A Matter of Honour (35 page)

When the woman saw that Adam was dripping
all over her spotless floor she quickly pulled down a towel from the rack above
the fire and said,
“Enlevez-moi ca
,”
pointing to Adam’s trousers.

Adam turned towards the farmer for guidance
but his host only nodded his agreement and added with a mime of pulling down
his own trousers.

“Enlevez
les, enlevez les,”
the
woman repeated, pointing at him, and handed him the towel.

Adam removed his shoes and socks but the
farmer’s wife went on pointing until he took off his trousers, and she didn’t
budge before he had finally removed his shirt and underclothes and wrapped the
towel around his waist. She stared at the large bandage on his shoulder but
then quickly picked up everything except his blazer and took them over to the
sink while he stood by the fire and dried himself.

Adam hitched up the towel around his waist,
as the farmer beckoned him to join him at the table, pouring a large glass of
milk for his guest and another for himself. Adam sat down next to the farmer,
hanging his fashionable new blazer over the back of the chair near the fire. A
delicious aroma arose from the pan where the farmer’s wife was frying a thick
slice of bacon which she had cut from the joint hanging in the smoky recess of
the chimney.

The farmer raised his glass of milk high in
the air.

“Winston Churchill,” he toasted. Adam took a
long gulp from his own glass and then raised it dramatically.

“Charles de Gaulle,” he said, and finished
off the warm milk as if it had been his first pint at the local pub.

The farmer picked up the jug once more and
refilled their glasses.
“Merci,”
said
Adam, turning to the farmer’s wife as she placed in front of him a large plate
sizzling with eggs and bacon. She nodded and handed Adam a knife and fork
before saying,
“Mangez.”

“Merci,
merci,”
Adam repeated, as
she cut him a thick oval slice from the huge loaf in front of am.

Adam began to devour the freshly cooked food
which was the first meal he’d managed since the dinner he’d ordered at Robin’s
expense.

Without warning the farmer suddenly rose
from his place and thrust out his hand. Adam also got up and shook it
gratefully, only to be reminded how sore his shoulder still was.

“Je
dois travailler à la laiterie,”
he explained.

Adam nodded, and remained standing as his
host left the room, but the farmer waved him down with a further,
“Mangez.”

When Adam had finished the last scrap of
food – he did everything except lick the plate – he took it over to the farmer’s
wife who was busy removing a pot from the stove in order to pour him a large,
steaming cup of hot coffee. He sat back down and began to sip at it.

Adam tapped the jacket pocket almost
automatically to make sure the icon was still safely in place. He pulled it out
and studied St George and the Dragon. He turned it over, hesitated and then
pressed the silver crown hard. The icon split in half like a book revealing two
tiny hinges on the inside.

He glanced up at the farmer’s wife, who was
now wringing out his socks. Adam noticed his pants had already joined the
trousers on the rack above the fire. She removed an ironing board from a little
alcove by the side of the stove and began to set it up, showing no interest in
Adam’s discovery.

Once again he stared down at the inside of
the open icon which was now laid flat on the table in front of him. The true
irony was that the woman pressing his trousers was able to understand every
word on the parchment while at the same time unable to explain the full
significance to him. The complete surface of the inside of the icon was covered
by a parchment which was glued to the wood and fell only a centimetre short of
the four edges. Adam swivelled it round so that he could study it more clearly.
The scrawled signatures in black ink at the bottom and the seals gave it the
look of a legal document. On each reading he learned something new. Adam had
been surprised originally to discover it was written in French until he came to
the date on the bottom – June 20, 1867 – and then he remembered from his
military history lectures at Sandhurst that long after Napoleonic times most
international agreements remained conducted in French. Adam began to reread the
script again slowly.

His French was not good enough to translate
more than a few odd words from the finely handwritten scroll. Under
Etas Unis
William Seward’s bold hand was
scrawled across a crest of a two-headed eagle. Next to it was the signature of
Edward de Stoeckle below a crown that mirrored the silver ornament embedded in
the back of the icon. Adam double-checked. It had to be some form of agreement
executed between the Russians and the Americans in 1867.

He then searched for other words that would
help to explain the significance of the document. On one line he identified:
‘Sept millions deux cent mille dollars d’or
(7.2 million)’
and on another
‘Sept
cent douze millions huit cent mille dollars d’or (712.8 million) le 20 juin
1966.

His eyes rested on a calendar hanging by a
nail from the wall. It was Friday, June 17, 1966. If the date in the agreement
were to be believed, then in only three days the document would no longer have
any legal validity. No wonder the two most powerful nations on earth seemed
desperate to get their hands on it, thought Adam.

Adam read through the document line by line
searching for any further clues, pondering over each word slowly.

His eyes came to a halt on the one word that
would remain the same in both languages.

The one word he had not told Lawrence.

Adam wondered how the icon had ever fallen
into the hands of Goering in the first place. He must have bequeathed it to his
father unknowingly – for had he realised the true importance of what was hidden
inside it, he would surely have been able to bargain for his own freedom with
either side.

“Voila,
voila,”
said the farmer’s
wife, waving her hands as she placed warm socks, pants and trousers in front of
Adam. How long had he spent engrossed in his fateful discovery? She looked down
at the upside down parchment and smiled. Adam quickly snapped the icon closed
and then studied the masterpiece carefully. So skilfully had the wood been cut
that he could no longer see the
join.
He thought of
the words of the letter left to him in his father’s will: “But if you open it
only to discover its purpose is to involve you in some dishonourable
enterprise, be rid of it without a second thought.” He did not need to give a
second thought to how his father would have reacted in the same circumstances.
The farmer’s wife was now standing hands on hips, staring at him with a puzzled
look.

Adam quickly replaced the icon in his jacket
pocket and pulled back on his trousers.

He could think of no adequate way of
thanking the farmer’s wife for her hospitality, her lack of suspicion or
inquisitiveness, so he simply walked over to her, took her gently by the
shoulders, and kissed her on the cheek. She blushed and handed him a small
plastic bag. He looked inside to find three apples, some bread and a large
piece of cheese. She removed a crumb from his lip with the edge of her apron
and led him to the open door.

Adam thanked her and then walked outside
into his other world.

 
“I
don’t want to be the first god-damn President in the history of the United
States to hand back an American state rather than be founding one.”

“I appreciate that, Mr President,” said the
Secretary of State. “But. . .”

“Where do we stand on this legally, Dean?”

“We don’t, Mr President. Abraham Brunweld,
the leading authority on documents of this period, confirms that the terms of
the ninety-nine year lease are binding on both sides. The lease was signed on
behalf of Russia by Edward de Stoeckle and for the US by the then Secretary of
State, William Seward.”

“Can this agreement still be valid today?”
asked the President, turning to his chief legal officer, Nicholas Katzenbach.

“It certainly can, sir,” said the Attorney
General. “But only if they can produce their original. If they do, the UN and
the international court at The Hague would have no choice but to support the
Russian claim. Otherwise no international agreement signed by us in the past or
in the future would carry any credibility.”

“What you’re asking me to do is lie down and
wag my tail like a prize
labrador
while the Russians
shit all over us,” said the President.

“I understand how you feel, Mr President,”
said the Attorney General, “but it remains my responsibility to make you aware
of the legal position.”

“God dammit, is there a precedent for this
kind of stupidity by a Head of State?”

“The British,” chipped in Dean Rusk, “will
be facing a similar problem with the Chinese in 1999 over the New Territories
of Hong Kong. They have already accepted the reality of the situation and
indeed have made it clear to the Chinese Government that they are willing to
come to an agreement with them.”

“That’s just one example,” said the
President, “and we all know about the British and their ‘fair play’ diplomacy.”

“Also, in 1898,” continued Rusk, “the
Russians obtained a ninety-nine-year lease on Port Arthur in Northern China.
The port was vital to them because, unlike Vladivostok, it is ice-free all year
round.”

“I had no idea the Russians
had
a port in China.”

“They don’t any longer, Mr President. They
returned it to Mao in 1955, as an act of goodwill between fellow Communists.”

“You can be damn sure the Russians won’t
return this piece of land to
us
as an
act of goodwill,” said the President. “Am I left with any alternative?”

“Short of military action to prevent the
Soviets claiming what they will rightfully see as theirs, no sir,” replied the
Secretary of State.

“So one Johnson buys the land from the
Russians in 1867 and another has to sell it back in 1966. Why did Seward and
the President ever agree to such a damn cockamaney idea in the first place?”

“At the time,” said the Attorney General,
removing his spectacles, “the purchase price of the land in question was seven
point two million dollars and inflation was then virtually unheard of. Andrew
Johnson could never have imagined the Russians wanting to purchase it back at
ninety-nine times its original value, or in real terms, seven hundred and
twelve point eight million dollars in gold bullion. In reality, years of
inflation have made the asking price cheap. And the Russians have already
lodged the full amount in a New York bank to prove it.”

“So we can’t even hope that they won’t stump
up in time,” said the President.

“It would seem not, sir.”

“But why did Tsar Alexander want to lease
the damn land in the first place? That’s what beats me.”

“He was having trouble with some of his
senior ministers at the time over the selling off of land belonging to Russia
in Eastern Asia. The Tsar thought this transaction would be more palatable to
his inner circle if he presented it as nothing more than a long lease, with a
buy-back clause, rather than an outright sale.”

“Why didn’t Congress object?”

“After Congress ratified the main treaty,
the amendment was not strictly subject to approval by the House, because no
further expenditure by the United States government was involved,” Rusk
explained. “Ironically, Seward was proud of the fact he had demanded such a
high premium in the repayment clause. At the time he had every reason to
believe it would be impossible to repay.”

“Now it’s worth that in annual oil revenue
alone,” said the President, looking out of the Oval Office window towards the
Washington Monument. “Not to mention the military chaos it’s going to create in
this country if they’ve got their hands on their copy of the treaty. Don’t ever
forget that I was the President who asked Congress to spend billions of dollars
putting the early warning system right across that border so the American
people could sleep easy.”

Neither adviser felt able to contradict
their elected leader.

“So what are the British doing about all
this?”

“Playing it close to the chest,
as usual, Mr President.
It’s an English national who is thought to be in possession of the treaty at
the moment and they still seem quietly confident that they will get their hands
on him and the icon before the Russians, so they may yet turn out to be our
saviours.”

“Nice to have the British coming to
our
rescue for a change,” said the
President. “But have we meanwhile been sitting on our asses while they try to
solve our problems for us?”