‘I’m not sure that would be so lucky,’ Knox said. ‘With everyone in London focused on the OECD conference it’d be the perfect place to hide Valera. Or put her to work.’

A stewardess interrupted their conversation, telling them the plane was about to begin its descent.

‘By the way,’ Knox said after the stewardess had moved on and he’d checked that his seatbelt was still tight across his lap, ‘how long has the CIA known about Pipistrelle?’

‘What?’ Bennett replied.

‘White’s bugs.’

‘Oh.’ Bennett smiled. ‘That was just a guess. Lucky for you my bosses wouldn’t believe me if I told them about it.’

As the plane came in to land at London Airport they agreed on a plan for the next day. Bennett would see if there was anything else she could find at the American embassy, and Knox would talk to the one other person in MI5 he might be able to trust.

Chapter 42

Chapter 42

It was midnight by the time Knox reached Soho. The hot, heavy air that had sat over London for days had finally broken into a storm and he had to move between shop doorways and awnings, dodging the last of the downpour as he made his way from Oxford Circus to Kemp House.

Soho was quiet, its usual nocturnal wanderers driven indoors by the rain. Knox walked down Argyll Street, turning left onto Great Marlborough Street opposite Liberty, the department store’s black and white Tudor panelling shining in the wet. He thought about his conversation with Bennett on the flight from Amsterdam. He understood better now why she was so scared of her dark vision of the world after everything she’d already gone through. He was starting to become as scared himself. Someone in London was so desperate to get their hands on the next generation of surveillance technology that they’d killed for it. Now, barely twenty-four hours before the opening of the OECD conference, they had kidnapped Irina Valera as well, leaving a trail of more death behind them. And Knox was convinced that this someone was his boss.

At the top of Poland Street two fire engines passed him. He wondered where they were headed at this time of night and in this weather. Then, as he turned into Berwick Street, he realised they weren’t on their way to deal with a fire, they were leaving one they’d just put out.

Small groups of people were gathered on the street, some in raincoats and holding umbrellas, others looking like they’d come straight from their beds, wrapped in whatever they could find on their way out of their homes. They were all looking up at Kemp House, where black scorch marks circled the top of the building and wisps of smoke were still reaching out from the blown-out windows of Knox’s flat.