough you could carve out a world of your own. She thought she had achieved this.

“What horrifies me is that I had no idea he was over there at all,” Skinner began.

He held a police report, she saw.

“If you’re referring to Rory Bannatyne, it was Strap 3.”

He turned slowly, silhouetted against the green-tinted daylight.

“You didn’t feel I had adequate clearance?”

“It’s a GCHQ operation, Gabriel. C gave the approval. No one else was due to be read in. That’s standard.”

“And what happened?”

“He took his life.”

“I’m not talking about his suicide. I’m talking about the disappearance of a child. Do you see that this slightly broadens the exposure and therefore the individuals worth alerting?”

“I’m currently establishing what happened. There seemed no point broadcasting this across the building until I knew what the situation was.”