A contemporary espionage thriller about the machinery that moves beneath official history.

When a courier vanishes in Tbilisi, Mara Venn and the ghost intelligence unit operating out of Bermondsey are pulled into a chain of old files, hidden financial structures, and institutional silences that point toward something larger than any single operation.

Absent Signal follows a team built from the edges of official systems — former operators, analysts, and specialists who know that the most dangerous machinery rarely announces itself. As the trail moves through London, Lisbon, Frankfurt, Tallinn, and beyond, the question is no longer whether someone is watching. It is whether the system has been watching them for years.

Written with a restrained, atmospheric edge, Gerald Barnaby’s debut novel explores institutional power, operational psychology, and the people who carry the weight of the work they do.