London was her first international posting, and she’d gone looking for Pankhurst’s grave as soon as she’d arrived in the city. She visited it whenever she felt her own resolve wavering, whenever she felt beaten down by the constant struggle to be taken seriously by her colleagues or, like now, when she just needed to think about her next move.
Bennett’s superiors were paying close attention to the fallout from Holland’s mysterious coma and Manning’s ascension to the top of MI5 days before the OECD conference. But they didn’t think either of these strange events had anything to do with the lingering rumours about Russian infiltration. Bennett did.
Her suspicions had led her to Dr Kaspar, and she’d been extremely careful timing her visit to Cambridge so she’d be able to take a look at his office undisturbed. She hadn’t expected to be interrupted halfway through her search of the old man’s den by one of MI5’s most senior officers, and she wanted to know why he’d been there. The obvious answer was that he was a mole hastily shutting down his network. Obvious and stupid. If Knox was a Soviet agent he’d have disappeared out of the country as soon as people had begun to ask questions about what had happened to Holland. The fact that he hadn’t, Bennett thought, meant something else was going on. She wondered if Knox was still hunting the mole himself. And if he was, then she might be able to use him.
After a few more minutes standing quietly in front of Pankhurst’s grave, staring at the details of the headstone that stood almost a full foot taller than her and that she knew so well, she left the cemetery.
CHAPTER 14
Valera stood on a low rise looking out over the tundra. By her reckoning she was about thirty kilometres from the Finnish border.
She had dug Ledjo’s body out of the rubble and sat cradling it for over an hour in the ruins of Povenets B. Long enough for all the dust, soot, and whatever else the explosion had thrown up into the air to start falling back down to earth, blanketing the naukograd in a black, acrid snow.
Valera had cleared as much of it off Ledjo as she could. With his raindrop eyes closed, he’d looked almost peaceful, an angel somehow trapped in hell. With her body covered in ash and her hands cut and filthy from digging, Valera had looked like some kind of beast from the abyss. She wanted to bathe Ledjo in her tears, but they wouldn’t come.
Povenets B had taken Valera’s freedom, and now it had taken her child. She’d almost given in, lain down next to Ledjo and let the rubble consume her as well, but something deep in her mind had compelled her not to. It forced her up and onto her feet. She couldn’t stop herself. She left her son in his horrible, open grave, and she walked home.
The further she got from the plant, the quieter the streets were. She passed building after building with cracked or smashed windows, and the odd person still running towards or away from the centre of the naukograd. By the time she reached her house she was completely alone. But even if Zukolev’s entire battalion of guards had been standing at her door, she wouldn’t have seen them in her shock-fuelled trance.
She stepped into the silent house and saw that the destruction had even reached inside here. Shards of glass from the windows that faced towards the power plant covered the floor, and a thick crack ran up the wall that she and Ledjo used to paint their fantastical worlds and stories on. She briefly looked at her faint half-reflection in one of the larger slices of glass. It was bad luck to look in a broken mirror – if she could have constructed the thought she would have asked the universe what more bad luck she could possibly endure.
She moved into the kitchen, and opened a cupboard next to the sink. She removed the thin wood panel she’d installed in it a year ago to create a fake back wall, and pulled two backpacks out of the hidden recess. She strapped the large one across her shoulders, and cradled the smaller one in her arms. Then, not rushing or racing, or looking at all like she was conscious of what she was doing, she walked away from her home and out through the unguarded entrance to Povenets B.
In her haze of trauma, she’d hiked west through the forest that surrounded the secret city until she hit a road. She’d continued on, one pack across her shoulders and the other in her arms, until the driver of a small truck picked her up just outside a village called Pindushi at the top of Lake Onega.
It was an unspoken agreement among the people who travelled Russia’s vast landscape that they would help each other get where they needed to go, and not ask questions along the way. Valera didn’t ask the driver why he was taking the long way to Leningrad, choosing the old country roads that meandered their way across Karelia instead of the modern highway that linked it directly to Petrozavodsk, the regional capital on the western side of Lake Onega. And he didn’t ask why she was filthy, why she never let go of the small backpack she clung to her chest, or why she shrank down in her seat whenever they passed another vehicle.
They travelled for a few hours in silence on the old road that wound through forests and tundra, skirted small lakes, or crossed them on rickety bridges, and passed through the decayed remains of several abandoned villages.
Karelia’s history was both long and bloody. Its vast network of interconnected lakes linked the Gulf of Finland and the White Sea, which meant whoever controlled Karelia controlled access to the Baltic and the Arctic. The region straddled the border between Finland and Russia, and twenty years ago, after centuries of tussling, the Soviet Union annexed most of it. The inhabitants of the area who wouldn’t or couldn’t flee west were moved out of their farms and villages, which were left to rot, and into internment camps. Povenets B had originally been one of those camps.
Valera barely registered the tundra, the lakes, or the empty villages as they drove on. Her mind was still trying to process what had happened. It was only when the sun started to stream through the truck’s windscreen that she realised the road had turned south. She was running on instinct but she knew she couldn’t risk going all the way to Leningrad. As soon as the GRU worked out she wasn’t in Povenets B, they’d go hunting for her, and Leningrad would be the first place they’d look. So with a few quiet words she said goodbye to the truck driver, and continued her journey on foot.
She hiked through two more villages in quick succession. The first had been remarkably well preserved. Buildings were still standing and small flowers bloomed in overgrown gardens. It was like everyone had just gone on a long summer holiday. The second village she almost missed entirely. It must have been the site of a major battle in one of Karelia’s many conflicts. A few broken walls were all that was left. There were no little flowers or any signs of life at all. And after that, there was just more tundra.
Another three hours of trudging across scrub and rock had brought her to this bluff, tantalisingly close to the Finnish border. It was late. She had no idea of the exact time, but the aching in her legs and pain in her stomach were finally starting to press against the fog of her shock and tell her she’d gone too long without food or a rest. She had two choices. Find somewhere to bed down, or keep walking.
This close to midsummer in Karelia the sun would briefly skim the horizon in a few hours’ time, but it wouldn’t get truly dark for another two months. Valera wouldn’t have the protective cover of night if she kept going, but she would be putting more distance between her and anyone who might be following behind her.