When they took pity on her and sent her "home," she went to a safe house in London: a perfectly anonymous Georgian town house that had been taken over and bent to this purpose. During the very limited amount of time that she was not working or sleeping, she found herself with nothing to do. She could not resume being Olivia Halifax-Lin just yet, could not begin facebooking or whatever it was people did now. She found a hairdresser who catered to Asians and got that business taken care of, ending up with something pageboyish, straight out of a porn film, that she never would have taken a risk on had circumstances not forced her hand. She rubbed her sore, immunized muscles. Warned to expect foreign travel, she bought clothes: enough lightweight, quick-drying synthetic garments to fill a carry-on bag and a blazer that she could throw on when she wanted to make a symbolic nod in the direction of greater formality. A new passport showed up, which made her wonder just now MI6 did these things: Did they have a passport factory of their very own? Or just a special room at the Central British Passport Factory where they could nip in and bang out a few as the occasion demanded?