Red Corona Page 8

  He took one more look at the papers spread over the table, then started to make his way to the door.

  ‘Manning’s generosity isn’t limitless,’ he said. ‘Find a lead worth pulling on. Quickly.’

  CHAPTER 17

  Valera’s resolve lasted another hour. The sun never completely set in Karelia in July, but the nights still got cold. She passed another abandoned village without registering it. Its old church still stood, offering sanctuary, but she didn’t seek it.

  She ignored the pools and peat bogs she stepped in, and the gnats that had become a constant buzzing swarm around her. She stumbled over uneven ground, only changing direction for the largest of obstacles – a boulder deposited on the tundra by some ancient glacier or an inexplicable and long-felled tree trunk – until her body finally gave out.

  Her legs crumpled under her and she collapsed onto a patch of moss and stunted bracken. As she hit the ground the small pack fell out of her arms. It was the first time she’d let go of it since she’d retrieved it from its hiding place. For almost a year she’d been collecting things, preparing emergency packs for her and Ledjo in case they ever got the chance to escape Povenets B. The chance had finally come, but only for Valera.

  Her stomach suddenly demanded sustenance. She reached out and unfastened the flap of Ledjo’s pack. A small parcel of nuts and dried biscuits sat on top of a thick jumper. The jumper was one of Ledjo’s favourites from Leningrad. He’d almost grown out of it when they’d arrived in Povenets B, but years of feasting on scraps meant it still fitted him. Valera couldn’t remember when she’d put the nuts and biscuits in the backpack – it had been weeks since there’d been any of either in the naukograd’s sole, undersupplied shop. She bit into a biscuit. It was dry, brittle, stale, and tasteless. But that didn’t matter. It was food, the fuel she needed. Her body was slowly shifting from shock to survival mode. Next it demanded water and shelter.

  She stood back up on her stiff, aching legs and took in her surroundings properly for the first time. In the midsummer twilight the tundra seemed to stretch away from her forever in all directions. So too did thousands of small pools. She hobbled over to the nearest one and used both hands to cup the first water to touch her lips in hours. It tasted of the Earth, and chemicals. She realised her hands were still caked in whatever substances the power plant had flung into the atmosphere and all over her. She plunged both hands into the pool and tried to scrub them clean. Then she took her own pack off her back and pulled out a large, rough wool jumper. She slipped it over her head, wiping her hands across the front of it.

  The falling temperature had driven the cloud of gnats away and Valera started to feel the silence of the night around her. She realised just how alone she was. There were no distant cries or howls, no beasts calling out to their mates or taunting their prey. The only sound was Valera’s own breath. It occurred to her that she hadn’t encountered anything larger than the gnats on her long walk across the tundra. There had been no snarling wolves or skittish elk, no tracks to follow or avoid. Even the animals had abandoned Karelia.

  She spotted the low remains of a building a hundred metres away – just two walls a few metres high on a slab of concrete. She couldn’t tell if it was the final remnant of another lost village or some lone hut that had succumbed to the wilderness. But it didn’t matter. It was shelter.

  Valera picked up both her packs, carried them over to the walls and wedged them into the corner where they met. Then she curled up against them and finally let out all the pain and anger she’d carried across Karelia. She cried. She wept for everything she’d lost. She wept for her parents. She wept for her beautiful, innocent son. She wept because the cost of her freedom had been too high.

  CHAPTER 18

  In the years following Stalin’s death it became increasingly fashionable for high-ranking members of the Communist Party to move out of the centre of Moscow to the city’s burgeoning suburbs. Apartments were swapped for houses, commutes by car replaced short metro rides. It was all part of the Soviet paradox.

  General Grigor Medev had never made the move out to the pretty, manicured neighbourhoods of Zhukovka or Barvikha, like so many of his comrades. He still lived in the Narkomfin Building, El Lissitzky’s grand communal housing project for Soviet workers in the centre of the city. He’d moved in in 1945 at the end of the Great Patriotic War, as the survivors of the Eastern Front returned home, and had lived there ever since.

  His apartment, like all the others in the building, was small, and simple. Every home in the Narkomfin Building was open-plan and split-level. Medev’s front door opened onto a short flight of stairs up to a living area. Another flight led to the second level with his single bed and bathroom. There was no kitchen. Medev knew some of the other residents had secretly installed makeshift pantries in their living rooms so they didn’t have to eat every meal in the large ground-floor cafeteria. But he had kept the original layout of his – a small circular table surrounded by a built-in settee and chairs, and a desk bolted to the wall beneath the apartment’s single, wide window. He’d added a few bookshelves and paintings but he’d more or less kept his home the same for sixteen years. He also ate every meal he could in the cafeteria.

  Secrecy and solitude were fundamental parts of Medev’s professional life, so he relished being surrounded by people whenever he had the chance. However, he hadn’t just stayed in the Narkomfin Building out of a deep, personal commitment to the concept of collectivised living. He’d stayed because he enjoyed his hour-long morning walk to KGB headquarters at the Lubyanka far too much to ever think about giving it up for a few acres of land out in the sticks. He also didn’t have anyone to move to the suburbs with.

  Medev had given his life to the Party and the KGB. On his long but steady ascent to becoming chief of the KGB scientific directorate, he’d worked for many leaders and become privy to even more secrets. He was a near-mythical figure in the eyes of his staff, and had proven himself enough times to be left to run his directorate however he saw fit.

  To the population of the Narkomfin Building he was something between an enigma and a contradiction. Everyone knew that he was a senior KGB officer. Some had even discovered his actual position and title. None of them understood why he lived with them, or why he was so friendly. Medev went out of his way to say hello to everyone he met in the building, asked after the parents and children of the people whose paths he crossed regularly (they were always, invariably, fine), and was on very good terms with the cafeteria staff. This was particularly important because Medev’s responsibilities at the Lubyanka meant that he could easily miss the building’s normal mealtimes.

  For the last two days he hadn’t left the Lubyanka before midnight.

  ‘Good evening, comrade,’ a disembodied voice said as Medev finally pushed open the cafeteria door at almost two in the morning. It belonged to Galina, one of the cafeteria staff, who had lived and worked in the Narkomfin Building almost as long as Medev had. She was a widow, and happy to take the graveyard shifts so the other workers could spend their evenings and nights with their families. Medev liked Galina. She had a good sense of humour, and was an excellent cook.

  ‘Busy day?’ Galina asked, appearing through the side door to the kitchen.

  ‘Very,’ Medev replied, taking a seat at one of the empty tables in the small section of the cafeteria that still had its lights on.

  ‘And productive,’ she said, her voice rising to mimic the Party messages that were broadcast on radios across the country every day about the value of hard work.

  ‘Of course,’ Medev said, smiling.

  The last two days had, as far as Medev was concerned, been anything but productive. He’d spent them locked in an unmoving argument with Sergei Korolev. Many people only knew Korolev by his grandiose and somewhat made-up title of chief designer of rocket-space systems. Medev, unfortunately, was now far more intimately acquainted with the man and his overblown aspirations.

  Kennedy wanted to take America t
o the moon, but Korolev wanted to take Russia to Mars. It had been his secret ambition for years, and he’d somehow persuaded Khrushchev that it should be a public one. He’d drawn up plans for orbital launching platforms and electric rocket engines, and was preparing to build an advanced life support system at the Institute of Biophysics in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. The closed-loop system, codenamed BIOS-3, could theoretically sustain human life indefinitely with recycled air and water, food cultivators, and xenon lamps designed to mimic sunlight – all key concerns for getting people all the way to the red planet and back again. But, unlike NASA and its endless budgets, Korolev had to fight for funding and not even having Khrushchev’s ear could get him everything he needed. It would take more money than he had to make BIOS-3 a reality, so he had travelled, cap grudgingly in hand, all the way from Siberia.

  ‘BIOS-3 is crucial to establishing Soviet dominance of the cosmos,’ Korolev had declared in their first meeting.

  ‘That is very good,’ Medev replied. ‘But what will it give our comrades here on Earth?’

  Korolev didn’t like being questioned. Medev didn’t care. He had to deal with people like Korolev on an almost weekly basis – people who, he suspected, were more interested in personal glory than advancing the Soviet cause.

  ‘Hope,’ Korolev said after a long pause.

  ‘Communism doesn’t need hope,’ Medev replied. ‘It needs protecting.’

  It took another two long meetings for Korolev to grasp what Medev had dangled in front of him and start talking about BIOS-3 in more terrestrial terms. It could, he began to argue, be used to house brave comrades in hostile environments around the world, or high-value foreign assets from whom the KGB might want to extract information in complete secrecy.

  Medev could see merit in both arguments. But just as Korolev didn’t have infinite resources, neither did he. Considerable amounts of KGB money had already been funnelled into the Zenit satellite and Vostok rocket programmes as well as the constant surveillance of their American counterparts, the Corona programme and Project Mercury. He couldn’t justify moving funds from any of these to research that would take years to produce even a proof of concept.

  An hour ago Medev had finally sent Korolev on his way, empty-handed but with a promise to reconsider his request at some unspecified date in the future.

  ‘I know you’re desperate to tell me all about it,’ Galina said, knowing full well that Medev couldn’t. ‘But I’ve got to get back to my stove. A bowl of solyanka, comrade?’

  ‘That sounds perfect,’ Medev said. A bowl of Galina’s sweet and sour beef stew was exactly what he needed before heading up to his apartment and sleep.

  CHAPTER 19

  Knox slouched in his Eames lounger. He’d been sitting in it for hours, watching the sun drop over London as he slowly sank lower and lower himself. He was now near horizontal. There was a crystal tumbler on the floor next to him within easy reach. The events of the day had called for something stronger than gin, so he was drinking his best Ron Zacapa rum, neat.

  He’d spent the whole evening staring out at the city, seething about his run-in with Peterson, and trying to work out exactly what he’d ended up in the middle of. He’d been given a puzzle to solve that didn’t make any sense. There were too many parts, and he couldn’t see how any of them fitted together.

  He’d survived as an outsider within MI5 by always being one step ahead, always knowing more about an operation than anyone else, considering every outcome, and preparing for all of them. Knox was absolutely not in control of this situation, and he didn’t like it. There had to be some angle that would make everything fall into place. But he had no idea what it was. And the longer he sat thinking about it, the less Kemp House felt like a castle in the sky and the more it felt like a giant plinth, giving a clear shot at him to anyone who wanted one.

  The one thing he knew for definite this evening was that he was too drunk to visit Holland. This was a problem, because he’d only felt more lost than right now once before during his MI5 career. The first time he’d visited the Gresham Arms. The first and only time he’d been responsible for a fellow officer’s death. And it had been Holland who had helped him find his way back then.

  Holland had recruited Knox into the Service as his apprentice at the end of the war. Knox wasn’t a typical candidate for MI5. But Holland had been impressed by his military record, and even more so when he discovered that he’d lied about his age to sign up to the army a week after D-Day.

  Holland had become Knox’s patron. Knox had become his pupil and, in turn, had recruited Jack Williams as his fellow disciple. Williams was Knox’s complete opposite. He was from the right kind of family and had gone to the right school. He had the relaxed, carefree attitude of the extremely well off, and the bright eyes and skin of someone who grew up breathing country air on land their family owned. But he also saw through his privilege and knew it was hollow, built on nothing he or his parents had achieved themselves.

  His mother and father were content to while away their lives on their large Hertfordshire estate, enjoying the silver spoon that Williams’s father had had the luck to be born sucking on. Williams himself preferred to do something with his. When he was young, he used his money to travel, and his easy charm to make friends all over the world. Then, when it was time for more serious pursuits, he used his name to get into Sandhurst. His great-grandfather had been a brigadier in the early days of the Raj in India, and the army had a long memory.

  Knox met Williams in Paris during the sombre yet heady days after its liberation from the Nazis. Williams was five years older than Knox, an officer in the 1st Royal Tank Regiment. He’d landed on Gold Beach during D-Day and had been in France ever since, pushing the Wehrmacht back village by village.

  The proprietor of a small bistro on the Île Saint-Louis sat them together one night when they happened to arrive at the restaurant at the same time, both in uniform. Before Knox could point out that they didn’t know each other, Williams had asked the owner, in perfect French, for a good bottle of Cahors wine for them to share.

  ‘I’ll show you mine and you can show me yours,’ Williams said to Knox as their wine was delivered.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Knox asked, confused.

  Williams unbuttoned his uniform jacket and pulled up his shirt to reveal a large patch of scar tissue that ran up the left side of his torso. ‘Got caught a little too close to an incendiary on a trip to the seaside.’

  Knox was momentarily transfixed by the swirls of flesh that stretched up towards his new dining companion’s chest and down towards his hip.

  ‘I like to think of it as my own, personal Van Gogh. Maybe I should get it painted,’ Williams joked as he tucked his shirt back in.

  Knox pulled back the thick lock of hair that he’d started to let fall over his forehead, revealing the wide scar that stuck out from his hairline. ‘Goes all the way back,’ he said.

  ‘Normandy?’ Williams asked.

  Knox shook his head. ‘Afterwards. I was on a patrol outside Rouen, looking for German stragglers. We got word there might be some holed up in the roof of an old manor house. It was late, and everyone was tired, so I volunteered to take a look. They were there, alright. Two young Germans who had been surviving on God knows what for weeks. One of them was too frail to do anything, the other decided to put me through a wall to protect his friend.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Lay half concussed in a pool of my own blood while the rest of my company came to the rescue.’

  They shared more war stories over dinner and another two bottles of wine. And for the next week they spent every day together, dining, drinking, and touring the city.

  Months later, demobbed and uninterested by the prospect of restoring his family’s pile to its pre-war state (it had, like many country homes, been taken over by the military for the duration of the war), Williams looked up Knox in London.

  Knox introduced him to Holland over a long dinner and drinks at the Garrick
Club, where Holland was a member. Williams fitted the rarefied surroundings more than Knox ever had, but his irreverence for them still shone through. Holland liked him, and by dessert they were discussing his prospects. Within a week Williams was cleared to join MI5. From that point Knox and Williams trained together, worked together, and spent most of their free time together. Then, after fourteen years of friendship closer than Knox ever thought he’d experience in his life, he got Williams killed.

  In 1959, President de Gaulle decided to pay a visit to Prime Minister Macmillan. Freshly elevated to the highest office in France, de Gaulle felt he deserved all the pomp his new title would afford him. It was to be a state visit.

  He sailed across the Channel aboard the Surcouf, one of the French navy’s new T 47-class destroyers, passing within ogling distance of the naval shipyards in Plymouth so everyone there could get an eyeful of the latest symbol of France’s post-war resurgence, before arriving in Southampton.

  Of course, some people wanted a closer look at the destroyer, and a plan was hatched between MI5, MI6, and Naval Intelligence to do just that. There was a rumour that the Surcouf had a new underwater guidance and torpedo detection system installed on the underside of its forward hull, and the navy wanted to know if it really existed before they made overtures about an official exchange of information.

  Knox was put in charge of the mission, and Williams, who had spent six months training with military divers for exactly this kind of operation, led the dive team.

  The night that de Gaulle was in London being wined and dined at Buckingham Palace, the clouds over Southampton were thick and the harbour water dead calm – perfect conditions for a clandestine dive.

  Confidence was high as Williams and his team slipped into the sea outside the harbour and made their way towards the destroyer. But when all the divers but Williams surfaced on time, Knox became concerned. When he hadn’t appeared after twenty minutes, concern turned into worry. Williams had enough air in his tank to last an hour, but that window came and went with no sign of him. This was the one outcome Knox hadn’t prepared for. He ordered people to comb both sides of the Southampton estuary all the way up to the Solent. They found nothing. He wanted to send every diver back into the water, requisition boats to start dredging the harbour. But by then it was morning, and doing either would make it obvious to anyone within fifty miles that Britain had been flagrantly spying on an ally in the middle of a state visit. So, nothing was done.