Glossary

This page explains the words the books use without stopping to explain them: Service slang, tradecraft, file classifications and the places the action happens in. It covers books 1–6, and it is written for someone who has just finished one of them and hit a term that made no sense. Entries are alphabetical within each section; where a term has its own page, the entry gives the meaning in one line and links to it, and where a place is real rather than invented, the entry says so.

The Service

Annex C — one of the Park’s classified annexes: a database of known mercenaries, “legit, grey area and downright nasty”. A face-recognition hit on a ferry arrival returns an Annex C match, and in book 6 the slow horses learn that their enemy has a team because three of his men were already on the list. See Annex C.

COBRA — real: the government’s civil contingencies committee, which meets in a Cabinet Office briefing room and coordinates the official response to a terror attack or other emergency. In book 4 it is where Claude Whelan, in his first week as First Desk, is briefed on Westacres.

The Dogs — the Service’s internal-security squad, its own police: they search flats, take guns and collect people before dawn. Nick Duffy runs them in books 1–3; Emma Flyte is Head Dog from book 4, appointed to a unit still in the doghouse after Tearney used its offices for her own ends. In book 5 they run a lockdown of Slough House that their own Head Dog cannot enforce, and are sent to collect a gun from Lamb and instead asked to invent a cover story. Book 6 opens with Taverner offering Flyte a sideways move to Slough House, which she refuses before walking out of the Service; she then works off the books for Louisa Guy and is killed in Wales, and the book never names her successor. See The Dogs.

Down the Corridor — Service slang for Westminster, the political world the Park answers to; “Over the River” is the intelligence community on the other bank.

First Desk — the head of the Service; from book 4 the post also carries the title Chief Executive. Charles Partner held it before Ingrid Tearney, who held it through book 3 and has retired by the start of book 4, when Claude Whelan is in his first week. Whelan holds it through book 5 and hands it to Diana Taverner at the end of that book, in exchange for a document and his staff’s jobs. Book 6 opens with Taverner newly installed and already consolidating — her first act is to try to move Flyte sideways, a move Flyte refuses — and Whelan retired. See Claude Whelan and Diana Taverner.

Bagman — the officer who carries for a principal: the fetching, the paying and the errands that must not be traced back. In book 5 Tyson Bowman is Zafar Jaffrey’s bagman, and the job is exactly what makes him the story’s scapegoat. See Tyson Bowman.

Galahad — Claude Whelan’s codename before he was promoted: the intelligence staff “over the river” were given knightly codenames, and his wife Claire loved it. On elevation to First Desk it was replaced with RP1, which he finds functional but boring.

Head Dog — the officer in charge of the Dogs: Bad Sam Chapman held it before Nick Duffy, who runs them through books 1–3, and Emma Flyte, eleven years in the Met, takes over in book 4. The rest of the Dogs are, inevitably, “underdogs”. Book 6 offers her a sideways move out of the post in its first chapter, which she refuses; she leaves the Service, works off the books for Louisa Guy, and is killed in Wales. No replacement is named. See Emma Flyte.

The Home Office — the government department the Service belongs to; its minister, the Home Secretary, is the Service’s political master. Peter Judd takes the job in book 3 and has retired into private life by book 4; book 5’s political pressure comes instead from Dennis Gimball, an MP who fronted Brexit and holds no office at all. In book 6 Judd is back as a private broker, and the text reminds the reader he “might have been Home Secretary once”. See Dennis Gimball and Peter Judd.

Joe — Service slang for one of its own officers, the person who does the work rather than the desk. “All joes go to the well,” Lamb says.

Joe country — the territory beyond Spook Street, meaning anywhere its habits and protections do not reach. It is the title of book 6, and the book gives it a harder meaning than book 4 did: not just the place where the Service’s rules stop applying, but the condition of being alone with no cover at all — “In joe country, any stranger was a hostile” (book 6, C11); “Going dark’s protocol in joe country” (C08); and, in the gentlest use in the series, a death: “His grandfather was entering joe country” (C01). See Joe Country.

Limitations — the committee that holds the Service’s purse strings, formerly Steering & Oversight; an op it has not cleared is an op that runs out of money.

MI5 / the Service — real: Britain’s Security Service, normally “the Service” or “Five”. MI5 is the UK’s domestic intelligence agency; here it is the institution everyone serves, fears or despises.

Number Ten — real: 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s office; in book 3 it is the prize Peter Judd is manoeuvring for, and in book 5 the room where Claude Whelan is told that catching the Abbotsfield killers is the price of keeping his job.

The O.B. — River’s grandfather, David Cartwright: a retired senior officer, “Old Bastard” in his daughter’s phrase, who raised River on Service stories. See David Cartwright.

Officer / agent — both mean a member of the Service here; “officer” is the formal word, “agent” is used loosely for the same people. (Real services distinguish them: officers run agents.)

Records — the Park’s records department, downstairs, where the old files live and Molly Doran works; Lamb visits when he wants something the building has forgotten, and in book 4 the horses phone her for personnel and travel records. In book 5 the department is being let go, and its archive supplies the original of the Watering Hole Paper — the paperwork the Service is disposing of is the paperwork that saves it. In book 6 Molly is still in the basement, and still the only person who can find a name the Park has lost: Lamb takes her the name Peter Kahlmann and she produces the file. By the end of the book all of Slough House’s own records have been erased. See Molly Doran.

Regent’s Park / the Park — Service headquarters, and the centre of the world for anyone exiled to Slough House. See Regent’s Park.

RP1 — the designator Claude Whelan is given on elevation to First Desk, replacing his codename Galahad: functional, he thinks, but boring.

Second Desk — the deputy’s post, though book 1 notes there are now several Second Desks. Diana Taverner holds the one that matters — Ops — and is still Second Desk under Whelan in books 4 and 5, until she takes First Desk at the end of book 5. See Diana Taverner.

Slough House — the Service’s dumping ground in Finsbury, above a newsagent’s: a way of losing people without sacking them. In book 6 it loses J.K. Coe, killed at a barn in Wales, and gains a new slow horse, Lech Wicinski, whose laptop was seeded with illegal material to bury a name; Emma Flyte, offered a posting here and refusing it, is killed in the same operation. The book’s last page has the house’s records erased. See Slough House.

Slow horse — the Service’s insult for Slough House staff: still a horse in the race, but one that cannot come first. The dream is going “back among the thoroughbreds”. See The slow horses.

Spook — informal word for an intelligence officer, used by journalists, politicians and the books’ narration alike.

Spook Street — the Service’s world and its folklore, and in book 4 David Cartwright’s own phrase for it: “When you lived on Spook Street you wrapped up tight: watched every word, guarded every secret.” A retiring officer is described as “leaving Spook Street for civilian life”; beyond it lies joe country. See Spook Street.

Vetting — the background checks run on staff and anyone with access; a botched vetting is a useful thing to hold over a rival, which is how Lamb gets past Duffy in book 3.

Tradecraft and operations

Black-bagged — seized and removed without charge or paperwork; the thing Lamb says should happen to Taverner before she reaches a cell.

Cicada — the books’ word for a sleeper left buried for years, after the insect that spends seventeen years underground and then “bursts out and sings”. See The cicada network.

Cold body — a ready-made identity: birth certificate, passport, bank account, credit rating, built over years through official channels rather than forged, so that it renews like any real document. Add flesh and blood and you have a fully documented life; the wardrobe department kept them current until the Cold War was declared won, and the passport found in book 4 was issued for a two-year-old. Taverner renames them “product” so the term gives nothing away. See Cold bodies.

Cover — the identity an officer lives under while working; River’s cover in Upshott is “Jonathan Walker”, a thriller writer with an Amazon page to prove it.

Dry run — a rehearsal staged to look like the real thing but with nothing live: Harkness’s team left unarmed but functional bombs in European cities and “poisoned” water supplies with harmless pollutants, then watched the security tighten. In book 4 Frank Harkness calls the bombing of Westacres “an exercise in what’s possible” and blames a man who went over the edge.

Fugue Protocol — a dormant emergency procedure: a home-soil operation with no oversight, “going under the bridge”, which supersedes the Service’s normal funding and committee approvals and needs the cooperation of whoever chairs Limitations. Taverner asks Oliver Nash to trigger it in book 6 (C08) and knows he will refuse; C10 says all she wanted was her application minuted, so that when the operation goes wrong she can say she tried to stop it.

Legend — a fabricated history that makes a cover or an operation believable; in book 1 the team works one up to explain how Hobden’s files were taken.

London Rules — the Service’s working ethic rather than a written code: cover your own back, build your walls high, and make the other side deal with you on your own terms. Lamb states rule one over tea in book 5 (C03); Taverner’s version is that anyone who wants to play London Rules should write their will first. Every character quotes it slightly differently, and the difference is the character. See London Rules.

Off the books / deniable — Catherine’s distinction: a black op is officially deniable, while one that is off the books “never happened” — no record, no budget line, nobody to blame. See Off-the-books operations.

Safe house — a property kept off the books for meetings or for holding someone; Catherine describes one whose bills were paid by standing order on a house that did not officially exist.

Sleeper — an agent planted under a false identity and left inactive for years, working solo with a call-code and no handler. Book 2’s sleepers date from the Cold War; book 5’s cell went one better and were planted as students, with flats, papers and a van supplied by the service that owned them.

Snow White — the Park’s code name for Richard Pynne’s “home-soil, low-risk” operation running Hannah Weiss: a British officer the BND believes has infiltrated the Civil Service on Germany’s behalf, and who has in fact infiltrated the BND for Britain — or that is what the Park thinks. Her German handler is Peter Kahlmann. The operation’s paperwork turns out to describe a man with another name and another service behind him. See Snow White.

SSD — North Korea’s State Security Department: the service that selected, trained and planted book 5’s cell and sends its instructions nightly. The book keeps it off the page — an address, a leader, and a phrase about the snake eating its own tail. See The SSD.

The Watering Hole Paper — the Service’s own blueprint for destabilising a small country: destroy the village, poison the watering hole, cripple the railway, kill a populist leader. Written by Claude Whelan nineteen years before book 5, declassified by Charles Partner, and executed against Britain by a foreign cell; internal name Operation Shopping List. See The Watering Hole Paper.

Slipped the leash — gone off the lead: an asset, an agent or a prisoner out of the Service’s control. Whelan’s account of Frank Harkness is that he “slipped the leash about ten minutes after hitting the street”.

Surveillance — watching and following a target, usually as a team; being good at it is the books’ basic test of professionalism.

Tail — to follow someone covertly, and the person doing the following. River tails Taverner for two days in book 1.

Tiger team — a team hired to attack your own defences as a test: hackers, a wet squad, a simulated raid. Judd hires one through Black Arrow in book 3, and it stops simulating.

Tradecraft — the professional craft of covert work: cover, surveillance, dressing to disappear, and waiting without looking like you are waiting.

Classification and paper

The Fiasco — Webb’s preferred word for River’s King’s Cross failure, and the incident that ends his career; the file the Park keeps on it is the kind of thing people hold over each other.

The flight fund — cash, a passport and a key to a bank box, kept where you can grab them: the means to run if the Service turns on you. See The flight fund.

The Grey Books — the Service’s files on conspiracy theories — 9/11, 7/7, Lockerbie, WMDs — kept because knowing what people believe makes it easier to bury the truth. See The Grey Books.

Project Waterproof — the Service’s programme for deporting “undesirables” without legal process, denied for years; in book 3 it is the secret someone was killed for. See Project Waterproof.

Scott — the highest security classification, and the level outsiders assume holds the real secrets.

Virgil — the second-highest classification, currently; a great deal of sensitive material is filed there because ministers and committees chase Scott-level instead.

The whackjob files — Lamb’s name for the Grey Books, and the name River says “they” use for them. Same files, different insult. See The Grey Books.

Places

Abbotsfield — fictional: the Derbyshire village shot up in book 5’s prologue, twelve dead, and attacked again at its own memorial service while the Service guards the Abbey. See Abbotsfield.

Aldersgate Street — real: the street in Finsbury, on the City’s edge, where Slough House’s door is.

The archive — fictional: the off-site store for the Grey Books and everything graded up to Virgil, a converted bunker under wasteland west of London, entered through a drain cover. See The archive.

The Barbican — real: the Barbican Estate and arts centre next door to Slough House, a labyrinth of walkways where the shortest route is never straight.

Birmingham — real: where book 5’s mayoral campaign holds a library meeting and where the cell leaves the country’s second city by road.

The cellar — fictional: at Les Arbres, the lightless room with a single candle where each boy was locked in on his twelfth birthday, given a bread roll and a beaker of water a day, and released only when he asked for his freedom.

Caerwyss Hall — fictional: the manor near Pegsea that has “gone corporate” — conference rooms, a pool, an assault course, stables, quad bikes, a spa — and that hosted the New Year party where a girl in a silver dress had a crossbow put into her hands. Book 6’s plot is the Service burying what happened there. See Caerwyss Hall.

The dazzle ship — real: HMS President, moored on the Embankment on the approach to Blackfriars Bridge, wearing a modern homage to the First World War dazzle camouflage that was meant to break up a ship’s outline and spoil a submarine’s aim. In book 4 it is the place on the river where Frank Harkness waits.

The farmhouse — fictional: the house outside London where Catherine Standish is held in book 3; the bus in its yard is how Ho finds her. See The farmhouse.

Les Arbres — fictional: the walled house in France, near Poitiers, where a commune of Russian, English, German and Czech men raised boys on cover stories in the early 1990s; burned three nights before River reaches it in book 4. See Les Arbres.

The Needle — fictional: the books’ name for the City skyscraper where book 2’s meeting with Pashkin takes place — eighty storeys, a hotel below, a service lift behind the stairs. See The Needle.

Pegsea — fictional: the Pembrokeshire town with a High Street, a pub and a graveyard, where Lucas Harper’s family holidayed and where book 6’s Welsh search ends. A town “this size, this far from London” is beyond Peter Judd’s fixing, which is why Emma Flyte walks towards its police station. See Pegsea.

St Leonard’s — fictional: the discreet brick chapel in Hampstead the Service uses for funerals, “the Spooks’ Chapel”, with a west wall of plaques to officers who did not come home, “The Last Dead Letter Drop”. David Cartwright is buried there in book 6. See St Leonard’s.

Skylarks — fictional: the private care home where David Cartwright spends his last year and dies in book 6, in a room “purpose-built to die in”. See Skylarks.

St Giles Cripplegate — real: the church inside the Barbican, a tennis ball’s throw from Slough House, where Tearney and Lamb meet in book 3.

Smithfield — real: the City district around the meat market; in book 2, Shana Bellman’s temping agency is near it.

Tonbridge — real: the Kent town where the O.B. lives, and the end of River’s train ride from London Bridge.

Upshott — fictional: the Cotswold village where book 2 plants its sleepers, with a pub, a shop, a church and an MoD range on an old USAF base. See Upshott.

Westacres — fictional: the shopping centre on London’s western fringe, built round a fountain hub where four corridors meet, bombed on the first working day of the year in book 4. See Westacres.

Westminster Abbey — real: the church where book 5 expects its attack. The memorial service there is the decoy: the Service fills the streets around it with armed police while the cell drives to the village service that will also be on television. See Westminster Abbey.

Names that are really operations

A mixed shelf: a legend, an outfit, a network, a town, a pill and a scheme for breeding people — because in these books a name is rarely just a name.

Alexander Popov — the Soviet spymaster the Service spent the Cold War chasing: a file, a biography and a reputation, all built on a man who never existed.

Black Arrow — Sylvester Monteith’s corporate-security firm, mostly firewall-testing until Peter Judd hired it; not a Service operation, but the firm that supplied his tiger team.

Bullingdon Fopp — Peter Judd’s PR firm, and the corporate client that hired Caerwyss Hall for the New Year party. Its name on a website is how Louisa Guy connects a missing boy to a royal guest.

Number Seven — the name a member of the royal family went by at Caerwyss Hall, “how close in line to the seat of power he was at the time”. The book never gives him another.

Paul’s Pantry — the Pegsea catering company Lucas Harper did cash-in-hand work for; “for all your party needs”, and the reason a seventeen-year-old was in the room when the crossbow came out.

The cicadas — the sleeper network in book 2, planted in Britain and left dormant for decades, answering to a legend. See The cicada network.

Project Cuckoo — the Cold War scheme, more legend than file, to breed “a perfect simulacrum of the enemy”: a fake American town where children would be born and raised as Americans. Frank Harkness took the idea and turned it round — fanatics instead of mimics, children who believed their own cover stories — and the Service refused it on paper while funding the house in France where it ran. See Project Cuckoo.

Xemoflavin — a pill sold online as a cure for liver cancer; the bottle from Katinsky’s flat turns out to be, in the Park’s assessment, “a whole lot of not much”.

ZT/53235 — the closed Soviet town in Georgia where Popov was supposedly born: a plutonium plant with a number for a name, wiped off the map after an accident.