Agent Running in the Field

Florence and Nat walk down the Thames toward the Head Office, planning to present their substation’s special operation—their first in three years. They propose bugging the apartments of a money launderer for a Kremlin-backed crime syndicate. Nat feels nervous about the meeting, as it will prove the efficacy of his office.

Nat has cautioned Florence to remain emotionally neutral when pitching their operation. As the presentation starts, she follows this guidance, staying on task. An agent named Marion interrupts Florence, wondering about the ethics of bugging all the rooms in the target’s home, as some of the rooms will be occupied by children. Florence claims that these rooms also need to be bugged since Orson, the target, frequently takes meetings and sees sex workers in these rooms, to whom he tends to brag about his criminal operations. The operation ends up being approved, to the delight of Nat and Florence.

Later, over drinks, Nat warns Florence that things aren’t fully finalized yet, as the Treasury sub-committee still needs to approve the operation before they can proceed. However, they return to the substation in triumph, well assured that their final approval is imminent. Nat also receives a call from Ed, telling him that his sister wants to join them in badminton for a two-versus-two game. Ed asks whether Nat can invite Prue, but Nat invites Florence to join them instead since Prue is busy with clients.

The day before the doubles badminton match, Nat and Prue are hanging out at home when Nat receives a call from Dom. Dom apologizes for the weekend call and tells Nat that they haven’t yet received final approval from the Treasury for their operation. However, he also has a favor to ask of Nat. He wants Nat to head to Northwood the following day, Monday, for a meeting with foreign agencies. German intelligence has acquired a source for Moscow’s new hybrid warfare program, and Dom wants Nat to observe along with an audience of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) professionals.

The following day, Nat sits through a number of tedious presentations mostly consisting of “a string of German statistics” (79). On the way home, he hears news that the Treasury sub-committee has decided to put the operation on hold temporarily. Nat has his driver take him directly to the Athleticus for the badminton match.

Nat and Florence meet Ed and his sister, Laura, in the lobby of the athletics center. Florence takes Laura into the changing room, and Ed wonders where Nat knows her from, clearly interested in her romantically. Nat claims that she is “someone’s high-powered assistant” (80), in conjunction with their cover story so that they don’t have to admit to their actual work as spies. At the court, Nat and Florence face off against Ed and Laura. On breaks between sets, Nat tells Florence about the cover story he invented and asks her whether she’s heard any more information about their operation, receiving no response from her.

When Laura becomes upset, they switch partners, with Florence and Laura playing against Ed and Nat. Nat pushes Florence to agree to the cover story, but she snaps at him in anger, telling him that she’s tired of all the lying. The women end up winning the match and return to the changing room in triumph. Ed invites them all out for drinks. 

Nat’s phone rings, and he steps into the hallway to answer. It’s Ilya, that night’s duty officer at the Haven. He tells Nat that an agent codenamed Pitchfork, a Russian research student at York University, has requested to meet with him, a request that the student claims is urgent. Nat meets back up with Ed and tells him that he can’t attend the post-match drinks, as he’s been called away on urgent business.

As Nat heads to York, he reflects on Pitchfork, whom he considers “notably quiescent” (87). He also feels nervous about Florence’s recent outburst about lying, worried that she’ll do something to break her cover. To distract himself from his worries, Nat avails himself of Pitchfork’s case history. His real name is Sergei Borisovich Kuznetsov, the St. Petersburg-born son of a family of Chekists, including a grandfather who was a general in the NKVD as well as a father in the KGB. As a teenager, he attended a special school specializing in conspiracy and espionage. During his first year at college, he defected to whichever Western country would accept him, which ended up being Great Britain, claiming a deep hatred of Putin’s authoritarianism as his reasoning. Sergei is a double agent for Great Britain since Russia still considers him a sleeper agent since his defection was never made known to them. However, Nat still views him with suspicion, as he didn’t produce any new pieces of actionable intelligence during his defection, and he wonders whether Sergei is actually a triple agent, still working in secret for Russia.

Nat calls Sergei as he arrives in York and is told that they’ll meet the following day. He calls Ilya for updates on the operation as well as Florence but doesn’t hear any new information. In the morning, Nat meets Sergei near the York city racecourse. They establish an elaborate series of steps before the meeting to make sure that Sergei isn’t being monitored by the Russian intelligence services when he speaks to Nat. Nat pulls up to the corner and greets Sergei as Jack, as if he’s an old friend whom Nat hasn’t seen in a long time. Sergei enters the car, and they drive off, their cover seemingly intact.

On the drive, Nat questions Sergei as to whether he has any recording devices on his person. Sergei claims that he doesn’t and that he’s holding onto important documents containing some very good news that Nat needs to see. They drive out of town to a hilltop with a view over the moors. Sergei tells Nat his good news: He received a coded message from his Russian handlers the previous Friday, and he spent the weekend translating it into English to show to Nat (since Sergei doesn’t know that Nat speaks fluent Russian). Nat responds angrily, as Sergei should have shown him the document as soon as he received it instead of translating it first.

Nat takes out the document, pretending to ignore the Russian version and only read the English. Sergei claims that the letter, sent from someone named Anette in the Netherlands, is from his Russian trainer and handler by the name of Anastasia since he says that he recognizes her handwriting. The letter instructs Sergei to rent a specific room in London, and Nat questions Sergei about his contacts in the city, feeling suspicious of the agent’s motives. Nat asks whether Sergei knows the motivations for Russia’s instructions, but Sergei doesn’t seem to know, lapsing into a quiet contemplation of the question.

After a moment, Sergei says that he suspects that the instructions are to “facilitate [his] murder” (101). Nat questions this, wondering why they would go to such elaborate lengths to kill a suspected traitor. Knowing Sergei is gay, he wonders whether his explanation is intended to cover for the fact that he doesn’t want to leave his partner, a man whom Sergei refuses to identify. Nat keeps pushing, and eventually, Sergei writes down his partner’s name, Barry, and his birthday on a slip of paper, which he gives to Nat.

They decide that Sergei will accept the Russian office’s assignment to move to London for two months under the assumed identity of a German national named Markus Schweizer. They also plan a coded response to Anette accepting the assignment, with pending approval from British intelligence. Nat concludes that Sergei would be more comfortable with a female handler and reassigns him to Florence. While in London, Florence will need to take on a different identity to maintain her cover while she meets with Sergei, and Nat plans a trip for her to York so that she can get to know her new assigned agent and come up with a story. Arriving back in London, Nat checks in on the operation and finds that the Treasury sub-committee hasn’t yet communicated an answer. He and Prue go out for Indian food before retiring to bed.

On Wednesday morning, Nat considers all the competing tasks in his day ahead. He considers whether he needs to report Florence’s insubordination to Human Resources but balks at the possibility that this would create a disciplinary tribunal for her. The office of Haven is strangely empty, and Nat finds two reports on his desk. The first tells him that the surveillance operation has been canceled “on grounds of disproportionate risk” (108). The second report informs him that Florence has resigned from the Service and that the “full severance procedure has been activated in accordance with HO rules of disengagement” (108).

According to the report, Florence’s resignation happened only hours before she joined Ed and Nat for the badminton game, which accounts for her bizarre behavior. Nat steps out into the hallway and calls for his employees to talk to him and tell him what happened with Florence. On the day she resigned, while Nat was out of the office, Florence informed Ilya that she had an appointment with Dom, which she had seemed nervous about. She returned from that meeting strangely silent, disappeared into her office for five minutes, and emerged holding a bag with her belongings inside of it. She hugged everyone and left the office after saying that “the ship ha[d] been taken over by the rats and [she’d] jumped” (110).

Nat steps outside and goes inside of a coffee shop to call Florence. However, her phone is dead, and he can’t reach her. He calls Dom instead but is told by his secretary that he’s not receiving calls at the moment. Instead, Nat heads to Dom’s office to confront him in person. Nat asks Dom why he sent him off to Northwood and what happened with Florence, accusing him of making a pass at her in his office. Dom denies this, instead claiming that Florence resigned due to advanced notice of the sub-committee’s report denying the surveillance operation. He claims that Florence’s response to the news was “disproportionate and hysterical” and that the Service is better off without her (113).

They discuss Sergei and his sleeper agent assignment from Moscow. Contrary to Sergei’s concerns, Nat claims that the assignment to London is to prove to Moscow that Sergei is still loyal to them. To that end, he advocates that the Service allow Sergei’s move to London to happen, all the while watching and waiting to see what Moscow does. Nat also tells Dom that he would like to run Sergei’s instructions by another previous sleeper double agent, codenamed Woodpecker. Previously, Woodpecker had been a good source of intelligence before he rejoined the Russian security services. Dom feels nervous about this plan, as he no longer trusts Woodpecker. Although Dom tells Nat that he’s forbidden from meeting Woodpecker, Nat immediately asks for a week off of work, indicating that he is going to go see him anyway.

As he waits on a response from Woodpecker, whose alias is Arkady, Nat continues to play badminton with Ed. Ed’s game has improved substantially, and he begins to win against Nat consistently. Nat continues to try to track down Florence to get her side of the story but remains stymied since Florence has disappeared. Understanding that Ed and Florence had been attracted to each other on sight, he asks Ed about her whereabouts, despite the risk that this would pose to their cover stories. However, Ed claims that he doesn’t have her number, instead launching into a diatribe about politics as usual.

Sergei moves to London and assumes the German national cover cooked up for him by Russia, reporting on everything back to Nat and the London office. They have him take photographs around town at various locations, writing up reports (under Nat’s approval) to submit back to Moscow. The locations seem random, except for the fact that all are connected by the same bicycle route, which runs from Hoxton to Central London.

Nat receives a response from Arkady agreeing to meet, and Nat books a ticket to Prague. Florence also contacts Nat with a new phone number so that he can call her, and Nat leaves a message asking to speak with her. Additionally, Nat and Prue plan to have lunch with their daughter, Steff, before Nat leaves for Czechia.

Steff shows up that weekend with a new boyfriend in tow, a Muslim man named Juno, who Nat finds to be exceedingly well-dressed and polite. Juno is in graduate school for zoology and will be taking Steff to Panama soon to accompany him as he studies flying bats on the island of Barro Colorado. To her parents’ shock, Steff announces that they’re engaged, with the wedding to occur after she has graduated.