London Station (Extract)

To coincide with the release of David's latest novel, London, we have the book’s first two chapters in audiobook form for you to enjoy. Artemis Procter returns in David McCloskey’s electrifying new spy thriller, where London has devolved into a covert battleground between British and American intelligence services. London Station by David McCloskey, is OUT NOW in the US and out next week in the UK. Pre-order a signed edition ⁠⁠via this link.⁠ ------------------- A new US administration has taken office, installing a brash and unconventional CIA director skeptical of old alliances and determined to disrupt the Agency. When the axe falls on the chief of London Station, the agency veteran decides to spy for the Brits―a betrayal uncovered by his replacement, Artemis Aphrodite Procter. Caught between a turncoat spymaster and a ruthless new boss back at Langley, Procter must now navigate a tense environment as old friends become adversaries and no one knows whom to trust. Adding to the chaos is a new breed of private intelligence agency: a secretive and powerful company run by a reclusive billionaire with a very different agenda than the two old allies who are suddenly at each other’s throats. When assets begin dying, Procter and her team in London Station must find out who is leaking the sources’ identities―and why―before both agencies go blind. Soon they will have to decide whether loyalty to the Mission means disobeying the Agency they serve. Immersing readers in the technological revolution upending intelligence tradecraft, London Station explores the changing nature of the spy business and what happens when politics threaten to destroy the special relationship between America and Britain. ------------------- Audiobook sample of London Station: A Novel by David McCloskey, narrated by Vanessa Daniels and George Naylor, is provided with permission of TantorMedia, an RBmedia audio brand, copyright 2026. ------------------- Email: [email protected] Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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  For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com.

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  Hello, classified listeners, producer Becky here. Today, we are exclusively sharing the audiobook for the first two chapters of David's latest novel, London Station. The link to purchase your copy is in the episode description. Enjoy.

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  Dreamscape, an RB Media audio brand, presents London Station, a novel. By David McCloskey. Narrated by Vanessa Daniels and George Naylor.

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  England and America should scrap cricket and baseball and come up with a new game that they both can play, like baseball, for example. Robert Benchley, American writer.

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  Part One: Pickpockets Chapter One

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  London

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  The Brits, what could you say? They were pickpockets, a band of charmingly accented thieves, trading on faded imperial glory, to collect crumbs of intel and hawk them to CIA in exchange for a fine meal. The agency was getting a raw deal, and now, on top of it all, Langley had been told to lay off a primo target, the kind of guy who left China once or twice each year. Pickpockets. Pickpockets who were also violating the game's rule number one: collect the intel. This is how CIA fell out with the Brits.

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  The turbulence had been shocking. The seatbelt signs illuminated pretty much constantly since takeoff. The flight attendants hadn't even wheeled out dinner—forget about the drink service—though she was almost grateful, she was off the sauce, hand to God. In place of booze, she had a little red squeezy ball for what Dr. Pan described as "appetite management," and she'd been choking it the entire flight, sweating beneath her thick cotton body padding. Sleep was out of the question for the woman whose passport bore the name Sybil Flanagan. The ride had been so bouncy that she heard the flight attendants murmuring about a couple of the Lap children back in economy going airborne, almost bonking their little baby

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  heads on the overhead compartments. In the one trip she'd risked to the lav, she had been rocketed a few inches off the seat, and her pantsuit was still soggy—it hadn't been a clean landing. So when United Airlines Flight 918 touched runway at London Heathrow at 6:54 a.m., between the violent jostling, the sleepless stress, the adrenaline high of committing future felonies on British soil, and the sobriety, she was sweating sheets. And that had her worried about the silicone mask glued across her face. When disguises went sideways, civilians tended to scream, and the last thing she needed in passport control was a face-melting situation.

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  After deplaning, she went straight to the bathroom. In the handicapped stall, she threw open her suitcase, stuffed all the clothes to one side, and pulled back a layer of fabric to reveal four black buttons fashioned to resemble plastic screws. She compressed them simultaneously until she heard a click, and she pulled open the concealment device snuggled into her case. There was her kit of spares—dental appliances, ears, cheeks, foreheads, chins, necks, and noses, also extra vials of spirit gum, remover, a kit of brushes, and a blending makeup that matched the pasty-white color of the disguise. Her Sybil disguise was also definitely on the jowlier end of the spectrum.

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  When the disguise mavens inside the Human Technology Office had shown the digital renderings of the mask, her first comment had been that Sybil was a fan of the scones—maybe too big a fan. "And that's a good thing," Gertie, one of the mavens said, "because a mask getting programmed is an additive business. Silicone comes right out of the 3D printer, and it's easier to print more of something than to slice off your pieces and parts." Fun as that could be, and it was true—the disguise mavens really could work miracles. She had once seen a male Korean-American case officer programmed for a disguise that transformed him into an Irishwoman.

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  Now sitting on the toilet, guided by her compact mirror, she decided to replace the nose, just in case. She applied spirit gum, let it dry for a moment, and then stuck one of the spares back in place. She then carefully brushed the milk-colored makeup across the seams until they vanished. Reassembling the bag, she flushed the old nose down the toilet, exited the stall, and took stock in the mirror. Dirty blonde wig, jowly cheeks, dental appliance that puffed out her mouth and made her teeth—Gertie's words—proper English. Puffy neck, forehead big enough to be a five-head, doughy chin piece, custom body padding snuggled

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  beneath an ill-fitting pantsuit that added the appearance of 30 pounds, itched like scabies, did not breathe, and—the sole redeeming quality—cranked her bust up three cup sizes. At passport control, she slapped a blue American tourist passport onto the reader and smiled for the camera. Sybil Flanagan was going to be an American when clearing passport control, an Englishwoman during the cold pitch, and son-deprived throughout. The photo she'd submitted for her UK electronic travel authorization had been snapped while wearing the Sybil mask, identical to what she was wearing now. Heathrow didn't use iris scanners.

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  The facial recognition tech here was excellent, but you didn't really have to fool it if the passport photo matched your face now, did you? Up on the screen, Sybil Flanagan was smiling right back. The passport was legit, having been procured by first securing an alias driver's license through the agency's state contacts, and then using that driver's license as an anchor for the deployment crew to submit the pics of Sybil to the State Department to work up an authentic document. But the wheel on the e-gate screen was just spinning. And here was the thing: Normally, she never would have sweated entry into the United Kingdom.

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  Normally, of course, she'd be here in true name, usually with the express knowledge and consent of the Brits, and always with the full participation of London Station. Yet London Station's prerogative was to maintain the relationship, not necessarily to conduct espionage. So this time, with the full approval of the Seventh Floor, mind you, she had opted to be a little naughty. When was the next time Gao Xiong was going to travel? The Brits didn't want to take a swing at him, wanted to kowtow to the Chinese because a few months back, something had gone sideways in Beijing, well, fine. And it was true.

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  Running an op against a Chinese intelligence officer in London was a delicate thing. She could understand the Brits not wanting the attention. But how could CIA not take a shot at a senior Chinese intelligence officer? The damn wheel kept on spinning, and she wanted to scratch her way right out of this bodysuit. What the hell was going on? "Come on," she whispered, "come on." If the op came apart here, she was going to jail, no doubt about it. And because not only the Brits, but the CIA's London Station were in the dark, she wondered if everyone would let her rot a little longer than was totally necessary, purely for spite.

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  London Station had their role, she understood and respected that, and she had hers. The wheel kept on spinning. Come on, it was too much being sober and watching this wheel at the same time. She should be in and out of the country in less than 24 hours, 48 tops, assuming the damn e-gate played ball. At last, the green checkmark materialized on the screen. The gates swung open. She pocketed the Sybil Flanagan passport and entered the United Kingdom.

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  In her room at the Canopy, just down the street from the gargantuan new Chinese Embassy compound, the woman stashed her suitcase and picked up a package that had been left for her at reception, which contained her British identity documents. The navy-blue British passport was also in the name of Sybil Flanagan, but it was a forgery that would not have held up to scrutiny at Heathrow. The hologram and e-chip were tricky to fake, but this passport was not designed to pass muster at the border. It was meant to be used for flash purposes, to convince Gao in case he demanded proof that Sybil was the Englishwoman she professed to be. She also collected the fraudulent green badge used for access to Vauxhall, which Gao would

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  understand marked Sybil as an employee of the British Secret Intelligence Service, called BSIS inside CIA, and occasionally MI6, 6, or, quite often, simply the Service. False-flagging as a Brit was easily the naughtiest part of the op, so naughty that the sight of the badge made her smile. She gathered up the £20,000 cash, should she need to give Gao an incentive. Last, she collected a business card for an Indian restaurant in London, printed on water-soluble cardstock. The phone number on the card was known as a crusty, backstopped, so Gao could contact a human at CIA or leave a message.

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  She slid the card inside a pack of Dunhills after throwing out half the cigs. Cold pitches were a sort of black hole for the case officer and the target alike, a bizarre alternate reality, a collision of two people who should never meet, and now, while conducting a final run-through, she felt the gravitational pull of another black hole, this one emanating from the minibar. Maybe just pull the ripcord on the whole day, fly back to Washington after a baby bender, deal with the fallout come what may. But she was trying to do better, she really was. Now she had the stress ball, which she had in a death grip, sitting there in her Sybil

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  disguise with her forged UK documents, thinking the CIA's Deputy Director for Operations had grown herself a real lady pair authorizing an operation that crossed pretty much every liaison red line with their British counterparts. But she wasn't spying on the UK. She was spying in the UK, not necessarily a new one for her. And the Brits would of course receive all of the product, should she be successful. The spirit, and this was important, was one of partnership, even if one partner remained in the dark. And that, she knew, sometimes could be good sexy fun.

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  While thinking this through, the woman had prayerfully knelt down and opened the minibar. Before setting off on her sobriety journey, she'd been legitimately worried that she'd wind up in the program, the CIA's internal drunk tank up in Maryland, where they sent case officers to dry out. Reasoning that kicking them into Civilian Alcoholics Anonymous presented serious problems as soon as step one: honesty. Instead, she summoned the moral courage to shut the fridge door, take a step back, grab Dr. Pan's squeezy ball, and sit on the bed pumping it to death while she rehearsed once more the flow of the cold pitch.

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  Back at headquarters, China Ops had studied Ministry of State Security Officer Gao Xiong, a counterintelligence officer with potential value, identifying penetrations inside the United States, maybe even CIA. She knew his face, knew that he was here in London under commercial cover, embedded as an adviser inside a trade delegation. She knew that during a stint in Jakarta, Gao had dinner on three occasions with a station officer and had not said no to a pitch, even though he also hadn't said yes. The other thing China Ops knew about Gao, thanks to the loose lips of another MSS officer

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  during a rare formal exchange on North Korea, was that Gao desperately wanted his eldest daughter, currently in the UK at boarding school, to attend Oxford or Cambridge. The working theory inside CIA was that Gao knew or believed the agency was penetrated, and therefore might be reluctant about an American approach in the first place. This, plus the angophilia, had tipped the scales in favor of the false-flag operation and ultimately birthed Sybil Flanagan. The other thing she knew, according to a few Ops cables out of Beijing, was that Gao was an avid runner, rain or shine.

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  That didn't mean he would be alone for long, though, merely that there might, might be space between him and any potential minders, because in the paranoid hothouse of the MSS, privacy meant only that the monitoring hadn't caught up yet. And thank God it was shine today, she thought, peering out of the lobby doors, because who knew what havoc a London rainstorm might wreak on her Sybil skin? Sometimes targets did freak out during a cold pitch, but this was rarely due to the case officer's face disintegrating into silicone cutlets. What she didn't know about Gao, though, could fill a book. In her experience, when the case officer did not have time to build rapport and trust

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  with a Chinese target over time, the most credible path to cooperation became not ideology nor greed, but whether CIA could open a hatch for the target to escape political pressure. What was the state of the patronage network inside MSS, to which Gao belonged? If Gao's sponsors in Beijing were strong, so was Gao, and the pitch would have little chance of success, at least for now. In the lobby, Sybil pretended to work on a laptop. Tap, tap, tap. The blond Englishwoman in the rumpled pantsuit kept on typing away. "Damn emails, damn corporate job," her aura seemed to say.

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  But it just so happened Sybil had a clean view of both the front door and the elevator. Clever girl. A few minutes after 5:00 PM, the delegation swung through the front doors and milled around in the lobby. The woman tracked Gao, but he was folded in with his compatriots, and there was no opportunity to peel him off without causing a ruckus or raising attention that would send the already low chances of success plummeting to zero. After a few minutes of chit-chat, Gao disappeared into the elevators. There were versions of this pitch where she found his hotel room and just went up and knocked, but this was not ideal.

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  Hotels were chock-full of cameras, and you didn't know who else might be in there. The dude might find it threatening, and in a cold pitch you wanted to give the target enough flexibility and privacy so they wouldn't have to report the pitch at all, because even if they say no, if they don't report it, you've won. A while later, after she'd demolished a coffee, the elevator doors opened, and there was Gao in a cold-weather running getup, sweatshirt and athletic pants, all by his lonesome. There were no obvious minders, at least for now. He walked outside. The woman shut her laptop, slid it into her purse, and followed right behind.

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  He was standing on the sidewalk, buried in his phone, when she sidled up beside him and dropped the pack of Dunhills at his feet, practically onto his shoes. She took a step back. With Russians, you wanted to be in their face. With Chinese, a little more distance was better, but not too much. There could be no misunderstandings. "I'm sorry," she said in the majorly accented, but still acceptable Mandarin she'd been learning for the past two years, from a nice old Chinese lady in Roslyn. It's called a cold pitch because you've got no personal relationship with the target. It's also got no room for softness or negotiation, even if you've got to be ready for mush

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  out the other side, yeses that mean no, and noes that could mean anything. Gao smiled, stooped to pick up the pack, and held it out to her. "I know you like a secret smoke, Mr. Gao," she said. "You keep it." The fun left Gao's face. He retracted the Dunhills but did not slide them into his pocket. He also didn't drop them, nor hand them back. In her experience, Chinese targets tended to crave directness, because they were direct themselves, verging on being pretty rude in many contexts. In one stilted liaison meeting, an MSS officer had asked after her pre-tax salary and if she carried a life insurance policy.

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  "I'm Sybil," she said. "I've arranged for us to meet like this because even though you are in my country, we know there are eyes inside your delegation, and I don't want you to fall under suspicion. I will be direct, because I know we are visible on cameras and do not have much time. My organization would like to work with you. We are prepared to offer £2 million for copies of a few files that you can access back in Beijing. Inside the pack of cigarettes is the business card of a restaurant." "Your organization?" Gao said. She felt he was listening, attuned to each word even as he stared out into the traffic,

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  clearly trying to work out whether this was the real deal, a provocation, or, most dangerous of all, a loyalty test conducted by his own service. His first instinct would not be curiosity, it would be suspicion.

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  The British Secret Intelligence Service, she said. He did not ask her to produce any identification, thank God. You should not have approached me. Say what you came to say, he said. Let's continue this discussion in private, she said. In that pack of cigarettes is a business card. Curry Place here in London. The phone number will reach us, and we can arrange a meeting. The paper's watasoluble if you need to be rid of it quick. Why are you pitching me, Gao asked. Because you have interesting access inside the MSS, she said, now feeling that this was headed toward a firm no.

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  He was asking the questions his superiors would put to him, already preparing the report, but she went on. And we understand your desire for your daughter to continue her education here in the United Kingdom. Perhaps at Oxford or Cambridge. We can help make this happen. Now Gao turned his focus from the torrent of bikers and aimed it straight at her. He dropped the pack of Dunhills at her feet. No, he said. I refuse, and I will report this. Well shit. In Gao's world, not reporting was pretty much impossible. The question was how much he would say.

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  She bent down to pick up the Dunhills, couldn't just leave them there, and held the pack out again.

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  Here are your cigarettes, she said. Cards in there. Next time you leave China, call us, and we'll arrange a meeting. A couple million for a few files. The chance to have an Oxbridge stamp on Fei Fei's future. Take it and think on it. She pressed the pack into his chest, maybe a little too hard, and Gao did the same right back. But he was agitated, running to angry, and his hand sank into the cottony body padding. And as he realized this was not the beginnings of an ill-defined post-menopausal belly, but a disguise, he made a weird noise.

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  What the hell, he said in Mandarin. Who are you? She slapped the cigarettes back into his hand, said, Two million pounds. Think of Fei Fei's future. Call us. This time, when Gao shoved the pack into her chest, she tottered off the curb and into the road. She never saw it, just heard the whir of an e-bike as it barreled straight into her legs, throwing her down hard on her side, face slamming the curb. Moaning, she rolled over and noticed that Sybil's guts were all twisted up. The breasts were growing from the right armpit, the belly lopsided. At first, the screams had been because of the crash,

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  but now the offending biker, who'd stepped down to help, seemed to be shouting on account of the pieces and parts of her face that had been blown clean off. Despite the thick application of spirit gum, her nose and jowls hung onto her skin by a thread, face peeling off like in a zombie flick. The e-bike guy wasn't offering a hand anymore, he was backing away. Strewn across the bike lane was, far as she could see, a cheek and the forehead, and her nose was coming next. When she finally, painfully rose to her feet, the wig ran down her backside and flopped into a hairy pile. She blinked, making eye contact with another pedestrian,

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  who did the sensible thing when confronted by a suddenly bald woman with an armpit-sprouting breasts. He hustled off. Most of the other bystanders had similar ideas, everyone wisely keeping their distance as she stumbled back up onto the sidewalk. Gao had disappeared. A policeman was hustling over. Are you all right, ma'am? I'm cool, she said. I don't think anything's broken. An odd thing to say, perhaps, when your face has dissolved across the pavement. The cop stood there gawking while she collected the contested pack of Dunhills and began picking up the pieces of the mask. The nose slid off, and she snatched that up too.

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  Another guy arrived, hustling from somewhere across the street. He was wearing sneakers and jeans and a jacket, but he showed a card to the policeman. They spoke briefly, and the cop just walked away. Cop upgrade felt bad, especially when the guy was in street clothes.

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  You're all right, ma'am, he asked. Sure am, she said. No problems here. He showed her a card, said he was from Special Branch. Then he eye-checked the handful of silicone in the wig still on the pavement. You were wearing a disguise? Sure was. Why would you wear a disguise? I guess I just don't like who I really am. Passersby were staring, cars slowing down for a look. A silence had gathered between them.

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  Do you have identification on you, he asked. What's the problem? Is it illegal to wear a disguise? Answer the question, he said, his tone hardening. Driver's license, passport. I'd really just like to be on my way. He took one step closer. She handed him the UK passport. For a few seconds, his eyes danced between the photo, her maskless face, and the pieces and parts in her hand.

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  Sybil Flanagan, he read aloud. Not much of a resemblance. With who, she said. With you. And thank God for that, she thought.

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  Chapter Two London

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  She wanted to like London, she really did. Back in her drinking days, she had come to see the city as a monument to what committed alcoholics could accomplish through teamwork. In London's case, the conquest of much of the planet. On top of this, it was an underrated spy town, a buffet of tasty targets. Russians, Chinese, Iranians, Africans, Pakistanis, Arabs. Plus an impressive roster of human rights violators, international businesses, city lawyers, and unmarked Mayfair townhouses writhing with financiers who, helpfully, from the standpoint of a spy service, were absolute whores for money.

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  Yes, in London, there really was no shortage of scoundrels and rats. Literally. For in London, you were never more than six feet from a rodent. Also to London's spy cred, present incarceration aside, the city was governed by a notionally friendly government. Even if you'd prefer Whitehall Escoche on the weaker side, so CIA could run roughshod, make it an "ask for forgiveness, not permission" kind of ops environment, always more of a hoot. But, con column, London was a ubiquitous technical surveillance powerhouse with artificial intelligence capabilities connected to their vast camera network and cellphone infrastructure.

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  London did boast some decent off-camera green spaces, suitable for operational acts, but in general, she wished there weren't so many goddamn cameras. The cellphone coverage was also too good. You wanted that spottier, so it would be harder for the opposition to realize that sometimes you didn't have your phone. Also, as a baseball girl, she hated the soccer fixation. And cricket? The word alone was agitating. And now she'd been arrested and thrown in a dank concrete holding room at Charing Cross Police Station. Welcome to London. After in-processing and declining legal representation, she stewed in her cell, waiting,

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  consoled by the knowledge that however much this sucked, right now, it sucked much worse to be inside the CIA's London station, dealing with the fallout of an officer violating a close ally's National Security Act and committing a slew of other charges relating to Sybil's fraudulent documents. Unlike some of the other places where she'd been incarcerated, she didn't think the Brits were going to rough her up, or trod in a wacky cellmate to goose or shank her while she slept. But the CIA's chief of station in London? She knew he would like to stab her himself. The custody sergeant collected her and led her through a maze of hallways into

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  a room with a long table containing most of Sybil Flanagan's earthly possessions, and even a few pieces of Sybil herself, numbered and organized into neat rows. She sat down across from a woman who introduced herself as Special Branch Detective Inspector Hills, and a man, Detective Sergeant Johnson. Hills had a bob of red hair and was smiling more than the woman thought appropriate for a law enforcement officer. Johnson had the baldest head she'd ever seen. "You do not have to say anything," Johnson said, repeating the rote lines, "but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.

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  We are recording this interview." "Peachy," the woman said. Hills started with Sybil's British passport. "This is a forgery," she said. The woman said that was ridiculous. Then Hills tapped the green SIS badge. "As is this." The woman asked if they had called head office at Vauxhall Cross, and neither responded. Johnson was wiggling the silicone forehead piece through the air. "Same for this." "And thank God for that," the woman said, feathering a hand across her own. That elicited from Hills something approaching a laugh. She tapped the laptop. "There is very little on this machine.

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  I've never seen a laptop like this. It's almost like it does not belong to a real person." "Brand-new," the woman said. "Haven't futzed around with it much." Hills passed over the body padding. Did her nose wrinkle in disgust? Halting at Sybil's American passport and driver's license, which the authorities had excavated from the concealment device in her suitcase back in the hotel room. Along with the rest of the disguise kit, it was spread on the far corner of the table. "This American passport is real," Hills said. "So here is what we know at this juncture about Mrs. Flanagan." "Ms. Flanagan," the woman corrected.

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  At this, Hills, still smiling, clicked open her pen to scribble briefly in her notepad. The woman took the chance to fluff out her curly black hair, still flattened from the skull cap. Hills finished writing. "At present, I know that Sybil Flanagan's UK papers are forged, whilst her American documents seem to be authentic. She arrived at Heathrow on United Airlines Flight 918 just this morning. She went straight to her hotel. The same hotel housing a Chinese trade delegation, in fact. Here, our friend Sybil seems to have sought out a particular member of this delegation, a Mr. Gao Xiong.

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  Witnesses report that there was a spat over a pack of cigarettes. Ah, yes, here it is." Hills gathered up the done Hills, said they'd phoned the number on the business card inside. "Strange answering machine for a curry house." "Where are we driving with this?" A thin smile spread on Hills's face. "What is your name?" "Sybil Flanagan." "But who really is Sybil Flanagan?" Hills said. "I've been trying to answer that question my entire life." "We ran your intake photos through a handful of national databases, including some maintained

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  by friends in the security services, and you know what? I think we can put an end to your soul-searching." "That would be a tremendous relief," the woman said. "And here's the answer," Hills said. "Sybil Geraldine Flanagan is a CIA officer named Artemis Aphrodite Procter." Onto the table, she slid a copy of the photo from Proctor's diplomatic passport, which she'd used to enter the United Kingdom years earlier, unofficial and declared CIA business. "Ta-da," Hills said, and sneezed. "Bless you," Proctor said.