Valera had felt the eyes of the queue behind her boring into her back, and then she’d felt a hand gently rest on her shoulder. She’d looked at the fat fingers curling round her clavicle and for one terrifying moment thought they belonged to Zukolev. But they didn’t. They were attached to an old man who had taken pity on her and translated the clerk’s instructions to go get her money changed into Finnish markka two desks down.
After she’d bought her ticket she went to the station’s small cafe, where she ate her first proper meal in days – a thick, meaty stew that she had to coax slowly down her throat. Then, an hour later, she’d got on another bus. Seven hours after that, she’d arrived in Helsinki. And just before five o’clock in the evening she’d walked through the doors of the Swedish embassy on the waterfront of the Finnish capital and requested political asylum.
Valera had no way of knowing that the CIA had a car permanently stationed in the ferry terminal car park across from the embassy and that the young agent sitting behind its steering wheel had taken her photo as she crossed the road and went inside. America had received its fair share of Soviet defectors in its European embassies over the years, and since Rudolf Nureyev, Russia’s greatest ballet star, had requested asylum in Paris a month ago the CIA had been watching at a long list of potential cross-over points all over the continent.
Most of the Swedish embassy’s senior staff had already left for the day when Valera walked in, and had to be urgently called back. All except the ambassador himself who, it was decided, would be better off not knowing about Valera until the Swedish security service, RPS/Säk, had worked out what to do with her.
The embassy was used to Russia dangling fake defectors at its front desk, promising the earth or begging for help. But they’d never seen anyone like Valera – someone who truly looked beaten down by despair but who refused to be defeated by it, and who spoke almost perfect Swedish.
However, it still took three hours of conversations and phone calls, including to the physics departments at Stockholm and Uppsala Universities, to establish that Valera was who she said she was, and another one to decide that instead of making her the ambassador’s problem, a seat should be found for her on the 10 p.m. SAS flight from Helsinki to Stockholm.
She’d been given twenty minutes to freshen herself up and change into a clean set of clothes kindly donated by one of the embassy secretaries. Then she was driven out to the airport.
CHAPTER 31
Knox knew trying to confront Manning had been a mistake. An amateurish, egotistical mistake. It was the kind of rash behaviour he’d drag a junior agent over the coals for. Manning wasn’t going to confess to being a double agent just because Knox wanted him to. And if Knox’s concerns about the security of the OECD conference and Operation Pipistrelle were as serious as he claimed, then Peterson was right and he should have taken the Italians’ papers straight to White. But he hadn’t. And he wasn’t going to.
Knox walked south, away from Fortnum’s, cutting through Green Park and then St James’s and down to the river. The hot night had turned into a muggy day, heavy with clouds. It was the kind of weather that reminded Londoners of pea-soupers and the Great Smog of 1952.
Knox needed to clear his head and stop letting his emotions and distrust of Manning get the better of him. He needed a more rational perspective.
He made his way east along Victoria Embankment. Opposite him the South Bank was still suffering its decade-long hangover from the Festival of Britain. Skylon, the slender spire that had been suspended over the riverbank as a vision of the nation’s bright tomorrow, was long gone. As was the grandiosely named Dome of Discovery that had been built next to it. The festival was supposed to be a beacon of hope and change, a celebration of a nation emerging from post-war austerity. And it had been, for the few months it was open.
Knox and Williams had visited the festival, along with everyone else in the city it seemed, over the summer of 1951. It was a welcome distraction from their office hours spent monitoring the swelling ranks of American and Russian agents treating London as their playground, all the while wondering if the stalemate along the 38th parallel would break and turn Korea into another world war.
Only the Royal Festival Hall was left standing now. The rest of the festival grounds had been cleared for redevelopment. So far only the new twenty-seven-storey headquarters of Royal Dutch Shell had started to rise in Skylon’s place.
He crossed over Blackfriars Bridge, stopping briefly to feel the wind blow past him. Even on the most stifling days, the air still moved on the Thames. He watched a heavy barge float downstream and under the bridge to the docks that lined the south side of the river from Blackfriars to beyond Tower Bridge.
He didn’t know what he was going to say to Holland, but he wanted to see him. Maybe sitting with him would help him accept how easily he’d let himself be manipulated, or maybe it would push him to do something about it.
Knox had visited Holland in Guy’s hospital every evening since he’d been rushed there from Highgate. Every evening except yesterday. The nurses who worked nights had no idea how Knox managed to appear at Holland’s bedside out of thin air at the start of their shifts. They’d just check Holland’s private room during their rounds, and suddenly he’d be there. Then, ten minutes or an hour later, they’d look in again and he’d be gone.
The hospital was busier than Knox was used to this afternoon. Visiting hours were in full swing and wives, husbands, parents, and children swarmed through the building. The grown-ups looked worried, resigned, or dog-tired. The children either stared excitedly at their unusual surroundings or ignored them.
Every bed Knox passed on his way to Holland’s room had someone next to it, talking, fussing, or just sitting quietly. And so did Holland’s.
Sarah Holland hadn’t slept properly in days. She’d found her husband lying face down on a thick-pile rug in their living room when she’d come home on Sunday evening after an afternoon visiting friends, his body limp, eyes closed, and breathing shallow and slow. She phoned for an ambulance, then she phoned Leconfield House. And for the last week her whole life had consisted of sitting at her husband’s bedside for two hours every morning and afternoon, and the rest of the time sitting at home, waiting to come back to the hospital, or for someone at Leconfield House to call and tell her something.
‘Sorry, I didn’t realise you were here,’ Knox said, as the door clicked shut behind him. ‘I’ll leave you alone.’
Sarah looked up at him from Holland’s side. She didn’t seem surprised. She looked like she’d been expecting him. She was immaculately dressed in a muted, floral dress. Her hair was neat, her make-up perfect, but Knox could see how tired she was.
‘No you won’t,’ Sarah replied. Her voice was cool, measured. ‘Stay.’
‘How is he?’ Knox asked, looking at Holland. He still wasn’t used to seeing him in his hospital bed, asleep, unable to wake up. Holland was a man with a powerful presence and it didn’t seem right for him to be so reduced, tucked under sheets in a pair of flannel pyjamas instead of behind his desk in one of his dark, pinstriped suits.
‘You’d know as well as me,’ Sarah said. ‘The nurses tell me you visit James every day.’
‘It’s the least I can do.’ Knox had known Sarah for years, but he found himself falling back on the formalities people used when talking to the grieving.