The embassy was a piece of the United States on British soil, so American social mores ruled. In the rest of the city the golden hue of Bennett’s skin and ice blue of her eyes might make her look like a northern European who had spent a long summer in warmer climes. In the embassy, they singled her out as what she really was—someone whose very existence made her fellow countrymen uncomfortable.

Many of the women who worked at the embassy lived together in houses in the area of the city bound to the north by Hyde Park and the south by the Thames. They were attracted by famous names and landmarks like the King’s Road, Harrods, and the Royal Albert Hall. Rooms were often shared, and beds passed on to newcomers as people returned to America or found a Brit to marry and moved out. The embassy encouraged the system as it created a kind of sisterhood and support network that helped its female staff feel safe and settled.

But when Bennett arrived in London, she was told there was nowhere for her in any of the women’s houses. A month later, after she’d found her own room in a boarding house off Gloucester Road, another woman had arrived, a blonde, white woman from New England. The embassy houses practically fought each other for her. There had been plenty of space all along, Bennett just wasn’t wanted.

People did their best to ignore Bennett in Grosvenor Square. Most of the time it irritated her, but today she was more than happy to let it work in her favour, especially in the archive, where the file clerks on duty chose not to see her moving through the aisles of record stacks.

First she went to the set of thick files the CIA held on Bianchi and Moretti. The agency had kept the two Italians under surveillance since they’d arrived in London to see if they posed a threat to local operations or if they were worth recruiting. Bennett wanted to see if anything had been added to their records since they’d been found dead. There was just a note saying MI5 were investigating their suspected murder. The front file had also been tagged with a green strip—code that all records relating to the Bianchi and Moretti should be moved into deep storage during the next reconciliation cycle.