CHAPTER 56
At the same time Knox was lying on his back in Leconfield House trying to weave a new thread that would connect all the events of the last week and lead him to the person behind it all, Bennett was sitting in the front seat of a car that wasn’t hers desperately trying to stay awake.
After Knox had left 66 Portland Place flanked by Watchers, Manning and Finney had returned to the reception, leaving Bennett alone in the exhibition gallery.
She spent five minutes processing the magnitude of what had just happened, and just how badly wrong things had gone. She decided there was no point returning to Grosvenor Square. In fact, she figured that chances were her security clearance had already been revoked. Instead, she left the RIBA building and walked up Portland Place to Regent’s Park tube station. She briefly thought about returning to Brompton Cemetery, to pay one final visit to Pankhurst’s grave, but decided against it. She’d come to London to prove she was just as smart and capable as any man in the CIA. Now she would be leaving in disgrace, written off as rash, emotional, a liability – a prime example of why women shouldn’t have ideas above their station. She wasn’t sure Pankhurst’s ghost would forgive her.
The boarding house Bennett called home was on Neville Street, ten minutes’ walk from South Kensington tube station. The house, number nine, was three storeys tall, the first covered in white stucco and the second two exposed brick. Unlike the other houses in the street, which were in immaculate condition, the stucco and bricks of number nine were both crumbling. The black and white mosaic steps that led up to the front door were cracked, and the door itself hadn’t been painted in a long time. The owner, Bennett learned shortly after moving in, had bought the house a long time ago, lived somewhere in the country, and rarely came into the city.
Bennett’s room was on the first floor, facing onto the street, and it was cavernous. Once upon a time it had been a grand reception room. Bennett’s single bed, wardrobe, and small table and chairs looked out of place pushed up next to its enormous, ornate fireplace. The room was draughty, but she didn’t care. It was bigger than anywhere else she’d ever lived, and it was all hers. She’d found it, she paid for it, and she didn’t have to share it.
Bennett’s journey back to Neville Street had been full of self-pity. She hated the idea of giving up her life in London and going back to America. She didn’t want to face her mother’s attempts to hide her disappointment or her useless brothers’ inevitable jokes, and she didn’t want to end up working some meaningless secretarial job in New York or Chicago if she was lucky, or Garden City if she wasn’t.
But when she reached her room, the home she’d made for herself, her pity transformed into anger. And fear. Seeing Medev killed and Valera kidnapped had shocked Bennett, but she’d told herself that she hadn’t been a target – she’d just got caught up in the attack along with Knox. Now that Finney had effectively taken her out of the game her mind was starting to catch up with everything that had happened in such quick succession since Stockholm. The man in Hyde Park had been there purely because of her. He’d wanted to hurt her, maybe even kill her. She realised she’d been so consumed with proving herself that she’d put herself in real, mortal danger. But as much as that scared her it also persuaded her even more that she was right – something very wrong was happening in MI5, and Finney was up to something too.
There was no one waiting for her but an envelope bearing the seal of the American embassy had been slipped under her door. It contained a letter informing her that her cover position had been terminated with immediate effect. She carefully slid the letter back into the envelope, then tore both of them in half.
She didn’t know where her future was, but she now knew it wouldn’t be in Neville Street. The embassy knew she lived there, which meant so did the CIA and so would anyone Finney might tell. She didn’t want to be sent back to America, but she also didn’t want to be kidnapped or killed and left to rot in her room. It was time to go. She started to pack.
She’d just finished sorting through her small pile of dirty clothes, wondering when and where she’d wash them, when she glanced out of the window and saw a man standing on the opposite side of the street looking up at her. He was middle-aged, with a shock of wiry blond hair, and his eyes were firmly fixed on her. They stared at each other for a moment before Bennett stepped back from the window.
She went back to her wardrobe, trying to ignore what had just happened, but she couldn’t resist peeking back out into the street to see if the man was still there. He was.
Bennett was about to gesture at him to move on when he raised his hand and gave her a small wave. Not sure how else to respond, she waved back. Then he turned his hand and made a subtle beckoning motion, raising his other one too to show he wasn’t hiding anything. Bennett was confused but intrigued.
She quickly searched her room for something she could use to defend herself in case this was a trick and the stranger waiting for her outside had been sent to finish the job the man in Hyde Park had failed to. The only things she could find were a small hardback edition of Our Man in Havana and her house keys. She left the book on her bed, bunched her keys in her fist, and headed downstairs.
Outside, the street lamps were starting to turn on. Bennett pulled her front door to and stepped down onto the pavement. But she didn’t cross the road.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘I know a friend of yours,’ White replied, trying not to shout. ‘Richard Knox.’
‘How do you know him?’
‘We work together at Avalon Logistics.’
Bennett relaxed her fist slightly. Knox had told her about MI5’s Avalon Logistics cover, and that she could trust anyone who used it.
White took the opportunity to cross over to her side of the street – he didn’t want all the residents of Neville Street to hear what he was about to tell Bennett.
‘Are you the famous Malcolm White?’ she asked as he stepped between the parked cars in front of her.
‘Apparently my reputation precedes me,’ he replied. ‘I had a rather troubling conversation with Richard this morning. He asked me to look into a few things, and let him know if I found anything odd. As he’s somewhat indisposed at present, I thought it best to find you.’
‘And you found something odd in Leconfield House?’
‘Plenty of odd things have been happening there recently, but one in particular stood out.’ He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small piece of paper, and handed it to Bennett. ‘Two days ago a dormant MI5 safe house was reactivated. No staff were requisitioned, no operation attached to it, just the power switched back on. I thought you might want to take a look.’
Bennett looked at the address. It was a street somewhere in south London. Suddenly she had the chance to do more than just disappear or wait for whatever fate Finney or one of his lackeys wanted to inflict on her.
‘I’ll need a car if I’m going on a stake-out,’ she said.
White pulled out a set of keys from his pocket. ‘The green Anglia at the end of the street. And my home and private office numbers are on the back of the address if you find anything interesting there.’
Bennett took the keys. ‘Can I at least give you a lift home?’
‘No need,’ he replied, starting to walk away. ‘It’s a lovely evening.’