This woman's true identity was a CIA agent who had defected while on a long-term assignment in the United Kingdom.
She had assumed Mary Morstan's name and begun a new life. The real Miss Mary Morstan had long been buried six feet under. Thanks to the United Kingdom's household registration system, the woman's disguise had never aroused suspicion. The fact that Salomon's adoption papers had no adoptive parent listed had gone undiscovered to this day, let alone the alterations made by an agent. Of course, if someone with extremely high intelligence clearance—namely Mycroft Holmes—carefully investigated, they would inevitably find suspicious details in the past of the woman now called Mary Morstan. Salomon's assistance had been to erase the records that might have been uncovered.
There was no way an Arcanist would specifically go looking for this woman's files. Salomon's assassins had acquired a great deal of information when they infiltrated CIA headquarters in Langley. It was only while sorting through those top-secret files to strike at the CIA's human trafficking channels—though in truth, this was to acquire recruits and train soldiers who truly belonged to the City of Immortals—that Salomon learned her true identity from a list of little value.
That was right. It held little value.
Her mission had not concerned national security. Rather, it had been to gather intelligence and compromising material on businessmen and politicians, allowing the financial conglomerates that had joined the Council on Foreign Relations to gain leverage in subsequent business negotiations and swallow up the capital and technology of British companies to ease their own economic troubles. Such missions were commonplace for the CIA. A low-ranking defected agent was nothing; they could simply send another. Ever since the last shovelful of dirt had been thrown onto Margaret Thatcher's grave in the British Empire, such