How it opens
They had given you light duty after Flanders, a desk in the War Office annexe, and a right arm that worked in warm rooms and went its own way in cold ones.
Your work was the registry, the reading of captured papers, the sorting of other men's secrets by date and by deadliness.
Colonel WardeWe call them the Four Faces because four of them matter. A cabinet minister's secretary, a shipping clerk, and a woman of no fixed sorrow are three.
Colonel WardeThe fourth is the paymaster, and the fourth has never been in any room I can enter.
Choose
It is drawn the same each time, sir. The same hand, or a trained copy of it.
It goes down before the event, in the pilot's log. Not after, as a boast. Before, as an order.
Three papers, three ports of call, and one drawer. Whoever drew it handled the registry itself.