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always reliable were the
words that appeared with regularity in almost every summation.
    There was an assertive rap on the door.
Zaborski closed the file and pressed a button under his desk. The doors clicked
open to allow Alexander Petrovich Romanov to enter the room.
    “Good morning, Comrade Chairman,” said the
elegant young man who now stood to attention in front of him. Zaborski looked
up at the man he had selected and felt a little envy that the gods had bestowed
so much on one so young. Still, it was he who understood how to use such a man
to the State’s best advantage.
    He continued to stare into those clear blue
eyes and considered that if Romanov had been born in Hollywood he would not
have found it hard to make a living. His suit looked as if it had been tailored
in Savile Row – and probably had been. Zaborski chose to ignore such
irregularities although he was tempted to ask the young man where he had his
shirts made.
    “You called for me,” said Romanov.
    The Chairman nodded. “I have just returned
from the Kremlin,” he said. “The General Secretary has entrusted us with a
particularly sensitive project of great importance to the State.” Zaborski
paused. “So sensitive in fact that you will report only to
me. You can hand-select your own team and no resources will be denied
you.”
    “I am honoured,” said Romanov, sounding
unusually sincere.
    “You will be,” replied the Chairman, “if you
succeed in discovering the whereabouts of the Tsar’s icon.”
    “But I thought. . .” began Romanov.
     

CHAPTER
FOUR
    Adam walked over to the side of his bed and
removed from the bookshelf the Bible his mother had given him as a Confirmation
present. As he opened it a layer of dust rose from the top of the
gold-leaf-edged pages. He placed the envelope in Revelation and returned the
Bible to the shelf.
    Adam strolled through to the kitchen, fried
himself an egg and warmed up the other half of the previous day’s tinned beans.
He placed the unwholesome meal on the kitchen table, unable to put out of his
mind the slap-up meal Lawrence and Carolyn must now be enjoying at the new
Italian restaurant. After Adam had finished and cleared his plate away, he
returned to his room and lay on the bed thinking. Would the contents of the
faded envelope finally prove his father’s innocence? A plan began to form in
his mind.
    When the grandfather clock in the hall
chimed ten times, Adam lifted his long legs over the end of the bed and pulled
the Bible back out of the bookshelf. With some apprehension Adam removed the
envelope. Next, he switched on the reading light by the side of the small
writing desk, unfolded the two pieces of paper and placed them in front of him.
    One appeared to be a personal letter from
Goering to Adam’s father, while the other had the look of an older, more
official document. Adam placed this second document to one side and began to go
over the letter line by line. It didn’t help.
    He tore a blank piece of paper from a
notepad that he found on Lawrence’s desk and started to copy down the text of
Goering’s letter. He left out only the greeting and what he assumed to be a
valediction – ‘hochachtungs-voll’ – followed
by the Reichsmarshal’s large, bold signature. He checked over the copy
carefully before replacing the original in its faded envelope. He had just
begun the same process with the official document, using a separate sheet of
paper, when he heard a key turning, followed by voices at the front door. Both
Lawrence and Carolyn sounded as if they had drunk more than the promised bottle
of wine, and Carolyn’s voice in particular had ascended into little more than a
series of high-pitched giggles.
    Adam sighed and switched off the light by
the side of the desk so they wouldn’t know he was still awake. In the darkness
he became more sensitive to their every sound. One of them headed towards the
kitchen, because he heard the fridge door squelch closed and, a few