You call on Miss Abernathy the next day and are ushered into a sitting room so thick with smoke you can barely see. A slim white hand rises from the murk to offer you a pipe.

“Want a puff? Wonderful stuff this hookah, I can’t imagine why nobody has them back in New York. I haven’t slept in three days.”

When in Rome. You take the pipe, ignoring the lipstick smeared around the rim, and take a puff. Steam and tobacco fill your mouth like a cup of warm mint tea.

“I thought you might be here,” she continues. “Natural allies and all that. Pyatnitsa serves chaos, the pirate serves himself, and while dear Baumgarten is a devotee of progress, he wants to keep her to Germany and we can’t have that, can we? I like the great powers just as they are, occupied with each other and leaving me in peace. I’m sure her majesty agrees. You’re with Naval Intelligence, I presume?”

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You choke, smoke spurting out your nose.

“Now, don’t argue, I can’t abide pretense. You may have fooled poor Ibrahim, but you’re not a good enough fraud to put one past a real scientist. I don’t believe you’ve ever touched a volume of Laplace in your life, and your knowledge of the movements of Jupiter’s moons is frankly embarrassing.”

Your eyes have adjusted enough to make her out, lounging on a divan in a silk robe, papers and little cups of coffee scattered around her like a conquered army. The moment you lower the pipe she snatches it and resumes smoking furiously. Hattie Abernathy. The first woman to attend classes at Harvard, and the first to be expelled. As brilliant as she is unpredictable.

“Now, how would you like to approach our competitors? The Sultan would like us all bidding against each other at his little soiree, but he doesn’t realize that the competition has already started.”