Background
The book features real-life spy Aldrich Ames as a character. Ames, a Central Intelligence Agency operative, had exchanged secrets to Soviet agents for money; his actions figure in the plot of Icon. Several real-life political figures are also characters in the story, and the plot features them meeting at Jackson, Wyoming for a secret conference.
The idea is that Russians need a personified icon to be their head to live in prosperity, peace and stability. To achieve such, "the good guys" work to restore the monarchy, and select Prince Michael of Kent as the new Tsar. Michael of course is a grandson of Grand Duchess Helen Vladimirovna of Russia, born of the line of maternally Orthodox descent, and descending from Greek royals and Russian Romanovs. In the plot of the book, Michael (then 57 years old) is regarded to be of a suitable age to ascend the throne, compared to his older and younger relatives. In the end of the book, he is installed to the throne as Tsar Mikhail Jurjevich, and his son (i.r.l Lord Frederick Windsor, then 20 years old) as Tsesarevich (presumably as Tsarevich Grand Duke Fyodor Mikhailovich of Russia, though the name was nowhere mentioned in the book).
The novel can be seen as a continuation of Forsyth's previous novel, The Fist of God; one of the minor characters in Icon, a banker named Nathanson, is described as the father of a pilot who was shot down in the closing hours of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, an event that occurs in Fist. Sir Nigel Irvine had previously appeared in The Devil's Alternative and The Fourth Protocol.
Read more about this topic: Icon (novel)
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
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“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)