Bennett went to Irina Valera’s folder next. It had been filed in the stacks on Friday afternoon, then checked out, again in the dead of night, on behalf of the chief of station.

Michael Finney, London station chief for ten years, was one of the most senior figures in the entire CIA. He spent his time briefing senior members of the state department and the top level of government. So why was he suddenly interested in the Italians and Valera?

Before she gave up on the archives, she scoured the stacks for any information they had on General Medev. Eventually she found a reference to him in a mission report from a CIA asset in Moscow. It listed him as head of the KGB’s scientific directorate. If that was true it explained why he’d been the one who had come after Valera. It also made him one hell of a sacrificial lamb.

Then she went to the other part of the embassy that was home to almost as much information as the archive—the canteen.

The canteen was on the next floor up—still underground but closer to the surface. It was busy with small groups of people from departments all over the embassy, huddled together up and down its rows of tables.

Bennett poured herself a cup of coffee from one of the giant pots that lined the canteen’s long wall and were kept full and hot all hours of the day and night. She scanned the tables out of habit, looking for any junior field agents or embassy staff who were too young or too unimportant to worry about being discreet with their breaktime conversations.

She spotted two secretaries sitting close together on the far side of the room and casually made her way over to them. She sat down four seats away—far enough for them not to pay attention to her but close enough for her to hear every word they said. Both women were wearing the twinset, skirt, and pearls that most secretaries in the embassy defaulted to, and they both looked angry about being stuck at work on a Sunday in summer.

They were the kind of women who Bennett had been intensely jealous of when she’d first arrived in London, the kind of women who hadn’t wanted anything to do with her. Now she looked down on them, because she knew that just because they were physically closer to the action, that didn’t mean they had any idea about what was really going on.

‘It’s ridiculous, I told him,’ the secretary on Bennett’s side of the table said.

‘I know,’ the other one replied.

‘The city’s full. No room at the inn.’

‘I know.’

‘He shouldn’t be surprised. Half the damn state department’s flown in.’

‘I know.’

‘All I ask is enough notice to be able to do my job properly. A little decency, you know?’

‘I know.’