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and the researchers had quickly been able to establish that the Tsar’s
icon had remained in his private quarters at the Winter Palace at Petrograd
until as late as December 1914. Romanov studied religiously a photo of the
small delicate painting of St George and the Dragon. St George in tiny mosaic
patterns of blue and gold while the dragon was in fiery red and yellow.
Although he had never shown any interest in art, Romanov could well understand
why people could be moved by the little masterpiece. He continued to read
details of the icon’s history, but still couldn’t work out why it was so
important to the State. He wondered if even Zaborski knew the reason.
    A royal servant who had testified before the
People’s Court a year after the Revolution claimed that the Tsar’s icon had
disappeared for a few days in 1915 after the visit of Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke
of Hesse. At the time, the inquisitors had taken scant interest in the
misplaced icon because it was still on the wall of the Tsar’s study when they
had stormed the Winter Palace. What concerned the court more was why, in the
middle of a fierce war with the Kaiser’s Germany, the Grand Duke of Hesse
should want to visit the Tsar at all.
    The Professor of History at the university
had immediately been asked for his opinion. The great academic was puzzled by
the request, as the KGB had never shown any interest in the nation’s past
history before. Nevertheless, he briefed Romanov on everything that was known
of the incident. Romanov pored over his report once again. The Grand Duke, it
was thought, had been on a secret visit to his sister Alexandra, the Tsarina.
Historians now believed that it had been his intention to secure a cease-fire
between Germany and Russia, in the hope that Germany could then concentrate her
war efforts on the British and the French.
    There was no proof that the Tsar made any
promises on behalf of his people but the Grand Duke, it seemed, did not return
to Germany empty-handed. As the reports of the proceedings of the People’s
Court showed, another palace servant had been instructed to wrap up the Tsar’s
icon and pack it with the Grand Duke’s belongings. However, no one on the
palace staff could properly explain to the court how a few days later the icon
reappeared in its rightful place on the wall of the Tsar’s private study.
    Romanov’s chief researcher, Professor Oleg
Kon-stantinov, having studied the professor’s notes and the other researchers’
contributions, had underlined his own conclusion in red ink.
    “The Tsar must have replaced the original
painting with a brilliant copy, having handed over the real icon for
safe-keeping to his brother-in-law, the Grand Duke.”
    “But why,” asked Romanov, “when the Tsar had
a palace full of Goyas, El Grecos, Titians and Rubens did he bother to smuggle
out one icon and why does Brezhnev want it back so badly?”
    Romanov instructed the professor and his
twenty-four researchers to turn their talents to the Royal House of Hesse in the
hope of tracing what had then happened to the Tsar’s icon. Within ten days,
they possessed between them more information about the Grand Duke and his
family than any professor at any university had managed to gather in a
lifetime. As each file appeared on his desk Romanov laboured through the night,
checking every scrap of information that might give him a lead to the
whereabouts of the original painting. He came to a dead end when, after the
Grand Duke’s death, the painting had been left to his son who was tragically
killed in a plane crash. Nothing had been seen or heard of the icon after that
day.
    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