Argylle

by Elly Conway

Yet still there are issues, like the golden carriage, that bring back to him the fact that he is still an outsider, remind him that he has yet to leave Christopher Clay completely behind.

He is Vasily Federov? what's the story here?!

After that he’d been half expecting the rejection from his

former KGB officer father, but still the shock of it had eaten through the tender marrow of him like a cancer,

He is rich. He is family. But the longer he stays, the more she wants him gone. Not just because of Dmitri but because of how the air in the apartment feels now he is in it, close and sticky and hard to breathe.

We don’t always recognize the people who will be most important to us in our lives, but something about Frances Coffey stops the breath in Argylle’s throat and brings a rush of warmth to his chest.

‘Are you kidding? I was crapping myself, man, but you know you should always do the thing that frightens you.’

Argylle’s physical appearance has altered. Intensive training has bulked him out, filling in the lines that before were faint or blurred.

Gone is the long, dark hair he used to tie back with an elastic band to stop it getting in the way. Instead, he sports a new flat-top style, with short sides as soft and smooth as suede.

protest. He starts climbing up the inside of the rigging, affecting a confidence he doesn’t feel. He feels the mission slipping away from them

Normally, Argylle would be relishing being in a small plane once again for the first time since his father died, but instead his heart is racing.

The great German sculptor Andreas Schlüter had an idea to decorate the walls of a grand room in the Berlin City Palace entirely in amber. This work took decades. When Peter the Great saw how beautiful it was, he fell in love with

Argylle is so surprised he stops in his tracks. ‘You misunderstand me. I really loved them.’ ‘That’s not what I’m asking, Argylle. Loving is easy. It’s forgiveness that’s the hard thing.’

corner. Reality has a terrible habit of souring things.

‘It is good to feel something,’ he says softly. ‘No amount of training should make you immune from images like this. Otherwise, what would their sacrifice be for? What would we have become?

As you’ll see, it’s more like a random collection of thoughts and memories than a proper journal. You can get a sense of how his mind was fragmenting.

T. E. Lawrence poem that his own father used to quote to him: ‘I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars/To earn you freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house/that your eyes might be shining for me when we came.’

You think you know about a person because you’ve gleaned a bunch of facts about where they came from or who their family is, but the tissue of a person is made up of so much more than that, all the tiny fibres of our lives that weave themselves into a pattern that is unique.

Europe, but I never once guessed they were under pressure. It makes me worry how I can trust my own judgement when I had so little clue what was happening around me.’

She understands all too well

Cambridge Five,

spies relating info to Russians from British Intel - Ww2/Cold War

‘I needed to bring in someone extraordinary, Aubrey. Someone who is outside of the team yet capable of getting right into the heart of it. Someone with enough empathy to encourage loyalty but enough detachment to understand that everyone is a suspect. Someone with courage and integrity and decency.’

Wyatt, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him, opens his car door and yanks him out, taking his place behind the wheel. The woman in the passenger seat surveys her new companion with interest.

‘Where are we, exactly, sir?’ Quinn wants to know.

Of course, she does!!