His visit to Canada had been both fruitless and pointless. And so, really, had his trip to Australia.

The Venona Project had been decrypting old Soviet communications for twenty years, hunting for traitors long hidden and often long gone. It had been instrumental in identifying Russian assets working in the West, like Klaus Fuchs, the German physicist who had been stealing classified information from the Manhattan Project, and Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, the Cambridge students-turned-­diplomats who had suddenly defected to Moscow in 1951, followed twelve years later by their comrade, MI6 officer Kim Philby. But its successes were always historic, retroactive, and Knox still couldn’t really see the point in flying all the way to Canberra to spend four days locked in a conference room with the Australians and Americans while everyone congratulated each other for uncovering yet another nefarious but minor plot years after it had done its damage.

Canada, Australia, and how many other of his trips around the Commonwealth had meant nothing and delivered less?

Knox had a couple of hours in Toronto Airport before his BOAC flight to London, so he found a bar and ordered a whisky. He hoped the spirit might do what last night’s Malbec had failed to and help him sleep on the overnight flight.

Shortly before he was called to board the man at the bar next to him got up, leaving behind the paper he’d been reading. Out of habit, Knox reached over and scanned the front page. More rumours about the election, more criticism of Smith and what was happening in the Empire’s latest ex-colony. He didn’t bother reading beyond the headlines, and instead just folded the paper in half, dropped it on the bar in front of the empty seat next to him, and cradled the last of his whisky as he waited for his flight number to be announced.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Knox’s Boeing 707 landed at London Airport early the next morning. He didn’t go straight to MI5 headquarters after he’d gone through passport control and collected his luggage. Instead, he picked up his gunmetal-grey E-type Jaguar from the car park, skirted the edge of the capital and headed north.

Knox had never seen the need for a car living in London, but for the last two years he’d been dividing what little time he spent in Britain between the city and the country, so one had become a necessity.

Rabley Heath was an old manor house nestled in a forest on a hill in Hertfordshire. It wasn’t as significant as nearby Knebworth House, or Hatfield, but it had still made an impact on the local geography as the catalyst for a village to spread along the wooded lanes that led to its gates.