A Matter of Honour (23 page)

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 safe. Adam pulled up the collar of his
trenchcoat 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 centre of the row 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
in the broad street 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 towards the British 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 recognised him but for
the eyes.

June 17, 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 10 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 laying 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 co-operation 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 towards him, Adam took a
pace backwards from the tramlines to allow the tramcar to pass between them.
When the tram 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 tram
and to the astonishment of the passengers, leapt on. He began checking over the
faces row by row.

Adam waited for the tramcar 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 towards it. Adam looked back at the tram
which had just been passed by another heading towards 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 now only yards from the Consulate door
Adam was left with no choice but to retreat 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 towards 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 box a few yards away. He changed direction quickly and leapt 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 box
before he realised 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 and two and three and four
and five, he counted as he ran along the road. He then checked right, before
mounting three steps and pushing through some swing 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 swing 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 hiring
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 which 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 were already
assembled, and familiarising themselves with the files that had been presented
to them only an hour before.

He glanced round the table at the specially
selected D4, all hand-picked 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 moustache 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 a
double first 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, 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 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 if there should be any 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 past 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 in 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 have 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 cheeking shows that a Mr
Rosenbaum arrived in Zurich yesterday morning and travelled 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 aeroplane 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 ILO and WHO, all with the necessary diplomatic status
they need to carry out undercover work. What still remains a mystery to me is
why Mr Rosenbaum should be willing to kill two innocent people for a relatively
obscure icon. That brings my report up to date. But perhaps you have come up
with something new,” said 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 Reichsmarshal 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 Mr Nicholas Wainwright, was asked by Scott to translate
what we now believe was a paragraph from the letter 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 all?” said Sir Morris.

“I’m afraid so,” said Lawrence, “although I
believe it confirms what Scott told me last night was his reason for travelling
to Geneva. There is no doubt in my mind that the package he went to pick up
contained the icon of St George and the Dragon left to his father by Goering.”

“St George and the Dragon,” said Matthews
interrupting, “but that’s the icon that half of the KGB have 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
began to assume that it must be a decoy because the Tsar’s icon of St 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 First Division,” he said.

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

“As much as we can get away with,” said
Lawrence. “Along with the Americans we have seventeen men operatives in Geneva,
all of them trying to find Scott.”

“The Swiss police have a thousand doing the
same job, though heaven knows whose side they imagine they’re on,” added Snell.

Lawrence chipped back in. “And it’s been
almost impossible to convince them that Scott is not in any way responsible for
the two murders. So we may have to get him out without relying on their
co-operation.”

“But what do you imagine would be the
outcome if Romanov or this Rosenbaum, who must also be part of the KGB, manages
to get to Scott before we do?” asked Matthews.

“A civilian up against one
of the Russians’ most ruthless agents.
That’s all we need,” said Commander Busch.

Lawrence inclined his head towards the
American. “I’ve known Adam for most of my life. The irony of his particular
predicament is that it was I who, without his knowledge, recommended that he
should be interviewed for a place in the Northern Department. It was my
intention that he should join us as soon as he had completed his course as a
trainee. If Romanov or any of his cohorts come face to face with Scott they’d
better remember that he was awarded a Military Cross when faced with a thousand
Chinese.”