by Tim Glister
Peterson and Valera walked across the hotel’s sparse foyer, past the reception desk, which was a single, amorphous piece of dazzling white Lucite that seemed to grow out of the equally white floor, to its small bank of lifts.
They rode up to the sixth floor in silence, then Peterson led Valera to their suite at the end of a corridor that was lacquered black and lit only by small spotlights above each room’s door.
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.’
CHAPTER
61
They got out of the car and crossed the junction to the Richmond, pausing just before the turn-in.
‘Give me a minute, then follow me in,’ Knox said.
Then he ran round the corner, through the hotel’s front doors, and straight up to the reception desk.
‘Sorry, excuse me. Hello,’ he said to the young man at the desk between panting breaths. ‘Oh God,’ he continued, his eyes darting across the foyer and back to the receptionist again. ‘He’s going to kill me.’
‘Can I help, sir?’ the receptionist asked, covering his confusion with professional courtesy.
‘My boss, is he already here?’ Knox spun round, facing away from the desk. ‘A man, about ten years older than me, grey suit?’ He turned back to the receptionist. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t get here first. This is it. I’m done.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the receptionist replied, ‘but I can’t give out any information about our guests. Or possible guests.’
‘Just tell me,’ Knox said, a pleading edge in his voice, ‘did he look angry?’
The receptionist looked at Knox’s desperate eyes, and the bruise across his cheek, and very slightly shook his head.
‘Oh, thank God,’ Knox said. ‘Maybe I can still fix this.’ He started to move away from the desk to the bank of lifts. ‘Fifth floor, right?’ he called back to the receptionist.
‘Sixth,’ he replied, instinctively.
‘Of course,’ Knox said, pantomiming smacking the side of his head and wincing at the pain it caused in his cheek.
As the lift doors closed behind Knox, a woman walked through the hotel doors, drawing the receptionist’s gaze away from the lifts. Halfway across the foyer she turned towards the receptionist, raised up a folded A-to-Z of the city, and said, ‘Lovely morning out there,’ in a broad American accent.
‘Yes, madam,’ he replied, immediately forgetting her as he went back to reviewing the morning’s depressingly short list of departures and arrivals.
Bennett reached the bank of lifts in time to see the display above the one Knox had taken stop at the sixth floor. She called the next lift, rode it up to the fourth floor, then took the stairs the rest of the way.
By the time she reached the sixth floor Knox had already made it most of the way down the corridor, moving silently from door to door listening for any movement inside.
There was only one room left, at the very end of the corridor.
Bennett tiptoed over to Knox and they both pressed their ears against the last door. At first they heard nothing, then what sounded like another door somewhere inside the room being opened.
Knox stepped away from the door, and then opened another across from it, revealing a cleaning trolley. He moved it under the spotlight next to Bennett, pressed his back against the wall, and gestured for Bennett to do the same.
‘Be ready as soon as the handle moves,’ Knox whispered. Then he knocked on the door.
Inside the suite, Valera, who had just come back out from her room, instinctively walked towards the sound of knocking.
‘Just a minute,’ Peterson said, getting up from the desk. ‘I’ll take care of this.’
Valera was fully aware that it wasn’t gallantry or manners that prompted Peterson to move past her. It was fear of his new business partner making a run for it, and irritation at being disturbed against his strict instructions.
He looked through the fisheye lens and saw the trolley. He considered ignoring it, but instead turned the handle, ready to give the chambermaid who had disturbed him a piece of his mind. But before he could open his mouth the door was flung open and he was shoved backwards by Knox and Bennett forcing their way inside.
At the sudden appearance of the two people she’d last seen in Stockholm Valera dashed back inside her bedroom. Peterson stumbled over his feet away from Knox and Bennett and, as Valera locked her door behind her, finally lost his balance and toppled over, skidding across the onyx coffee table and falling off the far side of it.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he demanded as he pulled himself back up using the arm of the sofa nearest the desk.
‘Surprised to see me?’ Knox said. ‘You need to hire some better muscle, Nicholas.’
‘I don’t have time to indulge you this morning, Richard,’ Peterson said, falling seamlessly into the role of harassed underling and covering his shock that Knox wasn’t slowly asphyxiating in his flat, as he edged towards the desk and his open briefcase. ‘I’ve got too much to do for Manning.’
‘For Russia, you mean,’ Knox countered, moving closer to Peterson between the sofa and coffee table.
‘You really are an idiot,’ Peterson said. He reached into the briefcase, pulled out the pistol – a Beretta 70 – and levelled it at Knox. ‘A complete, bloody idiot.’
The balance of power had suddenly shifted, but Knox didn’t flinch. Even with the gun it was still two against one.
‘Stand down. It’s over,’ he said.
Peterson just laughed at him, letting all his pretences finally drop away.
‘Let Valera go,’ Bennett said, stepping away from Knox, splitting Peterson’s target.
‘She’s here entirely of her own accord,’ Peterson replied.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I don’t care,’ he replied. Then he shot her.
CHAPTER 62
The gunshot was so loud it made Valera dive for cover. She thought the bullet must have smashed through the door to her bedroom, but it hadn’t. The door was still in one piece, still locked, keeping her safe but also stuck.
Valera had already checked the room for possible escape routes. Now she checked again. The bedroom window opened, but only a crack and out into thin air. There was another window in the en-suite bathroom. It might have led to a ledge but it was far too small for her to fit through.
There was nowhere for her to go. All she could do was stay where she was, listen to the crashes and shouts coming from the other side of the door, and hope they stayed there.
Out in the suite, Bennett crumpled to the floor. Her hands reached for the red blossom of blood already spreading across her torso. She knew what it felt like to fire a gun, and she’d read about what it was like to take a bullet, but her books hadn’t prepared her for the sudden flood of adrenaline that made her feel boiling hot and freezing cold all at once.
She tried to control her breathing and stop herself from hyperventilating. She pressed her hand against her side. The front and back of her shirt were both wet with blood, and she could feel the tears where the bullet had ripped through the fabric on its way in and out of her body. She knew she needed to put pressure on the wounds if she was going to stop herself bleeding out, so she clumsily shuffled backwards until she could rest against the wall and prop herself up against it, adding an extra smear of deep red to its vibrant print.
Peterson stared at the Beretta, frozen in surprise that he’d actually pulled the trigger. He’d fantasised about firing a gun but he’d never actually done it, not even at the MI5 practice range.
Knox, faced with either helping Bennett or stopping Peterson doing any more damage, took advantage of Peterson’s paralysis and lunged at him over the side of the sofa. They both hit the hard edge of the dining table as Knox tried to wrestle the gun out of Peterson’s hand. But Peterson’s grip was surprisingly strong and Knox had to settle for slamming his wrist against the table until the gun tumbled out of his grasp and disappeared under the sofa next to Bennett. Unfortunately she was in no position to reach out and grab it.
Peterson shoved Knox off him, almost sending him tumbling back over the side of the sofa, then moved around the dining table, putting it between them.
‘So you finally worked out what’s going on,’ he said, his voice pure condescension.
‘You killed Bianchi and Moretti,’ Knox said. ‘Sold out Pipistrelle to the Russians, and now you’re delivering Valera to them.’
‘Oh dear,’ Peterson replied. ‘Only one out of three. What on
earth did Holland see in you all these years? It can’t have been your powers of deduction.’
Knox faked a leap round the right-hand side of the table, forcing Peterson back towards the desk and away from the sofa the gun was under.
‘Why did you do it?’ Knox demanded. ‘Wasn’t being Manning’s lapdog enough?’
‘That’s rich, coming from Holland’s favourite pet,’ Peterson replied.
‘I’m no one’s pet,’ he shot back.
‘Holland handed you everything you’ve ever wanted on a plate. You’re the golden child who doesn’t have to follow the rules.’ Peterson took another step round towards the desk, mirroring every step Knox made towards him. ‘I’m just taking the advantages I wasn’t given.’
‘You’re a traitor,’ Knox said.
‘And you’re a hypocrite,’ Peterson spat at him. ‘You play the part of the poor child from the East End but you live in a penthouse on top of a block of council flats, just to remind everyone how much better than them you are.’
Knox couldn’t control himself any more. He hurled himself at Peterson. But Peterson was ready for him. He sidestepped out of the way and let Knox crash straight into the desk.
‘A predictable hypocrite.’
Knox, doubled over on the desk, took a second to compose and quickly berate himself for underestimating Peterson. He guessed Peterson expected him to come back up swinging. So instead he let out a groan, slumped down to his side, and used the tulip chair to steady himself. Then, when he did stand back up, he brought Peterson’s briefcase with him, throwing it at his head.
Peterson jerked out of its way, catching his foot on the corner of the coffee table and falling onto it again, this time smashing through the onyx and crashing onto the floor.
‘At least I’m not betraying my country so the KGB can spy on the whole world,’ Knox said, as he stepped over Peterson and started raining punches down on him.