A Matter of Honour (4 page)

Adam stopped to consider what he would have
done in the same circumstances, and decided to read on to discover if father
and son would have taken the same course.

However, Goering’s final words to me as I
left his cell seemed hardly those of a madman. He said quite simply: “Be
assured. It is a masterpiece; do not underestimate its value.” Then he lit up a
cigar as if he was relaxing at his club after a rather good dinner. We all had
different theories as to who smuggled the cigars in for him, and equally
wondered what might also have been smuggled out from time to time.

I placed the envelope in my jacket pocket
and left him to join the corporal in the corridor. We then checked the other
cells to see that all the prisoners were locked up for the night. The inspection
completed, I returned to my office. As I was satisfied that there were no more
immediate duties I settled down to make out my report. I left the envelope in
the jacket pocket of my uniform with every intention of opening it immediately
after Goering’s execution had been carried out the following morning. I was
checking over the orders of the day when the corporal rushed into my office
without knocking. “It’s Goer-ing, sir,
it’s
Goering,”
he said, frantically. From the panic on the man’s face, I didn’t need to ask
for any details. We both ran all the way back to the Reichsmarshal’s cell.

I found Goering lying face downwards on his
bunk. I turned him over to find he was already dead. In the commotion that
immediately followed I quite forgot Goering’s letter. An autopsy a few days
later showed that he had died from poisoning; the court came to the conclusion
that the cyanide capsule that had been found in his body must have been
implanted in one of his cigars.

As I had been the last to see him alone and
privately, it took only a few whispers before my name was linked with his
death. There was, of course, no truth in the accusation. Indeed I never doubted
for one moment that the court had delivered the correct verdict in his case and
that he justly deserved to be hanged for the part he had played in the war.

So stung was I by the continual
behind-the-back accusations that I might have helped Goering to an easy death
by smuggling in the cigars that I felt the only honourable thing to do in the
circumstances was to resign my commission immediately for fear of bringing
further dishonour to the regiment. When I returned to England later that year,
and finally decided to throw out my old uniform, I came across the envelope
again. When I explained to your mother the details of the incident she begged
me to destroy the envelope as she considered it had brought enough dishonour to
our family already, and even if it did point to whoever had been responsible
for helping Goering to his suicide, in her opinion such knowledge could no
longer do anyone any good. I agreed to comply with her wishes and although I
never opened the envelope I could never get myself to destroy it, remembering
the last sentence Goering had uttered about it being a masterpiece. And so
finally I hid it among my personal papers.

However, since the imagined sins of the
father are inevitably visited upon the next generation, I feel no such qualms
should influence you. If there is therefore anything to be gained from the
contents of this envelope I make only one request, namely that your mother
should be the first to benefit from it without ever being allowed to know how
such good fortune came about.

Over the years, I have watched your progress
with considerable pride and feel confident that I can leave you to make the
correct decision.

If you are left in any doubt about opening
the envelope yourself, destroy it without further consideration. But if you
open it only to discover its purpose is to involve you in some dishonourable
enterprise, be rid of it without a second thought.

May God be with
you.
Your loving father,

Gerald Scott

Adam read the letter over once again,
realising how much trust his father had placed 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:

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 of
the Chairman’s select team.

Zaborski stepped out on to the pavement and
walked towards another door held open for him. He strode across the marble
floor and stopped only when he reached the lift gates. Several silent men and
women had also been waiting for the lift but when it returned to the ground
floor and the Chairman stepped into the little cage, none of them made any
attempt to join him. Zaborski travelled slowly up towards his office, never
failing to compare it unfavourably with the speed of the one American elevator
he had experienced. They could launch their rockets before you could get to
your office, his predecessor had warned him. By the time Zaborski had reached
the top floor and the gates had been pulled back for him, he had made up his
mind. It would be Valchek.

A secretary helped him off with his long
black coat and took his hat. Zaborski walked quickly to his desk. The two files
he had asked for were awaiting him. He sat down and began to pore over Valchek’s
file. When he had completed it, he barked out an order to his hovering
secretary: “Find Romanov.”

Comrade Romanov lay flat on his back, his
left arm behind his head and his opponent’s right over his throat preparing for
a double knee-thrust. The coach executed it perfectly and Romanov groaned as he
hit the floor with a thud.

An attendant came rushing over to them and
bent down to whisper in the coach’s ear. The coach reluctantly released his
pupil who rose slowly as if in a daze, bowed to the coach and then in one
movement of right arm and left leg took the legs from under him and left him
flat on the gymnasium floor before making his way quickly to the off-the-hook
phone in the office.

Romanov didn’t notice the girl who handed
him the phone. “I’ll be with him as soon as I have had a shower,” was all she
heard him say. The girl who had taken the call had often wondered what Romanov
looked like in the shower. She, like all the other girls in the office, had
seen him in the gymnasium a hundred times. Six foot tall with that long,
flowing blond hair – he resembled a Western film star. And those eyes, ‘piercing
blue’ the friend who shared her desk described them.

“He’s got a scar on his...” the friend
confided.

“How do you know that?” she had asked, but
her friend had only giggled in reply.

The Chairman meanwhile had opened Romanov’s
personal file for a second time, and was still perusing the details. He began
to read the different entries that made up a candid character assessment which
Romanov would never see unless he became Chairman:

Alexander Petrovich Romanov.
Born Leningrad, March 12, 1937.
Elected
full Party member 1958.
Father: Peter Nicholevich
Romanov,
served on the Eastern Front in 1942. On returning to Russia in 1945 refused to
join Communist Party. After several reports of anti-State activities supplied
by his son he was sentenced to ten years in prison.
Died in
jail October 20, 1948.

Zaborski looked up and smiled – a child of
the State.

Grandfather: Nicholai Alexandrovich Romanov,
merchant, and one of the wealthiest landowners in Petrograd. Shot and killed on
May 11, 1918, while attempting to escape from the forces of the Red Army.

The Revolution had taken place between the
princely grandfather and the reluctant comrade father.

Alex, as he preferred to be known, had
nevertheless inherited the Romanov ambition so he enrolled for the Party’s
Pioneer organisation at the age of nine. By the age of eleven, he had been
offered a place at a special school at Smolensk – to the disgust of some of the
lesser Party workers who considered such privileges should be reserved for the
sons of loyal Party officials, not the sons of those in jail. Romanov
immediately excelled in the classroom, much to the dismay of the Director who
had been hoping to disprove any Darwinian theories. And at fourteen he was
selected as one of the Party’s elite and made a member of the Komsomol.

By the age of sixteen, Romanov had won the
Lenin language medal and the junior gymnastics prize and despite the Director’s
attempts to undermine young Alex’s achievements, most members of the school
board recognised Romanov’s potential and ensured that he was still allowed to
take up a place at university. As an undergraduate he continued to excel in
languages, specialising in English, French and German. Natural flair and hard
work kept him near the top of every subject he specialised in.

Zaborski picked up the phone by his side. “I
asked to see Romanov,” he said curtly.

“He was completing his morning work-out at
the gymnasium, Chairman,” replied the secretary. “But he left to change the
moment he heard you wanted to see him.”

The Chairman replaced the phone and his eyes
returned to the file in front of him. That Romanov could be found in the
gymnasium at all hours came as no surprise: the man’s athletic prowess had been
acknowledged far beyond the service.

During his first year as a student, Romanov
had continued diligently with his gymnastics and even gone on to represent the
State side until the university coach had written in bold letters across one of
his reports, “This student is too tall to be considered for serious Olympic
competition.” Romanov heeded the coach’s advice and took up judo. Within two
years, he had been selected for the 1958 Eastern Bloc games in Budapest and
within a further two years found other competitors preferred not to be drawn
against him on his inevitable route to the final. After his victory at the
Soviet games in Moscow the Western press crudely described him as ‘The Axe’.
Those who were already planning his long-term future felt it prudent not to
enter him for the Olympics.