For once I keep my gob shut, waiting to see if anyone else is feeling as out-of-the-loop as I am. I don't have to wait long. Shona bulls ahead, bless her: "Yeah, you bet I've got questions. Who is this Baron Roman Von Stauffenberg or whoever? When was he—did he die recently?"

"Ungern Sternberg died in September 1921, executed by a Bolshevik firing squad after Trotsky's soldiers captured him." Choudhury taps his folio again, looking severe: "He was a very bad man, you know! He had a habit of burning paperwork. And he had a man nicknamed Teapot who followed him around and strangled people the Baron was displeased with. I suppose we could all do with that, ha-ha." He doesn't notice—or doesn't care about—Iris's fish-eyed glare. "But, aha, yes, he was one of those Russian occultists. He converted to Buddhism—Mongolian Buddhism, of a rather bloody sect—but stayed in touch with members of a certain Theosophical splinter group he had fallen in with when he was posted to St. Petersburg. Obviously they didn't stay there after the revolution, but Ungern Sternberg would have known of his fellows in General Denikin's staff, and possibly known of F, due to his occult connections. And the, ah, anti-Semitism."

He looks pained. All intelligence agencies have skeletons in their closets: ours is our first Director of Intelligence, whose fascist sympathies were famous, and only barely outweighed by his patriotism.

"What can that possibly have to do with current affairs?" Shona's evident bafflement mirrors my own. "What are they looking for?"

"That's an interesting question," says Choudhury, looking perturbed. He glances at me, his expression unreadable. "Mr. Howard might be able to tell us—"

"Um. What?"

My confusion must be as obvious as Shona's, because Iris chips in: "Bob has only just come in on the case—Dr. Angleton didn't see fit to brief him earlier."

"Oh my goodness." Choudhury looks as if he's swallowed a toad. Live. "But in that case, we really must talk to the doctor—"

"You can't." Iris shakes her head, then looks at me again. "Bob, we—the committee—asked Angleton to investigate the link between Ungern Sternberg, F, and the current spike in KGB activity." She looks back at Choudhury. "Unfortunately, he was last seen on Wednesday evening. He's now officially AWOL and a search is under way. This happened the same night as Agent CANDID closed out CLUB ZERO. The next morning, CANDID and Mr. Howard were assaulted by a class three manifestation, and I don't believe it's any kind of coincidence that Agent Kurchatov was seen visiting the Russian embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens that morning—and left on an early evening flight back to Moscow.