A Matter of Honour (27 page)

“Who taught you to spin a yarn like that?”
asked Adam, as soon as he was out of earshot.

“My father,” said Robin. “You should have
heard him at his best.
In a class of his own.
The
problem was my mother still believed every word.”

“He would have been proud of you today.”

“Now we’ve found out what you do for a
living,” said Robin, “may we learn what’s next on the agenda for the youngest
director of Pirelli?”

Adam smiled. “I’ve started trying to reason
like Rosenbaum, and I think he’ll stay in Geneva for at least an hour, two at
the most, so with luck I’ll get a fifty-mile start on him.” He unfolded the map
across the two seats.

His finger ran along the road the bus was
travelling on, and it was Robin who spoke first.

“That means you could make Zurich airport
before he has any chance of catching up with you.”

“Perhaps,” said Adam, “but that would be too
much of a risk. Whoever Rosenbaum is,” he went on, abiding by Lawrence’s
request to be cautious by not letting Robin into his secret, “we now know for
certain that he has a professional organisation behind him so I must expect the
airports to be the first place he will have covered. And don’t forget the Swiss
police are still on the lookout for me as well.”

“So why don’t you come on to Frankfurt with
us?” asked Robin. “I can’t believe you’ll have any trouble from Stephen.”

“I’ve thought about that already but
discounted it also as too great a risk,” said Adam.

“Why?”

“Because, when Rosenbaum has had time to
think about it,” said Adam, “the one thing he’ll remember is this bus. Once he’s
found out the direction we’re heading in he’s sure to come after us.”

Robin’s eyes returned to the map. “So you’ll
need to decide where and when to get off.”

“Exactly,” whispered Adam. “I can risk sixty
to seventy miles, but not a lot further.”

Robin’s finger ran along the little road. “About
here,” she said, her finger stopping on a little town called Solothurn.

“Looks about the right
distance.”

“But once you’re off the bus what will you
do for transport?”

“I’ve little choice but to walk or thumb
lifts – unless I pinch another car.”

“With your luck, Rosenbaum will be the one
person who stops to pick you up.”

“Yes, I’ve thought about that as well,” said
Adam. “I would have to find a long stretch of road where I can see without
being seen for about one hundred yards, and then thumb lifts only from British
cars or cars with British number plates.”

“They taught you a trick or two in the army,
didn’t they?” said Robin. “But how do you intend to cross the frontier with
your passport?”

“That’s one of the many problems I haven’t
yet come up with a solution for.”

“If you decide to stay with us,” said Robin,
“it wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Why?” asked Adam.

“Because whenever we cross a border they
only count the number of people on the bus and the number of passports, and as
long as they tally the customs officials don’t bother to check everyone
individually. After all, why should they? The RPO is not exactly an unknown
quantity. All I would have to do is add your passport to the bundle and mention
it to the manager.”

“It’s a clever idea but it’s not on. If
Rosenbaum caught up with me while I’m still on this bus then I would be left
with no escape route.”

Robin was silent for a moment. “Once you’re
on your own will you contact Lawrence again?”

“Yes. I’ve got to let him know what happened
this morning, because whoever he’s dealing with must have a direct line to
Rosenbaum.”

“Could it be Lawrence himself?”

“Never,” said Adam.

“Your loyalty is touching,” said Robin,
turning to look at him, “but what you actually mean is you don’t want to
believe it could be Lawrence.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Like my mother didn’t want to believe that
my father was a liar and a drunk. So she turned a blind eye to his little
foibles. You know even when he dropped dead of cirrhosis of the liver, her only
words were, ‘strange for a man who never drank’.”

Adam thought about his relationship with
Lawrence and wondered if you could know someone for twenty years and really not
know them at all.

“Just be wary how much you let him know,”
advised Robin.

They sat in silence as Adam checked the map
and went over all the different possible routes he could take once he had left
the bus. He decided to aim for the German border and take the long route back
to England, from Hamburg or Bremerhaven, rather than the shorter, more obvious
route via Calais or Ostend.

“Got it,” said Robin suddenly.

“Got what?” said Adam, looking up from the
map.

“How we solve your passport problem,” she
murmured.

Adam glanced at her hopefully. “If you let
me have your passport,” she explained, “I’ll substitute it for the member of
the orchestra who most resembles you. No one will notice anything strange at
our end until we’re
back
home in Britain on Sunday
night.”

“Not a bad idea, if there is anyone who
remotely resembles me.”

“We’ll have to see what we can do,” said
Robin. She sat bolt upright, her eyes moving slowly from person to person. By
the time she had scanned all those in the bus from front to back, a small smile
appeared on her face. “There are two of our
lot
who
bear a passable resemblance to you. One is about five years older and the other
is four inches shorter, but you go on working out the safest way of escape
while I carry out some research. Let me have your passport,” she said. Adam
handed it over and then watched Robin walk up to the front and sit next to the
manager. He was chatting to the driver about the most convenient place to stop
for lunch.

“I need to check something in my passport,”
Robin broke in. “Sorry to bother you.”

“No bother. You’ll find them all under my
seat in a plastic bag,” he said, and continued his conversation with the
driver.

Robin bent down and started to shuffle
through the passports as if searching for her own. She picked out the two she
had considered as possible substitutes and compared the photographs. The
shorter man’s photo looked nothing like Adam. The older man’s was at least five
years out of date but could have passed for Adam as long as the officials didn’t
study the date of birth too carefully. She bundled up the passports, placing
Adam’s in the middle. She then put them back in the plastic bag and returned
the bag under the manager’s seat.

Robin made her way back to her seat. “Take a
look at
yourself
,” she said, slipping the passport
over to Adam. He studied the photo.

“Other than the moustache, not a bad
likeness, and it’s certainly my best chance in the circumstances. But what will
happen when you return to London and they find out my passport has been
substituted?”

“You’ll be back in England long before us,”
said Robin. “So put this one in an envelope with the calendar and send it
direct
to the RPO in Wigmore Street, Wl, and I’ll see that
they return yours.” Adam vowed to himself that if he ever got back to London,
he would become a life subscriber to the Friends of the Royal Philharmonic.

“That seems to have solved one of your
problems.”

“For the moment at least,” said Adam. “I
only wish I could take you with me for the rest of the trip.”

Robin smiled. “Frankfurt, Berlin, Amsterdam –
just in case you get bored. I wouldn’t mind meeting up with Rosenbaum.
But this time face to face.”

“He might just have met his match,” said
Adam.

“Can I have a last look at the icon?” Robin
asked, ignoring the comment.

Adam bent down to retrieve his trenchcoat
and slipped the painting out of his map pocket, careful to shield it from
anyone else’s view. Robin stared into the eyes of St George before she spoke
again. “When I lay
awake
last night waiting for you to
ravish me, I passed the time trying to fathom out what secret the icon held.”

“I thought you were asleep,” said Adam
smiling.
“When all along we were both doing the same thing.
Anyway, did you come up with any worthwhile conclusions?”

“First, I decided your taste was for male
double bass players,” said Robin, “or how else could you have resisted me?”

“But what about St George and the Dragon?”
asked Adam,
grinning.

“To begin with I wondered if the little
pieces of mosaic made up a code. But the picture is so magnificently executed
that the code would have to have been worked out afterwards. And that didn’t
seem credible.”

“Good thinking, Batman.”

“No, you’re Batman. So I wondered if there
was another painting underneath. I remembered from my schooldays that Rembrandt
and Constable often painted on the top of their paintings, either because they
didn’t care for their original effort or because, in the case of Rembrandt, he
couldn’t afford another canvas.”

“If that were the answer only an expert
could have carried out the task of removing every piece of paint.”

“Agreed,” said Robin. “So I dismissed that
as well. My third idea was that the crown on the back” – she turned the icon
over and stared at the little piece of silver embedded in the wood – “indicates
as your expert suggested that this is the original by Rublev and not a copy as
you have been led to believe.”

“I had already considered that,” said Adam, “during
my sleepless night and although it would place a far higher value on the work,
it is still not enough to explain why Rosenbaum would kill indiscriminately for
it.”

“Perhaps someone else needs St George every
bit as much as Rosenbaum does,” said Robin.

“But who and why?”

“Because it’s not the icon they’re after,
but something else.
Something hidden in or behind the
paint-ing.”

“That was the first thing I checked,” said
Adam smugly. “And I’m convinced that it’s a solid piece of wood.”

“I don’t agree with you,” said Robin as she
began tapping the wood all over like a doctor examining someone’s chest. “I’ve
worked with instruments all my life, watched them being made, played with them,
even slept with them, and this icon is not solid right through, though God
knows how I can prove it. If something is hidden inside it was never intended
to be discovered by laymen like ourselves.”

“Quite an imaginative little thing, aren’t
you?” said Adam.

“Comes naturally,” she said as she handed
the icon back to Adam. “Do let me know if you ever discover what is inside,”
she added.

“When I get five minutes to myself I might
even spend some time on one or two of my own theories,” said Adam, returning
the icon to his trenchcoat pocket.

“Two more kilometres to Solothurn,” said
Robin, pointing out of the window at a signpost.

Adam buttoned up his coat. “I’ll see you
off,” she said, and they both made their way up the aisle. When Adam reached
the front of the coach he asked the driver if he could drop him off just before
they reached the next village.

“Sure thing,” said the driver without
looking back.

“Leaving us so soon?” said Stephen.

“Afraid so,” said Adam. “But thanks for the
lift. And I won’t forget the calendar.” The driver pulled into a lay-by,
pressed a knob and the hydraulic doors swung back.

“Bye, Robin,” said Adam, giving her a
brotherly kiss on the cheek.

“Goodbye, baby brother,” said Robin. “Give
my love to mother if you see her before I do.” She smiled and waved at him as
the door swung closed and the coach returned to the highway to continue its
journey on to Frankfurt.

Adam was
on his own
again.

Professor Brunweld was rarely treated with
any respect. It was the fate of academics, he had long ago concluded. The ‘President’
was all they had said and he had wondered if he should believe it. Certainly
they had got him out of bed in the middle of the night and escorted him
silently to the Pentagon. They wanted Brunweld’s expert opinion, they had
assured him. Could it be possible? After Cuba and Dallas he’d begun to believe
anything was possible.

He had once read that the Pentagon had as
many floors below the ground as there were above it. He could now confirm that
as an established fact.

Once they had handed him the document they
left him alone. They only wanted one question answered. He studied the clauses
for over an hour and then called them back. It was, he told them, in his
opinion, authentic and if the Russians were still in possession of their copy,
also signed in 1867, then his adopted country was – what was that awful
American expression? Ah, yes – in all sorts of trouble.