A Matter of Honour (6 page)

By the beginning of the third week, Romanov
had reached the reluctant conclusion that there was nothing new on the
whereabouts of the icon to be discovered. He was preparing his final report for
the Chairman of the KGB when one researcher, Comrade Petrova, whose mind did
not work in parallel lines, stumbled across an article in the London
Times
of Wednesday, November 17
,1937
. Petrova bypassed the research leader and handed the
relevant photocopy to Romanov personally, who, over the next few hours, read
the news item so often that he came to know it off by heart.

In keeping with the Thunderer’s tradition,
the foreign correspondent remained anonymous. The article carried the dateline ‘Ostend,
November 16, 1937’.

It read:

Grand Duke George of Hesse and four members
of his family were tragically killed this morning when a Sabena aircraft
carrying them from Frankfurt to London crashed in thick fog over the Belgian
countryside.

The Grand Duke had been on his way to
England to attend the wedding of his younger brother, Prince Louis, to the Hon.
Joanna Geddes. The young prince had been waiting at Croydon Airport to greet
his family when the news was broken to him. He immediately cancelled his
original wedding plans and announced they would be rescheduled with a small
private service in the Chapel at Windsor.

The
Times
went on:

Prince Louis, who succeeds his brother as
the Grand Duke of Hesse, will leave for Ostend with his bride later today in
order that they can accompany the five coffins on their journey back to
Germany. The funerals will all take place in Darmstadt on November 23.

It was the next paragraph that the
researcher had circled boldly.

Some of the late Grand Duke’s personal
belongings, including several wedding presents for Prince Louis and his bride,
were scattered for miles in the vicinity of the crashed aircraft. The German
Government announced this morning that a senior German general has been
appointed to lead a team of salvage experts to ensure the recovery of any
family possessions that still belong to the Grand Duke’s successor.

Romanov immediately called for the young
researcher. When Anna Petrova arrived a few minutes later she gave no
impression of being overawed by her head of department. She accepted that it
would be hard to make any impression on him with the clothes she could afford.
However, she had put on the prettiest outfit she possessed and cut her hair in
the style of an American actress called Mia Farrow whom she had seen in one of
the few films not banned by the authorities. She hoped Romanov would notice.

“I want you to scour
The Times
every day from November 17, 1937 for six months, and also
check the German and Belgian press during the same period in case you come
across anything that would show what the salvage experts had discovered.” He
dismissed her with a smile.

Within twenty-four hours Comrade Petrova
barged back into Romanov’s office without even bothering to knock. Romanov
merely raised his eyebrows at the discourtesy before devouring an article she
had discovered in the Berlin
die Zeit
of
Saturday, January 19, 1938.

“The investigation into the crash last
November of the Sabena aircraft that was carrying the Hesse royal family to
London has now been concluded. All personal possessions belonging to the family
that were discovered in the vicinity of the wreckage have been returned to the
Grand Duke, Prince Louis, who, it is understood, was particularly saddened by
the loss of a family heirloom that was to have been a wedding gift from his
brother, the late Grand Duke. The gift, a painting known as the ‘Tsar’s Icon’,
had once belonged to his uncle, Tsar Nicholas II. The icon of St George and the
Dragon, although only a copy of Rublev’s masterpiece, was considered to be one
of the finest examples of early twentieth-century craftsmanship to come out of
Russia since the Revolution.”

Romanov looked up at the researcher. “Twentieth-century
copy
be
damned,” he said. “It was the
fifteenth-century original and none of them realised it at the time – perhaps
not even the old Grand Duke himself. No doubt the Tsar had other plans for the
icon had he managed to escape.”

Romanov dreaded having to tell Zaborski that
he could now prove conclusively that the original Tsar’s icon had been
destroyed in a plane crash some thirty years before. Such news would not ensure
promotion for its messenger, as he remained convinced that there was something
far more important than the icon at stake for Zaborski to be so involved.

He stared down at the photograph above the
Zeitung
report. The young Grand Duke was
shaking hands with the general in charge of the salvage team which had been
successful in returning so many of the Prince’s family possessions. “But did he
return them all?” Romanov said out loud.

“What do you mean?” asked the young
researcher. Romanov waved his hand as he continued to stare at the pre-war,
faded photograph of the two men. Although the general was unnamed, every schoolboy
in Germany would have recognised the large, impassive, heavy-jowled face with
the chilling eyes which had become infamous to the Allied powers.

Romanov looked up at the researcher. “You
can forget the Grand Duke from now on, Comrade Petrova. Concentrate your
efforts on Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering.”

When Adam woke his first thoughts were of
Carolyn. His yawn turned into a grin as he considered her invitation of the
night before. Then he remembered. He jumped out of bed and walked over to his
desk: everything was in place exactly as he had left it. He yawned for a second
time.

It was ten to seven. Although he felt as fit
as he had been the day he left the army some seven weeks before, he still
completed a punishing routine of exercise every morning. He intended to be at
his peak when the Foreign Office put him through a physical. In moments he was
kitted out in a singlet and a pair of running shorts. He pulled on an old army
tracksuit and finally tied up his gym shoes.

Adam tiptoed out of the flat, not wanting to
wake Lawrence or Carolyn – although he suspected she was wide awake, waiting
impatiently. For the next thirty-four minutes he pounded the pavement down to
the Embankment, across Albert Bridge, through Battersea Park to return by way
of Chelsea Bridge. Only one thought was going through his mind. After twenty
years of gossip and innuendo was this going to be the one chance to clear his
father’s name? The moment he arrived back at the flat, Adam checked his pulse:
150 beats a minute. Sixty seconds later it was down to 100, another minute 70,
and before the fourth minute was up it was back to a steady 58. It’s the
recovery that proves fitness, not your
speed,
his old
Physical Training Instructor at Aldershot had drummed into him.

As Adam walked back through to his room
there was still no sign of Carolyn. Lawrence, smart in a grey pinstripe suit,
was preparing breakfast in the kitchen while glancing at the sports pages of
the
Daily Telegraph.

“The West Indies made 526,” he informed Adam
forlornly.

“Have we begun our innings?” shouted Adam
from the bathroom.

“No, bad light stopped play.”

Adam groaned as he stripped for the shower.
He was ready for his morning game of finding out how long he could last under
the freezing jets. The forty-eight needles of ice cold water beat down on his
back and chest, which made him take several deep intakes of breath. Once you
survive the first thirty seconds you could stay under for ever, the instructor
had assured them. Adam emerged three minutes later, satisfied but still damning
the PTI from whose influence he felt he would never escape.

Once he had towelled himself down Adam
walked back to his bedroom. A moment later he had thrown on his dressing-gown and
joined his friend in the kitchen for breakfast. Lawrence was now seated at the
kitchen table concentrating hard on a bowl of cornflakes, while running a
finger down the Foreign Exchange rates in the
Financial Times.

Adam checked his watch: already ten past
eight. “Won’t you be late for the office?” he asked.

“Dear boy,” said Lawrence, “I am not a
lackey who works at the kind of bank where the customers keep shop hours.”

Adam laughed. “But I will, however, have to
be shackled to my desk in the City by nine thirty,” Lawrence admitted. “They
don’t send a driver for me nowadays,” he explained. “In this traffic, I told
them, it’s so much quicker by tube.”

Adam started to make himself breakfast.

“I could give you a lift on my motorbike.”

“Can you imagine a man in my position
arriving at the headquarters of Barclays Bank on a motorbike? The Chairman
would have a fit,” he added, as he folded the
Financial Times.

Adam cracked a second egg into the frying
pan.

“See you tonight then, glorious, unwashed
and unemployed,” jeered Lawrence as he collected his rolled umbrella from the
hat stand.

Adam cleared away and washed up, happy to
act as housewife while he was still unemployed. Despite years of being taken
care of by a batman he knew exactly what was expected of him. All he had
planned before his interview with the Foreign Office that afternoon was a long
bath and a slow shave. Then he remembered that Reichsmarshal Goering was still
resting on the table in the bedroom.

“Have you come up with anything that would
indicate Goering might have kept the icon for himself?” asked Romanov, turning
hopefully to the researcher.

“Only the obvious,” Anna Petrova replied in
an offhand manner.

Romanov considered reprimanding the young
girl for such insolence, but said nothing on this occasion. After all, Comrade
Petrova had proved to be far the most innovative of his team of researchers.

“And what was so obvious?” enquired Romanov.

“It’s common knowledge that Hitler put
Goering in charge of all the art treasures captured on behalf of the Third
Reich. But as the Fuhrer had such fixed personal opinions as to what
constituted quality, many of the world’s masterpieces were judged as ‘depraved’
and therefore unworthy to be put on public view for the delectation of the
master race.”

“So what happened to them?”

“Hitler ordered them to be destroyed. Among
those works condemned to death by burning were such masters as Van Gogh, Manet,
Monet – and especially the young Picasso who was considered unworthy of the
blue-blooded Aryan race Hitler was grooming to rule the world.”

“You are not suggesting Goering could have
stolen the Tsar’s icon,” asked Romanov, staring up at the ceiling, “only then
to burn it?”

“No, no. Goering was not that stupid. As we
now know, he didn’t always obey the Fiihrer’s every word.”

“Goering failed to carry out Hitler’s
orders?” said Romanov in disbelief.

“Depends from which standpoint you view it,”

Petrova replied. “Was he to behave as his
lunatic master demanded or turn a blind eye and use his common sense?”

“Stick to the facts,” said Romanov, his
voice suddenly sharp.

“Yes, Comrade Major,” said the young
researcher in a tone that suggested she believed herself to be indispensable,
at least for the time being.

“When it came to it,” Petrova continued, “Goering
did not destroy any of the denounced masterpieces. He held some public burnings
in Berlin and Diisseldorf of lesser known German artists, who would never have
fetched more than a few hundred marks on the open market in the first place.
But the masterpieces, the real works of genius, were moved discreetly over the
border and deposited in the vaults of Swiss banks.”

“So there’s still an outside chance that
having found the icon...”

“He then had it placed in a Swiss bank,”
added Petrova. “I wish it were that simple, Comrade Major,” said the
researcher, “but unfortunately Goering wasn’t quite as naive as the newspaper
cartoonists of the time made him out to be. I think he deposited the paintings
and antiques in several Swiss banks and to date no one has ever been able to
discover which banks or the aliases he used.”

“Then
we
shall have to do so,” said Romanov. “Where do you suggest we start?”

“Well, since the end of the war many of the
paintings have been found and restored to their rightful owners, including the
galleries of the German Democratic Republic. Others, however, have appeared on
walls as far-flung as the Getty Museum in California and the Gotoh in Tokyo,
sometimes without a fully satisfactory explanation. In fact, one of Renoir’s
major works can currently be seen hanging on the walls of the Metropolitan
Museum in New York. It undoubtedly passed through Goering’s hands although the
curator of the museum has never been willing to explain how the gallery came
into possession of it.”

“Have all the missing pictures now been
found?” asked Romanov anxiously.

“Over seventy per cent,
but there are still many more to be accounted for.
Some may even have been lost or destroyed,
but my guess is that there are still a large number that remain lodged in Swiss
banks.”