A Matter of Honor

by Archer, Jeffrey

  “Which one?” she whispered.

  “In the chauffeur’s uniform.”

  Robin glanced out of the window. “He may be evil, but he’s damned good-looking,” she said, inconsequentially.

  Adam looked disbelieving. Robin smiled apologetically.

  “Everybody’s in,” called a man from the front of the bus. “And I’ve double-checked, and we seem to have one extra.”

  Oh, my God, thought Adam, he’s going to throw me off the bus.

  “My brother,” shouted Robin from the back. “He’s only traveling with us for part of the journey.”

  “Oh, that’s okay then,” said the manager. “Well, let’s be on our way.” He turned to the driver.

  “He’s started looking at the bus,” said Robin. “But I don’t think he can see you. No, you’re all right, he’s now turned his gaze back to the hotel entrance.”

  “I didn’t realize you had a brother,” said the manager, who was suddenly standing beside them. The coach moved slowly out of the square.

  “Neither did I until this morning,” mumbled Robin, still looking out of the window. She turned to face her boss. “Yes, I forgot to mention to you that he might be in Switzerland at the same time as the orchestra. I do hope it’s not going to cause a problem.”

  “Not at all,” said the manager.

  “Adam, this is Stephen Grieg, who, as you will already have gathered, is the orchestra’s manager.”

  “Are you a musician as well?” asked Stephen as he shook Adam’s hand.

  “No, I can truthfully say that I have never been able to master any instrument,” said Adam.

  “He’s tone deaf,” butted in Robin. “Takes after my father. He’s in magazines, actually,” she continued, enjoying herself.

  “Oh, really. Do you publish them or sell them?” inquired Stephen.

  “I’m with Playboy,” said Adam, mentioning the first magazine that came into his head.

  “Playboy, the magazine that produces those fabulous calendars?”

  “What’s so special about their calendars?” asked Robin innocently. “I’m sure Adam can get you one.”

  “Oh, that would be great,” said Stephen. “I hope it won’t put you to too much trouble.”

  “No trouble at all,” said Robin, leaning over Adam conspiratorially. “Actually, to let you in on a little family secret, there is a rumor at H.Q. that Adam will soon be joining the main board. The youngest member in the publishing company’s history, you know.”

  “How impressive,” said the manager, taking a closer look at the orchestra’s latest recruit.

  “Where shall I send the calendar?” bleated out Adam.

  “Oh, direct to the RPO. No need to tell you the address, is there?”

  “In a brown paper envelope, no doubt,” said Robin. “And don’t worry about the year. It’s not the dates that he gets worked up about.”

  “What time are we expecting to reach Frankfurt, Stephen?” shouted a voice from the front.

  “Must leave you now,” said the manager. “Thanks for the promise of a calendar. Robin’s right, of course—any year will do.”

  “Who taught you to spin a yarn like that?” asked Adam, as soon as he was out of earshot.

  “My father,” said Robin. “You should have heard him at his best. In a class of his own. The problem was my mother still believed every word.”

  “He would have been proud of you today.”

  “Now we’ve found out what you do for a living,” said Robin, “may we learn what’s next on the agenda for the youngest director of Playboy?”

  Adam smiled. “I’ve started trying to reason like Rosenbaum, and I think he’ll stay in Geneva for at least an hour, two at the most, so with luck I’ll get a fifty-mile start on him.” He unfolded the map across the two seats.

  His finger ran along the road the bus was traveling on, and it was Robin who spoke first.

  “That means you could make Zurich airport before he has any chance of catching up with you.”

  “Perhaps,” said Adam, “but that would be too much of a risk. Whoever Rosenbaum is,” he went on, abiding by Lawrence’s request to be cautious by not letting Robin into his secret, “we now know for certain that he has a professional organization behind him, so I must expect the airports to be the first place he will have covered. And don’t forget the Swiss police are still on the lookout for me as well.”

  “So why don’t you come on to Frankfurt with us?” asked Robin. “I can’t believe you’ll have any trouble from Stephen.”

  “I’ve thought about that already but discounted it also as too great a risk,” said Adam.

  “Why?”

  “Because, when Rosenbaum has had time to think about it,” said Adam, “the one thing he’ll remember is this bus. Once he’s found out the direction we’re heading in he’s sure to come after us.”

  Robin’s eyes returned to the map. “So you’ll need to decide where and when to get off.”

  “Exactly,” whispered Adam. “I can risk sixty to seventy miles, but not a lot further.”

  Robin’s finger ran along the little road. “About here,” she said, her finger stopping on a little town called Solothurn.

  “Looks about the right distance.”

  “But once you’re off the bus, what will you do for transport?”

  “I’ve little choice but to walk or thumb lifts—unless I pinch another car.”

  “With your luck, Rosenbaum will be the one person who stops to pick you up.”

  “Yes, I’ve thought about that as well,” said Adam. “I would have to find a long stretch of road where I can see without being seen for about one hundred yards, and then thumb lifts only from British cars or cars with British license plates.”

  “They taught you a trick or two in the army, didn’t they?” said Robin. “But how do you intend to cross the frontier with your passport?”

  “That’s one of the many problems I haven’t yet come up with a solution for.”

  “If you decide to stay with us,” said Robin, “it wouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Why?” asked Adam.

  “Because whenever we cross a border they only count the number of people on the bus and the number of passports, and as long as they tally, the customs officials don’t bother to check everyone individually. After all, why should they? The RPO is not exactly an unknown quantity. All I would have to do is add your passport to the bundle and mention it to the manager.”

  “It’s a clever idea, but it’s not on. If Rosenbaum caught up with me while I’m still on this bus, then I would be left with no escape route.”

  Robin was silent for a moment. “Once you’re on your own, will you contact Lawrence again?”

  “Yes I’ve got to let him know what happened this morning, because whoever he’s dealing with must have a direct line to Rosenbaum.”

  “Could it be Lawrence himself?”

  “Never,” said Adam.

  “Your loyalty is touching,” said Robin, turning to look at him, “but what you actually mean is you don’t want to believe it could be Lawrence.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Like my mother didn’t want to believe that my father was a liar and a drunk. So she turned a blind eye to his little foibles. You know, even when he dropped dead of cirrhosis of the liver, her only words were, ‘strange for a man who never drank.’”

  Adam thought about his relationship with Lawrence and wondered if you could know someone for twenty years and really not know him at all.

  “Just be wary how much you let him know,” advised Robin.

  They sat in silence as Adam checked the map and went over all the different possible routes he could take once he had left the bus. He decided to aim for the German border and take the long route back to England, from Hamburg or Bremerhaven, rather than the shorter, more obvious route via Calais or Ostend.

  “Got it,” said Robin suddenly.

  “Cot what?” said Adam, looking u
p from the map.

  “How we solve your passport problem,” she murmured.

  Adam glanced at her hopefully. “If you let me have your passport,” she explained, “I’ll substitute it for the member of the orchestra who most resembles you. No one will notice anything strange at our end until we’re back home in Britain on Sunday night.”

  “Not a bad idea, if there is anyone who remotely resembles me.”

  “We’ll have to see what we can do,” said Robin. She sat bolt upright, her eyes moving slowly from person to person. By the time she had scanned all those in the bus from front to back, a small smile appeared on her face. “There are two of our lot who bear a passable resemblance to you. One is about five years older, and the other is four inches shorter, but you go on working out the safest way of escape while I carry out some sleight of hand. Let me have your passport,” she said. Adam handed it over and then watched Robin walk up to the front and sit next to the manager. He was chatting to the driver about the most convenient place to stop for lunch.

  “I need to check something in my passport,” Robin broke in. “Sorry to bother you.”

  “No bother. You’ll find them all under my seat in a plastic bag,” he said, and continued his conversation with the driver.

  Robin bent down and started to shuffle through the passports as if searching for her own. She picked out the two she had considered as possible substitutes and compared the photographs. The shorter man’s photo looked nothing like Adam. The older man’s was at least five years out of date but could have passed for Adam as long as the officials didn’t study the date of birth too carefully. She bundled up the passports, placing Adam’s in the middle. She then put them back in the plastic bag and returned the bag under the manager’s seat.

  Robin made her way back to her seat. “Take a look at yourself,” she said, slipping the passport over to Adam. He studied the photo.

  “Other than the mustache, not a bad likeness, and it’s certainly my best chance in the circumstances. But what will happen when you return to London and they find out my passport has been substituted?”

  “You’ll be back in England long before us,” said Robin. “So put this one in an envelope with the calendar and send it direct to the RPO on Wigmore Street, W1, and I’ll see that they return yours.” Adam vowed to himself that if he ever got back to London, he would become a life subscriber to the Friends of the Royal Philharmonic.

  “That seems to have solved one of your problems.”

  “For the moment at least,” said Adam. “I only wish I could take you with me for the rest of the trip.”

  Robin smiled. “Frankfurt, Berlin, Amsterdam, just in case you get bored. wouldn’t mind meeting up with Rosenbaum. But this time face to face.”

  “He might just be meeting his match,” said Adam.

  “Can I have a last look at the icon?” Robin asked, ignoring the comment.

  Adam bent down to retrieve his trench coat and slipped the painting out of his map pocket, careful to shield it from anyone else’s view. Robin stared into the eyes of Saint George before she spoke again. “When I lay awake last night waiting for you to ravish me, I passed the time trying to fathom out what secret the icon held.”

  “I thought you were asleep,” said Adam, smiling. “when all along, we were both doing the same thing. Anyway, did you come up with any worthwhile conclusions?”

  “First, I decided your taste was for male double bass players,” said Robin, “or how else could you have resisted me?”

  “But what about Saint George and the dragon?” asked Adam, grinning.

  “To begin with I wondered if the little pieces of mosaic made up a code. But the picture is so magnificently executed that the code would have to have been worked out afterward. And that didn’t seem credible.”

  “Good thinking, Batman.”

  “No, you’re Batman. So I wondered if there was another painting underneath. I remembered from my schooldays that Rembrandt and Constable often painted on the top of their paintings, either because they didn’t care for their original effort or because, in the case of Rembrandt, he couldn’t afford another canvas.”

  “If that were the answer, only an expert could have carried out the task of removing every piece of paint.”

  “Agreed,” said Robin. “So I dismissed that as well. My third idea was that the crown on the back”—she turned the icon over and stared at the little piece of silver embedded in the wood—”indicates, as your expert suggested, that this is the original by Rublev and not a copy as you have been led to believe.”

  “I had already considered that,” said Adam, “during my sleepless night, and although it would place a far higher value on the work, it is still not enough to explain why Rosenbaum would kill indiscriminately for it.”

  “Perhaps someone else needs Saint George every bit as much as Rosenbaum does,” said Robin.

  “But who and why?”

  “Because it’s not the icon they’re after, but something else. Something hidden in or behind the painting.”

  “That was the first thing I checked,” said Adam smugly. “And I’m convinced that it’s a solid piece of wood.”

  “I don’t agree with you,” said Robin as she began tapping the wood all over like a doctor examining someone’s chest. “I’ve worked with instruments all my life, watched them being made, played with them, even slept with them, and this icon is not solid right through, though God knows how I can prove it. If something is hidden inside, it was never intended to be discovered by laymen like ourselves.”

  “Quite an imaginative little thing, aren’t you?” said Adam.

  “Comes naturally,” she said as she reluctantly handed the icon back to Adam. “Do let me know if you ever discover what is inside,” she added.

  “When I get five minutes to myself I might even spend some time on one or two of my own theories,” said Adam, returning the icon to his trench coat pocket.

  “Two more kilometers to Solothurn,” said Robin, pointing out of the window at a signpost.

  Adam buttoned up his coat. “Ill see you off,” she said, and they both made their way up the aisle. When Adam reached the front of the coach he asked the driver if he could drop him off just before they reached the next village.

  “Sure thing,” said the driver without looking back.

  Adam turned and shook hands with the manager.

  “Leaving us so soon?” said Stephen.

  “Afraid so,” said Adam. “But thanks for the lift. And I won’t forget the calendar.” The driver pulled on to the shoulder and pressed a knob, and the hydraulic doors swung back.

  “‘Bye, Robin,” said Adam, giving her a brotherly kiss on the cheek.

  “Good-bye, baby brother,” said Robin. “Give my love to mother if you see her before I do.” She smiled and waved at him as the door swung closed and the coach returned to the highway to continue its journey on to Frankfurt.

  Adam was on his own again.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  PROFESSOR BRUNWELD was rarely treated with any respect. It was the fate of academics, he had long ago concluded. “The President” was all they had said and he had wondered if he should believe it. Certainly they had got him out of bed in the middle of the night and escorted him silently to the Pentagon. They wanted Brunweld’s expert opinion, they assured him. Could it be possible? After Cuba and Dallas he’d begun to believe anything was possible.

  He had once read that the Pentagon had as many floors below the ground as above it. He could now confirm that as an established fact.

  Once they had handed him the document they left him alone. He studied the clauses for over an hour, and then called them back. It was authentic, he told them, and if the Russians were still in possession of their copy, also signed in 1867, then his adopted country was—what was that awful American expression? ah, yes—in all sorts of trouble.

  He began to realize how serious it was when they told him he would not be allowed to leave the Pentagon until M
onday. That didn’t surprise him once he’d seen the date on the bottom of the treaty. So it was to be three days of solitude away from his demanding students and chattering wife. He would never have a better opportunity to settle down and read the collected works of Proust.

  Romanov knew he couldn’t risk standing by the side of the car for much longer. He was too conspicuously dressed not to be noticed by everyone who came out of the hotel. Three minutes later he threw his gray cap on to the backseat and instructed Valchek to get rid of the car and then return to the consulate.

  Valchek nodded. He had already carried out Romanov’s orders to kill the two British agents as if he had been asked to fix a burst water pipe. The only thing that hadn’t run to plan was when Valchek tried to button up the dead chauffeur’s uniform. Romanov thought he detected a smirk on Valchek’s face when he realized who would have to be the chauffeur.

  Romanov slipped into the shadows and waited for another half hour, by which time he was sure the plan must have been aborted from the London end. He hailed a taxi and asked the driver to take him to the Soviet consulate. He didn’t notice the taxi driver’s look of disbelief at his passenger’s chauffeur-clad vision.

  Could he really have lost Scott twice? Had he also underestimated him? Once more, and Zaborski was going to require a very convincing explanation.

  On his way back to the consulate an image kept Hashing across Romanov’s mind, but he couldn’t make any sense of it. Something had happened outside the hotel that didn’t quite fit. If he could only think clearly for a moment, he felt certain it would become clear to him. He kept playing the last thirty minutes over in his mind, as if rewinding the reel of an old film; but some of the frames still remained blurred.

  Once Romanov was back in the consulate, Valchek handed him a large envelope, which had just arrived in the diplomatic pouch from Moscow.

  Romanov read the decoded telex a second time, still unable to fathom its possible significance.

  “Information has come to light concerning the late Colonel Gerald Scott, D.S.O., O.B.E., M.C. that may prove useful when you make contact with your quarry. Full documentation will be with you by morning, latest. A.I.”