‘You alright, miss?’ one of the young men asked Bennett as the man disappeared in the distance.
‘I sure am, mister,’ she replied in her full Midwestern accent. ‘Thank you kindly.’
Then she gave him a hug and ran away, leaving everyone in the water gardens to wonder if she’d really been in danger or was just some mad American.
Bennett left the park, crossed over Bayswater Road, and headed into Lancaster Gate tube station. She now assumed Knox had never made it to Speakers’ Corner or the water gardens after all. She didn’t know where he was, and she needed to find him.
CHAPTER 50
Bennett took the Central Line from Lancaster Gate to Oxford Circus and, after checking that the man from the park hadn’t followed her or handed her over to another tail, made her way to Kemp House.
She’d decided that Knox’s flat was a good place to start her search for him. It wasn’t until she reached the top floor of the building that she realised something was wrong. As soon as the lift door opened, the acrid smell of smoke hit her. It reminded her of her childhood and the never-ending task of keeping the kitchen fire burning through winter. The sight of the tarpaulin across the door brought her back to the present. She opened the seam, releasing even more old smoke into the corridor, and shouted Knox’s name as she stepped into the flat and saw the destruction.
She found Knox strapped to the bed, smeared with dirt and blood. She rushed to his side and checked his breathing. It was shallow, but it was there. She shook his shoulders and shouted his name again, but he didn’t wake up. She ran out into the kitchen, looking for something to cut him free, but only found the two sets of footprints that led into the open-plan area and the single set and long streak that led away from it. The drawers that lined the kitchen counter were all warped shut.
Bennett tried the bathroom next. Like the bedroom, it had survived mostly intact. She opened the mirrored cupboard that sat on the wall above the sink and found a small pair of scissors. Standing over the bed again, she opened them to make a single blade and slashed at the strips of duct tape holding Knox down. Then she cut the binding around his ankles and wrists. Finally, she ripped the tape off his mouth. She expected the pain of the glue tearing the skin off his lips would bring him round. It didn’t.
Knox wouldn’t wake up because he didn’t want to. His mind was happy exactly where it was, dreaming that he was back at the Festival of Britain with Jack Williams.
It was late afternoon, a Friday. The sun was still high, the breeze off the Thames was just right, and Knox was drinking beer with his best friend. Soon they’d make a bet about who was going to buy the next round, Knox would lose, and Williams would make it up to him by taking him for dinner at a new restaurant he wanted to try. Then they’d inevitably end up at Bar Italia before stumbling back to wherever in Soho Knox was living at the time or taking a late train to Hertfordshire to spend the weekend recovering from their excesses. It was a perfect memory, and Knox’s mind had no desire to give it up.
Unfortunately, Bennett had no idea how content Knox was. She was just scared that he was now stuck in a coma, just like Holland. There was one thing left she could try to wake him up. She slapped him hard across the face. Twice.
Slowly, and very unwillingly, Knox came to. He was confused to see Bennett in his bedroom staring down at him. Then, as he started to register the pain all over his face and the back of his head, his confusion turned to anger.
‘Hello,’ he said. His voice cracked. His throat was dry from inhaling the smoke-heavy air.
‘What happened to you?’ Bennett asked.
‘I think I upset someone,’ he replied, pulling himself up into a sitting position and delicately leaning his head against the wall.
‘That makes two of us.’
He told her about seeing the aftermath of the fire last night, his visits to White and Sarah Holland, and the attack someone had sprung on him while he was checking the damage to his flat. Then Bennett told him about the man who had come after her in Hyde Park.
‘It sounds like they really want us out of the way,’ Knox replied when she was done.
‘We might need to add another they to our list,’ Bennett replied.
She told him about the missing records in the CIA archives, the file she’d found on Medev, and the conversation she’d overheard in the embassy canteen.
‘I think it might not just be MI5 that’s been compromised,’ she said. ‘Finney could have been turned too.’
Knox had spent years searching for signs of Soviet infiltration of British intelligence, and he was convinced he’d found them. But even he struggled to believe that the KGB could have turned the director general of MI5 and the CIA’s chief in London. He thought for a moment, then asked, ‘Why fly someone over from NASA?’
‘You said why yourself. To find out what they can from Valera before they hand her back.’
‘Maybe.’ A CIA station chief checking out files in the dead of night and the sudden appearance of a NASA scientist in the city were definitely strange, but they weren’t the oddest things to happen over the last week.
‘But, if Finney and Manning are both working for the KGB, then why circulate Valera’s photo in the first place?’ Knox asked. ‘Why not bury it as soon as it came in?’
Bennett had thought about that too while she sat in Hyde Park.
‘Anything that’s held back has to be accounted for, eventually. They weren’t expecting anyone to be looking for Valera, or even recognise her. It was low-level intelligence. Better to let it sit in plain sight and then quietly remove it. Then, once Valera’s been put on a plane, or a sub, or buried in a shallow grave somewhere, they can just slip it back into the files.’
That, unfortunately, sounded entirely plausible to Knox. He felt along the edge of the bruise across his face, and along the line of his brow. He winced when his finger touched the gash and broke the thin scab that had started to form across it.
He had one last question for Bennett. ‘What about Medev? Why kill a KGB directorate chief if that’s who you’re supposed to be working for?’
‘I can’t decide between two answers for that one,’ Bennett replied.
‘Which are?’
‘First, they didn’t know he was in play.’
‘They didn’t know one of the KGB’s highest-ranking officers was involved?’
‘I’m serious. How much does MI5 do that MI6 has no idea about? Getting the CIA and the FBI to cooperate on anything takes months of negotiation. The KGB is huge. Maybe there were two operations running at once.’
‘And second?’
‘He was a target too. Part of an internal KGB power struggle.’
Somehow Knox liked that idea even less than the notion that both Manning and Finney had been turned.
He pulled himself up off his bed and walked over to his wardrobe. He opened it, relieved to see both his clothes and the crate from Bianchi and Moretti’s were still inside and in decent condition.
‘What are you doing?’ Bennett asked.
‘I’m getting changed,’ he replied. ‘And then we’re going to Leconfield House to have it out with Manning once and for all, before he can do any more damage.’
‘That’s great,’ Bennett said. ‘But Manning isn’t at Leconfield House.’
‘What?’ Knox asked as he gave up trying to remove the duct tape from the front of his shirt and just pulled it over his head. He dropped the ruined shirt on the floor and took a clean one off a hanger.
‘He’ll be at the diplomatic reception in Portland Place. Along with Finney.’
Knox thought about Manning lapping up the attention of the great and powerful in Holland’s place, all the while knowing he was about to preside over an intelligence disaster that Britain might never recover from.