Red Corona Page 2

  Knox had to concede that what he’d seen so far – the lack of forced entry or disturbance, and the neatness of the bodies – fitted the Soviet security agency’s modus operandi.

  ‘For all we know,’ Manning continued, ‘they’re quietly up to things like this all over the city. Lord knows they’re enjoying keeping us on our toes at the moment, sending that cosmonaut of theirs to take photos with the PM.’

  While Knox was being questioned about Holland in Leconfield House, Major Yuri Gagarin, the first human to slip the surly bonds of Earth and successfully orbit the planet in the Russian Vostok 3KA space capsule, was being entertained by Macmillan at the end of a highly publicised trip to London. It had been a coup for Russia, and a very large headache for MI5 and the Metropolitan Police.

  Manning pulled his hands out of his pockets and made a brief, ineffective show of patting them back into place.

  ‘The point is,’ he said, ‘if it is the Russians behind all this, you’ll do your damnedest to find a connection to me, and when you can’t this mole hunt can be put to bed and we’ll all be able to get on with our jobs.’

  And with that, Manning made his way out of the flat, trailed by Peterson. He paused briefly at the front door, turning back and looking at Knox across the bodies.

  ‘I’m throwing you a bone, Richard,’ he said. ‘Possibly your last one.’

  CHAPTER 3

  Irina Valera was running late. She knew she was late because by the time she reached the gates of her son Ledjo’s school, he was the only child left waiting to be collected.

  When Ledjo saw his mother finally arrive, he quietly walked across the small concrete playground to her and, saying nothing, held out his hand for her to take. It might have looked like the six-year-old was so angry he was giving his mother the silent treatment. But he wasn’t. He was just obeying one of the many rules of life in Povenets B.

  Valera and Ledjo walked in shared silence, hand in hand, down the wide tarmac strip that doubled as road and pavement, and stretched from the centre of town to the small bungalow they called home. The buildings changed the closer they got, becoming more uniform until each one was identical to the last. The outskirts of Povenets B were made up of row after row of single-storey homes, with clapboard walls, flat shingle roofs, and five metres of empty scrub between them. Beyond the outermost row of bungalows stood two three-metre high fences, topped with barbed wire and patrolled day and night to stop anyone from entering or leaving.

  Nestled in thick forest at the top of Lake Onega in the semi-autonomous region of Karelia near the Finnish border, Povenets B wasn’t on any maps. It was so secret it hadn’t even been found by the stray street dogs that were a permanent feature of towns and villages all over Russia. And if Povenets B looked like an internment camp, it was because that’s exactly what it had been. And in Valera’s mind it still was.

  Povenets B had started life as a prison, a remote set of grey huts where members of the Karelian population who hadn’t sufficiently demonstrated their commitment to the Soviet cause were indefinitely interred. Since then it had grown in fits and starts. Larger, equally grey slabs of buildings were hastily erected; drab, prefabricated housing extended the original grid of prison blocks; basic roads were laid. Then the fence had gone up.

  Povenets B was now a naukograd, a science city closed off from the outside world and administered by the GRU, the Soviet Union’s foreign military intelligence directorate.

  As World War Two had given way to the Cold War, all sensitive state-sponsored operations like advanced scientific research, nuclear development, and weapons testing had been moved to secure locations across the Soviet Union. Some closed cities were little more than a factory with a few cabins for housing workers; others were entire cities, either built almost from scratch, like Povenets B, or simply redesignated, like Perm or Vladivostok, with fences and sentry posts surrounding them seemingly overnight.

  Three years ago a member of the GRU had approached Valera outside Andrei Zhdanov University in Leningrad and made her the same offer that had been extended to a select group of academics across the country – to leave her low salary and cold apartment for the higher standards of living and unlimited research budgets of a naukograd. Facing another bitter winter in a draughty, underheated two-room home at the top of a housing block that somehow managed to bear the brunt of winds from the Baltic and the Arctic, Valera decided she couldn’t refuse. Along with fifty other families, she and Ledjo moved to Povenets B. She soon regretted her decision.

  A quarter of the homes in Povenets B were old prison barracks, and the rest had been built in the same utilitarian style. Valera and Ledjo’s bungalow was one of the prefabricated additions. It had looked solid enough when they’d first arrived, but a few Karelian winters had revealed just how fragile it was. The walls were paper-thin, wind crept between the door and windows, and the water pipes that had been left running along the outside of it were bent and rusted from exposure.

  There was a school for Ledjo, but so few teachers that all the children were taught together. There was no hospital, and only one food shop, which, depending on the day, might or might not be stocked.

  All naukograds were expected to generate their own energy, a necessity both for security and because they tended to be built away from established supply lines. Povenets B’s power plant was by far its largest building. It was three storeys of dark concrete, patterned by stains from months of sun and more of ice; black, painted pipes that were big enough for a full-grown man to walk through and which seemed to knot through each other; and a tall, stretched-out cooling tower that for much of the day cast a deep shadow on the smaller structures next to it, including the school.

  Valera had never understood why Povenets B’s planners had put these two buildings next to each other. There was some kind of minor emergency at the plant every day, and power cuts were a regular occurrence. But whenever she voiced her concerns she was informed that infrastructure policy was none of her concern.

  Major Yuri Zukolev, the GRU administrator in charge of Povenets B, treated the city like a medieval fiefdom, and its scientists and their families as his personal serfs. Povenets B was a long way from Moscow and the prying eyes of Zukolev’s superiors, and as long as he kept the peace, didn’t ask for too much money, and delivered regular, positive progress reports, he was mostly left to run the naukograd as he saw fit. His chosen methods involved regimenting daily life down to half-hour intervals, restricting the supply of food to encourage obedience, and constantly demanding that the scientists under his care produced more results with fewer resources.

  One of the sirens that marked the passing of another half-hour blasted from a tower next to the power plant as Valera and Ledjo stepped through the door into their modest little home. As the door shut behind them they both let out a high-pitched scream, shook their bodies, and gave each other a big hug.

  ‘Hello, Pikku,’ Valera said, using her pet name for her son.

  ‘Hello, Mama,’ Ledjo replied, squeezing her waist tight.

  Valera helped Ledjo take off his worn school shoes, which were at least a size too small, then followed him into their spartan living room, waiting for him to climb onto their sofa – the one seat in the room – before jumping on top of him. They both giggled together. Valera pretended she couldn’t feel her son’s ribs pressing into her as she tickled him.

  ‘Mama,’ Ledjo said, when Valera had stopped gently attacking his sides. ‘Teacher told us today that we have conquered space and all the stars are ours. Is that true?’

  Valera grinned, leaned in close to Ledjo, and whispered ‘no’ in his ear. She could never have said anything as inflammatory as that single word outside, but in the privacy of her own home she was free to rebel a little.

  Ledjo’s face turned into a thoughtful frown.

  ‘That must be why we have to hide under our desks every day,’ he said. ‘Because of the Mercan bombs.’

  She wanted to tell him it wasn’t the American bombs
he should be worried about, but some trigger-happy major accidentally launching one of theirs. But there’d be hell to pay if he accidentally repeated something so un-Soviet in the playground or classroom.

  It was now past the naukograd’s unofficial curfew. They had nowhere to go, but for the rest of the day they were safe from prying eyes and ears. Valera would make them a stew on their single-flame stove with whatever food they had in the kitchen, and they would play games they made up or tell each other stories, pretending to paint them on the living room’s bare white walls until it was time for Ledjo to go to bed.

  For Valera and Ledjo’s first six months in Povenets B life had been very different. Zukolev had gone out of his way to make things pleasant for them. They were his favourites. They were invited to events at his home – the only two-storey house in the naukograd – with senior scientists. Ledjo was allowed to play in the major’s immaculately kept garden. They were even occasionally given extra meat from the monthly supply delivery. Karelia itself even wanted them to feel welcome, stretching out the warm autumn.

  But one morning at the school gates, just as the winter chill was starting to bite, Valera noticed the same look on the faces of several of the other mothers – a mix of pity and disgust. Valera was the only woman in Povenets B who wasn’t just a wife or mother, and she had no friends among the other women to ask what the look meant. But one of them was kind enough to whisper ‘whore’ as she walked past Valera two mornings later.

  Valera had brought a lie with her when she’d come to Povenets B, and she’d trapped herself in it. Ledjo had been the result of a brief affair with a young Red Army officer. The relationship had been intense, but when Valera told her lover she was pregnant and wanted to get married, he told her to get rid of the baby and then left himself. Valera didn’t want an abortion, but she also didn’t want a child who would have to grow up with the stigma of being a bastard. So, she invented another end to the story of the Red Army officer, which involved him dying tragically in service of Soviet glory.

  She’d forgotten that the role of the mourning, withdrawn widow was one she was supposed to play for the rest of her life, until the stranger at the school gates had reminded her. They’d also made her realise that she wasn’t Zukolev’s favourite at all. She was his prey. She was the only single woman and only single parent in Povenets B, and she’d let herself be manoeuvred into a position that made both her and Ledjo extremely vulnerable.

  Finally seeing the real agenda beneath Zukolev’s kindness, Valera refused his next invitation to dinner, and sent away the man who appeared at her door with two plucked chickens the following night.

  Zukolev’s behaviour changed instantly. He became as cold as the winter wind that rattled through Valera’s bungalow and chattered Ledjo’s milk teeth. For the next eighteen months he delighted in making her life difficult, reminding her at every opportunity that he had the power to make it – and Ledjo’s – even worse whenever he wanted. He would sporadically summon her to his office to tell her that her research was too slow, too expensive, or just outright useless. It didn’t matter that he had no comprehension of the particular area of radio wave physics to which Valera had dedicated every last bit of her energy and life that wasn’t already given to Ledjo.

  Over the last year their run-ins had become more frequent, and they now averaged one a week. Moscow had started to put pressure on Zukolev, so he was heaping it on her. Even locked away in the depths of Karelia, news from the outside world filtered through. Valera knew that America’s desire to win the space race was as strong as Russia’s. And she guessed scientists somewhere in the West were working on the same problems she’d been tasked with solving to help their side achieve a final, insurmountable victory.

  ‘What shall we have for supper, Pikku?’ Valera asked Ledjo as she untangled herself from his arms.

  ‘Caviar!’ Ledjo cried. ‘Goose!’

  ‘Of course, Pikku. Anything for you.’

  Valera left Ledjo to lose himself his imagination, and scoured the dark kitchen cupboards for any potatoes or grains that might have magically appeared in them.

  Years surviving on a subsistence diet had taken its toll on Valera. She was thin, and her skin was pale. The almond eyes that her mother had told her were so beautiful when she was young now looked like they belonged to someone far older. And her hair, which had never been thick but one upon a time had shone with life, hung dull and limp around her shoulders.

  Other women in Povenets B tried to disguise their deterioration, tying their brittle hair into elaborate plaits or squirrelling away their meagre supplies of butter and oil to give their faces an unnatural sheen. Valera did neither. She had no interest in pretending life in the naukograd was any better than it was.

  She also didn’t want anyone paying attention to her – especially Zukolev. But, as she took a blunt knife to half an old beetroot she’d been saving to make a thin borscht, she realised it was ten days since she’d last had to face the commandant of this prison she was locked away in, and she was overdue a visit.

  CHAPTER 4

  After Manning had left Bianchi and Moretti’s flat with Peterson at his heel, several MI5 officers arrived to pack up the scene and arrange transport of the bodies to a secure morgue.

  Knox made his own way back into town. There were no black cabs on Deptford High Street, so he caught a train into London Bridge, then walked over the river to Bank and took the Central Line to Oxford Circus.

  The Central Line in July was one of the least pleasant places to be in the whole of London. It was hot, pungent with the smell of stale bodies and cigarette smoke, and, somehow, always crowded. But it was also the fastest way across the city.

  Less than an hour after leaving Deptford, he was walking the short distance from Oxford Circus to Berwick Street and Kemp House, the eighteen-storey high-rise block that towered over the centre of Soho.

  The building had only been complete for a few months and Knox had been its first resident. When he’d seen the announcement by Westminster Council about the block in the Evening Standard over a year ago he knew he had to live there, and he’d used some contacts to pull a few strings and cut a deal with the council to buy a flat on the top floor off the architect’s plans.

  His flat was made up of a single large living area wrapped by windows, which served as his kitchen, dining, and living room. The space looked austere but considered. There was nothing extraneous, and everything served a purpose. On one side of the room was a free-standing granite kitchen counter. On the other was a large marble dining table and chairs. Along the wall halfway between them a well-stocked drinks trolley sat next to a black leather and rosewood Eames lounger. Behind the open plan was an equally minimalist bedroom and en suite.

  Of all the absences from the flat, one was particularly noticeable: a television. In less than a decade they’d become a feature of almost every British home, but Knox had never seen the appeal. He understood the excitement a little window on the world might offer people locked away in semi-detached houses up and down the country, but he saw more than his fair share of life on a daily basis.

  Knox always said he liked living in Kemp House because it made him feel connected to the heart of the city. Holland had countered that he’d chosen it so he could see his enemies coming from a long way off. Knox admitted it was a little bit of both.

  Ten minutes after arriving home and making himself a stiff gin and tonic to take the edge off the afternoon, there was a knock at his front door.

  Knox didn’t receive many visitors, which was another part of the attraction of living at the top of a high-rise. He valued his privacy, and still hadn’t introduced himself to the building’s few other residents. And should any of them want to learn more about him, all they’d find in any public rec-ords would be his name and job title at Avalon Logistics, one of the more prosaic cover company names used by members of MI5.

  He checked his watch – a 1956 Omega with a silver body, clear face, and tan leather strap h
e’d treated himself to when Holland had been made director general and promoted him three years ago – and took a guess about who was calling on him at four in the afternoon.

  He opened his door and proved himself right. A Watcher was standing in the hallway, holding a small crate.

  ‘Is this everything?’ Knox asked, fairly sure it wasn’t.

  ‘It’s what I was told to bring. So it’s what I brought.’ The Watcher thrust the crate into Knox’s hands and turned back to the lift without saying anything else. Knox let him go.

  Back inside his flat, Knox emptied the crate onto the dining table and spread out the contents. He picked up the slim MI5 file on Bianchi and Moretti. It was scant. Copies of their passports, a few details about their daily routines, a police report for a night Moretti had spent in a cell for being drunk and disorderly a few months ago, and not much else.

  Then, the rest of the crate: business cards for both men, an address book, and several bundles of paper, which Knox assumed must have been the ones scattered across the desk in their makeshift office.

  Knox’s instincts told him he’d been given the edited lowlights. Nothing jumped out to him that justified Manning’s interest in their deaths, or even MI5’s surveillance of them, as light as it might have been. Manning was already tying his hands behind his back. It was frustrating. But it was all Knox had to work with, so it was where he had to start.

  The business cards were elegant, but didn’t give away anything other than the Italians’ names and their address, which Knox already knew. There was no company or mysterious foreign phone number to call. The address book contained the details of several high-profile organisations, but they all matched the list Manning had reeled off in their makeshift study. There were no curious omissions or additions.

  Of the four bundles of papers, three of them were written entirely in Italian, which Knox had never learned. The fourth appeared to be a series of mathematical equations, advanced enough to use symbols rather than letters or numbers – another language Knox couldn’t read. It wouldn’t have taken much to get the Italian pages translated. Knox only needed to walk a few hundred yards to Bar Italia, the twenty-four-hour Italian cafe on Frith Street, buy an espresso, and call in one of the many favours the cafe’s waiters owed him. He knew he could rely on their tact – he’d owed them his fair share of favours over the years for secrets they’d kept and indiscretions they hadn’t held against him – but he decided it probably wasn’t worth the security risk in case the papers did end up containing something important. He’d have to send them on through official channels and wait for someone to be assigned to translating them.