It was another rhetorical question, but as Knox looked down at the man, he recognised his heavy, almost Neanderthal brow, and the sneer that was still on his face, even in death. It was the policeman who had been guarding Bianchi and Moretti’s building.

Chapter 41

Chapter 41

The SAS flight to Amsterdam left Stockholm just before six o’clock. It was a popular route, and the two-hour flight time meant that the early-evening flight was always busy with business travellers keen to leave Sweden after their afternoon meetings and reach Holland in time for more business, or pleasure, or both. This evening’s plane was almost full, but the SAS desk agent managed to find two seats together for the English gentleman and American lady who had arrived at Bromma shortly after 5 p.m.

Knox sat in silence for almost the whole flight. The only time he opened his mouth was to order two double whiskies in quick succession. The rest of the time he spent brooding. For once, he didn’t like being right. He also didn’t like how he’d been proved right. He’d been blindsided by events unfolding around him yet again. And he’d wilfully walked into a situation almost identical to the one at the centre of his suspicions of Manning. There was even the death of a Russian agent to complete the parallel. But there was also a significant difference between them—Manning’s mission to Singapore had been sanctioned, and Knox’s trip to Stockholm had not. If it hadn’t been for the dead man from Deptford, Knox’s anxiety at breaking one of MI5’s most basic operational rules would have outweighed his anger at finding and then losing Valera. As it was there wasn’t much between them.

At Schiphol, Knox and Bennett were lucky again. There was a KLM flight to London leaving at nine thirty, and it had plenty of seats available. They had an hour to kill before boarding, and tacitly agreed not to spend it together.

Knox found a bar in the terminal and ordered another whisky to tide him over as he tried to get his head round everything that had happened. He imagined Williams and Holland sitting opposite him, Williams joking about the man who had killed himself by tripping over Knox, and Holland calling him a bloody fool for letting himself get in such a mess in the first place.