‘Right, then. I think it’s time for my afternoon stroll round the grounds.’ Horne pushed her chair back, stood up, and straightened her shirt. ‘Oi,’ she shouted at the door. A moment later it opened, revealing the same guard who had delivered her a few minutes earlier. ‘I think we’re finished now,’ Horne told the guard, then turned back to Knox and said, ‘I’ll see you soon, dearie.’

The guard looked at Knox as Horne stepped past her. He nodded that they were indeed done, and the guard fell into step behind her prisoner, leaving Knox to find his own way out.

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Abey Bennett loved London. The city was literally and figuratively thousands of miles from Lakin, the township in rural Kansas where she’d grown up. Lakin was a small, tight-knit community of weather-beaten buildings and grizzled prairie folk who were only a few generations removed from the great push west. London was the complete opposite. It was a real melting pot, where the tall towers and endless streets were full of people from all over the world.

Bennett felt free in London. Free to be who she wanted to be. Free to be as visible or invisible as she needed to be. And when it came to trailing members of MI5 across the city, she needed to be invisible.

Once she was sure Knox was going to see Sandra Horne, Bennett went back to the tube and rode the Piccadilly Line all the way to South Kensington. If she’d been following operational procedure properly, she’d have reported Knox’s trips to Cambridge and Holloway to her superiors. But, as they’d already dismissed every attempt she’d made to convince them something was rotten at the highest levels of British intelligence and she was currently acting alone and without authorisation, she didn’t feel inclined to.

She knew who Knox was, and that he’d been suspended from MI5 just over twenty-four hours ago. What she didn’t understand was why he’d then gone to see Dr Ludwig Kaspar, a man who still had suspected links to Russia, and then Horne, whose Soviet connections were certain.

At South Kensington, she changed onto the District Line and travelled another three stops. At West Brompton she got off the tube, turned right out of the station, walked a hundred yards along Old Brompton Road, and turned right again.