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  ‘And if they’re not?’

  ‘Then we’ll need to work out a way to get rid of Blondie.’

  There was no need to worry about Valera’s companion. Five minutes after Bennett stepped outside the man left the hotel. And two minutes after that, so did Valera.

  Knox waited a moment to let her clear the entrance, then left as well. He didn’t pause at the door, or look down the street to see which way she’d gone, but crossed straight over the road to where Bennett was waiting for him. Without a word she nodded to the right and they both set off north, trailing twenty yards behind Valera.

  CHAPTER 39

  It turned out Djurgården wasn’t just an island of trees. As Valera crossed the low, ornate bridge to it and passed through a high, wrought-iron gate, she saw wooded paths busy with people branching off all over the island. Old men sat on benches talking, couples strolled arm in arm, and parents struggled to control children who wanted to run everywhere but on the path.

  Valera had gone looking for solitude and she hadn’t found it. But she wasn’t ready to go back to the hotel yet. Despite having cleaned herself up in Helsinki and at the Reisen, she could still feel grains of dust under her fingernails and smell the carnage of Povenets B in her hair. They were a constant, taunting reminder of what she’d lost. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get rid of them, but she knew that if she went back to the Reisen she’d just fixate on them.

  She wanted to taste at least some of the freedom she’d gone through so much for, so she picked a path and started down it, falling into step with the other people who had chosen it for their late-afternoon stroll and letting them guide her deeper into the island.

  The woods became very dense, very quickly. The background hum of the city faded. Valera was reminded a little of Leningrad. It was also a city of islands, and some of them had been left wild. But few of their trees had survived the siege. Their wood was needed for shoring up defences or burning for heat, and their bark, in the most desperate moments, for food. A couple of the islands had been replanted with fresh stock, but they were saplings compared to the huge, old trees of Djurgården.

  If it hadn’t been for the other people on the path her mind might also have taken her back to the forest surrounding Povenets B. But before it could the path opened up to reveal a wide, neat lawn. On the far side stood a low, curved building, painted yellow and white. It was flanked with Swedish flags, and the word Skansen was written above it in more iron.

  Valera joined a queue of people making their way through an archway in the side of the building and discovered, as she handed over one of the notes Alve had given her, that Skansen was some kind of amusement park and open-air museum.

  She walked past small farmhouses with country gardens that butted up against clapboard cottages with thatched roofs, and bright, red-painted halls. People in old-fashioned clothes passed her by on horse-drawn carts, or cleaned the steps of townhouses, or mingled with visitors, chatting with parents and explaining things to children.

  Coming from somewhere that devoted so much time and energy to erasing its past, Valera was shocked to see such a celebration of history.

  She moved from human exhibits to natural ones, passing several large animal enclosures. In one, three wolves lay together on a wide, flat rock, sleeping. In another a brown bear sat in the branches of a tree, staring back at her as she stared up at it. These were the animals she should have encountered in her hike out of Russia, but here they were instead. The bear looked comfortable, content soaking up the last of the day’s sun, but it was still in a cage. She wondered if it recognised a kindred spirit in her, and if it would have stayed happily sitting in its tree looking down at her if there wasn’t a high wall separating them.

  She kept walking and came to a deserted Viking village. As she passed its large meeting hall and longhouses, it occurred to her how much Ledjo would have loved this place. He’d have been as excited as all the other children straining at their parents’ arms, running in and out of buildings, hopping through history and rushing to share everything he discovered with her. She wondered how different their lives would have been on this side of the Iron Curtain. They could have spent their weeks working and studying, and their weekends visiting the animals at Skansen or sailing around the Stockholm archipelago – everything she’d promised and never given him.

  She stopped at a bench in front of one of the longhouses. She could feel her emotions starting to get the better of her and wanted to sit down before she fell down. But her sadness instantly turned to fear as she watched a man in a dark suit appear from behind the longhouse and sit next to her.

  CHAPTER 40

  ‘Hello, Irina.’

  Her blood froze at the sound of her name, pronounced in perfect Russian with the drawn-out emphasis on the middle syllable. In an instant she knew they’d found her, and they’d come to take her back.

  ‘Who are you?’ she stuttered, staring straight ahead.

  ‘My name is General Grigor Medev. I am the head of the KGB scientific directorate. And I have come to apologise to you.’

  ‘Apologise?’ she asked, turning to face him.

  ‘For everything you’ve been through,’ he replied. ‘For the last three years.’ He turned, finally making eye contact. ‘I want you to know that Povenets B has been decommissioned, and Zukolev has been dealt with.’

  Valera had waited a long time for Zukolev to face some kind of reckoning, and she hoped he had, but she had no reason to believe Medev.

  ‘He was a vain, arrogant man,’ Medev said, trying to calm the doubts he’d anticipated. ‘He did not deserve the responsibilities given to him.’

  ‘Who the hell is that?’ Bennett whispered to Knox.

  They were standing in a narrow gap between a large, thatched hall and a smaller building, which, from the smell, Knox reckoned was some kind of barn. They’d followed Valera all the way from the Reisen, splitting up as she’d wandered around Skansen to make sure she didn’t somehow give them the slip and reuniting out of view of Valera and the man who had appeared from nowhere.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Knox whispered back. ‘But they’re speaking Russian.’

  ‘We have to get her out of there. We can’t lose her.’ Bennett tried to edge past Knox, pushing him into the thatch and making it rustle until he gently put his hand on her shoulder to stop her.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Look at her. She’s not going anywhere.’

  Medev took in the view from the bench. The quaint, perfectly preserved longhouses, the well-maintained paths, the dappled sunlight. He watched two swallows dance in the sky above them, feasting on invisible insects.

  ‘I understand why you left,’ he said. ‘I think I would have too under the circumstances. But I have to ask you to come home.’

  Valera let out a short, hard laugh. ‘I don’t have a home. Anything I ever had was taken from me.’

  ‘I know,’ he replied. ‘We’ve failed you terribly, and there’s nothing we can do to make up for the debt we owe you. I can give you an apartment, a dacha, a laboratory. But I cannot give you your life back. Your parents, or Ledjo.’

  Valera knew how short-lived promises were in her homeland. Medev might offer her something today, but would she get it tomorrow? Every ruined village she’d walked through as she fled Povenets B had once been teeming with life, hope, and happiness, and they’d all been destroyed.

  ‘Problems are caused by mistakes,’ Medev continued. ‘Wars if we let them. The way you’ve been treated was an unforgivable mistake. I don’t want it to turn into something even worse.’

  Valera thought of Ledjo. Was Medev calling him a little problem, a mistake? Something that could never be fixed? She was about to tell him she would never go back, but before she could he turned to face the big, thatched hall across from the bench and said, ‘Would you care to join us?’ loudly, and in English.

  Knox, whose hand was still resting on Bennett’s shoulder, gestured at her to stay put, but she shrugged him off and stepped ou
t into the open. After swearing under his breath to himself, Knox followed.

  ‘It only seems fair that everyone gets to make their offer to Miss Valera,’ Medev said, smiling at Bennett and Knox. ‘Now, neither of you look like members of the Swedish security service, so may I ask who you represent? My name is General Medev and I, as you have probably guessed, am Russian.’

  It was an obvious ploy, and Knox refused to fall for it. But Bennett was too caught up in what was happening to realise she was being tricked.

  ‘You need to leave the lady alone,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, American,’ Medev replied. ‘I must have our records updated. We didn’t think the CIA had any female agents in Europe.’

  ‘Maybe Soviet intelligence isn’t as smart as it thinks it is,’ Bennett said.

  ‘Maybe.’ Medev smiled at her. ‘The world is full of surprises.’ He turned to Knox. ‘And you? Do you work for the CIA also?’

  Knox couldn’t avoid a direct question. But he also didn’t want to give Medev any more ammunition. So he just said, ‘No.’

  ‘British? Then, my friend, I think you do,’ Medev said with a chuckle. ‘But who we are really is not so important. This is about Miss Valera, and what she wants.’

  He stood up, gesturing for Bennett to take his place on the bench. But before she could sit down next to Valera and recite the speech she’d prepared about everything America had to offer her, about how important her research was, and how she and the CIA could work together to create a safer, better world, a crimson plume erupted from Medev’s forehead.

  Blood splattered Valera as his lifeless body slumped back down onto the bench. She screamed, but it was drowned out by the sound of more shots being fired at them and Knox shouting for all of them to get down.

  Three men wearing balaclavas and dressed completely in black ran towards them. Two of them had their guns raised at Knox and Bennett, covering the third, who lunged for Valera, still sitting on the bench, motionless from the shock of seeing Medev die in front of her. But as soon as his gloved hand touched her arm she burst back into life, much to her attacker’s surprise, shaking off his grip and launching herself off the bench.

  Knox and Bennett seized the momentary distraction and both rushed their attackers, grabbing the guns pointed at them and trying to wrestle them away. Bennett was much smaller than her assailant, but she was faster. She weaved around him, twisting and pulling on his wrist so he couldn’t grab hold of her or get off another shot.

  Knox’s opponent was a tougher customer. Every move he made against him was instantly countered. Knox took multiple hits to his head, and his side, which was still tender from the kicking he’d taken in Strand station.

  Valera made it almost twenty feet from the bench before a gloved hand grabbed her again and slammed her down into the ground, stunning her for a moment before she started kicking and screaming at the man standing over her.

  Bennett bent the wrist of her attacker so far back that he let out a growl of pain. But he still didn’t drop his gun. She tried to pull it back even further, but she was concentrating so hard on the man’s wrist that she’d stopped ducking and diving, or paying attention to his other hand. He finally caught her and held her against him as he drove her into the wall of the longhouse, winding her and pinning her against it.

  The man fighting Knox did drop his gun, but not because Knox made him. He took a step back, let it fall to the ground, and goaded Knox to come at him with both hands. Knox couldn’t see the man’s face under the balaclava but he was sure he was sneering at him. Knox wanted to throw himself at him and wipe the invisible smile off his face, but he knew that was just what the other man wanted. So he tried his own trick on him, backing away and forcing the man in black to keep moving forward until his patience ran out and he sprang at Knox. Knox ducked down. He’d planned to drive his shoulder up into the man’s abdomen, but instead the man tripped over Knox’s curled-up body, lost his balance, and crashed full speed and head first into the edge of the bench Medev’s body was still slumped limply on.

  The sound of the man’s skull cracking against the metal corner of the bench stopped everyone else. For a moment no one moved. Then the two other masked men gave each other a look. The one holding Bennett against the wall drove her into it one more time, winding her again, then let her drop to the ground. He ran over to the man who had managed to pin Valera down and sedate her somehow. Then he turned the gun on Knox, who was separated from them by the bench and the two dead bodies. The other man slung Valera’s body over his shoulder, and they both started to back away.

  As soon as the men disappeared behind the longhouse, Knox ran over to Bennett, who was already pulling herself up off the ground.

  ‘What just happened?’ she asked, rhetorically.

  The whole encounter, from Medev first sitting down on the bench to the masked men carrying Valera off, had lasted less than five minutes.

  Bennett walked over to the dead attacker. She nudged him with her foot to make sure he wasn’t just dazed, then reached down and pulled the balaclava off his head. It was already sticky with blood from the deep gash across the top of his skull.

  ‘Anyone you know?’ she said to Knox.

  It was another rhetorical question, but as Knox looked down at the man, he recognised his heavy, almost Neanderthal brow, and the sneer that was still on his face, even in death. It was the policeman who had been guarding Bianchi and Moretti’s building.

  CHAPTER 41

  The SAS flight to Amsterdam left Stockholm just before six o’clock. It was a popular route, and the two-hour flight time meant that the early-evening flight was always busy with business travellers keen to leave Sweden after their afternoon meetings and reach Holland in time for more business, or pleasure, or both. This evening’s plane was almost full, but the SAS desk agent managed to find two seats together for the English gentleman and American lady who had arrived at Bromma shortly after 5 p.m.

  Knox sat in silence for almost the whole flight. The only time he opened his mouth was to order two double whiskies in quick succession. The rest of the time he spent brooding. For once, he didn’t like being right. He also didn’t like how he’d been proved right. He’d been blindsided by events unfolding around him yet again. And he’d wilfully walked into a situation almost identical to the one at the centre of his suspicions of Manning. There was even the death of a Russian agent to complete the parallel. But there was also a significant difference between them – Manning’s mission to Singapore had been sanctioned, and Knox’s trip to Stockholm had not. If it hadn’t been for the dead man from Deptford, Knox’s anxiety at breaking one of MI5’s most basic operational rules would have outweighed his anger at finding and then losing Valera. As it was there wasn’t much between them.

  At Schiphol, Knox and Bennett were lucky again. There was a KLM flight to London leaving at nine thirty, and it had plenty of seats available. They had an hour to kill before boarding, and tacitly agreed not to spend it together.

  Knox found a bar in the terminal and ordered another whisky to tide him over as he tried to get his head round everything that had happened. He imagined Williams and Holland sitting opposite him, Williams joking about the man who had killed himself by tripping over Knox, and Holland calling him a bloody fool for letting himself get in such a mess in the first place.

  The attack on Valera had proved Bennett right. And the dead man was the evidence Knox needed to prove there was a direct line that ran from Bianchi and Moretti to Valera and led straight back to MI5 and Manning. Seeing Valera snatched by a fully armed strike team dispelled any notion that she might have been some sort of elaborate honeytrap, and also showed Knox just how much he’d underestimated Manning. He wondered what else the man might be capable of. The KGB had mastered the art of incapacitating targets without any signs of foul play. For all Knox knew, they’d helped get Holland out of the way to clear a path for Manning.

  One question still lingered. Medev. Was Manning so valuable the Russians we
re ready to sacrifice one of their own to protect him? It was possible, but it gnawed away at Knox’s mind, not quite making sense, alongside what Medev had said about the CIA not having any female agents in Europe. Knox had no reason to believe Medev, but it still made him second-guess the rapid faith he’d developed in Bennett.

  Knox hadn’t paid attention to where she’d gone after they’d landed. She might have disappeared into the Dutch night, but Knox had a feeling she was somewhere very close, keeping her own tabs on him. He’d tested her in Stockholm; now he decided he needed to push her, and see if a little more pressure on top of everything they’d been through would make her break and reveal some hidden motive or allegiance. He reminded himself that just because they shared enemies that didn’t necessarily mean they were friends.

  They reunited in the gate line. The flight hadn’t filled up and they boarded quickly. This plane was smaller than the ones they’d taken to and from Stockholm. The aisle was off-centre, with single seats running down the left side of the cabin, and sets of two down the right. Their seats were halfway down the plane, near the wing. Bennett took the window, leaving Knox with the aisle. He glimpsed one of the plane’s two propellers starting to turn through a window and immediately fastened his seatbelt.

  Bennett was the one who spoke first, but only after take-off, when the stewardess arrived with the drinks trolley.

  ‘Nothing for either of us, thank you,’ she said to the stewardess, leaning across Knox. Then, patting his arm, she added, ‘You’ve had enough, darling.’

  Before Knox had the chance to protest the stewardess moved on, and by the time he turned round to beckon her back after snatching his arm from under Bennett’s surprisingly firm grip she was already several rows away. He wanted another drink, but he didn’t want to be the man who chased a trolley down a plane to get it.

  ‘Just keeping up the act,’ she said.

  But instead of winking back, Knox took the opportunity to put her on the spot.