CHAPTER 63
Knox knew where he was before he opened his eyes. He recognised the quiet hum punctured by distant footsteps and beeps, the smell of bleach masking other odours, and the rough cotton sheet tucked tightly under his arms. He forced his eyelids apart. It felt like a long time since they’d closed as he slid down the wall of Peterson’s hotel suite, blood seeping from his chest and thigh.
It took a moment for him to focus, taking in first the general, fuzzy details of the private hospital room he was in and then, more clearly, the two people sitting in wheelchairs at the end of his bed.
‘Hello, sir,’ Knox said to Holland.
‘Ah, the sleeper awakes,’ Holland replied.
‘It’s about time,’ Bennett added.
‘I told you it wasn’t the end,’ Knox said, trying, and failing, to shift his weight. He didn’t know how long he’d been in this bed, propped up on pillows and pinned in place, but he guessed it had been a while.
‘That was before you got yourself shot,’ Bennett replied.
‘True. How long have I been out?’
‘Two days,’ Holland answered. ‘You spent most of Monday in surgery. The doctors decided to keep you sedated for twenty-four hours to make sure you didn’t undo any of their hard work straight away. They thought you might come round yesterday, but they had to make do with me instead.’
‘Sounds like a reasonable trade. What did I miss?’ Knox asked.
‘Rather a lot, as it happens.’
Holland recounted the events of the last two days, starting with the chaos that MI5 had been quietly plunged into when the police informed them what and who a team of paramedics had been called to the Richmond for on Monday morning.
Peterson was pronounced dead at the scene, but Knox and Bennett, who were still clinging onto life, were rushed to Guy’s for emergency surgery. Bennett was out of the operating theatre relatively quickly once her surgeon established that the bullet that had pierced her side had missed her vital organs. She was stitched up, given a blood transfusion, and sent to recovery.
Knox, however, took considerably longer to stabilise. The bullet Valera had shot into his chest had ricocheted off one of his ribs and come to a stop with its tip lodged in the wall of his left ventricle. It took his surgeon several hours to safely remove the bullet, repair the lining of his heart, assess the damage to his rib, and then take a look at his thigh. Luckily, the rib was cracked but not shattered, and the onyx shard had created a clean wound in his leg without slicing any important tendons. After enough rest and some light physiotherapy, the surgeons predicted Knox should make a full recovery.
Knox looked at his wrists, realising there were no handcuffs or straps on them. ‘How are the police treating Peterson’s death?’ he asked.
‘As an internal MI5 matter,’ Holland replied. ‘Thanks, in large part, to Miss Bennett.’
‘I wasn’t totally out of it,’ Bennett said. ‘I heard everything Peterson confessed, and told everyone I could as soon as I came round.’ She smiled at both men. ‘By Tuesday morning people were lining up to listen to me.’
‘Including myself,’ Holland said. ‘Whatever drug I’d been slipped finally wore off and I woke up at four in the morning on Tuesday, with no idea where I was or what was going on.’
‘That sounds like one hell of a sedative,’ Knox said.
‘We know the KGB have been inducing comas and staging fake deaths for years, but we haven’t heard of any cases of it lasting over a week. I may have set a record.’
‘I’ll bet White will want to run some tests on you.’
‘He’s already tried,’ Holland replied, a touch of irritation creeping into his voice. ‘But I have no desire to continue being someone’s guinea pig.’
Thinking about White reminded Knox of the other fear that had been driving him on. ‘Is Pipistrelle secure?’ he asked.
Holland nodded. ‘Now the conference delegates are leaving, the retrieval teams are clearing out our bugs. So far none of them have found anything to suggest the Russians – or anyone else – were listening in too. They’ve also disavowed Peterson.’
‘Hardly a surprise. What about Manning?’
‘He’s going to quietly stand down in a week or so, once I’ve been given the all-clear. He’ll probably be pensioned off with an OBE.’
It had been very quickly agreed to keep Holland’s miraculous recovery and Manning’s departure quiet until after the conference had ended to avoid any awkward questions. The last thing MI5 needed was to make public not only that it had been penetrated by the KGB, but also that their mole had ended up with unfettered access to all the Service’s intelligence and the complete trust of its freshly installed director general.
‘So you’re still DG?’ Knox asked.
‘Can you think of a reason I shouldn’t be?’ Holland replied.
‘No, sir,’ Knox replied, relieved that their shared secret was still safe. ‘What about me?’
‘You have Peterson’s mess to clear up once you’re discharged.’
Another wave of relief washed over Knox. In a few days he’d be back in Leconfield House, working with Holland again. Investigating Peterson’s crimes after his punishment had been dispensed wasn’t the usual way justice was served, but he could live with it.
‘I could use some help,’ Knox said to Bennett. ‘If you’re available.’
‘My fate is still being decided,’ she replied.
‘I’ve already told Finney she has a job waiting for her at Leconfield House if he doesn’t give her one.’
‘He should,’ Knox said. ‘She was right about everything.’
‘You’ll make me blush if you talk like that,’ Bennett said. ‘And I was wrong about plenty.’
‘Miss Bennett has more than proven her worth,’ Holland said. ‘No one else even had any idea who Irina Valera was. People should have paid attention to what she was saying a lot sooner.’
‘Speaking of Valera…’ Knox said.
‘She was on a plane to DC by lunch on Monday,’ Bennett said. ‘That I was right about,’ she added, smirking.
‘Shame.’ Knox’s voice took on a sharp tone. ‘I’d have liked to have continued our conversation.’
‘Don’t be too hard on her,’ Bennett said.
‘She shot me in the heart,’ Knox replied.
‘She was the one who told the receptionist at the Richmond to call the emergency services,’ Bennett replied, smiling again. ‘Technically, she saved your life.’
JULY 1962
CHAPTER 64
Mission control was buzzing with nervous energy. Dixon watched scientists and engineers rush between huge banks of whirring computers and the blinking control panels and screens they fed a constant stream of information to. Everyone around him was busy with some crucial job, but he knew he was basically just there to pad out the room.
It was almost a year to the day since he’d found himself sitting in a room in central London, straight off a red-eye from Washington, with little idea about why he’d just spent the night crossing the Atlantic.
Murphy had refused to tell him who he was supposed to be meeting despite him asking on the flight, in the taxi into the city, and as they’d climbed the several flights of narrow stairs that led up from the anonymous black-lacquered door just off Dover Street in Mayfair to their mysterious ap-pointment. There had been no one waiting to greet them. Murphy had produced a key to unlock the door on the street, then another one for the room at the top of the building.
It turned out Dixon had travelled three and a half thousand miles to meet a lady called Irina Valera. She’d arrived twenty minutes after they had. When she stepped into the room by herself, Murphy, for the first time, didn’t seem entirely in control of the situation.