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)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)