"No," Annika said. "A proper lady."
The understanding had been sudden and complete then. The cascade of dueling infidelities between her mother and father had reached its breaking point. Chace knew they were separating, and understood that divorce would follow, that it would be ugly, that it would be brutal, and that her mother would never, ever change. She saw in her mother a vision of herself as she might be, selfish and spoiled and utterly oblivious to the pain she inflicted upon others, a woman-child who would never grow up.
Which meant Chace was going to have to, and quickly. The second of such moments occurred when Chace was twenty-two, in her last year at Cambridge but down to London for a long weekend with a group of her peers, amongst them the only one she called a friend, Rachel Beck. This was in the days on the cusp, after the Cold War but before the Global War on Terror, before the Firm had been reduced to advertising openly for new recruits. For two years, Chace had been vetted with deliberation by SIS's talent-spotters at the university until, finally, assured of her loyalties, intelligence, and potential, she had been invited the night before to a discreet-read: secret-meeting in a cramped office situated in the basement of one of London's finer hotels. Chace, who had long since developed a strong suspicion of what was really going on, had attended the meeting, in part to assure herself she'd been correct, but mostly because the secrecy and deception involved had appealed to her.
Arriving for the interview precisely at twenty minutes past three in the afternoon, Chace had found an empty room, two chairs, a table, and a tea set on the sideboard. Touching the pot with the back of her hand, she'd found it scalding hot. She'd ignored the refreshment, taken a seat, smoked a cigarette, and had begun contemplating smoking another when a small and rather sad-looking man entered the room. He made no apology for keeping her waiting, and Chace had liked that, because, of course, she'd understood the delay as intentional. She was certain she'd been followed to the meeting, and would've been surprised if she hadn't been under surveillance within the room itself.
The man gave his name as Mr. Smith, and producing a file from his bag, he proceeded to relate a comprehensive and remarkably thorough accounting of her life up to and including that very day. Everything was laid bare in the most clinical fashion: her family, her friendships, her education, her vices, her lovers, her indiscretions, including one or two that Chace herself had tried to forget. It was a recitation of facts, devoid of all judgment but her own.
Then Mr. Smith had said, "There are those who feel you could be of great service to your country, if you chose to dedicate yourself in such a direction. I speak, Miss Chace, of a lifetime of service, of challenge and sacrifice that will be known to only a very few at the highest levels of Government. It is a life without public recognition, without common reward, but it is, at its heart, greater and more vital. A secret life, to be sure, but one where what you do and say can-not to overstate it-alter the course of history."
Mr. Smith had paused, perhaps to give Chace the opportunity to speak, but she didn't take it. After several seconds, with no change of his expression, he continued.
"Very few people are invited to this calling. Of those who answer, even less actually succeed. You could be one of them."
Chace remained silent.
"Certainly, this is not a decision to be made with haste," Mr. Smith said. "By the same token, it is not one that can be indulged. An answer is required before midnight Sunday."
Chace nodded, smiled, whereupon Mr. Smith recited a phone number for her to remember. If she was interested, she was to call the number and say that she was staying in London for the week. If not, she needn't bother to call.
She left Mr. Smith in the basement, making her way on foot to meet Rachel and the others near Sloane Square, struggling with her thoughts. By the time she reached them, though, she had come to a decision: She would forget Mr. Smith and his phone number, along with everything else he'd said. There was an appeal to the offer, to be sure, and it wasn't a fear of failing that restrained her; she had no doubt that, of those few who were called, she would certainly be one to succeed. But it was that same vanity, ultimately, that held her in check.
She loathed, with passion, the idea of being anonymous.
The dinner that evening had been a typically indulgent affair, catty and gossip-laden, lubricated with alcohol, which Chace enjoyed, and a smattering of recreational drugs, which she eschewed. This was followed by dancing and more drinking at a string of clubs, all of them deemed fashionable for one reason or another. Rachel, unlike Chace, was nouveau riche, and while her father had substantially more money than any number of them put together, to the Sloanes she was not, and never would be, one of them, try though she might, and try heroically she did. While no one was ever overtly unkind to Rachel's face, as soon as her back was turned the knives promptly emerged to carve out a hundred imaginary faults and sins.
To Chace, who'd met Rachel her first year at boarding school and now had known her for over a decade, it was painful to behold; her friend, desperate to believe that she had been accepted, only to be reminded again and again that she would never belong; while at the same time, Chace herself was welcomed with open arms through no effort of her own, simply an accident of birth.
At two in the morning, stumbling into cabs outside of yet another too dark and too loud dance club, Rachel had doubled over vomiting, apparently sick drunk, much to the amusement and relief of Chace's fellow Sloanes. Chace was urged to send Rachel home in a cab so that the party might roll onto its next port of call.
That was the moment. With one hand on Rachel's back, the other holding her friend's hair out of her face, smelling the petrol and alcohol and vomit, hearing the laughter and mockery of these inbred and overly privileged young women, Chace saw herself as one of them, and she hated herself thoroughly for it.
She spent the next day nursing Rachel through one of the worst bouts of food poisoning Chace ever witnessed. That night, with just under an hour to spare, she dialed the number Mr. Smith had given her.
"I'm thinking I'll be staying in London for the week," Chace said. The third moment came five years later, as Chace stood on the balcony of Tom Wallace's flat in Gosport, looking out at the lights glimmering on the water, a glass of whiskey in her hand. Wallace stood beside her. They were both a little drunk and very well fed, and surrounded in the warmth of contented, companionable friendship.
Following her entry to SIS, Chace had been sent to the Firm's training facility in Gosport, near Ports mouth, for the requisite sixteen-week induction and education course required of all fledgling spies. The Powers That Be had marked her early on as an analyst, due to several factors, not the least of them being her raw intelligence and the fact that she already spoke four languages fluently, and could pass as native in three of them. Her career trajectory had already been planned by the time she'd unpacked her things in the School dormitory. She would complete her training, be posted as a Number Two to some low-priority theatre to get her legs, and provided she acquitted herself well, would be reposted in due course to a more active theatre. She would serve out her tours and, if all continued as planned, would return to London to a job in the Intelligence Directorate, working for the Director of Intelligence, perhaps heading up one of the Desks herself. If she proved particularly brilliant, she might even find herself named D-Int one day.
No one had bothered to inform Chace about this, however, and it was shortly after the introductory lecture, where the hierarchy and divisions of SIS were broken down for all new recruits, that she began asking questions about the Special Section. About those agents who were tasked directly under the Director of Operations. The Special Operations Officers, the ones who worked out of headquarters in Vauxhall Cross, who were expected to dash around the world at a moment's notice. The agents who, when feces sailed en route to fan, were expected to intercept and leave not a trace behind.