A Matter Of Honour [new Edn]

this is a Jeffery Archer....here's a short review-

In 1966 disgraced British colonel bequeaths a mysterious letter to his only son. But the moment Adam Scott opens the yellowing envelope, he sets into motion a deadly chain of events that threatens to shake the very foundations of the free world. Within days, Adam's lover is brutally murdered and he's running for his life through the great cities of Europe, pursued not only by the KGB, but by the CIA and his own countrymen as well. Their common intent is to kill him before the truth comes out. While powerful men in smoke-filled rooms plot ever more ingenious means of destroying him, Adam finds himself betrayed and abandoned even by those he holds most dear. When at last he comes to understand what he is in possession of, he's even more determined to protect it, for it's more than a matter of life and death – it's a matter of honour.

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 czars which by misadventure came into the possession of Hermann Göring sometime in the 1930s. 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 didn't dream of: the only official Russian copy of a secret codicil to the 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 long (99-year) lease akin to the British hold on Hong Kong, with a right of return to Russia (now the part of the Soviet Union) if they can only retrieve their copy before the lease deadline, only days away.