‘No,’ Holland replied. ‘I want you here. It’s clear you were the target in Dungeness, so I don’t want to put you at risk. I also want you to spend the day with White. Who knows, he might be able to help you fill in the rest of the gaps in your memory.’

Chapter 46

Chapter 46

Unusually for a politician, Kosygin was running early. He’d already arrived at the Trades Union Congress headquarters for his meeting with George Woodcock, its general secretary, by the time Knox and Bennett reached Great Russell Street.

The security Laing had arranged was subtle but formidable. As Knox and Bennett walked beneath The Spirit of Brotherhood, the weathered bronze statue that loomed over the entrance to Congress House, Knox recognised several MI5 and Met officers standing guard and walking circuits around the building, looking like they were staff. They all knew who he was too, and didn’t react at all to his unexpected arrival.

‘Everything in order?’ Knox asked the plain-clothed constable sitting behind the reception desk.

‘Yes, sir,’ he replied.

‘Good. I’m going to take a look around.’

‘And the lady?’

‘Is with me.’

‘Very good, sir.’

The TUC’s real staff had been told not to come into work this morning. Only a few members of Woodcock’s inner circle knew why. Knox was sure the building had been checked for people who shouldn’t be there. He was concerned about someone who was supposed to be there but who might have an ulterior motive—someone from the Soviet delegation, Woodcock’s office, or, worst of all, MI5 or the police.

‘Should we go floor by floor?’ Bennett asked as they walked along a large window that looked out over the building’s hexagon-tiled inner courtyard at another sculpture, this one of a skeletal woman cradling a dead child against a towering green marble backdrop.

Knox shook his head. ‘We don’t have time to search the whole building. They’re meeting in the conference hall in the basement, so we should assume if someone’s here they aren’t messing about on the upper floors.’

‘You sure about that?’ Bennett said, pointing at the hexagons, which, Knox now realised, weren’t just ornamental tiling but skylights that gave direct lines of sight into the conference hall from all round the building.

‘Good point,’ he said. ‘We’ll go up, then down.’

Bennett took the lift while Knox climbed the staircase. It took them ten minutes to check every office and potential hiding place on the top floor, then another ten on each of the next two floors down. The building was deserted, but that only added to Knox and Bennett’s joint fear that that just meant they hadn’t found whoever they were hunting yet.