Tim Glister - Red Corona

‘I was doing my job.’

‘Your job is to find out who killed Bianchi and Moretti. Not to go showing classified evidence to old Nazis.’

The image of Kaspar, defeated, hobbling across Sheep’s Green, rushed back into Knox’s mind.

‘He’s not a Nazi,’ he said.

‘It’s amazing how many of them weren’t after they lost the war.’

‘He told me he wasn’t,’ Knox countered. ‘And I haven’t seen anything that proves he was.’

‘Did he, really? Did he also tell you he’d never been turned by the Russians? Or the Americans? Or both?’ Sarcasm dripped off Peterson’s questions. ‘Don’t be so naive, Richard. But maybe that’s why you went straight to him. Maybe he’s your KGB handler. The poor old genius everyone’s forgotten about. It’s a smart play. Hell, maybe you’re the mysterious phantom of Cecil Court too. That’s the only reason I can think of for you visiting Sandra Horne. Check in with Moscow, then make sure your operative hasn’t sold you out yet.’

‘I’m not a traitor,’ Knox replied, spitting the words through clenched teeth.

In response, Peterson’s face broke into a bright smile.

‘Oh, probably not,’ he said. His tone was suddenly light, almost conversational. ‘All just idle speculation. Not very pleasant though, is it? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but remember, so is truth.’

‘If you don’t like my methods, take me off the case.’

‘I don’t like that you’re acting as if you’re still working for the director general who’s been lying unresponsive in a hospital bed for four days instead of the one who’s very much with us and gave you a very simple order. Your duty is to the Service, not Holland.’

‘And yours?’ Knox spat back.

‘I do what I’m told.’

Knox was suddenly very tired of arguing with Peterson. ‘If you want me to find out who killed Bianchi and Moretti I have to start with why,’ he said.

‘Exactly,’ Peterson replied. ‘Why two Italians died in the arse end of Deptford. Not how you can make this part of a grand conspiracy. Just because you want there to be a connection between them and Manning doesn’t mean there is one.’ He stood up and smoothed his suit jacket. ‘You might not believe me, Richard, but I am trying to help you.’

He took one more look at the papers spread over the table, then started to make his way to the door.

‘Manning’s generosity isn’t limitless,’ he said. ‘Find a lead worth pulling on. Quickly.’

Valera’s resolve lasted another hour. The sun never completely set in Karelia in July, but the nights still got cold. She passed another abandoned village without registering it. Its old church still stood, offering sanctuary, but she didn’t seek it.

She ignored the pools and peat bogs she stepped in, and the gnats that had become a constant buzzing swarm around her. She stumbled over uneven ground, only changing direction for the largest of obstacles – a boulder deposited on the tundra by some ancient glacier or an inexplicable and long-felled tree trunk – until her body finally gave out.

Her legs crumpled under her and she collapsed onto a patch of moss and stunted bracken. As she hit the ground the small pack fell out of her arms. It was the first time she’d let go of it since she’d retrieved it from its hiding place. For almost a year she’d been collecting things, preparing emergency packs for her and Ledjo in case they ever got the chance to escape Povenets B. The chance had finally come, but only for Valera.

Her stomach suddenly demanded sustenance. She reached out and unfastened the flap of Ledjo’s pack. A small parcel of nuts and dried biscuits sat on top of a thick jumper. The jumper was one of Ledjo’s favourites from Leningrad. He’d almost grown out of it when they’d arrived in Povenets B, but years of feasting on scraps meant it still fitted him. Valera couldn’t remember when she’d put the nuts and biscuits in the backpack – it had been weeks since there’d been any of either in the naukograd ’s sole, undersupplied shop. She bit into a biscuit. It was dry, brittle, stale, and tasteless. But that didn’t matter. It was food, the fuel she needed. Her body was slowly shifting from shock to survival mode. Next it demanded water and shelter.

She stood back up on her stiff, aching legs and took in her surroundings properly for the first time. In the midsummer twilight the tundra seemed to stretch away from her forever in all directions. So too did thousands of small pools. She hobbled over to the nearest one and used both hands to cup the first water to touch her lips in hours. It tasted of the Earth, and chemicals. She realised her hands were still caked in whatever substances the power plant had flung into the atmosphere and all over her. She plunged both hands into the pool and tried to scrub them clean. Then she took her own pack off her back and pulled out a large, rough wool jumper. She slipped it over her head, wiping her hands across the front of it.

The falling temperature had driven the cloud of gnats away and Valera started to feel the silence of the night around her. She realised just how alone she was. There were no distant cries or howls, no beasts calling out to their mates or taunting their prey. The only sound was Valera’s own breath. It occurred to her that she hadn’t encountered anything larger than the gnats on her long walk across the tundra. There had been no snarling wolves or skittish elk, no tracks to follow or avoid. Even the animals had abandoned Karelia.

She spotted the low remains of a building a hundred metres away – just two walls a few metres high on a slab of concrete. She couldn’t tell if it was the final remnant of another lost village or some lone hut that had succumbed to the wilderness. But it didn’t matter. It was shelter.

Valera picked up both her packs, carried them over to the walls and wedged them into the corner where they met. Then she curled up against them and finally let out all the pain and anger she’d carried across Karelia. She cried. She wept for everything she’d lost. She wept for her parents. She wept for her beautiful, innocent son. She wept because the cost of her freedom had been too high.

In the years following Stalin’s death it became increasingly fashionable for high-ranking members of the Communist Party to move out of the centre of Moscow to the city’s burgeoning suburbs. Apartments were swapped for houses, commutes by car replaced short metro rides. It was all part of the Soviet paradox.

General Grigor Medev had never made the move out to the pretty, manicured neighbourhoods of Zhukovka or Barvikha, like so many of his comrades. He still lived in the Narkomfin Building, El Lissitzky’s grand communal housing project for Soviet workers in the centre of the city. He’d moved in in 1945 at the end of the Great Patriotic War, as the survivors of the Eastern Front returned home, and had lived there ever since.

His apartment, like all the others in the building, was small, and simple. Every home in the Narkomfin Building was open-plan and split-level. Medev’s front door opened onto a short flight of stairs up to a living area. Another flight led to the second level with his single bed and bathroom. There was no kitchen. Medev knew some of the other residents had secretly installed makeshift pantries in their living rooms so they didn’t have to eat every meal in the large ground-floor cafeteria. But he had kept the original layout of his – a small circular table surrounded by a built-in settee and chairs, and a desk bolted to the wall beneath the apartment’s single, wide window. He’d added a few bookshelves and paintings but he’d more or less kept his home the same for sixteen years. He also ate every meal he could in the cafeteria.