Red Corona Read online

  ‘Not fair that, two on one,’ the guard said.

  ‘A case of mistaken identity,’ Knox replied. ‘They thought I was a friend of theirs.’

  He thanked the old man for his help, but declined his offer of calling the police. Instead, he straightened his jacket, patted himself down, and made his way up the staircase he’d been kicked down a minute before.

  At the top he looked out across the square, just in case the giants were waiting for round two. They weren’t. He checked the papers and passports were still in his jacket pocket, held a hand to his side where it felt like the final kick had cracked a couple of his ribs, took a breath, and ran.

  He sprinted across Trafalgar and Leicester Squares, then through Piccadilly Circus, weaving his way through the people bustling under the giant glowing adverts for Wrigley, BP, and Coca-Cola, and avoiding the policemen in their jet-black uniforms and bleached white gloves trying to control the traffic and early-evening crowds. His side throbbed as he ran, and the scar across his head that itched whenever he pushed himself too hard felt like it was on fire.

  He struggled to keep his breath even and shallow enough not to add more pain to his side. He finally slowed down as he cut through the grim, narrow Ham Yard to Archer Street, and was walking at a normal pace by the time he turned north into Rupert Street. Instead of continuing on the short distance to Kemp House, he turned right into Tisbury Court and stopped outside a small, anonymous door halfway down the alley. He didn’t want to risk going home yet, just in case the men from Trafalgar Square knew where he lived and had got there ahead of him. He needed somewhere to hide and recover, somewhere people wouldn’t think to look because they had no idea it existed.

  He knocked on the door three times and after a long, pregnant moment, it opened.

  The basement bar was dark, lit only by a few scattered candles. There was no way of telling how far back the room stretched, how many tables there were, or who was sitting at them. The only clues were the murmur of intimate conversations that mingled with the quiet, mournful jazz that played from somewhere, and the occasional candlelit glint of a cocktail glass or flare of a burning cigarette.

  The bar was private, members-only in all but dues. It served a clientele who didn’t want to be seen, who craved respite from the city above and wanted to be alone, or sometimes together, away from prying eyes.

  It would normally take a few minutes to adjust to the dimness, but Knox had been to this particular clandestine refuge from the world enough times to know his way through it with his eyes closed. He walked in a diagonal across the room, avoiding the tables and legs of the other patrons, to a long counter lined with stools and a row of low lamps.

  A man sat at one end of the counter. His body was lost in the dark but his tanned face and perfectly quiffed hair were haloed by the lamp hanging just above them. Knox chose a spot at the other end, suddenly conscious of how much of a mess he must look after his sprint across Soho. He slouched on his stool, craning his body to avoid the pool of light on the counter in front of him, and nodded to the bartender, a woman in a three-piece suit whose pompadour hair matched the man’s.

  ‘You look like you’ve had a time of it,’ she said. ‘What’ll it be? Vodka? Whisky?’

  ‘Both,’ Knox answered.

  ‘Sure thing.’ She poured two generous measures of the spirits over ice and passed the two glasses across the bar to Knox.

  He swallowed the vodka in one go, then started to swirl the whisky, encouraging the ice to melt a little and take the edge off the deep-brown liquid. Eventually the vodka did its job. His side stopped aching, his scar stopped feeling like it was burning into his skull, and he started to calm down.

  CHAPTER 33

  The crew of the Hercules stationed at Cooke Air Force Base understood why the timings of their recovery flights had to be kept secret until the last minute. But they didn’t enjoy the endless days spent on standby, waiting for the go signal. It also irked them that no matter when they flew, day or night, the Shining Emerald was always waiting for them in the target zone over the Pacific. It seemed like the KGB knew their mission parameters before they did.

  Evening was always the worst time to fly. Heading west out over the coast, it took every pair of eyes on board to spot the parachutes attached to the Corona payload capsules against the fierce rays of the setting sun. At least this evening the Shining Emerald would have just as much of a problem as the Hercules. A thick blanket of low cloud stretched over the ocean, cutting visibility to just a few thousand feet from sea level.

  Fortunately, luck was also on the Hercules’ side, and just as the plane entered the target zone, several shouts went up. The parachute had been spotted twenty degrees off their current path, roughly five miles away. The pilot altered course and altitude to give them plenty of time to reach it before it was lost in the clouds.

  When the Hercules was about a mile from the capsule, a strange shadow started to appear on the surface of the clouds in front of the plane. It looked like it was projected a few feet ahead of the cockpit, but it couldn’t have been because the Hercules was still flying into the sun. The pilot made a small course change, and the shadow matched it. He came back onto his original trajectory, and so did the shadow.

  Then the shadow pulled away. It rose out of the clouds and solidified. First a long, silver tube. Then two vast, swept-back wings. A Soviet Tupolev Tu-95 long-range strategic bomber.

  The huge Russian plane gleamed in the sunlight as it climbed in front of the Hercules. It continued to pull away from the American plane, its huge engines roaring as it accelerated towards the falling capsule. There was no time for the Hercules to overtake it. All the American crew could do was watch as the Tupolev got further and further away from them and closer and closer to the parachute.

  The Tupolev had no hook hanging behind it, but it did have a long, thin refuelling probe projecting out from its nose. The Russian pilot lined the probe up with the gap between the parachute and the Corona capsule, and squeezed one more push from the throttle. His aim was true and the probe shot through the parachute lines like they were the eye of a needle.

  Everyone in the Hercules sat in stunned silence as they watched the Tupolev descend back into the clouds and vanish with the Corona payload pinned against the underside of its cockpit.

  CHAPTER 34

  The Hercules returned to Cooke Air Force Base at 9 p.m. Pacific time. It was 11 p.m. by the time the crew was debriefed, which meant it was 2 a.m. Eastern time when the phone in Patrick Dixon’s hallway started to ring.

  He’d told Langley that the post-flight report could wait until the morning. He’d stayed late at the office too many nights recently and needed some decent sleep. If he was being called now, something must have gone very wrong.

  NASA had offered Dixon one of the apartments in the research centre grounds when he’d moved down from New England, but he’d preferred to keep a little distinction between his work and home life. He’d found an old colonial-era villa in Armstrong Gardens on the far side of Hampton, south of Langley, that looked out over Chesapeake Bay. Its fretwork veranda and bright painted walls stuck out among the more recent red-brick houses that dominated the neighbourhood. They had been built to survive whatever the Atlantic threw at them, but the villa already had. Dixon loved it.

  He dragged himself out of bed and along the dark landing. He almost tripped over Loki, his jet-black cat, who had taken to sitting at the top of the stairs at night, but remembered he was there just in time to clumsily hop over him and land heavily on the first step. He reached the bottom of the staircase intact and picked up the phone. He didn’t even have a chance to say hello before the voice on the other end of the line started telling him exactly how badly things had gone with the evening flight. Thirty seconds later he’d hung up and was making his way back up the dark stairs to get dressed.

  The security breach Dixon had feared for months had finally happened. And in dramatic fashion. Questions would now be asked, arguments had,
pounds of flesh claimed. Worst of all, people would want to know what progress he’d made on coming up with a more secure way to control and retrieve the intelligence Corona gathered, and the answer to that was still vanishingly little.

  The only saving grace of the Russians picking this capsule to intercept was that its payload was relatively low-value. All they’d find when they cracked it open would be an experimental pressurisation system containing a few strips of unexposed film. If they’d wanted to score a major intelligence coup, they’d picked the wrong day for it.

  Langley was quiet when Dixon arrived at the research centre twenty minutes later. The nightwatchman waved him through the security gates and he drove across the empty car park to his reserved spot outside the building that had been given over to the Corona programme.

  The only light in the building came from his office. Someone was waiting for him.

  Phinneus Murphy had worked for the CIA for a long time. He looked like it, and he smoked like it. Dixon had never seen him without a cigarette between his fingers and another lined up to take its place. He was slouched in the easy chair that sat in front of Dixon’s desk, lighting up, as Dixon stepped into his office. They’d worked together long enough to dispense with pleasantries, so as soon as Murphy was finished taking his first, long pull on his cigarette, he got down to business.

  ‘What are we going to tell the president?’ he asked.

  Dixon had anticipated Murphy’s question. ‘They didn’t get anything important,’ he answered. ‘Maybe we even let them take it. Something worthless to keep them occupied.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘It could be. We got lucky.’ Dixon took a cigarette from Murphy’s case and sat down at his desk. He only smoked when he was stressed.

  ‘We got lazy,’ Murphy replied, between drags.

  The Marlboro Man had sold America on the image of smokers as rugged and masculine. Cigarettes were to be savoured, smoked slowly by powerful people thinking serious thoughts. Murphy didn’t smoke like the Marlboro Man. He smoked like nicotine was his air and oxygen was poison.

  ‘We’ve known they’ve been on to Corona for months. We should have been expecting this,’ he said.

  ‘Not my area of expertise, I’m afraid,’ Dixon replied.

  ‘It doesn’t take an expert to guess that the more times you let someone get on a podium and tell the world how great we are, the more everyone’s going to want our stuff.’

  ‘We could always just share Corona,’ Dixon said. ‘You know, for the collective good of humanity.’

  ‘You going commie on me?’ Murphy asked.

  Dixon let out a short laugh. Murphy lit his next cigarette.

  ‘Speaking of which,’ Murphy continued, ‘next on the president’s list is sticking a bunch of satellites over Vietnam. Got it into his head Corona is the key to nipping this Cong problem in the bud.’

  ‘He knows it can’t see through things, right? Unless we start clearing jungle it won’t be much help.’

  ‘He’s been told. But the practicalities aren’t his problem, they’re ours.’

  ‘My hands are full,’ Dixon said.

  His recent late nights had involved a succession of increasingly bizarre experiments to try to crack the atmospheric barrier problem. Dixon and his team had come at the problem from every angle they could think of. They’d explored the idea of vast ground-based aerials, or high-altitude radio balloons. They’d considered developing reusable space planes that could take off and land from regular airstrips. They’d even thought about somehow shrinking down the IBM 7090 mainframe computer that was currently being used by the Mercury programme so it could actually be launched into space. Each experiment was approached with fresh optimism, but each one failed. It was tiring.

  ‘You know, it’s cute how you think you have a choice,’ Murphy said.

  Dixon finally finished his cigarette. ‘I thought we were winning, anyway.’

  ‘Of course we are,’ Murphy answered. ‘America doesn’t lose. But we could be winning faster. Ideally before the next election.’

  ‘There it is,’ Dixon said.

  ‘Don’t act so surprised. Everything’s always about votes.’

  A dark thought suddenly struck Dixon. ‘He’d use Corona on our own people, wouldn’t he?’

  Murphy pulled himself up out of the easy chair. ‘I wouldn’t recommend it, at least not letting the electorate know it was happening. But I can see the logic.’

  ‘That’s not something I want to help happen,’ Dixon said.

  ‘It’s been happening for years,’ Murphy replied. ‘Did you know in the thirties the Nazis worked out which US states had the highest numbers of German migrants in them so they could run adverts about the joys of National Socialism in the local papers and swing US public opinion against intervening in Europe? I saw the map they made.’

  ‘We’re using Nazis as our reference point, now?’

  Murphy smiled. ‘I’m just saying this is nothing new. Finding people, working out what they want, and giving it to them. It’s basic advertising.’

  ‘That’s not what either of the As in NASA stand for,’ Dixon said.

  ‘You sure?’ The grin on Murphy’s face faded as soon as he finished his joke. ‘This is a mess, Patrick.’

  ‘That it is, Phinn.’

  ‘Want another one?’ Murphy asked, offering Dixon his cigarette case.

  ‘Thanks, but one’s enough for me.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Murphy prepared another cigarette for himself as he made his way to the door. ‘See you tomorrow, if we both still work here by then.’

  CHAPTER 35

  Knox’s hangover was vicious. His head was pounding, his mouth was dry, and he could barely focus. He couldn’t remember how long he’d stayed at the bar under Tisbury Court. The taste of whisky was still on his tongue, but it was mixed with enough other flavours for it to feel like a drop in a large ocean of alcohol. He wasn’t sure what else he’d drunk, or eaten, but given how queasy he felt he was fairly sure he’d skipped dinner.

  He also had no idea how or when he’d got home. Or who with. Someone was lying next to him in his bed, completely covered in sheets that rose and fell in time with their unconscious breathing. Knox had no memory of meeting anyone last night. But he clearly had. At some point he’d work out what had happened. But first, he wanted to know who was in his kitchen, loudly grinding coffee beans.

  He slid out of his bed and slipped on a robe. He left the stranger under the covers and walked out into the kitchen, half-expecting to see Peterson waiting to question him about his ungentlemanly nocturnal habits. Instead, he found a young woman pouring two cups of fresh coffee.

  This was the second time in three days someone had surprised him in his own home – the third if he counted the person still asleep in his bed. Through the haze of his hangover it took him a moment to recognise her pixie-cut hair and realise that he’d met her before.

  ‘So, you’re not Kaspar’s assistant, then?’ he said. His voice was croaky. He picked up the coffee she’d made for him and took a tentative sip, letting a small amount of the hot liquid mix with whatever was still sloshing around in his stomach.

  ‘Afraid not,’ she replied, her Midwestern accent coming through even in this short phrase.

  ‘Are you working for Peterson?’ he asked, realising she was also the right size and build to be the person in the hat who had followed him two nights ago.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m a friend.’

  He resisted the dismissive grunt he felt in his throat. ‘What were you doing in Cambridge?’ he asked instead.

  ‘The same thing as you, I reckon,’ she replied. ‘Not finding the answers I was looking for.’

  Knox made a mental note to have some better locks fitted to his front door as she slid a photograph over the kitchen counter to him. It was a slightly blurred, blown-up image of a woman on a street. Knox reached out to pick it up, wincing as his side reminded him of the kicking it had taken last nig
ht. He didn’t recognise her, or any details in the background of the picture that would tell him where it had been taken. All he could see was that whoever she was, she looked like she’d been through hell.

  ‘Who is she?’ he asked. ‘And who are you?’

  ‘I’m Abey Bennett, CIA. And that is Irina Valera. She is, or was, one of the Soviet Union’s most promising physicists. She disappeared in Leningrad three years ago, and no one has seen or heard of her since. Until she walked into the Swedish embassy in Helsinki yesterday afternoon.’

  Knox looked at the photo again. ‘Very interesting, but I don’t see what that has to do with me.’ He took another, larger gulp of the coffee and briefly wondered about finding some food before his gut confirmed it wasn’t ready for that just yet.

  ‘Before she disappeared, Miss Valera was working on manipulating radio waves. The same kind of manipulation your dead Italians were working on’ – she took her own sip of coffee for dramatic effect – ‘and that Mr White is so fond of.’

  Knox slowly lowered his cup. He’d been happy to entertain Bennett, whoever she was, while he woke up and got his head straight. The photo of the woman meant nothing to him, and she could easily have learned Bianchi and Moretti’s names from Kaspar just by waiting for him to return to his office after his encounter with Knox. But her knowing who White was and about Operation Pipistrelle told Knox two things. First, she was a bona fide member of the intelligence community. And second, one of MI5’s most closely guarded secrets was out. He needed to tread very carefully for the next few minutes and find out exactly what she knew.

  ‘Bianchi and Moretti were just a couple of opportunists,’ he said, giving her MI5’s de facto official line.

  ‘Maybe they were. But they were killed because of their work.’

  ‘That’s supposition.’

  ‘This is all supposition,’ she replied, a smirk on her lips. ‘That’s what spies do. We suppose.’

  Knox had to give her that. ‘The investigation into Bianchi and Moretti is no longer active.’