A Matter of Honor

by Archer, Jeffrey

  “Au nom du Père, du Fils et du Saint-Esprit.”

  Adam looked up from the paper, startled, and considered making a dash for it. But he allowed his long-ago training to take hold, and he found himself saying automatically, “Father, bless me, for I have sinned and wish to confess.”

  “Good, my son, and what form has this sin taken?” asked the priest in accented but clear English.

  Adam thought quickly, I must give him no clue as to who I am. He looked out through the gap in the curtain and was alarmed to see two policemen questioning another priest by the west door. He drew the curtains tight and turned to the only accent he could ever imitate with conviction.

  “I’m over from Dublin, Father, and last night I picked up this local girl in a bar and took her back to my hotel.”

  “Yes, my son.”

  “Well, one thing led to another, Father.”

  “Another what, my son?”

  “Well, I took her up to my room.”

  “Yes, my son?”

  “And she started to undress.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “She started to undress me.”

  “Did you try to resist, my son?”

  “Yes, Father, but it got harder.”

  “And did intercourse take place?” asked the priest.

  “I’m afraid so, Father, couldn’t stop myself. She was very beautiful,” Adam added.

  “And is it your intention to marry this girl, my son?”

  “Oh, no, Father, I’m already married and have two lovely children, Seamus and Maureen.”

  “It is a night you must forever put behind you.”

  “I’d like to, Father.”

  “Has this happened before?”

  “No, Father, it’s the first time I’ve been abroad on my own. I swear to it.”

  “Then let it be a lesson to you, my son, and may the Lord find it in his mercy to forgive you this abominable sin, and now you must make your act of contrition.”

  “Oh, my God … .”

  When Adam had completed the act of contrition the priest pronounced absolution and told him he must as penance say three decades of the Rosary.

  “And one more thing.”

  “Yes, Father?”

  “You will tell your wife everything the moment you return to Ireland, or you cannot hope for atonement. You must promise me that, my son.”

  “When I see my wife I will tell her everything that happened last night, Father,” Adam promised, as he once again checked through the curtains. The police were no longer anywhere to be seen.

  “Good, and continue to pray to our Blessed Lady to keep you from the evils of temptation.”

  Adam folded up his paper, pushed it in the trench coat, and bolted from the little box and took a seat on the end of a pew. He lowered his head and began to whisper the Lord’s Prayer as he opened the map of Geneva and began to study the road plan. He had located the British consulate on the far side of a large garden square by the time he reached, “Deliver us from evil.” He estimated that it was just over a mile away from the cathedral, but seven streets and a bridge had to be negotiated before he would be safe. He returned to the Lady Chapel and his knees. Adam checked his watch. It was too early to leave Saint Peter’s, so he remained head in hands for another thirty minutes going over the route again and again. He watched a party of tourists being conducted through the cathedral. His eyes never left them as they began to move nearer and nearer to the great door at the west end of the aisle. He needed to time it to perfection.

  Suddenly Adam rose and walked quickly down the side aisle reaching the porch only a yard behind the party of tourists. They shielded him out on to the square. Adam ducked under a shop awning at the side of the road, then walked round three sides of the square to avoid the one policeman on duty by the north corner. He crossed the first road as the light turned red and headed up a one-way street. He kept on the inside of the pavement, knowing he had to turn left at the end of the road. Two uniformed policemen came round the corner and walked straight toward him. He jumped into the first shop without looking and turned his back on the pavement.

  “Bonjour, monsieur,” said a young lady to Adam. “Vous désirez quelque chose?” Adam looked around him. Lissome dummies in panties and bras with garters and fasteners and long black nylon stockings stood all around him.

  “I’m looking for a present for my wife.”

  The girl smiled. “Perhaps a slip?” she suggested.

  “Yes,” said Adam, “definitely a slip. Do you have one in burgundy?” he asked, as he half turned to watch the policemen stroll past.

  “Yes, I think so, but I’ll have to check in the stock room.”

  Adam had reached the next streetcorner long before she had returned with “just the thing.”

  He managed the next three crossings without incident, and with only two hundred yards to go could already feel his heart thumping as if it were trying to escape from his body. On the final corner there was only one policeman in sight, and he seemed intent on directing traffic. Adam kept his back to the officer. He could now see the garden square that had only shown up on the map as a tiny green blob. On the far side of the road he spotted a Union Jack hanging above a blue door.

  Never run the last few yards, especially when it’s open ground, his sergeant had told him many times when on patrol in the Malayan jungle. He crossed the road and stood on the edge of the small park, only fifty yards away from safety. A policeman was patrolling aimlessly up the road, but Adam suspected that was only because there were several consulates standing adjacent to one another. He watched the officer carefully. It took the man two minutes to reach the French consulate before he turned and continued his leisurely walk back. Adam ducked behind a tree in the corner of the little park and selected another tree on the far side of the road only yards from the consulate front door that would shield him from the oncoming policeman. He estimated that by walking at a speed that wouldn’t attract attention he could cover the last thirty yards in under ten seconds. He waited for the policeman to reach his farthest point.

  He checked the consulate door again, relieved to see a girl go in and a man carrying a briefcase come out on to the street. There seemed to be no guard in sight as the door remained half open. He looked up at the bay window on the first floor. He could see two men staring out at the park as if waiting expectantly for someone to arrive. Lawrence had succeeded. In moments he would be home. Adam pulled up the collar of his trench coat and set off as the cathedral clock behind him struck eleven. The policeman was now a few paces from reaching his farthest point but still walking in the opposite direction. Adam crossed the road at a measured stride. When he reached the streetcar lines in the center he had to stop suddenly to let a car pass by. The policeman turned to start his journey back.

  For several seconds Adam remained motionless between the streetcar lines as he stared at the tree he had selected to shield him if the policeman turned before he could reach the front door. He took a confident pace toward the consulate. A tall man of athletic build, his head covered in a stubble of short fair hair, stepped out to greet him.

  Adam would not have recognized him but for the eyes.

  PART II

  10 DOWNING STREET

  LONDON S.W.1

  June 16, 1966

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  10 DOWNING STREET

  JUNE 16, 1966

  WHEN SIR MORRIS Youngfield left the Prime Minister he still was unable to work out why the possession of any icon could be that important.

  Leaving Number Ten behind him, Sir Morris marched quickly into the Foreign Office courtyard and within moments was stepping out of the lift on the seventh floor. When he walked into his office, Tessa, his secretary, was sorting out some papers for him.

  “I want a D4 assembled immediately,” he said to the woman who had served him so loyally for fourteen years. “And ask Commander Busch to join the team.”

  Tessa raised her eyebrows, but Sir
Morris ignored her silent comment as he knew he couldn’t hope to get to the bottom of this one without the cooperation of the Americans. Once more Sir Morris considered the Prime Minister’s instructions. Harold Wilson hadn’t needed to explain that he didn’t get that many transatlantic calls from Lyndon Johnson seeking his help. But why a Russian icon of an English saint?

  As Romanov moved toward him, Adam took a pace backward from the streetcar lines to allow the streetcar to pass between them. When the streetcar had passed Adam was no longer to be seen. Romanov snarled at such an amateur trick, sprinted the twenty yards necessary to catch up with the streetcar, and to the astonishment of the passengers, leaped on. He began checking over the faces row by row.

  Adam waited for the streetcar to travel another twenty yards before he emerged from behind a tree on the far side of the road. He felt confident he could reach the safety of the consulate door long before Heidi’s killer could hope to return. He checked the other side of the road and swore under his breath. The policeman patrolling was now only a few paces from the consulate and heading relentlessly toward it. Adam looked back at the streetcar, which had just been passed by another, which was heading toward him. To his dismay, he saw his adversary leap from one platform to the other with the agility of a top-class gymnast. With the policeman only yards from the consulate door Adam was left with no choice but to turn and sprint back up the one-way street. After fifty yards he glanced over his shoulder. The man he knew only as Rosenbaum couldn’t have looked less like a helpless old man as he started running toward him.

  Adam jumped between the cars and buses and dodged around the milling pedestrians as he tried to lengthen the fifty yards’ distance between them. At the first crossroad he saw a plump lady coming out of a phone booth a few yards away. He changed direction quickly and leaped into the empty box, crouching into the far corner. The door slowly squelched shut. Rosenbaum came hurtling round the corner and was twenty yards past the booth before he realized that Adam had shot back out and down the road in the opposite direction. Adam knew he had at least five seconds before Rosenbaum could hope to see which direction he had chosen. One, two, three, four, and five he counted as he ran along the road. He then checked right, before mounting three steps and pushing through some swinging doors. He found himself in front of a small counter behind which sat a young woman holding a small wad of tickets.

  “Deux francs, monsieur,” said the girl. Adam looked at the little box, quickly took out two francs, and made his way down the long dark passage and through another set of swinging doors. He stood at the back waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the dark. It was the first performance of the day, and the cinema was nearly empty. Adam chose a seat on the end of a row that was an equal distance from both exits.

  He stared at the screen, thankful that the movie had just begun, because he needed some time to formulate a plan. Whenever the screen was bright enough he checked the little red road on the map, and then using the top of his thumb as a one-inch ruler, he was able to estimate that the nearest border into France was only eight miles away at Ferney-Voltaire. From there he could travel to Paris via Dijon and be back home almost as quickly as it would take him to sit through Exodus a second time. Having decided on his route, the next problem for Adam was how to travel. He dismissed all forms of public transport and settled on renting a car. He remained in his seat during the interval to double-check the routes. The moment Paul Newman reappeared on the screen, he folded up the map and left the cinema by the exit that had been least used during the past four hours.

  When Sir Morris entered the room for the meeting of the Northern Department, he found the rest of the D4 already assembled and familiarizing themselves with the files that had been presented to them only an hour before.

  He glanced around the table at the specially selected D4, all handpicked men, but only one of them did he consider his equal. And it wasn’t the old war-horse Alec Snell, who had served at the Foreign Office longer than any of them, and was touching his mustache nervously as he waited for Sir Morris to take his seat. Next to him sat Brian Matthews, known in the department as the “well-balanced man”: a grammar school boy with high honors and a chip on both shoulders. Opposite him was Commander Ralph Busch, the CIA representative with a short fuse, who, after five years attached to the embassy in Grosvenor Square considered himself more British than the British and even imitated the Foreign Office style of dress to prove it. At the far end of the table was Sir Morris’s second in command, who some said was a little too young, although everyone except Tessa had forgotten that Sir Morris had held his job at the same age.

  The four members of the committee stopped talking once Sir Morris had settled in his seat at the head of the table.

  “Gentlemen,” he began—the only lady present being the long-suffering Tessa, whose existence he rarely acknowledged—“the Prime Minister has given this D4 his full blessing. And, he requires detailed reports to be sent to him every twelve hours, wherever he is, and at any time of the night or day should there be some unexpected development. So, as you can see, there is no time to waste. This particular D4 has co-opted as part of its team a liaison officer from the CIA, Commander Ralph Busch. I have worked with Commander Busch several times over the last five years, and I am delighted that the American embassy has chosen him to represent them.”

  The man seated on Sir Morris’s right bowed slightly. At five feet nine inches, with broad, muscular shoulders and a neat black beard, he looked every inch the sailor whom Player’s cigarettes were always trying to please. Indeed, a sailor wouldn’t have been a bad guess because Busch had been a commander of PT boats during the Second World War.

  “From the latest reports I have received,” Sir Morris continued, opening the file in front of him, “it appears that Scott never reached the consulate this morning, despite our request for the police to have no more than a token force on duty within two hundred yards of the park.

  “Since our sketchy information yesterday BEA has confirmed,” said Sir Morris, consulting a note in front of him, “that Scott received a call from Roget et Cie while he was at the airport. After considerable pressure from our ambassador and Interpol we have learned from Mr. Roget that the purpose of Scott’s visit to the bank was to pick up an unknown bequest from a Mr. Emmanuel Rosenbaum Further checking shows that a Mr. Rosenbaum arrived in Zurich yesterday morning and traveled on to Geneva in the afternoon. He left his hotel first thing this morning and has subsequently vanished from the face of the earth. None of this would be of any great significance if Mr. Rosenbaum had not boarded the airplane to Zurich from”—Sir Morris couldn’t resist a short dramatic pause—”Moscow I think it is not unreasonable therefore to assume that Mr. Rosenbaum, whoever he is, works directly or indirectly for the KGB.

  “The KGB, as we know to our cost, is well serviced in Geneva, by a large number of East Europeans working under the guise of the United Nations for the ILO and the WHO, all with the diplomatic status they need to carry out undercover work. What still remains a mystery is why Mr. Rosenbaum should be willing to kill two innocent people for a relatively obscure icon. That brings me up to date, but have you come up with anything in the last few hours?” asked Sir Morris turning to his number two.

  Lawrence Pemberton looked up from his end of the table. “Since our meeting this morning, Sir Morris,” he began, “I have spoken to Scott’s sister, his mother, and a firm of solicitors in Appleshaw who administered his father’s will. It transpires that Scott was left with nothing of any real importance in the will apart from an envelope, which his mother says contained a letter from Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering.” There was an immediate buzz around the table until Sir Morris tapped his knuckle on the desk.

  “Do we have any idea of the contents of Goering’s letter?” asked Sir Morris.

  “The whole letter, no, sir. But one of our examination entrants, a Nicholas Wainwright, was asked by Scott to translate what we now believe was a paragraph from it because later
Wainwright asked the examination board if it was part of his test.” Lawrence extracted a piece of paper from the file in front of him and read out the paragraph:

  During the year you cannot have failed to notice that I have been receiving from one of the guards a regular supply of Havana cigars—one of the few pleasures I have been permitted, despite my incarceration. The cigars themselves have also served another purpose, as each one contained a capsule with a small amount of poison. Enough to allow me to survive my trial, while ensuring that I shall cheat the executioner.

  “That’s it?” said Sir Morris.

  “Yes,” said Lawrence, “but I believe it confirms what Scott explained last night was his reason for traveling to Geneva. There is no doubt in my mind that the package contained the icon of Saint George and the dragon.”

  “Saint George and the Dragon,” said Matthews interrupting, “but that’s the icon that half of the KGB has been searching for during the past two weeks, and my department has been trying to find out why.”

  “And what have you come up with?” asked Sir Morris.

  “Very little,” admitted Matthews. “But we had assumed it must be a decoy because the Czar’s icon of Saint George and the dragon hangs in the Winter Palace at Leningrad and has done so for three hundred years.”

  “Anything else?” asked Sir Morris.

  “Only that the section leader in search of the icon is Alex Romanov,” said Matthews.

  Snell gave out a low whistle. “Well, at least we know we’re dealing with the A-list,” he said.

  There was a long silence before Sir Morris offered, “One thing is clear. We have to get to Scott first and must also assume that it’s Romanov we’re up against. So what are we doing about it?”