ALL THAT REMAINED was her field training. Lavon and Uzi Navot put her through her paces. For three days and nights they took her into the streets of London and drilled her on the basic tenets of tradecraft. They taught her how to make a clandestine meeting and how to determine if a site was compromised. They taught her how to spot physical surveillance and simple techniques for shaking it. They taught her how to make a dead drop and how to hand material to a live courier. They taught her how to dial the Office emergency lines on ordinary pay telephones and how to signal them with her body if she were blown and required extraction. Lavon would later describe her as the finest natural amateur field agent he had ever trained. He could have completed the course in two days, but Gabriel, if only for his own peace of mind, insisted on a third. When Lavon finally returned to Surrey that afternoon he found Gabriel standing morosely at the edge of the stock pond, with a rod in one hand and his eyes trained on the surface of the water as though willing a fish to rise. “She’s ready,” Lavon said. “The question is, are you?” Gabriel slowly reeled in his line and followed Lavon back to the house.

LATER THAT SAME evening the lights went dark in the melancholy little travel agency in Mason’s Yard. Miss Archer, clutching a batch of old files, paused for a moment on the landing and peered through the sparkling glass entrance of Isherwood Fine Arts. Seated behind the receptionist desk was Elena, Mr. Isherwood’s scandalously pretty Italian secretary. She glanced up from her computer screen and blew Miss Archer an elaborate farewell kiss, then looked down again and resumed her work.

Miss Archer smiled sadly and headed down the stairway. There were no tears in her eyes. She’d done her crying in private, the way she did most things. Nor was there hesitation in her step. For twenty-seven years she’d been coming to this office five mornings a week. Saturdays, too, if there was housekeeping to be done. She was looking forward to retirement, even if it had come a bit earlier than expected. Maybe she’d take a long holiday. Or maybe she’d take a cottage in the countryside. She’d had her eye on a little place in the Chilterns for some time. She was certain of only one thing: She wasn’t sorry to be leaving. Mason’s Yard would never be the same again, not with the flashy Miss Bancroft in residence. It wasn’t that Miss Archer had anything against Americans personally. She just wasn’t terribly interested in living next door to one.