'What makes me look bad makes you look redundant.

Bachelor assures Lady Di that he will 'fix' the situation. Initially, Bachelor believes that the worst punishment he'd face would be reassignment to MI5's equivalent of Siberia - Slough House with its string of 'slow horses.' Sobriety surfaces quickly when it is propelled by fear, and Taverner lays out far more frightening possibilities. It was a question you asked when you wanted to crush your underling under foot. It wasn't a question you asked because you wanted to know the answer. It looks like Hess has been compromised because he had a bank account that had been hitherto unknown to MI5. Bachelor is quickly disabused that Taverner is making a courtesy consolation call. While getting pleasantly tipsy at the wake, Bachelor receives a visit from 'Lady Di' Taverner, who is in charge of Ops and thus far above him in the chain of command. Obsolescence is built into Bachelor's job as most of his charges date their assistance back to the Cold War, and they're succumbing to old age.įormerly of East Germany, Dieter Hess has just passed. Nicknamed the 'milkman,' Bachelor makes the rounds of all the assets who had helped the UK government and who are now receiving pensions in compensation for their service. Once a spook, always a spook, and even being dead doesn’t mean you can’t uncover secrets.ĭickie Bow might have tailed his last target, but Lamb and his crew of no-hopers are about to go live.In The List, John Bachelor has a very particular job with the British Security Service (or MI5) as a babysitter or minder. On Dickie’s phone Lamb finds the last message he ever left, which hints that an old-time Moscow-style op is being run in the Intelligence Service’s back-yard. But he’s not an obvious target for assassination in the here and now. He was in Berlin with Lamb, back in the day. Dickie Bow was a talented streetwalker once, good at following people and bringing home their secrets. ‘The new king of the spy thriller’ Mail on Sundayįrom the Intelligence Service purgatory that is Slough House, where disgraced spies are sent to see out the dregs of their careers, Jackson Lamb is on his way to Oxford, where a former spook has turned up dead on a bus. *Now a major TV series starring Gary Oldman*

Dead Lions by Mick Herron