IRIS WOKE AT DAWN to the shrill noise of all the world’s birds outside the open window. Yesterday was hot; this morning, the sky was cloudy and restless. Sasha lay asleep on his stomach, one arm thrown across her ribs. She untangled herself and slipped out of bed. She ached all over; when she looked in the mirror, she saw red smudges scattered across her breasts and stomach and thighs. She put on some clothes. When she returned to bed to stare at Sasha, she was pleased to see she’d marked him, too. His mouth hung open a little. His hair splayed across his forehead. Iris wondered how he looked after he went to bed with Nedda Fischer—whether they made love like this, snarling and snapping—whether they discussed Marxist theory afterward, among the tangled sheets—the dialectic and all that, the class struggle as the basis of all history—the inevitable revolution—all the things Iris didn’t care about.

She wondered if she should tell Philip Beauchamp what she knew—whether that would be an act of patriotism or of vengeance.

DOWNSTAIRS, THE COTTAGE WAS still quiet. Not even Mrs. Betts had risen to put order to all the chaos. Iris found Burgess sprawled asleep on the library sofa, covered by a horse blanket; Major Davenport lay on the floor half ensnared by a raincoat. Neither was wearing a shirt; God knew if they had anything on down below. The room stank of male perspiration and of stale cigarettes. Iris picked up the empty bottles of gin from the weary Oriental rug and threw them in the trash. She put on her sturdy leather Oxford shoes and slipped out the kitchen door.

The air was speckled with fragile golden light and the dew coated the meadow. Iris inhaled the smell of wet hay, the new clean green morning. She started on the lane, toward Highcliffe, then veered down a path that angled to the sea. Like the birds, she couldn’t settle. She tried to tie together Sasha and Nedda Fischer and Guy Burgess, but the threads kept dropping as she picked them up, because Sasha was at the American embassy and Burgess worked for the British Foreign Office and what about the Fischer woman? The SIS? How did they all tie together, how did it work? Sasha said it was finished. Why? Because the war was over, fascism was vanquished? Why did they still see each other, then? Why did they get drunk and trade messages and rush off?