“It’s very nice,” I say carefully. “What did VEVAK want?”

“They had a problem. I fixed it. Did anything interesting happen while I was away?” I noticed a faint tremor in her voice when she said fixed.

“Oh, I called in a Code Blue, but what I’d found turned out to be an internal op. Supposedly, anyway. It nearly turned into fratricide but we stopped in time.” I grimace and try not to rub my right arm too obviously.

Mo sits up, looking almost interested. “Really?” She asks: “Can you tell me about it?”

A quick check with my internal censor reveals that I can, indeed, tell Mo everything about my ten-percenter project. Although I suddenly begin to wonder if it was wise to mention this at all, bearing in mind the Mhari angle. On the other hand, Mhari and I split up almost before I ever met Mo in the first place, and on the third hand, being caught later trying to conceal Mhari’s sudden reappearance would be vastly more incriminating than coughing to the true situation right now. I make a snap decision that sometimes honesty really is the best policy—even between spies—but paranoia about the ex from hell can wait until Mo’s a bit less stressed out.

So I stand up to pour the tea, and begin to explain what I’ve been up to for the past few weeks, with a focus on Andy’s fucked-up summoning and subsequent search for a new office, and Pete’s MAGIC CIRCLE OF SAFETY project. Who knows? Maybe it’ll help her stay awake until she’s over the jet lag. And maybe hearing about someone else’s woes will distract her from whatever the bad thing is that happened in Iran that she’s trying to avoid telling me about.

10.

DEATH CHAMBERS

THERE ARE SOME TRADITIONAL PROPRIETIES THAT MUST always be upheld, except in the direst of emergencies. The current situation does not—yet—amount to such an emergency. And so it is that when George decides to inform another of his ilk of Sir David’s worrying news, he does so by invoking a protocol steeped in antiquity.

Not that Sir David himself realized that his news would be cause for concern: he saw nothing wrong with directing a tenth of a billion pounds into an untried research project, and indeed, that sum is only a small fraction of the bank’s asset reserve. But George’s nostrils flare and his lips involuntarily crease into something like a sneer at the unwelcome memory dredged up by the miasma of meddling that Sir David trailed into his club. Sir David has been touched by a will not his own, and George cannot abide the stink of soiled goods, much less the threat that it brings.