Bennett watched him turn out of Neville Street, then she rushed back inside number nine and up to her room. She grabbed a jumper and the small packet of crackers she kept on the mantelpiece over the fireplace, then ran back out into the street.
White’s Anglia was exactly where he said it would be, and half an hour later she pulled into Methley Street, a quiet row of small but well-kept terraces just north of the Oval cricket ground in Kennington.
CHAPTER 57
Valera had spent the night alone. After Peterson had persuaded her to eat the tasteless sandwiches from the fridge, he’d explained that MI5 owned the building she’d had woken up trapped in. He confirmed what Valera already suspected: the whole of the upstairs was soundproofed, the windows were reinforced, and the only way in or out was through the bulletproof door at the bottom of the staircase.
After she’d finished eating Peterson had asked her to tell him exactly what she was bringing to her side of their new business partnership. She spent ten minutes explaining the intricacies of spread-spectrum broadcasting, frequency degradation and code-division modulation until she realised he had no idea what she was talking about. So instead of trying to give him a crash course in advanced radio wave physics, she resorted to an analogy.
‘If you are in a room full of people talking,’ she said, ‘how do you make yourself heard?’
‘Shout over everyone else,’ Peterson replied.
‘But what if everyone else starts to shout as well?’
‘Wait for them to stop.’
‘Good. You’ve just described broadcasting at different pitches or sequences. There is also a third option.’
Peterson thought for a moment, then said, ‘Different languages.’
Valera smiled. ‘Excellent. Pitch, sequence, and frequency. If I was speaking Russian in a room full of people speaking English, another Russian person would be able to make out my voice and know what I was saying.’
‘And no one else could.’
‘Unless they also understood Russian, or were paying my Russian friend to tell them what they heard,’ she replied. ‘Now, imagine if this room we were in was very large, large enough to contain everyone in the world. Another Russian speaker nearby might hear me, but not one thousands of kilometres away or on the other side of the planet. What can I do to make sure that person can hear me?’
This time Peterson couldn’t think of an answer.
‘I build another room,’ Valera said. ‘One that only I have access to, but that has doors that open up all around the world.’
Peterson started to understand what Valera was describing. A secure, global communications network. Something like that really could change the world. Every spy agency on the planet would want to get their hands on it, and every major corporation as well. He could sell it to all of them, and finally escape his life spent serving two masters.
Like every branch of the civil service, MI5 offered its mid-ranking members job security and a reasonable salary. There was also excitement, power, and some discretionary riches to be had if you became a field agent or eventually rose to the very top of the Service. Peterson had wanted all three, but it had been made clear to him early on in his career that they weren’t in his cards. He’d become tethered to Manning almost as soon as he’d joined MI5, and it was his lot to help Manning rise through the ranks, clinging to his coat-tails as he did.
Peterson might have let his resentment at the unsatisfying destiny he’d been handed lead him away from the Service, if a member of the MGB hadn’t approached him in Brighton one day ten years ago.
Peterson had decided to spend a rare weekend off outside London, and had taken the train down to the south coast. He was sitting in a deckchair on the bluff of the pebble beach near the Palace Pier, struggling to eat an ice cream before the sun melted it or the wind off the Channel splattered it across his front, when a man pulled a chair over to his, sat down, and introduced himself.
It was a bold, blunt approach, but it worked. The MGB had guessed that Peterson would respond to being flattered and having his ego stroked, and they were right. They offered him the excitement, power, and money he wanted in exchange for becoming their asset inside MI5. And he leaped at the chance.
For almost as long as he’d served as Manning’s sycophantic minion he’d also provided his Russian handlers with any information they’d requested from him. He’d even taken on the occasional mission for them, making or collecting the odd dead drop in and around London.
However, when he’d made the point that as he was becoming privy to more valuable information as Manning continued his unending ascent – and his risk of being caught was increasing – he should be paid more for what he was passing to Moscow, he was rebuffed. He pressed the point until he was told in very clear terms that it wasn’t only MI5 that he needed to worry about exposing him. He stopped asking for more money. But he also began putting plans in place that would let him escape both Russian and British intelligence.
As soon as he found out about Operation Pipistrelle, he knew he’d found his way out. He’d tried for years to get his hands on one of the bugs, but White guarded them zealously. So he’d kept his ears and eyes open in case something similar came along, which was how he ended up meeting Bianchi and Moretti.
He knew he could sell the Italians’ eavesdropping technology, and the OECD conference had given him the perfect market of paranoid governments and businesses. But now, with what Valera was offering, he could end up even richer than he’d hoped and, depending on what deals were done over the next couple of days, immeasurably powerful as well.
He’d briefly considered selling Valera’s discovery – and Valera – back to the Russians. But he decided he didn’t owe them such preferential treatment. Yes, his handler had asked him to look out for information about a defector passing through Finland, but it was he who found out who Valera really was, arranged for her to be extracted from Stockholm, and finally got her to confess just how valuable she could be.
Valera and Peterson had spent another hour going over her enhanced spread-spectrum code-division technology. By the time they were done Peterson had grasped enough of the basic principles to convincingly parrot them back to Valera.
As he left, he told her that someone would come by shortly with more provisions for her for the evening and a change of clothes for the morning. Half an hour later a man had delivered a fresh selection of bland sandwiches and a suit carrier, and she was now sitting in the living room, in a white shirt and plain black skirt and jacket, waiting for Peterson to return.
CHAPTER 58
Bennett reached over to the passenger side of the car, opened the glovebox, rattled the tin of travel sweets inside, and shut the compartment again. She went through this little routine whenever one of the residents of Methley Street walked past the Anglia as they began their morning commute, because it made her look less conspicuous than if she was just sitting behind the wheel not going anywhere.
She’d managed to stay awake most of the night, only dropping off for a few minutes around 3 a.m. and again at five. After finishing her crackers an hour into her stake-out, she’d staved off hunger thanks to the travel sweets, which she’d found shortly after midnight and had dipped into every couple of hours. Despite her brief lapses, she was sure she hadn’t missed anyone coming or going from the address White had given her.
Just as Bennett was starting to wonder if it might be time to try some more direct surveillance, like pulling a couple of wires out of the Anglia’s engine and knocking on the safe house’s front door for help, a large black Jaguar sedan shot down the street. She assumed it was someone running late for work, until it pulled to a sudden stop outside the safe house.