42 London–Cornwall
London–Cornwall
They quibbled over the code name—eventually the undertaking would be christened Sapphire—but on one point they were in complete
agreement. For reasons of operational security, Liam Higgins, Edward Knight’s faithful if officious personal assistant, had
to go. It was Knight himself who did the deed, using as his justification the state of his finances, which had been depleted
by the half-billion-dollar ransom he had paid to the phantom kidnappers of his wife. He nevertheless offered Higgins a generous
severance package before showing him the door. The Sapphire team, which monitored the proceedings via concealed cameras and
microphones, declared the operation’s modest opening act a rousing success.
A replacement for Higgins arrived at Hans Place early that evening in the form of Nigel Whitcombe, aide-de-camp of none other than SIS chief Graham Seymour.
Whitcombe, after settling into his rooms, immediately laid down a few ground rules.
His role, he told his ersatz employer, was one of physical surveillance, not perpetual servitude.
There would be no preparation of meals, no running of errands, no answering of bells—unless, of course, there was an operational necessity.
Knight, incensed, fired off a written complaint to Christopher Keller, Sapphire’s nominal leader, and Christopher, after giving the document no consideration whatsoever, dropped it into his burn bag.
For the most part, though, Knight accepted the yoke of SIS discipline without complaint, even when Nigel Whitcombe demanded
the password for his mobile phone and computer—and when Whitcombe declared that, henceforth, he would be reading all incoming
and outgoing emails and text messages, and monitoring all calls and videoconferences. For good measure, the digital snoops
at GCHQ, Britain’s signals intelligence service, did the same. Like Whitcombe, they saw nothing to suggest that SIS’s reluctant
recruit had violated the terms of his agreement with His Majesty’s Government.
They were spelled out in a draconian document drafted in secret by an SIS lawyer and signed by Knight in a somber evening
ceremony at Hans Place. It was Christopher Keller who supplied the handsome gold pen and the soothing words of encouragement.
He then gave his new recruit the first of several private lessons in basic tradecraft, though later he would concede that
Edward Knight required little training in the art of deception. He was a spy by nature, and a rather gifted one at that. Had
he attended Oxford or Cambridge instead of the University of Leeds, he undoubtedly would have received a quiet tap on the
shoulder from an SIS talent spotter.
His debut as a newly minted SIS asset would take place only seventy-two hours after his formal enlistment and was occasioned by the receipt of a much-anticipated encrypted text message from the Russian oligarch Dmitri Savin, the subject of which concerned the failure of the Knight Group Ltd.
to make its monthly investment in Landmark Ventures of Nassau, the Bahamas.
At Christopher’s direction, Knight waited another forty-eight hours before informing his Russian business partner that no additional investments in Landmark would be forthcoming, though in point of fact it was Nigel Whitcombe who composed the text and tapped the send icon.
A laser-guided missile of a response arrived from Moscow a few minutes later, and Knight, after yet another lengthy
delay, suggested they speak by telephone at Dmitri’s convenience. The Russian oligarch said he was looking forward to it.
So too was the Sapphire team, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Serious Fraud Office, the National Crime Agency, and HM’s
Revenue and Customs, all of which were poring over the Knight Group’s ledgers and bank records. A select interagency delegation
was permitted to listen in on the call, which was initiated by Dmitri Savin at 6:20 p.m. London time, 9:20 p.m. in Moscow. Dmitri, who sounded as though he’d had a drink or two that evening, skipped the pleasantries and got straight
to the point. But much to the Russian oligarch’s dismay, Edward Knight stood his ground. His wife’s kidnapping, he declared,
reading from Christopher’s carefully worded script, had laid waste to his personal finances. The well was dry.
“You’ll regret this, Edward,” came the reply from distant Moscow.
“Sorry, Dmitri. But I’m afraid it’s over.”
At which point the conversation descended into a replay of the one some six months earlier that had precipitated the unraveling
of Edward Knight’s marriage. Dmitri Savin made it clear that only he could end the relationship, that Knight had until the
close of business on Friday to wire the money to Landmark Ventures, that failure to do so would prove fatal, in so many words.
He didn’t bother to issue a threat against the British tycoon’s wife. As far as Dmitri Savin knew, Alice Winter was already
dead and buried.
The delegation from British law enforcement was under the same mistaken impression, and after monitoring the tense phone call, they feared that Edward Knight might soon meet with the same fate.
Therefore they would have been shocked to learn that their cunning counterparts from the Secret Intelligence Service wanted nothing more—not Knight’s assassination, of course, but a serious attempt on his life, carried out by an operative of GRU Unit 29155.
Such an outcome, after all, had been the point of the entire charade.
But how to arrange the circumstances whereby the Russians might try to make good on Dmitri Savin’s threat? This aspect of
Sapphire they left in the hands of their silent partner, the one who had brought them Edward Knight and his wife in the first
place—the one with the matchless operational touch. He drew up a proposal and forwarded it to Graham Seymour and Christopher
Keller at Vauxhall Cross. It would have to be something splashy, he told them, perhaps a touch over the top. The art world
bash of the season.
Gabriel chose Olivia Watson, of all people, to set his gambit in motion. As instructed, she let it slip to Nicky Lovegrove
over lunch at Franco’s, and Nicky, perhaps hoping for a piece of the action, promptly told Simon Mendenhall of Christie’s.
Simon being Simon, he kept it under wraps for twenty-four hours while making repeated attempts to contact the collector in
question—the real estate mogul Edward Knight, he of the long-missing spouse. Receiving no response, Simon mentioned it seemingly
in passing to Julian Isherwood, from whom Knight had purchased several paintings in the past. Julian, as was often the case
of late, professed complete and total ignorance. Sarah Bancroft, his beautiful American-born partner, was only marginally
more forthcoming.
“Don’t quote me on this,” she murmured over her martini at Wiltons that evening, “but I hear Edward’s going in a different
direction.”
“And which direction is that?” probed Simon.
Her eyes settled briefly on tweedy Jeremy Crabbe.
“Bonhams?” asked Simon, aghast.
Sarah smiled over her drink. “If you snooze, you lose, darling.”
The talk soon spread from the insular art world of St. James’s to the palaces of high finance in Mayfair and the City of London,
until finally it reached the ears of Amelia March of ARTnews. She too made several attempts to contact Knight, but like Simon Mendenhall she received no response. She nibbled around
the periphery, though—the periphery being Sarah’s corner table at Wiltons—and twenty-four hours later she posted a lengthy
story on the ARTnews website. Edward Knight, having no other recourse, or so it seemed to the uninitiated, issued a statement through the real
estate investment firm that bore his name, confirming the story’s accuracy.
Needless to say, Amelia’s account made no mention of Knight’s connections to the much-sanctioned Russian oligarch Dmitri Savin
or the Secret Intelligence Service, only that after careful reflection he had decided to dispose of a portion of his collection
of museum-quality Old Master paintings. There was intense speculation in the London art world, the story went on to say, that
Knight had consigned the paintings to Bonhams, which quickly issued a press release of its own. The auction, it said, would
be held in just ten days’ time, not at the firm’s New Bond Street salesroom but at Knight’s grand manor house near the coast
of Devon. The proceeds would be donated to organizations dedicated to combating violence against women in all its forms, with
Bonhams receiving a fraction of its usual commission. Edward Knight, the statement read in conclusion, planned to attend.
A furious battle soon commenced on social media, and in the less high-minded press, as to Knight’s motives.
His legion of detractors, which now included the gadfly podcaster who had originally broken the story of his wife’s disappearance, saw a rather transparent attempt to repair an irreparably damaged image.
The opposing camp, led by friends and associates of the billionaire, was far more magnanimous.
Losing Alice, they said, had left Knight a changed man—and for the better.
And yet none of those friends and associates, including his employees in Berkeley Square, had laid eyes on Edward Knight in
ages. Indeed the first verified sighting occurred on the Wednesday afternoon of that week, when Knight was spotted at Taylor
Taylor hair salon in Regent Street. His glamorous wife, missing and presumed dead, was at that same moment trudging across
the windswept hills of Dartmoor, accompanied by two SIS minders. Knight dined that evening at his Hans Place mansion, she
at Wormwood Cottage. Miss Coventry prepared a mixed green salad, lightly dressed with a lemon vinaigrette, followed by grilled
haddock and a medley of steamed vegetables. Parish complained bitterly throughout the meal. Tomorrow evening, he declared
while helping Miss Coventry with the dishes, they were having steak and kidney pie.