Chapter 3 #2
The Russians couldn’t prove it was us. With my blonde wig shed, my appearance altered, the trail went cold. But they knew. Mank had to burn assets we’d spent years cultivating just to get me out of the country without starting an international incident.
Dmitri Olkov is still alive, still has a daughter studying medicine in St. Petersburg, and I’m still asking myself why I couldn’t just kiss him and be done with it.
The answer, I think, is that I’m broken. Something in me has cracked, some wire crossed wrong, and I don’t know how to fix it. I’ve spent fifteen years turning my curse into a weapon, and now, the weapon is misfiring.
Mank never asked for details. He just looked at me with those sharp eyes, handed me a box of files, and said, “Take some time. Get your head right.”
Three months of filing later, and I’m still not sure my head is right.
But when the Vanguard mission came across Mank’s desk—a surveillance op requiring a journalist cover, one I’d spent years perfecting on the side, no honeytrap required, just observation and assessment—I’d practically begged for it.
A chance to prove I was still worth something.
A chance to use my brain instead of my body, even though I’ll have to use the latter if the time ever calls for it.
And now, here I am, walking through the warehouse door with my phone burning a hole in my pocket, checking every thirty seconds for an email that hasn’t come.
The lift groans its way up to the top floor, lurching a couple of times ominously before it deposits me into the controlled chaos of SOE.
Someone’s left a half-eaten croissant on the radiator again—probably Cal, the heathen—and the smell of burnt toast confirms Bayo is already at his station, failing spectacularly at breakfast, as usual.
The radiators are clanging their morning protest, and through the grimy windows, the Thames is a grey ribbon under an even greyer sky.
Home sweet home.
“Morning, love!” Tabby calls out from behind her desk, which is less a desk and more a fortified position made of teacups, biscuit tins, candles, and stacks of files that would give a health and safety inspector heart palpitations.
Tabitha French is our office manager, though that title doesn’t begin to cover what she actually does.
She’s mid-seventies, with steel-grey curls and an ever-present yellow cardigan that could qualify for its own postcode, with round, ruddy cheeks and warm brown eyes, the kind of face that belongs on a tin of biscuits.
She calls everyone ‘love’ and ‘dear’ and dispenses tissues and Hobnobs like a nan who wandered in from a different, gentler world.
Which is exactly what she wants you to think.
No one talks about it openly, but Tabby was MI6 from 1972 to 2003.
She ran honey traps in East Berlin when the Wall still stood—probably invented half the techniques I use today (sans lethal kiss, of course).
There’s a rumor that in the ’80s, she killed a KGB handler with a hairpin in Vienna.
She neither confirms nor denies, just smiles and offers you another cuppa.
These days, she makes tea, remembers everyone’s birthday, and occasionally drops a piece of tradecraft so casually devastating, even Mank shuts up and takes note.
“Morning, Tabby,” I say, accepting the cup of oat milk Earl Grey she’s already poured. She always knows when I need it. “Any word from—”
“Nothing yet, love. But the kettle’s just boiled, and worrying won’t make emails arrive faster.” She pats my arm with a hand that’s surprisingly strong. “Roger said you did good work on that proposal. Whatever happens, happens.”
Easy for her to say. She’s not the one whose career is dangling by a thread.
“Well, well.” A voice cuts across the room. “Look who’s decided to grace us with her presence. The belle of the ball. Or should I say, gala?”
Cal is leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen alcove, mug in hand, dark curls falling artfully over his forehead in a way that suggests he spent longer styling them than he’d ever admit.
Callum Reed—our second-best field operative, though he’d argue the ranking—has the sort of face that belongs on a BBC period drama, all cheekbones and brooding eyes and sharp jawline.
He’s wearing a rumpled Oxford shirt rolled to the elbows, and there’s a fading scar on his forearm I try not to look at.
He got that scar pulling me out of a drop gone wrong in Tehran. One of the targets had gotten close with a knife before Cal put him down. He never mentions it, and I never got a chance to thank him properly.
There’s a lot Cal and I don’t mention to each other.
“Morning, Cal,” I say, keeping my voice light. “Still haven’t figured out how the toaster works, I see. You and Bayo should team up.”
“And he’d agree the toaster is a war criminal that should be tried at The Hague.
” He takes a sip of his coffee, eyes never leaving mine over the rim.
“So, tell me all about it. Rubbing elbows with superheroes and celebs, writing love letters to evil corporations that hastened the demise of the western world.”
“It was a proposal, not a love letter.”
“Same thing when you’re trying to seduce someone into letting you close.”
There’s an edge to his voice that I know has nothing to do with Vanguard.
Cal and I have history. A few years ago, after a particularly brutal op in Marrakech, he told me he loved me.
Properly, painfully, the kind of confession that hangs in the air like a grenade with the pin pulled.
We’d been drinking—him more than me, since alcohol barely affects me—and he’d looked at me with those dark eyes and said, I know you can’t—I know your condition.
I don’t care. We could figure it out. I just want to be with you.
I’d turned him down as gently as I could, which wasn’t very gentle at all, because my god, sometimes, a man can’t take a hint.
The truth is, even if I could kiss him without killing him, I’m not sure I’d let myself.
Intimacy requires trust, and trust requires vulnerability, and vulnerability gets people killed in our line of work.
I’ve spent fifteen years building walls to keep everyone at arm’s length—literally, in my case—and the thought of letting someone past them terrifies me more than any FSB officer with a gun aimed at my head.
Cal took it well on the surface. We’re still friends, still partners when the mission calls for it, still capable of the easy banter that comes from trusting someone with your life. But sometimes, I catch him looking at me like he’s still waiting for me to change my mind.
I won’t. I can’t.
And I hate that I hurt him.
That said, it’s better than killing him.
“Noted,” I say, sliding past him toward my sad little desk-that-isn’t-a-desk. “When I need seduction advice from a man whose flirting technique was lifted directly from a Bronte novel, I’ll let you know. Until then, try not to brood so hard, you sprain something.”
“Rude,” he calls after me.
I settle onto my stool (I refuse to call it a chair, since chairs have backs and this is basically a wooden mushroom held together by duct tape) and Bayo looks up from his workstation.
His setup is the one genuinely impressive thing in our whole office: three curved monitors, a mechanical keyboard that makes the most pleasing clacking sounds, and enough blinking lights to guide a plane in for landing.
Daniel Babatunde—Bayo to everyone he considers a friend—is our cyber operations specialist, on loan from Government Communications Headquarters and permanently embedded with us because he’s too valuable to give back.
He’s built like a rugby player gone slightly soft, with close-cropped hair and a gregarious face that’s quick to smile, though when he’s serious, he’s serious.
“Anything?” I ask, not specifying what.
He shakes his head. “Not yet, Miss Mia. But Van Veen’s people are thorough. Could take a few days to vet everything. Thank God your journalism background is legit.”
“Yeah, well, the suspense is killing me,” I groan.
“Because you’re the least patient person in this room. But pushing won’t help. Either they bite or they don’t.”
“Helpful, Bayo. Very Zen.”
“I do what I can.” His cheeky grin flashes white against his dark skin.
“Mia.”
We both look up. Katarina Morozov is standing in the doorway to Mank’s office, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
Kat is my mentor, my trainer, and—depending on the day—my harshest critic.
Former FSB, she defected during the tensions with Russia and brought a lifetime’s worth of tradecraft with her.
She’s slight and pale, with dark hair cropped close to her skull and the kind of face that disappears into a crowd.
Forgettable by design. Memorable only to those who’ve seen what she can do with a garrote and thirty seconds of privacy.
She taught me everything I know about surveillance, dead drops, asset handling, how to vanish into a city and become someone else entirely. How to live as a NOC, as someone who doesn’t exist, and how to make peace with being a ghost.
She won’t admit it, but she also hasn’t forgiven me for Minsk, and I’m not sure she ever will. I was her protégé, and I let her down in a spectacular way.
“Mank wants you,” she says, her accent still carrying traces of Moscow despite fifteen years in London, though she can make it disappear at will.
My stomach drops. “The briefing isn’t for another two hours.”
“Did I say briefing?” Her dark eyes give nothing away. “He wants you. His office. Now.”
My face flushes as I stand, smoothing my hands on my trousers to hide the fact that they’ve gone clammy. Bayo gives me an encouraging nod. Cal watches from the kitchen doorway, his mug frozen halfway to his lips.
As I cross the room, I pass Fi, who’s emerging from the storage closet we generously call the archives.
Fiona Chen—the newest and youngest member of our team—has dust on her cheek, her dark hair escaping from its bun.
She’s got delicate features that make her look younger than her twenty-four years: high cheekbones, wide, dark eyes, a mouth that’s perpetually quirked in private amusement.
Socially awkward and unassuming, she was recruited straight out of SOAS with a gift for languages and an improv background that makes her dangerously good at thinking on her feet. It certainly helped at the gala.
Like me, Fi is enhanced in her own special way.
She was also engineered by my father, in a program I try not to think about too much.
We don’t talk about it much either, but there’s an understanding between us, a shared weight.
She’s the only other person I know who was made into something before she had any say in the matter.
She catches my eye as I pass and gives me a thumbs up, though with her, I can’t tell if it’s sarcastic or genuine. I take it as the latter.
I knock twice on Mank’s door and take a deep breath.
Here goes nothing.