Red Corona Read online

  She’d decided that she had to keep moving.

  Her ride from Ilomantsi had dropped her off in the middle of Joensuu’s old town and, not wanting to expose herself as an outsider by asking for directions, she had spent almost an hour finding the main city bus station.

  She’d tried to buy a ticket to Helsinki, but this time the clerk had refused her rubles. He’d said something to her, but Valera had no idea what. She’d tried, quietly, speaking to him in Swedish and then English, but he didn’t understand either.

  Valera had felt the eyes of the queue behind her boring into her back, and then she’d felt a hand gently rest on her shoulder. She’d looked at the fat fingers curling round her clavicle and for one terrifying moment thought they belonged to Zukolev. But they didn’t. They were attached to an old man who had taken pity on her and translated the clerk’s instructions to go get her money changed into Finnish markka two desks down.

  After she’d bought her ticket she went to the station’s small cafe, where she ate her first proper meal in days – a thick, meaty stew that she had to coax slowly down her throat. Then, an hour later, she’d got on another bus. Seven hours after that, she’d arrived in Helsinki. And just before five o’clock in the evening she’d walked through the doors of the Swedish embassy on the waterfront of the Finnish capital and requested political asylum.

  Valera had no way of knowing that the CIA had a car permanently stationed in the ferry terminal car park across from the embassy and that the young agent sitting behind its steering wheel had taken her photo as she crossed the road and went inside. America had received its fair share of Soviet defectors in its European embassies over the years, and since Rudolf Nureyev, Russia’s greatest ballet star, had requested asylum in Paris a month ago the CIA had been watching at a long list of potential cross-over points all over the continent.

  Most of the Swedish embassy’s senior staff had already left for the day when Valera walked in, and had to be urgently called back. All except the ambassador himself who, it was decided, would be better off not knowing about Valera until the Swedish security service, RPS/Säk, had worked out what to do with her.

  The embassy was used to Russia dangling fake defectors at its front desk, promising the earth or begging for help. But they’d never seen anyone like Valera – someone who truly looked beaten down by despair but who refused to be defeated by it, and who spoke almost perfect Swedish.

  However, it still took three hours of conversations and phone calls, including to the physics departments at Stockholm and Uppsala Universities, to establish that Valera was who she said she was, and another one to decide that instead of making her the ambassador’s problem, a seat should be found for her on the 10 p.m. SAS flight from Helsinki to Stockholm.

  She’d been given twenty minutes to freshen herself up and change into a clean set of clothes kindly donated by one of the embassy secretaries. Then she was driven out to the airport.

  CHAPTER 31

  Knox knew trying to confront Manning had been a mistake. An amateurish, egotistical mistake. It was the kind of rash behaviour he’d drag a junior agent over the coals for. Manning wasn’t going to confess to being a double agent just because Knox wanted him to. And if Knox’s concerns about the security of the OECD conference and Operation Pipistrelle were as serious as he claimed, then Peterson was right and he should have taken the Italians’ papers straight to White. But he hadn’t. And he wasn’t going to.

  Knox walked south, away from Fortnum’s, cutting through Green Park and then St James’s and down to the river. The hot night had turned into a muggy day, heavy with clouds. It was the kind of weather that reminded Londoners of pea-soupers and the Great Smog of 1952.

  Knox needed to clear his head and stop letting his emotions and distrust of Manning get the better of him. He needed a more rational perspective.

  He made his way east along Victoria Embankment. Opposite him the South Bank was still suffering its decade-long hangover from the Festival of Britain. Skylon, the slender spire that had been suspended over the riverbank as a vision of the nation’s bright tomorrow, was long gone. As was the grandiosely named Dome of Discovery that had been built next to it. The festival was supposed to be a beacon of hope and change, a celebration of a nation emerging from post-war austerity. And it had been, for the few months it was open.

  Knox and Williams had visited the festival, along with everyone else in the city it seemed, over the summer of 1951. It was a welcome distraction from their office hours spent monitoring the swelling ranks of American and Russian agents treating London as their playground, all the while wondering if the stalemate along the 38th parallel would break and turn Korea into another world war.

  Only the Royal Festival Hall was left standing now. The rest of the festival grounds had been cleared for redevelopment. So far only the new twenty-seven-storey headquarters of Royal Dutch Shell had started to rise in Skylon’s place.

  He crossed over Blackfriars Bridge, stopping briefly to feel the wind blow past him. Even on the most stifling days, the air still moved on the Thames. He watched a heavy barge float downstream and under the bridge to the docks that lined the south side of the river from Blackfriars to beyond Tower Bridge.

  He didn’t know what he was going to say to Holland, but he wanted to see him. Maybe sitting with him would help him accept how easily he’d let himself be manipulated, or maybe it would push him to do something about it.

  Knox had visited Holland in Guy’s hospital every evening since he’d been rushed there from Highgate. Every evening except yesterday. The nurses who worked nights had no idea how Knox managed to appear at Holland’s bedside out of thin air at the start of their shifts. They’d just check Holland’s private room during their rounds, and suddenly he’d be there. Then, ten minutes or an hour later, they’d look in again and he’d be gone.

  The hospital was busier than Knox was used to this afternoon. Visiting hours were in full swing and wives, husbands, parents, and children swarmed through the building. The grown-ups looked worried, resigned, or dog-tired. The children either stared excitedly at their unusual surroundings or ignored them.

  Every bed Knox passed on his way to Holland’s room had someone next to it, talking, fussing, or just sitting quietly. And so did Holland’s.

  Sarah Holland hadn’t slept properly in days. She’d found her husband lying face down on a thick-pile rug in their living room when she’d come home on Sunday evening after an afternoon visiting friends, his body limp, eyes closed, and breathing shallow and slow. She phoned for an ambulance, then she phoned Leconfield House. And for the last week her whole life had consisted of sitting at her husband’s bedside for two hours every morning and afternoon, and the rest of the time sitting at home, waiting to come back to the hospital, or for someone at Leconfield House to call and tell her something.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t realise you were here,’ Knox said, as the door clicked shut behind him. ‘I’ll leave you alone.’

  Sarah looked up at him from Holland’s side. She didn’t seem surprised. She looked like she’d been expecting him. She was immaculately dressed in a muted, floral dress. Her hair was neat, her make-up perfect, but Knox could see how tired she was.

  ‘No you won’t,’ Sarah replied. Her voice was cool, measured. ‘Stay.’

  ‘How is he?’ Knox asked, looking at Holland. He still wasn’t used to seeing him in his hospital bed, asleep, unable to wake up. Holland was a man with a powerful presence and it didn’t seem right for him to be so reduced, tucked under sheets in a pair of flannel pyjamas instead of behind his desk in one of his dark, pinstriped suits.

  ‘You’d know as well as me,’ Sarah said. ‘The nurses tell me you visit James every day.’

  ‘It’s the least I can do.’ Knox had known Sarah for years, but he found himself falling back on the formalities people used when talking to the grieving.

  ‘Is it?’ Sarah asked, her voice suddenly changing from cool to cold.

  ‘I’ll come ba
ck later,’ Knox said, sensing the change in her tone.

  ‘The hell you will.’

  ‘I don’t want to upset you.’

  ‘You think you’re upsetting me? My husband lying in a coma no one can do anything about upsets me. The one person who could help him refusing to do anything bloody infuriates me.’

  Sarah had been privy to most of the details of MI5’s investigation, including Knox’s lack of cooperation.

  Knox knew he owed her the truth. Holland had been more than a patron and mentor to him. Though neither of them would ever say it, the older man had become a kind of father to him, a replacement for the one he’d never had the chance to know. And in many ways Sarah had been his surrogate mother, offering her own support, ear, or advice whenever needed.

  Knox wanted to tell her where he’d been the night Holland had fallen into the coma. He wanted to tell her she was right to blame him, that it was his fault. He wanted to share with her the secret he and Holland had kept for fifteen years. But he couldn’t, because Holland himself had sworn him to secrecy, and because the more people who knew about it, the more people could be hurt by it.

  Sarah, however, didn’t care about that. She just wanted to know what had happened to her husband.

  ‘Please, just tell me where you were,’ she said, her exhaustion creeping into her voice.

  Knox couldn’t bring himself to betray Holland’s trust in him after so long, even to the one person closer to him than Knox was. ‘I can’t,’ he said.

  ‘After everything we’ve done for you? I’m his wife, for God’s sake.’

  Sarah knew her husband’s life was built on secrets, but they’d never kept any from each other. Apart from the one he shared only with Knox.

  ‘I can’t,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not your decision to make.’

  ‘No, it was James’s.’ As soon as the words left Knox’s mouth he knew he’d made a mistake.

  Sarah’s face set hard, her tiredness and worry finally turning to rage. But she didn’t explode at Knox. Instead, she got up, kissed Holland on the forehead, and straightened his gold-rimmed glasses that sat next to his wedding ring – a thin band of bronze shaped like a belt buckle – on his bedside table.

  She smoothed down her dress, picked up her handbag, and walked past Knox.

  ‘Say goodbye,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘And don’t come back.’

  Then she left.

  Knox didn’t say goodbye to Holland. He didn’t say anything. He just sat with him, going over and over his encounters with Manning and Sarah in his mind. His reason for not breaking his pact with Holland and telling Sarah where he had been was that it could ruin both his career and her husband’s. But, if Manning was now permanent director general and Knox’s professional life already lay in tatters, how much did it really matter?

  After several, silent hours he decided to go up to Highgate and tell Sarah everything. It might not bring her husband back to her, but perhaps it would make her feel better to know that even if he had kept something from her, it had been to protect her.

  CHAPTER 32

  Knox’s London had almost been destroyed twice. Once by the Luftwaffe, and once by his parents’ deaths. Now, with Manning in control of MI5, his world was on the brink of collapse again. What no one knew was how his parents’ deaths were connected to his mentor’s coma. No one apart from Knox, Holland, and, soon, his wife.

  Knox left Guy’s, walking back along Southwark Street towards Blackfriars Bridge. Rush hour was over, but there were still plenty of people about. The man who Knox had noticed following him since he’d turned out of St Thomas Street may just have been making his way to the tube and home after a long day in the office. But that didn’t explain why he was wearing the international uniform of street muscle – a large, black leather bomber jacket and a flat cap tilted low over his eyes in the middle of summer.

  Knox reached the entrance to Blackfriars station at the northern end of the bridge. He passed two paper sellers trying to get rid of their last copies of the Evening Standard and the Evening News. Both were leading with stories about the rapid build-up of American military in West Berlin. Knox slowed down to read the headlines, and see if the man following him would carry on past him or linger on the bridge. He headed straight into the station and, after a moment, so did Knox.

  He made his way down to the tube and stopped in the middle of the platform, already anticipating his change at Charing Cross to the Northern Line, which would take him up to Highgate.

  The man in the bomber was further down the platform, keeping enough distance between him and Knox to put them in different carriages when the tube arrived. If he was following Knox, he was being smart about it. And if this was another round in Knox’s game with Peterson, he’d sent a much better player. Out of the corner of his eye, Knox watched him lean against the wall next to one of the station roundels. With the sudden context he realised the man was a giant. Six foot five, at least, and built like the side of a house.

  A bright red Circle Line train pulled into the station, screeching loudly as its worn brakes grabbed at the tracks. The doors opened with a judder and a few commuters got off. Knox hung back on the platform. So did the giant. At the last moment, Knox hopped through the closing doors. So did the giant.

  The train lumbered its way to the next stop, speeding up only to slow down again over and over, as if it wasn’t sure what lay ahead in the dark tunnel. Knox resisted the urge to look at the other passengers. He wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible, and the easiest way to stand out and draw attention in London was to make eye contact with people on the tube.

  Temple station was empty. No one got off, and no one got on. Knox snatched a glance through the open doors before they slid shut again, but couldn’t see any movement in the next carriage.

  Charing Cross was next. This time, as soon as the doors opened, Knox burst off the train and sprinted down the stairs his carriage had lined up perfectly with. He didn’t look back, so he didn’t see the giant pushing his way down the platform and into the tunnel, trying to catch up with him.

  Knox reached the northbound platform of the Northern Line as a train was about to depart. It was one of the new silver deep-level trains. He stretched his arms out, jamming the nearest set of doors open. Several of the carriage’s other occupants tutted loudly as he climbed inside, angry that they’d delayed their journey home by a few seconds. But Knox ignored them. He kept his eyes on the platform, watching the giant reach the platform too late to stop the train pulling away.

  Knox had lost him. But he couldn’t risk the chance that the man had guessed his destination and would follow him all the way to Highgate.

  He got off at the next station, Strand. From there he could have run the short distance to Trafalgar Square station and the Bakerloo Line, or doubled back on himself and taken the Northern Line under the river to Waterloo. But he needed to make sure he’d slipped his tail, and that would be a lot easier above ground where he wouldn’t be trapped in trains and tunnels.

  Both of the station’s recently installed escalators were cordoned off, so Knox took the spiral staircase that climbed a shaft next to the station’s old, original lifts up to the ticket hall. It was quiet. Knox knew that once he made it up to street level he’d be exposed as he crossed Trafalgar Square, but only for a minute.

  He made it three steps up the exit that led to the south-east corner of the square before a boot slammed into his chest and sent him flying back down. He skidded several feet across the floor, sliding to a halt as the body the boot belonged to reached the bottom of the stairs. It was another man wearing an unseasonably heavy coat. This one was a few inches shorter than the giant who had followed Knox to Embankment. But he was almost as wide as he was tall and, from Knox’s viewpoint on the ground, it looked like it was all muscle.

  Knox scrambled up to his feet. He heard the sound of footsteps approaching behind him. It was giant number one. Somehow they’d known where he was going and how h
e’d react if he realised he was being shadowed. He tried to back away as the two giants circled him, but there was nowhere for him to go. In the end, he held up his hands and managed to say ‘Gentlemen—’ before they lunged at him.

  Giant number one struck first, followed by his shorter friend. They alternated their assault, keeping Knox off balance as they hit and grabbed at him. The attack was brutal but calculated. They wanted to do damage, but Knox could tell between blows that they were holding back. Instead of just one of them holding him down while the other laid into him, they kept switching roles and going after different parts of his body. Knox realised they wanted something more than just to hurt him. They were searching him. Not for his watch or wallet, but for the papers and passports he was carrying in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  Knox twisted and squirmed, taking every hit while not letting them hold him still. Eventually the giants ran out of patience and the smaller one grabbed both of his arms and kicked his legs out from under him, pinning him down on the tiles as the larger giant started working his way through his pockets. He reached inside Knox’s jacket. His fingers brushed the papers, but before he could pull them out a voice shouted out behind them.

  One of the station guards had finally noticed what was happening. He was ancient, small, and bent over under the weight of his uniform. The old man couldn’t have done much to help Knox, but just interrupting the beating he was taking was enough to spook the giants. The taller one let go of the papers as the smaller one let go of Knox. Then, after both giving him one last kick in the side, they ran past the guard and disappeared.

  Knox used the tiled wall to help push himself back up onto his feet as the guard approached him.