by Tim Glister
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.’
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 increasin
g – 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.
A man in a grey suit got out of the rear door nearest the pavement and Bennett instinctively sank down into the well of her seat as he walked up the steps, unlocked the front door, and stepped inside.
A minute later he re-emerged with Valera by his side in a dark suit. Bennett sank even lower as Valera paused at the top of the steps and scanned the street. She couldn’t read the expression on her face – she didn’t look exactly happy about following the man down into the waiting car, but she didn’t look scared either.
Bennett let the sedan pull away, counted to ten, put the Anglia in gear, and started to follow them.
The Jaguar turned out of Methley Street and headed north. The driver had no idea who either of his passengers were. He’d been hired, along with the car, anonymously by Peterson and paid in cash. Peterson was always careful with the people who did his dirty work for him. He paid well, but never told them more than was absolutely necessary. And he never used the same person twice. The only time he’d broken this rule was when he’d sent the man who’d been guarding the Italians’ flat to Stockholm because he hadn’t had time to find anyone else to complete the strike team. But he’d ended up getting himself killed, so couldn’t betray Peterson even if he’d wanted to.
Valera sat across from Peterson in the back of the sedan. She tried her best to look relaxed, but her body was rigid and her suit itched.
Peterson had an open briefcase perched on his knees. He held a manila folder in one hand while the other kept a vice-like grip on the handle of the case.
‘We’ll be at the Richmond in twenty minutes,’ he said, without looking up from the documents he was studying. ‘We’ll get you settled in my suite for an hour, then we have two meetings this morning. After that, the car will take you back to the hotel, where you’ll have lunch in the suite. I have another engagement I have to attend, but I’ll be back around three in time for our afternoon appointments.’
Valera had already memorised their schedule, and knew what was expected of her. She was to dazzle Peterson’s contacts with her genius, while he worked on extracting the best deal from them. She didn’t know who she would be meeting, and Peterson had made it clear that she wouldn’t find out until she was in the room with them. He may have been doing his best to exude an air of confidence, down to organising the ostentatious car and moving Valera to an expensive hotel, but his paranoia still showed through. Valera tried to sneak a look at the contents of his folder, but all she could see was the handle of a pistol resting under it in the briefcase.
‘Then what?’ she asked.
‘Then,’ he replied, closing the briefcase, ‘it’s back to the Richmond for dinner and an early night, and we do it all again in the morning.’
The Jaguar started to cross Westminster Bridge. Twenty seconds later, the Anglia did the same. Bennett followed Peterson and Valera over the bridge, past Big Ben and Parliament Square, and along the sides of St James’s Park and Buckingham Palace, before turning east along Piccadilly and into Mayfair.
The little convoy travelled up Clarges Street, then Curzon Street, just a few hundred yards away from Leconfield House. It looped around Berkeley Square, then continued on along Conduit Street. After the junction with New Bond Street, the Jaguar slowed to a stop in the middle of the road, indicating right.
Bennett pulled in to the kerb fifty yards behind them on the other side of the junction, and watched as the car turned into the set-back entrance of a six-storey hotel. She got out of the Anglia and ran over the junction just in time to see Peterson and Valera walk inside, then she sprinted back to Berkeley Square, stepped into one of the bright red phone boxes that stood in a row at its northern end, and dialled White’s office number.
CHAPTER 59
The owners of the Richmond had started to worry that they’d made a terrible mistake. They’d bet that the super-wealthy were growing tired of the faded glories of hotels that had last been decorated at the height of the belle époque, and that there was money to be made by being the first to embrace a more modern aesthetic. So they’d spent a sizeable fortune stripping back and renovating the hotel, then filling it with one-of-a-kind pieces by designers like Arne Jacobsen and Eero Saarinen that blended forms and materials in radical, outlandish ways. Unfortunately it hadn’t worked.
The hotel had featured in a couple of travel articles in the UK and America, and had even been used for a photoshoot for Vogue, but so far the rich had not flocked to the Richmond. There had been a steady stream of tourists coming to enjoy the novelty of the place, but there hadn’t been a booking for any of its suites on the upper floors in over a month. The owners had wanted to get ahead of the times, but it seemed they’d gone a little too far a little too fast.
They were particularly concerned that they had no reservations for the OECD conference. Every other luxury hotel in Mayfair was fighting off booking requests, but the Richmond stood almost empty. The owners had no idea that Peterson had orchestrated this
exact situation by removing the Richmond from the list of approved hotels MI5 had supplied to the conference’s attendees. So they were extremely relieved when they finally received a booking for one of their most expensive suites for the entire week of the conference from a Mr Devereux.
They had no idea who Mr Devereux was or who he worked for, but they didn’t care – he had money, and that was enough to make him important. Desperate to make a good impression, the front-of-house staff were told to cater to his every whim and accommodate all his peculiarities, such as checking in late on Sunday night, insisting no staff go up to the sixth floor or enter his suite without direct instruction from him, and bringing an unknown woman who he referred to unconvincingly as his niece into the hotel at nine o’clock on a Monday morning.
Peterson had chosen the Richmond out of convenience. It was close to both Leconfield House and Westminster Central Hall, where the majority of the OECD conference’s official events would be held. The Central Hall had been picked to add a bit of weight and theatricality to the conference’s proceedings. It had been the site of the first meeting of the inaugural General Assembly of the United Nations in 1946, and the OECD hoped to borrow some of its historical significance.
The Richmond was also near all the other hotels – the Dorchester, Claridge’s, Brown’s and the like – that had been booked out by visiting dignitaries. And by keeping it off MI5’s list Peterson could be sure he wouldn’t bump into anyone he didn’t plan on meeting, or worry about anyone listening in to his conversations. He’d even taken the precaution of having all Pipistrelle intelligence routed through GCHQ, so if any of his prospective buyers let slip about their meetings with him in their hotel rooms it would be too late by the time it got back to MI5.
And, just to be completely certain of his privacy, a month ago he’d taken a short-term lease on an empty office at the top of a building just off Dover Street, five minutes away. It was neutral, anonymous ground, and, importantly, it was untraceable – the company Peterson had used on the lease didn’t exist.