Rykov cleared his throat and moved on to the final item on the agenda. ‘A major explosion has caused significant damage to the Povenets B naukograd in Karelia.’
This got Medev’s attention. He held the clay figure still as Rykov read through the truncated initial report that had been sent overnight to Moscow.
‘The explosion occurred at the city’s power plant while the GRU administrator was inspecting it,’ Rykov continued. ‘Part of the plant was destroyed, causing an overnight blackout…’ He paused again at the line that had shocked him when he’d first read it half an hour ago ‘…and levelling the school building next to it. The administrator and surviving plant workers have been transported to the hospital in Petrozavodsk. Initial indications suggest all children and teachers in the school were killed. The GRU is confident the site is now secure.’ He waited for Medev to respond.
Medev placed the small statue back on his desk.
‘What research was being done at Povenets B?’ he asked.
Rykov consulted his notes. ‘A variety of advanced radio and electronics projects. Primarily remote guidance systems, and long-range, experimental communications.’
Medev sat for another long moment, then looked up at his young assistant and said, ‘Get me a plane.’
CHAPTER 25
Knox marched through the front door of Leconfield House, full of righteous indignation. After security reluctantly waved him through, he made his way across the ground floor’s large typing pool to the bank of lifts that would take him up to confront Manning. By now the MI5 rumour mill had done its work and row after row of people averted their eyes as he passed. Colleagues he’d worked with for over a decade pretended they couldn’t see him, but he didn’t care. He was about to give them something new to talk about.
Knox hadn’t needed another trip down to see White or up to Cambridge to confirm that the new papers he’d found in Bianchi and Moretti’s flat were legitimate and dangerous. He’d looked through the papers when he’d got back to Kemp House, and a couple of the equations felt familiar, though he couldn’t remember where from. In the morning he took them to the library in Senate House, the towering grey obelisk that loomed over Bloomsbury, and ten minutes in the physics section jogged his memory: they were a set of radio wave frequency calculations.
Knox had gleaned enough from briefings with White to know that frequency identification was a fundamental part of the science behind Operation Pipistrelle. Now the Italians were no longer just a mystery for Knox to solve; they were a potential threat to national security, and the timing of their deaths was suddenly extremely significant.
The OECD was the direct descendant of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, which had been formed to administer the thirteen billion dollars America and Canada pumped into Europe after the war via the Marshall Plan.
After the continent’s economies were shored up, the OEEC’s members decided to expand both the organisation and its remit. America and Canada were allowed to join, a belated thank you for their money, and the members magnanimously decided that the new OECD’s mission would be to help the world’s less-developed economies grow and prosper. Whether these economies wanted this help was a detail that would be ironed out later.
Now, the organisation’s inaugural conference in London was just three days away. The main event would, of course, be mostly a show. A chance for heads of state to posture and have their pictures taken. But Holland had made it clear to every department head in MI5 that the conference needed to be a success. Politically, it gave Britain a much-needed platform in the nascent new world order – a way to align itself with America but with the buffer of a grand international project firmly rooted in Europe, which would hopefully also stop the continent from falling into another war no one could afford. And from an information-gathering perspective, while the politicians were enjoying their receptions and photo opportunities, their London embassies would become the world’s most tantalising intelligence targets. This was because the OECD delegates included the most senior members of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, set up to coordinate and consolidate the West’s opposition to the threat of Soviet Russia.
Everyone wanted to know whose egos needed stroking, whose noses had most recently been put out of joint, and what intrigues and stratagems were being hatched against friends and foes. MI5 had toiled for years to gain its home field advantage, creating and refining the Pipistrelle devices, then installing them in embassies, hotel rooms, and conference facilities all over the capital.
If Bianchi and Moretti had found a way to replicate them, and someone else was able to listen to what was being discussed behind closed doors, all of MI5’s hard work would be undone. It also, in Knox’s mind, shortened the list of the Italians’ potential killers to three possibilities: someone they were working with who didn’t want them working with anyone else, someone who knew about their discovery and killed them when they wouldn’t hand it over, or someone who was scared of being exposed by it.
As for the passports, Knox had seen a lot of forgeries in his time, and these ones were good. Very good. So good, in fact, they could only have come from either an expert and expensive forger, or from a source that regularly produced high-quality fakes, like a security service. He had no proof that they’d come from MI5. They could just as easily have been made by MI6, the CIA, KGB, SDECE, or any of the other acronymmed agencies with a presence in London who used identity documents like currency. But he also couldn’t say for certain that someone in the Service hadn’t produced them.
By the time Knox reached the fifth floor, Manning’s secretary was waiting for him. Rachel Taunton had worked for Manning even longer than Peterson, and, just like everyone else close to him, was enjoying her recent rise to the Service’s highest echelon.
She let Knox step out of the lift, but blocked him from getting any further.
‘I’m here to see Manning.’
‘The director general’s busy.’
‘Acting director general,’ he corrected her.
‘Not any more,’ she replied, her face breaking into a crocodile smile.
‘What?’
‘Didn’t you hear? He was called to Whitehall this morning.’ She made a show of checking her watch. ‘It’s been official for almost an hour now.’
Knox couldn’t believe it. Holland had been out of action for less than a week, and he was carrying evidence that raised serious questions about MI5’s operational security and Manning’s personal agenda. This wasn’t the time to hand the Service permanently over to someone else. Knox had to get to Whitehall, confront Manning, or make his case directly to the Home Secretary that he shouldn’t be given absolute power over the Service.
Another lift arrived and he stepped inside as the doors started to close.
Taunton, still smiling, called after him: ‘They’ll be celebrating by now.’
She’d meant it as a twist of the knife she’d just buried in his chest, but she’d actually just told Knox there was no point going to Whitehall after all. If Manning was celebrating, there was only one place he’d be.
CHAPTER 26
The Fountain restaurant opened in Fortnum and Mason’s in 1955, and ever since had attracted the kind of person who liked their consumption extremely conspicuous. The restaurant’s plush, velvet booths gave the illusion of privacy, while their low backs made sure that everyone could see and be seen. Likewise, its windows were set low and fringed with curtains but still managed to provide a perfect view of the restaurant’s diners from the street.