The suite, in contrast to the hotel’s monochrome entrance and hallways, was a riotous rainbow of colour. The main space was dominated by two bright yellow leather sofas, facing each other across a low, angular onyx coffee table. Beyond them was a large, circular pedestal dining table made of the same white Lucite as the reception desk, surrounded by six intensely red moulded plastic chairs beneath an equally lurid orange pendant lamp hung above the table. Every wall was decorated differently – some in block colours, some in intricate, psychedelic wallpaper.
It was a sensory overload and Valera struggled to process it all. Peterson, already used to it after spending a night in the suite, walked over to the small oak desk next to the dining table, sat in its green leather tulip chair, opened his briefcase, and started reviewing the contents of his folder again.
Valera stood in front of the two sofas, turned a slow circle, and counted the doors in the suite. There were three: the one that led back out to the corridor, one for Peterson’s room, and, she hoped, one for hers.
‘Where can I freshen up?’ she asked.
Peterson gestured behind him without looking up. ‘The room on the left is yours,’ he said. Then he checked his watch. ‘We need to leave in fifty minutes.’
‘I’ll try to be done by then,’ Valera replied, doing nothing to hide the sarcasm in her voice.
Peterson grunted in response, no longer paying attention to her.
CHAPTER 60
Knox heard footsteps walking towards his cell. He had no idea how many hours he’d been languishing in the belly of Leconfield House but his stomach told him it was morning and he’d been there through the night. He hoped that whoever was coming to see him, and whatever they had planned to do to him, they were bringing him breakfast.
He swung his legs off the mattress and stood up as the door opened and White stepped into the room.
Before he could say anything, Knox said, ‘It’s Peterson, isn’t it?’
White closed the door behind him and nodded.
Knox had spent the night going back over every event of the last week, every piece of evidence, and every supposition. He was still convinced there was a Russian mole, but it wasn’t Manning. He’d made a list of everyone in MI5 who might have both reason to betray the Service and the access to information valuable enough to be worth something to the Russians. He went through the list again and again, and every time he came to the same conclusion. The mole had to be Peterson.
It wasn’t just the most logical possibility. It was also, embarrassingly, the most simple one. Peterson had been the one who had overseen Knox’s suspension, then orchestrated bringing him back in, both apparently under Manning’s orders. He was the only person in MI5 apart from White who knew that Knox had found Bianchi and Moretti’s secret papers. And, as Manning’s right-hand man, he’d see any information shared by the CIA, which would have led him to Valera.
He’d played the part of the harried deputy perfectly, all the while using Knox’s hatred of Manning to blind him to what was really going on.
‘I went snooping, as you suggested,’ White said. ‘And discovered that Peterson had quietly activated a safe house in Kennington. He’d tried to hide the order, but not very well. There was no way I could come and talk to you last night after the stunt you pulled at RIBA, so I went to see your American friend. She’s been keeping watch overnight.’
‘What happened?’ Knox asked.
‘Five minutes ago she called me from a phone box in Berkeley Square to tell me that a man fitting Peterson’s description arrived at the safe house this morning and left again with Miss Valera. They’re now at the Richmond Hotel on Conduit Street.’
So Knox was right. Peterson had kidnapped Valera under orders from the KGB, and he was going to use the conference as cover for getting her out of the country.
‘He killed Bianchi and Moretti, and now he’s going to hand her over to the Russians,’ Knox replied. ‘I need to stop him.’
‘Yes, you do,’ White replied.
‘And you’ve come to break me out of jail?’
‘Almost,’ White said. ‘Punch me.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You can’t send anyone else to help Bennett, and I can hardly despatch my engineers as cavalry. It has to be you. But you also can’t just walk out of here.’ He squared up to Knox. ‘So punch me, make your daring escape, and I’ll make sure you get a head start.’
‘Are you sure?’ he asked. There had been plenty of times Knox had wanted to give him a right hook, but this wasn’t one of them.
‘I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t. You’re wasting time.’
‘Fine,’ Knox said. Then he shifted his weight, pulled his arm back, and slammed his fist into the side of White’s face. White took a couple of stumbling steps backwards before stopping and righting himself. He felt a bubble of blood on the edge of his lower lip.
‘That should do it,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ Knox replied, moving towards the door. ‘And thank you.’
‘One more thing,’ White said, leaning one hand on the table and caressing his jawbone with the other. ‘I reviewed the calculations you gave me. They’re crude and unsophisticated, but with a little refinement they’d work. If Peterson has them too then Pipistrelle is blown.’
It took Knox less than ten minutes to get out of Leconfield House and run across Mayfair. The whole way he thought about what else Peterson might be handing over to the Russians along with Valera. He didn’t have the papers Knox had discovered, but Knox had no idea what Peterson might have extracted from the Italians before killing them. Or what he might have taken from MI5. If he’d somehow managed to pass on information about Atlas, it would be an even bigger disaster than London being covered in undetectable listening devices, stealing all the West’s secrets. With a supercomputer, Russian intelligence capabilities would take a massive, and terrifying, leap forward. No one and nowhere would be safe.
Knox slowed to a walk in Conduit Street, ignoring the burning of his scar and the dull ache that still covered his side. He found Bennett sitting in White’s Anglia, staring so intently at the turn-in to the Richmond that he had to bang on the passenger-side window to get her attention.
‘How was your night?’ she asked, unlocking the door to let him in.
‘Uncomfortable,’ Knox replied.
‘Ditto.’
Knox told Bennett that the man she’d seen with Valera was Nicholas Peterson, Manning’s deputy.
‘So Manning is still behind all this?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Knox said. ‘I think he’s a patsy. Peterson is the mole and he used Manning to deflect attention as he burrowed deeper into MI5.’
She filled him in on the details of the morning that White hadn’t had time to pass on, and told him that she hadn’t seen Peterson or Valera leave the hotel, or the black Jaguar come back.
‘Unless they slipped out when I was on the phone to White, they’re still in there.’
‘So we just need to walk in and ask which room the MI5 traitor and kidnapped Russian defector are staying in,’ Knox said
‘We only need to get past the front desk,’ she replied. ‘And I’ve got a plan for that.’ She pointed at a small newspaper kiosk down New Bond Street that had a rack of London maps hanging off its awning. ‘We’re just a couple of tourists coming back from our morning stroll.’
‘That might work for you, but it wouldn’t explain this,’ Knox replied, gesturing at the bruise across his face that was still an intense, deep purple. ‘I’ve also got an idea, though.’