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 to 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.