A Matter of Honor

by Archer, Jeffrey

  Over the years I have watched your progress with considerable pride and feel confident that I can leave you to make the correct decision.

  If you are left in doubt about opening the envelope yourself, destroy it without further consideration. But if you open it only to discover its purpose is to involve you in some dishonorable enterprise, be rid of it without a second thought.

  May God be with you.

  Your loving father,

  Gerald Scott

  Adam read the letter over once again, realizing how much trust his father had placed in him. His heart thumped in his chest as he considered how Pa’s life had been wasted by the murmurings and innuendos of lesser men. The same men who had succeeded in bringing his own career to a premature halt. When he had finished reading the missive for a third time he folded it up neatly and slipped it back into its envelope.

  He then picked up the second envelope from the side table. The words “Colonel Gerald Scott” were written in a faded bold script across it.

  Adam removed a comb from his inside pocket and wedged it into the corner of the envelope. Slowly he began to slit it open. He hesitated for a moment before extracting two pieces of paper, both yellowed with agc. One appeared to be a letter while the other seemed to be a document of some sort. The crest of the Third Reich was embossed at the head of the letter paper above the printed name of Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering. Adam’s hands began to tremble as he read the first line.

  It began, Sehr geehrter Herr Oberst Scott:

  CHAPTER THREE

  AS THE BLACK Chaika limousine drove out under the Spasskaya Bashnya and on to Red Square, two Kremlin guards in khaki uniforms sprang to attention and presented arms. A shrill whistle sounded, which ensured that Yuri Efimovich Zaborski would experience no delays on his route back to Dzerzhinsky Square.

  Zaborski touched the corner of his black felt hat in automatic acknowledgment of the salute although his thoughts were elsewhere. As the car rumbled over the cobbled stones, he didn’t even glance at the long snakelike line that stretched from Lenin’s Tomb to the edge of Red Square. The first decision he had to make would undoubtedly be the most important. Which of his senior operatives should be charged with the task of heading the team to find the Czar’s icon? He continued to ponder the problem as his driver took him across Red Square, passing the gray facade of the GUM department store away to his left before driving along Neitsa Kuibysheva.

  Within moments of leaving his leader, the Chairman of State Security had formed in his own mind a shortlist of two, but which of those two, Valchek or Romanov, should be given the nod still taxed him. In normal circumstances he would have spent at least a week making such a decision, but the General Secretary’s deadline of June 20 left him with no such freedom. He knew he would have to make the choice even before he reached his office. The driver cruised through another green light past the Ministry of Culture and into Cherkasski Bolshoi Pereulok, lined with its imposing blocklike, gray buildings. The car remained in the special inside lane that could be used only by senior party officials. In England, he was amused to learn, they had plans for such a traffic lane—but it would only be for the use of buses.

  The car came to an abrupt halt outside KGB headquarters. It hadn’t helped that they had been able to cover the three-kilometer journey in less than four minutes. The driver ran around and opened the back door to allow his master to step out, but Zaborski didn’t move. The man who rarely changed his mind had already done so twice on the route back to Dzerzhinsky Square. He knew he could call on any number of bureaucrats and academics to do the spade work, but someone with flair was going to have to lead them and be responsible for reporting back to him.

  His professional intuition told him to select Yuri Valchek, who had proved over the years to be a trusty and reliable servant of the State. He was also one of the Chairman’s longest-serving heads of department. Slow, methodical and reliable, he had completed a full ten years as an agent in the field before confining himself to largely a desk job.

  In contrast, Alex Romanov, who had only recently become head of his own section, had shown flashes of brilliance in the field, but they had been so often outweighed by a lack of personal judgment. At twenty-nine, he was the youngest and without question the most ambitious of the Chairman’s select team.

  Zaborski stepped out on to the pavement and walked toward another door held open for him. He strode across the marble floor and stopped only when he reached the lift gates. Several silent men and women had also been waiting for the lift, but when it returned to the ground floor and the Chairman stepped in to the little cage, none of them made any attempt to join him. Zaborski traveled slowly up toward his office, never failing to compare it unfavorably with the speed of the one American elevator he had experienced. They could launch their rockets before you could get to your office, his predecessor had warned him. By the time Zaborski had reached the top floor and the gates had been pulled back for him, he had made up his mind. It would be Valchek.

  A secretary helped him off with his long black coat and took his hat. Zaborski walked quickly to his desk. The two files he had asked for were awaiting him. He sat down and began to pore over Valchek’s file. When he had completed it he barked out an order to his hovering secretary: “Find Romanov.”

  Comrade Romanov lay flat on his back, his left arm behind his head and his opponent’s right over his throat, preparing for a double knee-thrust. The coach executed it perfectly, and Romanov groaned as he hit the floor with a thud.

  An attendant came rushing over to them and bent down to whisper in the coach’s ear. The coach reluctantly released his pupil, who rose slowly as if in a daze, bowed to the coach, and then in one movement of right arm and left leg took the legs from under him and left him flat on the gymnasium floor before making his way quickly to the off-the-hook phone in the office.

  Romanov didn’t notice the girl who handed him the phone. “I’ll be with him as soon as I have had a shower,” was all she heard him say. The girl who had taken the call had often wondered what Romanov looked like in the shower. She, like all the other girls in the office, had seen him in the gymnasium a hundred times. Six feet tall with that long, flowing blond hair—he resembled a Western film star. And those eyes, “piercing blue,” the friend who shared her desk described them.

  “He’s got a scar on his …” the friend confided.

  “How do you know that?” she had asked, but her friend had only giggled in reply.

  The Chairman meanwhile had opened Romanov’s personal file for a second time and was still perusing the details. He began to read the different entries that made up a candid character assessment that Romanov would never see unless he became Chairman:

  Alexander Petrovich Romanov. Born Leningrad, 12 March 1937.

  Elected full party member 1958.

  Father: Petr Nikolayevich Romanov, served on the Eastern Front in 1942. On returning to Russia in 1945 refused to join Communist party. After several reports of anti-state activities supplied by his son he was sentenced to ten years in prison. Died in jail 20 October 1948.

  Zaborski looked up and smiled—a child of the State.

  Grandfather: Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov, merchant, and one of the wealthiest landowners in Petrograd. Shot and killed on 11 May 1918, while attempting to escape from the forces of the Red Army.

  The revolution had taken place between the princely grandfather and the reluctant Comrade father.

  Alex, as he preferred to be known, had nevertheless inherited the Romanov ambition, so he enrolled for the party’s Pioneer organization at the age of nine. By the age of eleven, he had been offered a place at a special school at Smolensk—to the disgust of some of the lesser party workers, who considered such privileges should be reserved for the sons of loyal party officials, not the sons of those in jail. Romanov immediately excelled in the classroom, much to the dismay of the director, who had been hoping to disprove any Darwinian theories. And at fourteen he was selected as one of
the party’s elite and made a member of the Komsomol.

  By the age of sixteen, Romanov had won the Lenin language medal and the junior gymnastics prize, and despite the director’s attempts to undermine young Alex’s achievements, most members of the school board recognized Romanov’s potential and ensured that he was still allowed to take a place at a university. As an undergraduate he continued to excel in languages, specializing in English, French, and German. Natural flair and hard work kept him near the top of every subject he specialized in.

  Zaborski picked up the phone by his side. “I asked to see Romanov,” he said curtly.

  “He was completing his morning workout at the gymnasium, Comrade Chairman,” replied the secretary. “But he left to change the moment he heard you wanted to see him.”

  The Chairman replaced the phone, and his eyes returned to the file in front of him. That Romanov could be found in the gymnasium at all hours came as no surprise: the man’s athletic prowess had been acknowledged far beyond the service.

  During his first year as a student, Romanov had diligently continued with his gymnastics and even gone on to represent the State side until the university coach had written in bold letters across one of his reports, “This student is too tall to be considered for senior Olympic competition.” Romanov heeded the coach’s advice and took up judo. Within two years, he had been selected for the 1958 Eastern Bloc games in Budapest, and within a further two years found that other competitors preferred not to be drawn against him on his inevitable route to the final. After his victory at the Second Soviet Games in Moscow the Western press crudely described him as “The Axe.” Those who were already planning his long-term future felt it prudent not to enter him for the Olympics.

  Once Romanov had completed his fifth year at the university and obtained his diploma (with distinction) he remained in Moscow and joined the diplomatic service.

  Zaborski had now reached the point in the file at which he had first come across the self-confident young man. Each year the KGB was able to choose for assignment from the diplomatic service any person it considered to be of exceptional talent. Romanov was an obvious candidate. Zaborski’s rule, however, was not to enlist anyone who didn’t consider the KGB to be the elite. Unwilling candidates never made good operatives and sometimes even ended up working for the other side. Romanov showed no such doubt. He had always wanted to be an officer of the KGB. During the next six years he carried out tours at Soviet embassies in Paris, London, Prague, and Lagos. By the time he had returned to Moscow to join the headquarters staff he was a sophisticated operative who was as comfortable at an ambassadorial cocktail party as he was in the gymnasium.

  Zaborski began to read some of the comments he himself had added to the report during the last four years—in particular how much Romanov had changed during his time on the Chairman’s personal staff. As an operative he had reached the rank of major, having served successfully in the field before being appointed head of a department. Two red dots—indicating successful missions—were placed by his name: a defecting violinist attempting to leave Prague and a general who had thought he was going to be the next head of a small African state. What impressed Zaborski most about his protégé’s efforts was that the Western press thought the Czechs were responsible for the first and the Americans for the second. Romanov’s most significant achievement, however, had been the recruitment of an agent from the British Foreign Office, whose parallel rise had only assisted Romanov’s career. Romanov’s appointment as head of a department had surprised no one, Romanov included, although it soon became clear to Zaborski that he missed the raw excitement of fieldwork.

  The Chairman turned to the last page, a character assessment, in which the majority of contributors were in accord: ambitious, sophisticated, ruthless, arrogant but not always reliable were the words that appeared with regularity in almost every summation.

  There was an assertive rap on the door. Zaborski closed the file and pressed a button under his desk. The doors clicked open to allow Alexander Petrovich Romanov to enter the room.

  “Good morning, Comrade Chairman,” said the elegant young man who now stood at attention in front of him. Zaborski looked up and felt a little envy that the gods had bestowed so much on one so young. Still, it was he who understood how to use such a man to the State’s best advantage.

  He continued to stare into those clear blue eyes and considered that if Romanov had been born in Hollywood he would not have found it hard to make a living. His suit looked as if it had been tailored in Savile Row—and probably had been. Zaborski chose to ignore such irregularities although he was tempted to ask the young man where he had his shirts made.

  “You called for me,” said Romanov.

  The Chairman nodded. “I have just returned from the Kremlin,” he said. “The General Secretary has entrusted us with a particularly sensitive project of great importance to the State.” Zaborski paused. “So sensitive in fact that you will report only to me. You can hand-select your own team, and no resources will be denied you.”

  “I am honored,” said Romanov, sounding unusually sincere.

  “You will be,” replied the Chairman, “if you succeed in discovering the whereabouts of the Czar’s icon.”

  “But I thought …” began Romanov.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ADAM WALKED OVER to the side of his bed and removed from the bookshelf the Bible his mother had given him as a Confirmation present. As he opened it a layer of dust rose from the top of the gold leaf-edged pages. He placed the envelope in Revelations and returned the Bible to the shelf.

  Adam strolled through to the kitchen, fried himself an egg and warmed up the other half of the previous day’s tinned beans. He placed the unwholesome meal on the kitchen table, unable to put out of his mind the one Lawrence and Carolyn must now be enjoying at the new Italian restaurant. After Adam had finished and cleared his plate away, he returned to his room and lay on the bed thinking. Would the contents of the faded envelope finally prove his father’s innocence?

  When the grandfather clock in the hall chimed ten times, Adam lifted his long legs over the end of the bed and pulled the Bible back out of the bookshelf. With some apprehension Adam removed the envelope. Next, he switched on the reading light by the side of the small writing desk, unfolded the two pieces of paper, and placed them in front of him.

  One appeared to be a personal letter from Goering to Adam’s father, while the other had the look of an older, more official document. Adam placed this second document to one side and began to go over the letter line by line. It didn’t help.

  He tore a blank piece of paper from a notepad that he found on Lawrence’s desk and started to copy down the text of Goering’s letter. He left out only the greeting and what he assumed to be a valediction, hochachlungsvoll, followed by the Reichsmarschall’s large, bold signature. He checked over the copy carefully before replacing the original back in its faded envelope. He had just begun the same process with the official document, using a separate sheet of paper, when he heard a key turning, followed by voices at the front door. Both Lawrence and Carolyn sounded as if they had drunk more than the promised bottle of wine, and Carolyn’s voice in particular had ascended into little more than a series of high-pitched giggles.

  Adam sighed and switched off the light by the side of the desk so they wouldn’t know he was still awake. In the darkness he became more sensitive to their every sound. One of them headed toward the kitchen, because he heard the refrigerator door squelch close and, a few seconds later, the sound of a cork being extracted—he presumed from his last bottle of white wine, as they were unlikely to be so drunk they had started on the vinegar.

  Reluctantly he rose from his chair and, circling his arms in front of him, he made his way back to bed. He touched the corner of the bedstead and quietly lowered himself onto the mattress, then waited impatiently for Lawrence’s bedroom door to close.

  He must have fallen asleep because the next thing he remembered was the tick
of the hall clock. Adam licked his fingers and rubbed them over his eyes as he tried to get accustomed to the dark. He checked the little luminous dial on his alarm clock: ten past three. He eased himself off the bed gingerly, feeling more than a little crumpled and weary. Slowly he groped his way back toward the desk, banging his knee on the corner of a chest of drawers during his travels. He couldn’t stop himself cursing. He fumbled for the light switch, and when the bulb first glowed it made him blink several times. The faded envelope looked so insignificant—and perhaps it was. The official document was still laid out on the center of the table alongside the first few lines of his handwritten duplicate.

  Adam yawned as he began to study the words once more. The document was not as simple to copy out as the letter had been, because this time the hand was spidery and cramped, as if the writer had considered paper an expensive commodity. Adam left out the address on the top right-hand corner and reversed the eight-digit number underlined at the head of the text. Otherwise he ended up with a faithful transcript of the original.

  The work was painstaking and took a surprisingly long time. He wrote out each word in block capitals, and when he wasn’t certain of the spelling he put down the possible alternative letters below; he wanted to be sure of any translation the first time.

  “My, you do work late,” whispered a voice from behind him.

  Adam spun round, feeling like a burglar who had been caught with his hands on the family silver.

  “You needn’t look so nervous. It’s only me,” said Carolyn, standing by the bedroom door.

  Adam stared up at the tall blonde who was even more attractive clad only in Lawrence’s large unbuttoned pajamas and floppy slippers than she had been fully dressed. Her long, fair hair now dropped untidily over her shoulders, and he began to understand what Lawrence had meant when he had once described her as someone who could turn a matchstick into a Cuban cigar.