‘What do you reckon?’ murmured Jake in my ear. ‘We pop her and call it a training accident.’

‘Well, Cameron, you’ve just met all of Whistle. Please take a seat.’ Hattie motioned to the chair next to him.

‘Why do you Brits have to be so twee?’ asked Cameron as she sat down. ‘Whistle? How the hell is that inspiring? Why not have names like ours – Independence, Liberty, Patriot – you know, names that mean something.’

Robin cleared his throat. ‘All our unit names mean something. “Megatron” is because their unit leader Dave is a big Transformers fan. Then there’s “Grinch”, which is another obvious one . . . Well, it would be if you met their unit leader, misery-guts Gavin. “Jagger” is because Dennis has the “moves like Jagger”.’ Robin paused to chuckle to himself. ‘Whereas “Watermelon” is because Joe thought to do this job you needed balls as big as—’

‘That’s ridiculous. And sexist.’ She looked at me as she popped her gum.

‘Cameron, I think the only thing offensive about boys wanting to name something after their ball-size is having to work with people with such a lame sense of humour.’

Cameron turned to Hattie. ‘So is this really it?’ She gestured towards us all. ‘This is all the personnel you have working on this?’

‘Yes, Cameron, this is our team. And there are two others at Six. You all know Dugdale, I gather? As Department Head he was the one who the Six agent approached with information on Tenebris.’

Harry Dugdale. Duggers. If you had told me back in Oxford that the rugby-playing chin downing yards of ale on the other side of the college bar would end up being one of the only people who knew what my job really entailed, I wouldn’t have believed it.

‘Dugdale and the agent have been running their own off-the-books investigation but have now come to us to help them finish. They’ll be in for a meeting tomorrow. We need to get this resolved fast. The Tenebris Network threatens the very existence of Eight. Of all our Security Services. Tenebris is a terrifyingly efficient way of not only organising but recruiting Snakes. We’re going to be severely incapacitated if we start having to put additional security protocols in place to try and protect our intel from our own employees.’