Red Corona

by Tim Glister

  At least most of the people she worked with respected her and tended to leave her alone. But there were still stares whenever she walked into a canteen or was seen outside the NASA compound. And some of her supposed colleagues were less than thankful when she was called in to solve an impossible problem that had stumped them for months.

  She knew she owed the CIA for getting her out of the KGB’s reach, and she owed Dixon for giving her work that actually challenged her and for giving her back her only physical memory of her son. But she also knew she couldn’t work for them forever, being allowed to stray gradually further and further from her lab but always kept on an invisible leash.

  Valera had been generous, giving NASA and the CIA as much of her brain as they could handle. But she was close to paying off her side of the bargain she’d struck in London with Dixon and Murphy. In fact, she’d decided that after her next major success, which might be mere minutes away, she’d wait for the celebratory party Americans were so fond of throwing to reach its height, then quietly slip out, put a jumper and some biscuits in her small backpack, disappear into the great American wilderness, and go find a lake somewhere to sail a boat on.

  So, she was anxious as she moved from panel to panel, followed by her assigned acolytes, but not for the reasons Dixon imagined.

  CHAPTER 65

  Knox walked through the front door of Leconfield House with absolutely no attention or fanfare, which was exactly how he liked it. For the first month after the Peterson affair and Holland’s return, whenever he arrived at MI5 headquarters he’d always encounter someone who wanted to congratulate him or apologise for believing the rumours and character assassinations that had been spread about him during his suspension. Now, a year later, things had settled down and it was back to business as normal.

  MI5 had covered the cost of restoring Knox’s flat, and his extended stay at Duke’s Hotel on St James’s Place. When he’d stepped back into his flat again for the first time after everything had been repaired, he remembered Peterson calling him a hypocrite for using his connections to buy it in the first place. After three weeks of building work he decided the least he could do was introduce himself to the other residents who were starting to fill up the building, if only to say sorry for the inconvenience he’d put them through.

  Knox had also been given his own office on the fifth floor of Leconfield House again, next to Holland’s and one that had been put aside for White but which he never used, preferring to stay down in the depths of the building with his engineers.

  With Operation Pipistrelle still secure, White had vigorously campaigned for an expansion of its scope and use. He also insisted that primary control be brought in-house to MI5 from GCHQ and Atlas turned back on. After balancing the ever-growing need for better-quality intelligence with the increased potential for a breach that more Pipistrelle bugs in the field could cause, Holland cautiously agreed to both.

  Holland had also faced repeated questions from Michael Finney about Pipistrelle. He had scolded Knox for revealing the name of one of MI5’s most important secrets to the CIA, but he also enjoyed seeing Finney squirm, aware that British intelligence had some sort of trick up their sleeve he knew nothing about.

  The two men who had attacked Knox in Strand station and the man who had tried to assault Bennett in Hyde Park had been picked up by the police shortly after their identikit descriptions had been drawn and circulated. They’d all identified Peterson when they were shown his photograph. But none of them admitted to knocking Knox out in Kemp House, or being part of the masked team that had kidnapped Valera in Stockholm.

  Knox’s first job once he’d been discharged from hospital was to work out just how badly Peterson had compromised MI5 over the years. The answer was, it seemed, mercifully little.

  The Service had been very lucky. Knox combed through all of MI5’s most important operations over the last decade, as well as intelligence supplied by MI6 about Russia’s activities over the same period. He couldn’t find any major strategic decision or tactical move by the Soviet Union or operational problem that could be attributed to a KGB mole at the heart of British intelligence. In fact, it had taken getting access to Peterson’s bank accounts to establish when he’d started working for the Russians.

  As Peterson had made clear to Knox as he stood over him in the suite in the Richmond, he wasn’t an ideological traitor. His relationship with the KGB had been strictly based on remuneration, and they’d paid him very well over the years for very little return. Peterson hadn’t left a record of exactly what he’d passed on to Russia, but by cross-referencing the timings of his second salary Knox was confident in his conclusion that the KGB had either ignored or chosen not to act on whatever information Peterson had given them.

  The only loose end that still worried Knox was the ghost of Cecil Court. Even after she’d been sentenced, Sandra Horne had refused to confirm if it had been Peterson who had been helping the Calder Hall Ring. Knox couldn’t tell if she was trying desperately to hold on to one last sliver of power, or if she was bluffing and actually had no idea who the mysterious contact had been. Holland was happy to leave this particular thread dangling so it could be pulled on in the future if needed.

  After Knox had completed his report and compiled a list of ongoing operations that should be closely monitored just in case the KGB knew about them, Holland insisted that he take a holiday.

  Knox decided to go back to Sweden. He flew to Stockholm, and spent a couple of days exploring the city and, inevitably, having some conversations with the Swedish security service. Their representative was a very tall, straight-talking man called Alve. Knox liked him immediately.

  Alve filled in some of the details about Valera’s long, hard journey from Russia to Sweden, and Knox reassured Alve that sending illicit extraction teams into foreign capitals was not standard MI5 procedure. Learning more about Valera and her life gave Knox a greater appreciation for what she’d gone through, but he still wasn’t sure he’d ever forgive her for shooting him.

  He then spent another week driving a rented Saab along the southern Swedish coast, on Alve’s recommendation. A fortnight after he’d returned to London several crates of teak furniture and Scandinavian art arrived at Kemp House.

  Since the new year, most of Knox’s time had been taken up with monitoring the Committee of 100, the direct-action wing of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It had spent 1961 committing increasingly bold acts of civil disobedience, staging protests across London and at military bases all over the country. But the wheels were now starting to come off, and Knox was in charge of making sure they didn’t cause any damage when they did. MI5 had braced itself for a long summer of watching the Committee implode. But, after the CND’s annual Easter march, things had gone quiet. It turned out the Committee and the CND were both almost broke.

  Knox’s last few months had been fairly subdued, consisting mainly of reviewing reports, catching up on training, and waiting for the events of the previous summer to come back and haunt him.

  It had taken Finney two weeks to arrange for Bennett to be accepted into CIA field agent training and be sent back to America. Given the events around the OECD conference he couldn’t deny that she was talented, but she also needed some of her rougher edges smoothed, and ideally somewhere far away from him. He didn’t enjoy being accused of treason by his junior staff.

  ‘Are you sure it’s what you want?’ Knox had asked when she told him. ‘You’re still more than welcome at Leconfield House.’

  ‘I will miss this city,’ she’d replied. ‘But I hate to walk away from a challenge. Especially one I made for myself,’ she added with a smirk.

  On her last day in London, Knox had taken her to Bar Italia. After they’d both finished their espressos, she pulled two photographs out of her bag and slid them over the counter.

  ‘Who are we after now?’ he asked.

  ‘A going-away present,’ she replied, smiling.

  ‘I think I’m supposed to get you
one, not the other way round.’

  She split the two photographs, revealing both faces, and pointed at them in turn. ‘That’s Patrick Dixon, the NASA scientist, and that’s Phinneus Murphy, his CIA liaison.’

  After saying goodbye to Bennett, Knox had taken the photos straight to Leconfield House. A single phone call by Holland to MI6 had established Dixon’s role in the Corona spy satellite programme, and a conversation with White had revealed why the Americans had been so suddenly interested in Valera. Knox was fascinated and terrified by what he’d learned about both. Pipistrelle and Atlas paled in comparison to the potential of Corona, and Valera might just be the greatest intelligence asset ever to slip through MI5’s fingers. It was some consolation that she was now in the hands of an ally, but not much.

  For the last year, people at the top of MI5 and MI6 had been anxiously speculating about what Valera and the CIA might cook up together. Now, at long last, Knox thought, they were about to find out.

  CHAPTER 66

  Knox crossed the secretarial pool on his way to the lifts. For once, discipline had completely broken down and no one minded at all. Desks had been cleared and a small television set in a wooden box had been set up in the middle of the room. A large group of people were already huddled around it. Knox checked his watch. He still had three minutes – plenty of time to reach Holland’s office.

  Five floors up he found another group of people gathered in front of a considerably bigger television screen. The director general’s private sanctum was normally reserved for one-on-one meetings, but today the heads of all MI5’s various departments swarmed it en masse. Holland didn’t like this, which explained his hectoring of White, who was still adjusting the television as Knox made his way to the space that had been left for him next to Holland.

  ‘Perhaps we should adjourn downstairs,’ Holland said as he rubbed his glasses with a small square of chamois.

  White ignored the thinly veiled criticism and continued tinkering with the set. A moment later the static on the screen cleared, revealing a baseball game in mid-play. Jokes rippled round the room. Had so much effort gone into the first-ever live transatlantic broadcast just to subject Europe to America’s bastardised version of cricket?

  After a full minute of play and accompanying witticisms, the screen switched to reveal Richard Dimbleby, the BBC journalist, in crisp black and white. He explained that most of the historic broadcast between America and Europe that was about to begin would be taken up by President Kennedy’s weekly press conference, transmitted live outside America for the first time.

  ‘But, before that remarkable event,’ he said in his clipped, received-pronunciation voice, ‘viewers on both sides of the Atlantic will be given a glimpse inside the control room that is in charge of transmitting the president’s words to the Telstar 1 satellite, which is travelling high above the ocean in its orbit as I speak, and which will in turn relay the broadcast signal to antenna stations in Goonhilly Downs in Cornwall and Pleumeur-Bodou in France.’

  Telstar 1 had been launched on top of a Thor-Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral ten days earlier. It was the result of a joint initiative that involved AT&T, Bell Labs and NASA in America, the Post Office in Britain, and its French equivalent, PTT. It was a revolutionary piece of technology, and the kind of potent statement that many in the West were keen to make about the power of cooperation between governments and private industry.

  At the heart of the satellite was a unique transponder that could capture and retransmit television and phone signals from one point on the planet to another. It took two and a half hours for Telstar 1 to orbit the planet, and for twenty minutes of every cycle it came within range of the American and European antenna stations. For that short window it could relay real-time signals between the two continents.

  The camera began to pan across the control room in Cape Canaveral. Walter Cronkite, the CBS journalist who had taken over presenting duties from Dimbleby when the live feed switched to America, listed some of the more notable members of the NASA team who were appearing on screen.

  ‘There we can see John Robinson Pierce, the leader of the project,’ Cronkite said in his sonorous, southern drawl, as a tall, thin man in heavy glasses stalked across the frame, flanked by people carrying clipboards.

  Then the camera settled on two more middle-aged men talking to each other. ‘And I believe that’s James M. Early, the man who designed the satellite’s transistors and solar panels, and Rudy Kompfner, the physicist who invented the travelling wave tube amplifier on which Telstar 1’s advanced transponder is based.’

  Several of the people watching in Holland’s office started to lose interest and chat among themselves. They wanted to see Kennedy, not a bunch of technicians. Knox, White, and Holland, however, kept their attention firmly on the screen.

  Holland was watching out for any high-ranking officials the camera might catch. White was soaking up as much information as he could from the control boards the camera drifted over – he wondered how much of the technological spectacle was for show, a flickering metal curtain hiding a hundred invisible mathematicians frantically crunching numbers. And Knox was looking for one person in particular. Then for one brief moment he saw her.

  Irina Valera. The woman who had almost killed him twelve months ago was standing at the back of the room, staring up at something Knox couldn’t see. She looked calm. Her face was unreadable – if she felt anything about what was happening in front of her, she wasn’t showing it. A phantom pang of pain shot through his chest.

  Knox also recognised the man standing next to Valera. It was Dixon, the head of the Corona project and one of the two men who had persuaded Valera to get on a plane to America a year ago. He thought about Bennett, and if she was watching the broadcast somewhere, maybe crammed into a room as full as Holland’s office with her fellow trainee CIA field agents.

  The camera only lingered on Valera and Dixon for a few seconds before it cut away again, this time to the White House and an empty dais bearing the presidential seal and flanked by American flags. The big moment had finally come. Kennedy walked into shot and Holland’s office fell silent again.

  He took to the stage and immediately began his address, his speech punctuated with his trademark ‘err’s and pauses.

  ‘I understand that part of today’s press conference is being relayed by the Telstar communications satellite to viewers across the Atlantic,’ he said. ‘And this is another indication of the extraordinary world in which we live.’ Mocked-up footage of the satellite spinning in space then came on the screen. ‘The satellite must be high enough to carry messages from both sides of the world, which is of course a very essential requirement for peace,’ he continued, as the camera switched back to him. ‘And I think this understanding which will inevitably come from these speedier communications is bound to increase the well-being and security of all people, here and those across the oceans.’

  It was a casual, relaxed performance but the words had been very carefully chosen, and Kennedy’s message was clear.

  He went on to talk about the price of the American dollar, which had been a rumbling news story across Europe for the last few weeks. However, Knox didn’t hear any of that. He was too busy thinking about the president’s opening remarks and the presence of Irina Valera at the heart of the Telstar project.

  Telstar had been pitched as the newest triumph of innovation driven by America’s dual belief in itself and limitless budgets. But as far as Knox was concerned, that’s not what Telstar was at all. It was a public relations exercise, a dazzling piece of propaganda beamed directly into millions of households up and down Britain, and even more across Europe and America. He wondered what Khrushchev would have said if he was the one behind the podium, being broadcast to the world.

  Telstar was something for the public to be wowed by and for governments and intelligence agencies to pay close attention to. It was also a cover. Kennedy’s comments about international security and seeing Valera at Cape Canavera
l had given it away. Even with an unlimited budget there was no way the US would have invested millions in breaching the atmospheric barrier for a relay satellite that worked for less than three hours a day.

  Knox was willing to bet that the next generation of Corona satellites was already in orbit, sending everything they spotted straight to the watchful eyes of the CIA. Some people in Holland’s office would probably think that was a good thing. Knox wasn’t so sure.

  At the end of the broadcast the collected department heads started to chat again, alternating between how impressed or underwhelmed they were seeing America’s greatest living orator speak live for the first time. Knox, White, and Holland, who had all paid closer attention to what the president had actually said, remained silent.

  After a few minutes, Holland sat down at his expansive and fastidiously clear desk, signalling that it was time for everyone to get out.

  ‘Did you notice?’ Knox asked Holland after everyone except he and White had left.

  ‘We shouldn’t be too surprised,’ Holland responded. ‘And now at least we know for certain.’

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘We can do nothing.’ Holland turned to White. ‘Though it might perhaps be time to bring Six in on Pipistrelle and see what they come up with.’

  White didn’t look thrilled at the prospect, but he had also caught sight of Valera and could read between Kennedy’s lines.

  ‘Are you sure that’s wise?’ he asked.