Red Corona Read online

  After two hours of walking she reached a single, vast step in the ground. She stared at it for a moment, her mind unable to process its strangeness until it realised it was a road, raised up to protect it from the freeze-thaw swelling of the tundra, and she had hit it side on. Valera could either cross over it and keep going the way she was, or follow it and find out where it went. Her body decided it was too tired even to guide her by instinct, so she stepped up, turned right, and let the road lead her. Twenty minutes later she stopped dead in her tracks. There was a sign in front of her and it wasn’t in Cyrillic. Its letters were from the Latin alphabet. She wasn’t in Russia any more. She was in Finland.

  The nearest place worth being on a road sign, somewhere called Ilomantsi, was only a few kilometres away. It turned out to be a small village, just a few paved streets and a few more muddy tracks rutted by cartwheels. But in the middle of its little square stood a large memorial to a battle that had been fought somewhere nearby. There was also, more importantly for Valera, a bus idling next to the monument.

  The engine was running and a short queue of people was waiting to get on. Valera didn’t know where the bus was headed, but even her foggy, malnourished brain reasoned it wouldn’t be back across the border. So she joined the end of the line and pulled a purse out of the top of her rucksack, hoping the small amount of rubles she’d been able to secrete away over the last three years would be enough to buy her a ticket somewhere.

  It turned out that Finnish bus drivers were as uninterested in asking questions about their passengers as Karelian truck drivers. It also turned out that Valera was not the first person to try to pay her fare with Russian coins. The driver took a few coins from the handful she offered him, and nodded at her to take a seat.

  CHAPTER 24

  Medev knew that one day someone, somewhere would decide he knew too much about something he shouldn’t and he’d suddenly become a threat to the people he’d spent his whole life serving. He’d been part of the Soviet intelligence apparatus long enough to have worked for the NKVD, the MGB and now the KGB. He’d survived Stalin’s purges of his own spies, and the jostling for control that had followed his death. Medev was now as near to the heart of the Party as he could be without being chairman of the KGB himself. His position as chief of the scientific directorate came with many powerful allies and untold, invisible enemies. But, for the moment, his standing was still good and his authority unquestioned.

  He’d slept well, Korolev was already making his way back to the far side of the Urals, and he could enjoy his morning walk to the Lubyanka in peace. He strolled down Bolshaya Nikitskaya ul., and across Alexandrovsky Garden and Red Square, watching the city come to life around him in peace. Babushkas hurried their grandchildren to school, and the street sweepers went through their daily ritual of cleaning the pavements outside old pastel-stuccoed villas as the bright summer sun rose over the spires of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  Like every other day, Medev reached his cavernous office at ten minutes to nine, and brewed himself a sour cherry and honey tea. Six five-metre-high windows flooded the room with light during the day, and a row of large, orb-shaped pendants hanging from the ceiling did the same at night. The room was far too large for one man in Medev’s opinion, but he knew its size was intended to reflect the power and importance of his position rather than Medev himself.

  He sat at his desk, surrounded on all four sides by three metres of meticulously maintained parquet flooring, savouring his favourite drink and toying with the set of figurines he kept next to his blotting pad. The small figures were abstract human shapes, fashioned in clay by Kazimir Malevich, the great Modernist artist who had been lauded by Lenin and then derided by Stalin.

  Medev loved the figures for their myriad contradictions. They were anonymous, homogenous, each without a face and all of them made up of the same basic shapes. But they bore such unique markings and indentations from Malevich’s tools that they were all completely individual. The same but different, different but the same.

  No one knew if Khrushchev admired Modernism, and few officers would have risked displaying something so provocative as Malevich’s figures in case they were not to his taste. But Medev reasoned that the leader of the Soviet Union probably had more important things to worry about than this. If Medev was going to find himself bundled onto the back seat of a car and driven out to Khimki Forest, it wouldn’t be for a minor artistic indulgence.

  At exactly nine o’clock there was a knock at Medev’s door. Medev’s assistant, Lieutenant Vadim Rykov, had arrived for his morning briefing. Rykov was barely into his twenties but he’d worked for Medev for almost two years and was well trained in his boss’s preferred working methods. So, as ever, he got the incidentals out of the way before the day’s big stories.

  This morning’s less important news included the acquisition of a new wrist-mounted Tessina subminiature camera by a KGB agent from the manufacturer’s factory in Grenchen, Switzerland, and the progress of MIR and BESM research groups working on the development of the Soviet Union’s first solid-state computer. Then Rykov moved on to the three pieces of information that might require Medev’s review.

  ‘Our informant at Cooke airbase has confirmed the next Corona retrieval is still scheduled for tomorrow morning, Pacific time.’ He gave Medev a moment to file this away in his head. ‘And results for the latest SP-117 tests will be delayed again as more volunteers are recruited.’

  SP-117 was the codename for the KGB’s range of psychoactive drugs. They were as close as the KGB had come to creating a real truth serum and were a cornerstone of its interrogation processes. But the latest generation, which should have gone into general circulation two months ago, was having teething problems. It either didn’t work, caused test subjects to become delirious, or killed them.

  The lieutenant expected Medev to be angry about this latest setback, but if he was, he didn’t show it. He remained silent, turning one of Malevich’s squat figures over in his hands.

  Rykov cleared his throat and moved on to the final item on the agenda. ‘A major explosion has caused significant damage to the Povenets B naukograd in Karelia.’

  This got Medev’s attention. He held the clay figure still as Rykov read through the truncated initial report that had been sent overnight to Moscow.

  ‘The explosion occurred at the city’s power plant while the GRU administrator was inspecting it,’ Rykov continued. ‘Part of the plant was destroyed, causing an overnight blackout…’ He paused again at the line that had shocked him when he’d first read it half an hour ago ‘…and levelling the school building next to it. The administrator and surviving plant workers have been transported to the hospital in Petrozavodsk. Initial indications suggest all children and teachers in the school were killed. The GRU is confident the site is now secure.’ He waited for Medev to respond.

  Medev placed the small statue back on his desk.

  ‘What research was being done at Povenets B?’ he asked.

  Rykov consulted his notes. ‘A variety of advanced radio and electronics projects. Primarily remote guidance systems, and long-range, experimental communications.’

  Medev sat for another long moment, then looked up at his young assistant and said, ‘Get me a plane.’

  CHAPTER 25

  Knox marched through the front door of Leconfield House, full of righteous indignation. After security reluctantly waved him through, he made his way across the ground floor’s large typing pool to the bank of lifts that would take him up to confront Manning. By now the MI5 rumour mill had done its work and row after row of people averted their eyes as he passed. Colleagues he’d worked with for over a decade pretended they couldn’t see him, but he didn’t care. He was about to give them something new to talk about.

  Knox hadn’t needed another trip down to see White or up to Cambridge to confirm that the new papers he’d found in Bianchi and Moretti’s flat were legitimate and dangerous. He’d looked through the papers when he’d got back to
Kemp House, and a couple of the equations felt familiar, though he couldn’t remember where from. In the morning he took them to the library in Senate House, the towering grey obelisk that loomed over Bloomsbury, and ten minutes in the physics section jogged his memory: they were a set of radio wave frequency calculations.

  Knox had gleaned enough from briefings with White to know that frequency identification was a fundamental part of the science behind Operation Pipistrelle. Now the Italians were no longer just a mystery for Knox to solve; they were a potential threat to national security, and the timing of their deaths was suddenly extremely significant.

  The OECD was the direct descendant of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, which had been formed to administer the thirteen billion dollars America and Canada pumped into Europe after the war via the Marshall Plan.

  After the continent’s economies were shored up, the OEEC’s members decided to expand both the organisation and its remit. America and Canada were allowed to join, a belated thank you for their money, and the members magnanimously decided that the new OECD’s mission would be to help the world’s less-developed economies grow and prosper. Whether these economies wanted this help was a detail that would be ironed out later.

  Now, the organisation’s inaugural conference in London was just three days away. The main event would, of course, be mostly a show. A chance for heads of state to posture and have their pictures taken. But Holland had made it clear to every department head in MI5 that the conference needed to be a success. Politically, it gave Britain a much-needed platform in the nascent new world order – a way to align itself with America but with the buffer of a grand international project firmly rooted in Europe, which would hopefully also stop the continent from falling into another war no one could afford. And from an information-gathering perspective, while the politicians were enjoying their receptions and photo opportunities, their London embassies would become the world’s most tantalising intelligence targets. This was because the OECD delegates included the most senior members of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, set up to coordinate and consolidate the West’s opposition to the threat of Soviet Russia.

  Everyone wanted to know whose egos needed stroking, whose noses had most recently been put out of joint, and what intrigues and stratagems were being hatched against friends and foes. MI5 had toiled for years to gain its home field advantage, creating and refining the Pipistrelle devices, then installing them in embassies, hotel rooms, and conference facilities all over the capital.

  If Bianchi and Moretti had found a way to replicate them, and someone else was able to listen to what was being discussed behind closed doors, all of MI5’s hard work would be undone. It also, in Knox’s mind, shortened the list of the Italians’ potential killers to three possibilities: someone they were working with who didn’t want them working with anyone else, someone who knew about their discovery and killed them when they wouldn’t hand it over, or someone who was scared of being exposed by it.

  As for the passports, Knox had seen a lot of forgeries in his time, and these ones were good. Very good. So good, in fact, they could only have come from either an expert and expensive forger, or from a source that regularly produced high-quality fakes, like a security service. He had no proof that they’d come from MI5. They could just as easily have been made by MI6, the CIA, KGB, SDECE, or any of the other acronymmed agencies with a presence in London who used identity documents like currency. But he also couldn’t say for certain that someone in the Service hadn’t produced them.

  By the time Knox reached the fifth floor, Manning’s secretary was waiting for him. Rachel Taunton had worked for Manning even longer than Peterson, and, just like everyone else close to him, was enjoying her recent rise to the Service’s highest echelon.

  She let Knox step out of the lift, but blocked him from getting any further.

  ‘I’m here to see Manning.’

  ‘The director general’s busy.’

  ‘Acting director general,’ he corrected her.

  ‘Not any more,’ she replied, her face breaking into a crocodile smile.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear? He was called to Whitehall this morning.’ She made a show of checking her watch. ‘It’s been official for almost an hour now.’

  Knox couldn’t believe it. Holland had been out of action for less than a week, and he was carrying evidence that raised serious questions about MI5’s operational security and Manning’s personal agenda. This wasn’t the time to hand the Service permanently over to someone else. Knox had to get to Whitehall, confront Manning, or make his case directly to the Home Secretary that he shouldn’t be given absolute power over the Service.

  Another lift arrived and he stepped inside as the doors started to close.

  Taunton, still smiling, called after him: ‘They’ll be celebrating by now.’

  She’d meant it as a twist of the knife she’d just buried in his chest, but she’d actually just told Knox there was no point going to Whitehall after all. If Manning was celebrating, there was only one place he’d be.

  CHAPTER 26

  The Fountain restaurant opened in Fortnum and Mason’s in 1955, and ever since had attracted the kind of person who liked their consumption extremely conspicuous. The restaurant’s plush, velvet booths gave the illusion of privacy, while their low backs made sure that everyone could see and be seen. Likewise, its windows were set low and fringed with curtains but still managed to provide a perfect view of the restaurant’s diners from the street.

  Knox wasn’t at all surprised to find Manning in one of the Fountain’s larger booths, flanked by Peterson and two younger men he didn’t recognise. They looked like they’d been shipped up from Oxford that morning – they were bright, eager, and were both wearing the same Prince of Wales check suit as Peterson.

  The four men were all tucking into the restaurant’s signature welsh rarebit. To Knox’s non-gourmand eyes it looked like pretentious cheese on toast, but people who had actually sampled the dish described it in near-transcendental terms.

  ‘Enjoying your meal?’ Knox asked the group.

  The four heads turned as one, no doubt expecting to see the maître d’ dutifully checking in on them.

  ‘Ah, Richard, care to join us?’ Manning said, gesturing to the edge of the booth.

  Knox didn’t move.

  ‘Phillips here was just telling us a charming story about Fortnum’s sending hampers to some suffragettes who had been sent to prison for smashing their windows.’ One of the Oxford men smiled, enjoying his moment in Manning’s spotlight. ‘Rather gentlemanly, don’t you think?’ He cut a large slice of the rarebit, then gestured again at the banquette. ‘Please, sit.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Knox replied. ‘I hear congratulations are in order.’

  ‘Yes, well, the PM thought it was for the best.’

  ‘Of course he did.’

  Peterson coughed loudly into his napkin, a less than subtle warning that Knox should check his tone. Knox ignored him.

  ‘Would you like my report, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Report?’

  ‘Into Bianchi and Moretti.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Manning turned to his two young acolytes. ‘Phillips, Harris, if you could excuse us for a moment.’

  ‘No need,’ Peterson said, placing his napkin on the table and shuffling out of the booth. ‘You can give it to me, outside.’

  ‘I really think the director general should hear it,’ Knox replied.

  ‘He will. Through me.’

  Peterson guided Knox quickly out of the restaurant. Then, on the corner of Jermyn Street, asked him what exactly he thought he was playing at.

  ‘First buggering off to Cambridge and Holloway without approval, and now trying to make a scene in public. What the hell’s got into you?’

  ‘You sound stressed, Nicholas,’ Knox replied, his voice full of mock concern.

  ‘We’re in a period of transition,’ he replied. A poli
tical, neutral answer. ‘Everyone is feeling the strain.’

  ‘They look pretty relaxed to me.’ Knox pointed through the window at the three men still enjoying their lunch, Phillips and Harris hanging on to whatever anecdote Manning was telling them.

  ‘They haven’t spent all morning keeping the Spanish and Portuguese delegations from each other’s throats,’ Peterson said, somewhat less neutrally. ‘That thankless task fell to me.’

  ‘And I’m sure you put up a fight.’

  Peterson let out a long sigh. ‘I don’t have time for this, Richard. What’s going on?’

  ‘I know why they were killed.’

  ‘So?’

  It wasn’t the response Knox had expected.

  ‘You think that justifies talking to Manning like that?’ Peterson asked.

  ‘They weren’t just troublemakers. They’d worked out a way to replicate Pipistrelle.’

  Concern suddenly flickered across Peterson’s face. He stepped closer to Knox.

  ‘You have proof?’ he asked, lowering his voice.

  ‘I have their equations. Their real equations.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘Another set of papers. Hidden in their apartment, and not very well.’

  Peterson glanced through the restaurant’s wide windows at Manning. Knox enjoyed imagining the cogs turning in his mind.

  ‘Your conclusion?’ he asked, when he turned back to face Knox.

  ‘Either they were hiding it from the person who killed them. Or they were hidden after they died, by someone who didn’t want me to see them.’

  ‘That sounds a little like putting the cart in front of the horse.’

  ‘Not if this whole thing is a set-up. They were behind a bookcase in the study, where Manning was waiting for us.’