A Matter of Honour is a novel by Jeffrey Archer, first published in 1986. Synopsis In 1966 disgraced British colonel Gerald Scott bequeaths a mysterious letter to his only son, Adam Scott. The "item in question" that Adam's father's letter leads him to acquire from a safe deposit box in Switzerland is a precious Russian Orthodox icon made long ago for the Russian tsars which by misadventure came into the possession of Hermann Göring sometime in the 1930s. Following the Second World War Göring wanted Scott's father (one of his jailers at Nuremberg) to have it in token of his kind treatment and because Göring realized Scott's father would be unfairly blamed for his pre-execution suicide. But the icon contains something that even Göring did not dream of: the only official Russian copy of a secret codice to the Alaska Purchase treaty by which the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. "Seward's Folly" turns out to have not been a true purchase at all, but a 99-year lease akin to the British hold on Hong Kong, with a right of return to Russia (now part of the Soviet Union) if they can only retrieve their copy before the lease deadline, only days away. Plot In June 1966 disgraced British colonel Gerald Scott leaves a mysterious letter to his only son, Adam Scott. Adam's mother tells him that she had already asked his father to destroy the letter. Later, Adam opens the letter to discover that his father was one of Hermann Göring's jailers at Nuremberg following the end of World War Two. The evening before his execution, Göring requested a meeting with Scott in order to give him an envelope containing the location of the tsar's icon of Saint George & the Dragon in a deposit box in a vault of the Swiss bank Bischoff et Cie. Afterwards, Göring commits suicide via poisoned cigar and the suspicion falling on Scott for his interaction with Göring leads Scott to resign from the military. The colonel then leaves the issue of the letter to his son to deal with. Adam decides to visit Switzerland to retrieve the icon and has it valued to potentially sell it. However, he is ambushed by KGB agent Major Alexander Romanov, who murders his German girlfriend Heidi and tracks Scott through the country. Romanov has been sent to get the icon by any means necessary.