by Mitch Silver
They had been carpooling for the past couple of weeks, ever since he had started at the bank and she had discovered that his flat was on her way. Martin had a nightly computer report to file on the day’s withdrawals, and she had the responsibility for locking the vault area, so they usually finished up together. A widow with a modestly sporty car and male companionship probably should have been thinking of the amorous possibilities, but she just couldn’t picture herself kissing a mouth with those teeth. So theirs would be forever a platonic relationship.
Forever arrived at the bottom of the Rathmines Road when a lorry backed out of a side road at high speed. There was a blinding flash of light, and then the little Fiat 124 slammed into the truck and burst into fire.
Before the police and the reporters arrived at the scene, the lorry driver joined the two men who were watching the flames. The one with the heavy goggles in his hand turned to the driver and, in an accent suggesting the Indian subcontinent, said, “Nicely done.”
Chapter 6
PROVENANCE
Amy, I don’t know how much English history you’ll have learned by the time you read this, so I’m going to give you a little background on the principal players in our drama. The year 1925 was the absolute apogee of the British Empire, and the royal family were in their glory. I remember that when I was a teenager, the Hearst papers, the largest international newspaper syndicate, ran a heavily publicized contest inviting readers to vote for the “World’s Most Eligible Bachelor.” Rudolph Valentino finished second. The winner was the blond, blue-eyed, slightly built young man who had been England’s King-in-Waiting for the past dozen years: Edward, the Prince of Wales. Popular? When the Empire Exhibition opened later that year at London’s new Wembley Stadium, the most visited exhibit was a life-size statue of the Prince made of New Zealand butter. I recall the guard wouldn’t let me touch it.
Of course, it wasn’t just his warm manner and charming personality. Wherever he went, and by the end of the 1920s he had travelled to every corner of the British Empire as the King’s stand-in and emissary, the Prince trailed an unmistakable aura of power and authority. Trains and planes were held; yachts materialized; the best suites in the finest hotels were flung open—all without the Prince’s appearing to notice.
But what the Hearst readers and the butter sculptors never knew was, the Prince felt himself pathetically unworthy. In part, it was simply that he had never done anything to earn the wealth and adulation except be born into it. But there was something else. Goethe had agreed with Madame de Sevigny: “Es gibt für den Kammerdiener keinen Helden.” “No man is a hero to his valet.” Or his nanny. Mrs. Green, the child’s governess and mistress of the royal bath, was only the first of the women in his life to discover that the Prince’s sexual equipment was far from princely. Suffice it to say that the adult Prince would spend much of his life trying to disprove an anatomical fact: that he was not fit for a king. Or, even fully erect, for a queen.
Barren, neurotic, and deserted by her husband, Mrs. Green used to pinch her little charge painfully or twist his arm in the nursery before his regular teatime visits to coldly formal King George and his German wife, the former Princess Mary of Teck. The boy’s bawling would guarantee he was swiftly passed back to Nanny. And then, once more in the nursery, Nanny would quiet the child by assuring him that, however unlovable and ill equipped he was, she would always be the one woman who truly adored him.
Today, the headshrinkers call it aversion therapy. The Chinese Communists call it brainwashing. I prefer to just call it what it was: sadism. Mix love and pain the wrong way round early enough in life, and the man who emerges will spend his years seeking a cold, cruel mother’s love in all the women he meets.
Chapter 7
Amy looked out the window of her hotel room at the lights of Dublin. It was beautiful at night. What was Fleming going on about, all this psychological mumbo jumbo? They said he had sex on the brain, but the Duke of Windsor’s sex? She thought about cracking open the Widow Clicquot’s champagne, but she knew she shouldn’t. Not now.
The yawn surprised her. Okay, just a couple more chapters, and then maybe a closer look through the other papers. She’d be flying back to the States tomorrow morning, and there’d be plenty of time to read on the plane. She wanted to have it all finished by the time she saw Scott. Amy picked up the manuscript again.
PROVENANCE
The thing I always keep in mind about the Prince of Wales is that he was Queen Victoria’s great-grandson. That meant that nearly all the royal families of Europe were his aunts and uncles and cousins. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was benevolent “Uncle Willi” to young David (as the Prince was called when he was a boy) and to his younger brothers and sister. On their summer holidays at Bernsdorf Palace in Germany, he’d let the children sit in the cavalry saddle set on a block of wood that the Kaiser used instead of a desk chair. He claimed he always thought better on horseback.
Another handy thing to keep in mind is that Windsor is a made-up name. The Prince was born Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, with all seven of those Christian names (including Christian) ending in Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. It was the family name of Queen Victoria’s German husband, Albert. They changed it during the war when being descended from Huns was no longer a point of English pride. It explains why the bilingual Prince often said he was three-fourths German.
While we’re at it, David’s first cousin once removed and godfather was Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. (In the nursery hung a photograph of the Tsar, the Kaiser, and the King on a hunting trip together in 1903. The three men looked so much alike it was kind of a game for the children to pick Father out of the group.) So when the Great War pitted Englishmen against Germans against Russians, David watched the two sides of his heritage battling to the death while the third, Eastern branch of the family was swept away on a Red tide.
The Prince, just twenty when hostilities began, wasn’t wanting for bravery. Though commissioned into the Grenadier Guards, he was prohibited from going to the front himself because his capture by the Germans would require a king’s ransom—and possibly an armistice as well—to get him back. But he saw enough to make him all the more determined that “his” two countries would never go to war with each other again.
Two things happened in 1918 that make the events of later years easier to understand. In late summer word reached the Windsors of the execution of the Tsar and his family by the new Communist government. The murder of his Russian cousins sealed his hatred of Bolshevism, one he not surprisingly shared with the rest of Europe’s royals, and threw him over for good to the other side of the political spectrum. It also threw the impotence of democratic institutions into high relief. Years later he noted, “Just before the Bolsheviks seized the Tsar, my father had personally planned to rescue him with a British cruiser, but in some way the plan was blocked. ‘Those politicians,’ he used to say. ‘If it had been one of their kind, they would have acted fast enough. But just because the poor man was Emperor…’ ”
The other thing was more personal. While on leave back in London, David was invited to a dinner party in Belgrave Square. Introductions were still being made when the air raid siren went off. Everyone made their way down to the darkened cellar, where they smoked and waited for the all clear. One of the guests, Mrs. Freda Dudley Ward, spent the time conversing with the man standing next to her in the dark. It wasn’t till they were back upstairs that she realised she had been chatted up by the Prince of Wales.
Within a month, the Prince would be writing her, “My angel!! I can’t tell you how much I hated having to say good-bye this morning…and my last night in England too.” His postscript read, “Please curse me if I have written a terribly stupid and indiscreet letter as I expect this is, darling; but I can’t help it, sitting in my room all alone tonight thinking of you, and I’m not caring much or thinking of the consequences. Good night, my angel!!!”
In the next fifteen years, David would write Freda more than thr
ee thousand such letters. (I’ve had a chance to read several of the ones available to the public.) For her part, she made no demands. It was all the same whether he was telling her about his latest fling, “mais les petits amusements ne content pas,” or the latest joke. “My dearest, know why the biggest gun they have pounding Paris is called Rasputin? Because it comes every fifteen minutes!” Her presence was tolerated by the authorities for one reason: whenever the “dark, dark mist” of depression fell over him—and it was often—and the Prince threatened to drop his public mask of Britain’s Jazz Age golden youth, only Freda’s mothering and security made it all better again.
Chapter 8
PROVENANCE
And now we come to the part where I tell you how I know what I know. Part of it, much of it, is that I have friends in high places. Highest among them, my own godfather—trumpets, please—Winston S. Churchill.
When my father, Valentine Fleming, was killed in the Great War, the First Lord of the Admiralty, his comrade-in-arms and fellow Member of Parliament, was kind enough to write a remembrance (as W.S.C.) in the Times. After that, Winston took it upon himself to watch over me, with a usually baleful eye, during my formative years. I can honestly say that at no time did he intervene on my behalf, either with the many teachers I was to disappoint in my many schools or with my several employers as I struggled to “find myself,” first as a journalist and later as a banker.
What he did do was to make use of me, and the one or two talents I possess, during what he called his wilderness years between the wars. It is only beginning to be acknowledged that Winston Churchill’s personal network of friends and acquaintances was probably the world’s third-most impressive intelligence service, after Britain’s official one and, in the 1930s, Germany’s. Certainly it was better informed than anything the Americans had.
And, as he did with the others who carried out his little “tasks,” if he thought I needed to know something, he told me. For instance, when he learned I would be navigating a friend’s entry in the Cross-Alpine Motor Rally of early 1933, he asked me to monitor German election broadcasts while we were in Switzerland. Winston wanted to know whose names were mentioned and whose words were quoted by the Nazis, especially any reference to Joachim von Ribbentrop or Rudolf Hess. He told me these two were Hitler’s internationalists, and Ribbentrop in particular was cultivating friends in England in the Prince’s circle.
The other way I know what I know is through my obsessive reading of the files in Rooms 39 and 40 of the Admiralty, where I was Assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence during the war. I was not Assistant Director of Naval Intelligence. That was quite another, much more important job. But as Assistant to the Director, I was, among other things, Head Janitor of the files. So I had access to everything heard and done by both MI5 and MI6, as well as our own service. (My godfather once described our system as “tangle within tangle, plot and counterplot, ruse and treachery, cross and double cross.”) On paper, British Military Intelligence (MI) consists of several departments. MI5—the service that catches “their” spies—is responsible to the Home Office. MI6—officially called the Secret Intelligence Service—are “our” spies and report to the Foreign Office. In practice, they function much as do your FBI and CIA.
We’ll pass over the 1920s, most of which the Prince spent either abroad—reviewing the troops of whatever colonial outpost or planting a ceremonial tree or observing the centennial of some local historical event, all worked around various safaris to India and Africa—or at home, going from dinner party to dinner party and doing everything he could do to earn the title of Flaming Youth Number One. As a young man I was invited as an afterthought to one such party where the Prince was guest of honour. We spoke for less than a minute, and he interrupted even that to remind the servants to refill the glasses of certain of the female guests. The encounter left me with the clear picture that the Prince was acquainted with the effects of alcohol and opiates on the human body.
By the 1930s, the Prince of Wales, now choosing to be publicly called Edward, was a no-longer-young London society institution whose head was turned one day by an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Her name was Thelma Morgan, the Viscountess Furness, a fabled South American beauty whose twin sister had married a Vanderbilt and produced a daughter, Gloria, the Poor Little Rich Girl. Thelma—beautiful, exotic, cosmopolitan, desirable—had first married the man who ran Bell Telephone. Then she divorced him and took a second, richer, titled husband, who spent all his time playing polo. Supplanting Freda in the princely affections (and bedroom), Thelma served the tea and doled out the crumpets when the Prince entertained at his snuggery in Fort Belvedere, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Her only mistake was introducing the Prince to Wallis Simpson.
The words on the manuscript page swam up to meet her, and then swam away again. Amy stifled a yawn. Who could she call? She was bursting to tell the Girls about Fleming and the King and…
She reached over to grab her purse and flipped open the day planner to her sketch of the Girls, as they had dubbed themselves. Four career women with their arms around each other, lovingly drawn from a snapshot taken at their fifteenth college reunion. Susan, the one with the perm and the balding husband, on the left. Blanche, the brilliant one with the two ex-husbands, on the right. Amy next to her, and Katie making four, still in her short, spiky hair from college and now an “aboriginal archeologist,” whatever that was.
Amy couldn’t call Katie; wasn’t it 5 a.m. tomorrow in Australia? Blanche, who “didn’t believe in cell phones,” was away at a conference. And Susan would still be busy at work. And then came another yawn, this one too big to stifle. Amy put down the manuscript and turned off the light. The jet lag had won. She’d pack in the morning.
Chapter 9
In the morning, Amy decided to carry her own bags and save on the tip. She had her rolling American Tourister overnighter in one hand and her IBM ThinkPad in its soft black carrying case (along with its precious cargo of Fleming’s pages) in the other. Her handbag hung from her shoulder. Now, if she could just reach the elevator button…
While she waited at reception for her receipt to be printed, a young, already balding man a few feet down the counter turned to her with his bill. “Sprechen Sie Deutsche, Fräulein…?” he asked.
“Greenberg. Ja, a little, Herr…?”
“Kaltenbrunner.”
Amy’s sketchy history-of-art German led her to gather that Mr. Kaltenbrunner was unfamiliar with the concept of hotels gouging their guests on long-distance calls. Enlightened if not mollified by her explanation, he zipped open a pocket of the blue rucksack at his feet and stuffed the offending bill inside. “You have been so helpful. Perhaps, if you are going to the Shannon Airport, I might be permitted to share with you my taxi?” Herr Kaltenbrunner smiled and reached out his hand toward Amy’s black nylon case. “I could perhaps carry your computer? It must be heavy.”
It was an odd smile. The man’s lips parted to show his teeth on only one side of his mouth. Amy said, “Thank you, but I’m not going directly to the airport. I have to make a stop first.”
Kaltenbrunner seemed unsure what to do with his extended right arm now that Amy wasn’t letting him carry her computer case. Finally he dropped it to his side, only to offer it again in the form of a handshake. “Well then, Fräulein…Miss Greenberg, I mean—possibly we will meet again.”
Amy shook his hand. It was surprisingly calloused. “I hope so,” she said, not totally meaning it.
Slightly over an hour later Amy was at Dublin International Airport, standing in front of an electronic board indicating DL 106 to New York was delayed one hour. The stopover at Shields’s bookstore had gone well enough, a preliminary meet and greet with a man who might have something extremely valuable to sell, something he was not making available for public inspection at the moment. To build up the suspense, Amy supposed. She wouldn’t have much to tell them about the visit back at Yale.
Lacking the wherewithal to make a
ny real impact in the duty-free shops, Amy resigned herself to waiting in the boarding area, where the only seats to be had were in the glassed-in smoking section. What was the point of being a vegetarian and avoiding meat if you were going to die from secondhand smoke?
She stepped up to the kiosk, where the Delta agent looked at her ticket and, after punching a few computer keys, tore it up. Aghast, Amy stammered, “Don’t!”
Liam Carmody, according to his plastic clip-on airport ID, looked up from his keyboard. “I’m sorry, miss. I thought you knew. You’ve been upgraded to business.”
“Upgraded? I don’t have any miles. Or at least not enough.”
Mr. Carmody hit a few more keys before saying, “Dr. Amy Greenberg of America, yes? A Mrs. O’Beirne at your bank confirmed the change this morning. Aisle or window?”
In ten minutes, Amy was sitting in the business lounge of Delta’s Crown Room, away from the smokers. She was pleased but not content. First the champagne and now the ticket. Who was she to the Ansbacher Bank that they should care so much about her? She hadn’t even been the holder of the account, and they’d certainly never see her again. In a few weeks, they’d probably be out of business themselves.
Still, if you had to wait out a delay, there were worse places. Amy scanned the headlines of the complimentary USA Today on the coffee table in front of her before turning her thoughts to the need for bridesmaids’ dresses. Which inevitably led to the need for bridesmaids. Katie was halfway around the world. Would she be able to come back for a June wedding? Susan and Blanche she could count on. As a hoot, Amy tried to imagine the look on their faces when she told the Girls they’d have to wear matching bridesmaids’ dresses. Make that the mutinous look on their faces. She’d string them along for a while, describe some burgundy—no, lavender—outfit with capped sleeves and squared-off neckline. Really make them sweat.