A Matter of Honour Read Online Free PDF Page A

in him. His heart thumped in his
chest as he considered how Pa’s life had been wasted by the murmurings and
innuendoes of lesser men – the same men who had also succeeded in bringing his
own career to a premature halt. When he had finished reading the missive for a
third time he folded it up neatly and slipped it back into its envelope.
    He then picked up the second envelope from
the side table. The words ‘Colonel Gerald Scott’ were written in a faded bold
script across it.
    Adam removed a comb from his inside pocket
and wedged it into the corner of the envelope. Slowly he began to slit it open.
He hesitated for a moment before extracting two pieces of paper, both yellowed
with age. One appeared to be a letter while the other seemed to be a document
of some sort. The crest of the Third Reich was embossed at the head of the
letterpaper above the printed name of Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering. Adam’s
hands began to tremble as he read the first line.
    It began, Sehr geehrter Hen Oberst Scott:

CHAPTER THREE
    As the black Ghaika limousine drove out
under the Spasskaya Bashnya and on to Red Square, two Kremlin guards in khaki
uniforms sprang to attention and presented arms. A shrill whistle sounded which
ensured that Yuri Efimovich Zaborski would experience no delays on his route
back to Dzerzhinsky Square.
    Zaborski touched the corner of his black
felt hat in automatic acknowledgment of the salute although his thoughts were
elsewhere. As the car rumbled over the cobbled stones, he didn’t even glance at
the long snake-like queue that stretched from Lenin’s Tomb to the edge of Red
Square. The first decision he had to make would undoubtedly be the most
important: which of his senior operatives should be charged with the task of
heading the team to find the Tsar’s icon? He continued to ponder the problem as
his driver took him across Red Square, passing the grey facade of the GUM
department store away to his left before driving along Neitsa Kuibysheva.
    Within moments of leaving his leader, the
Chairman of State Security had formed in his own mind a shortlist of two. Which
of those two, Valchek or Romanov, should be given the nod still taxed him. In
normal circumstances he would have spent at least a week making such a decision
but the General Secretary’s deadline of June 20 left him with no such freedom.
He knew he would have to make the choice even before he reached his office. The
driver cruised through another green light past the Ministry of Culture and
into Cherkasskiy Bolshoy Pereulok lined with its imposing block-like, grey
buildings. The car remained in the special inside lane that could be used only
by senior Party officials. In England, he was amused to learn that they had
plans for such a traffic lane – but it would only be for the use of buses.
    The car came to an abrupt halt outside KGB
headquarters. It hadn’t helped that they had been able to cover the three
kilometre journey in less than four minutes. The driver ran round and opened
the back door to allow his master to step out but Zaborski didn’t move. The man
who rarely changed his mind had already done so twice on the route back to
Dzerzhinsky Square. He knew he could call on any number of bureaucrats and
academics to do the spade work but someone with flair was going to have to lead
them and be responsible for reporting back to him.
    His professional intuition told him to
select Yuri Valchek, who had proved over the years to be a trusty and reliable
servant of the State. He was also one of the Chairman’s longest serving heads
of department. Slow, methodical and reliable, he had completed a full ten years
as an agent in the field before confining himself to a desk job.
    In contrast, Alex Romanov, who had only
recently become head of his own section, had shown flashes of brilliance in the
field but they had been so often outweighed by a lack of personal judgment. At
twenty-nine, he was the youngest and, without question, the most ambitious