M rested her chin on her hand and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes with her right index finger, smearing mascara all down her face in the process. She hadn't slept in around four days, and she was in a zombie-like state, but her eyes were fixed on her laptop screen. It was showing a map of Dandong, China, in a GPS style setup. There was a red flashing light on the edge of the screen, underneath which read; 'SILVA, RAOUL'. The light wasn't moving as it normally would; the flashing dots on the screen showed the exact location of an agent to within a few meters. Silva's light hadn't gone anywhere in forty-eight hours, and for every one of those hours, M had been awake and watching the screen intently. It was difficult to think that a few days ago, she had been congratulating Silva on the success of his mission in China to find and destroy the three USB keys containing the identities of every undercover NATO agent in existence, and was emailing virtual ticket details for a flight from Dandong to Heathrow to the agent, and beginning to work on his debriefing. She didn't know what had happened to him, but she had received no communication from him since his location stopped moving.

M had been in the process of making her way through a Special K bar and trying to keep her eyes open, until nineteen-year-old Eve Moneypenny, one of the service's newest agents, burst into the room, her arms loaded with two Costa take-out mugs and about 200 sheets of printer paper.

M hazarded a quick glance upwards, and saw that the young agent was wearing some kind of bizarre outfit made up of white Prada kitten heels, turquoise chinos and a neon pink Nike running shirt. There was a blue-black Superdry bag slung over her shoulder. She was dropping maybe two or three sheets of paper with every step, and there was sheets of photocopying strewn from one end of the room to the other. M was used to agents running in like this at all hours; most of the time it was for no valid reason, so she didn't bother looking up. Suppressing a yawn, she said; "What is it, Moneypenny? Paper cut?"

"M, this is serious." She said, putting the Costa cups onto M's desk, dropping her insane amount of paperwork in the process. M picked the cups up again and threw a couple of paper napkins underneath them before putting them down again. "Coasters," she said firmly. She was still treating Eve with her usual dry sarcasm; for most agents, serious usually meant that the aged coffee machine in the hall was broken again. M didn't know why, but she seemed to be the only person she knew of in MI6 who could function without a caffeine fix. "That desk's mahogany. And it'd better be bloody well serious, considering the mess you've made of my office."

"Well, I'm pretty sure that its IDs of six agents getting leaked onto Wikipedia can be considered serious."

M had already started sifting through the printed sheets. About fifty of them were just random digits and unidentifiable URLs, but there was around twenty pages with Wikipedia articles bearing the MI6 logo, a photo and a name. There were six of them; Peter Linton, Senga Morran, John McIntyre, Carol-Ann Grant and the penultimate name was Zara Asker. Where did M know these names from? But she knew when she saw the face and name on the last. The picture was an eastern-European looking male with blonde hair. And the name came as the biggest shock yet to M. Raoul Silva...