Matthew Sinclair.
Not the father he’d never known, but the grandfather he had. Dotty old Granddad Matthew who had sat Jamie upon his knee quoting endlessly from the scriptures and expecting him to enjoy strange stories told in his fluent German. Who had taken him to his first art gallery and taught him the importance of composition, form and line as they stood in front of an enormous Civil War portrait of some curly-wigged knight. His gentle, kindly grandfather, who quite literally would not have squashed a fly, had been a soldier. It didn’t seem possible, but the evidence was here on the bed.
He laid the pay book aside, picked up the medals one by one and placed them on the quilt; two silver circles about twice the size of a ten-pence piece, three bronze stars differentiated only by the colour of their ribbons, and – he hesitated, half-recognizing what he had in the palm of his hand – a fine silver cross with a crown embossed at the end of each arm. He turned the cross over and read the inscription on the reverse side: Cptn M. Sinclair (Royal Berkshire Regiment) 8 May 1945. The cross, though Jamie could only hazard a guess at which award it was, meant Matthew Sinclair had not only served in the army, he had fought, and fought well. And there was more. Now that he’d almost emptied the box he found two small scraps of cloth nestling at the bottom. One was a set of parachute wings and the other the instantly recognizable winged dagger of the Special Air Service.
Jamie stared at the badge in disbelief. He felt excited and robbed at one and the same time. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he demanded of the empty room. His mother had not just cheated him of his father, she’d cheated him of his grandfather as well. The sweet, eccentric old man he’d lived beside all those years had been a war hero. Yet neither of them had ever mentioned it.
He was so angry he almost missed the battered journal that had been hidden beneath the box.
III
2008, Menshikov Palace, St Petersburg, Russia
THE SIX MEN in black overalls sat bathed in dim red light in the rear compartment of a large van parked on Vasilevskiy Island diagonally across the Neva from the Hermitage museum. Their leader was very pleased that the vast, imposing building on the far riverbank wasn’t tonight’s target. When it had become clear that what his client sought was in St Petersburg he had reconnoitered the six buildings of the main complex and discovered exactly what he’d known he would: the Hermitage was as tough a nut to crack as the Bank of England or Fort Knox. Fortunately, he didn’t have to crack it. Like every major museum in the world, the Hermitage is home to far more treasures than it can ever display at one time and those treasures are dispersed among its sister museums. It also holds several thousand items whose origins and ownership have been subject to dispute since the end of the Second World War. As greedy for retribution as he was for power, Stalin insisted that Germany’s art and historic artefacts should make up part of the blood price to be paid for Mother Russia’s suffering. When his generals closed in on Berlin, special NKVD trophy brigades spread across the country plundering carefully chosen paintings, books and sculptures, taking home with them between three and twelve million artworks, depending on who you believed, including paintings by Botticelli and Van Dyck. Some of those artefacts were almost certainly not far from where he sat with his assault team, but tonight only one of them interested him. He looked at his watch. 01:55.
‘Get ready.’ He pulled a black ski mask over his head. The others followed suit, automatically checking their weapons and equipment.
Dimitriy Yermolov stifled a yawn and struggled to keep his eyes open. Time to take another look around. If one of the supervisors came in – admittedly unlikely – and discovered him even half asleep he’d be out of a job by morning, and then who’d pay to put his wastrel son through university? He was getting too old for this night work, but what else could he do? The New Russia had been just as tough on Dimitriy as the Old Soviet union had. That was the problem with being an honest man in a country where corruption was an essential element of any successful career. It didn’t matter whether it was turning a blind eye to some Mafia drug dealer from Kazakhstan or keeping your mouth shut about a party functionary selling off state alcohol, it was the same old stink. Trouble was, being a lowly security guard, even in one of Russia’s most prestigious museums, didn’t pay well and never had. And let’s face it, this was just a sideshow compared to the Hermitage across the water. Don’t get him wrong, the Menshikov Palace was impressive enough, a glorious Baroque mansion house overlooking the river in one of the world’s prime locations. It was probably the oldest surviving building in the best city in Russia. Forget Moscow, ‘Piotr’ had always been the capital and always would be, and he loved it, even if that bastard Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin had also been born here. But compared to the State Museum or the Winter Palace, the Menshikov was just a collection of pretty rooms really, with the odd Old Master here and there to give it a wafer-thin veneer of distinction. Nobody would rob this place.