The grounds beyond the gate were barren and bleak, an acquired taste. The man who built the cottage there had made his money in shipping. He had bequeathed it to his only son, and the son, who had no heirs, had entrusted it to the Secret Intelligence Service, where he had worked for the better part of a half-century. He had served in many distant corners of the empire, under many different names, but mainly he was known as Wormwood. The service named the cottage in his honor. Those who stayed there found the name appropriate.

It was set upon a swell in the land and was fashioned of Devon stone that had darkened with age and neglect. Behind it, across a broken courtyard, was a converted barn with offices and living quarters for the staff. When Wormwood Cottage was unoccupied, a single caretaker called Parish kept watch over it. But when a guest was present—guests were always referred to as “company”—the staff could number as many as ten. Much depended on the nature of the guest and the men from whom he was hiding. A “friendly” with few enemies might be given the run of the place. A defector from Iran or Russia would be treated almost as a prisoner.

The two men who arrived on the evening of the Brompton Road bombing fell somewhere in between. They had appeared with only a few minutes’ warning, accompanied by an acolyte of the chiefs who went by the work name Davies and a doctor who treated the wounds of the untreatable. The doctor had spent the rest of the night putting the older of the two men back together again. The younger one had watched over his every move.

He was an Englishman, the younger one, an expatriate, a man who had lived in another land, spoken another language. The older of the two was the legend. Two members of the staff had looked after him once before, after an incident in Hyde Park involving the daughter of the American ambassador. He was a gentleman, an artist by nature, a bit on the quiet side, a touch temperamental, but many of his ilk were. They would watch over him, tend to his wounds, and then send him on his way. And not once would they speak his name, for as far as they were concerned he did not exist. He was a man without a past or future. He was a blank page. He was dead.