During WWII Lacey was given carte blanche by Winston Churchill. His “special help,” as Churchill used to call it, not only kept Allied supplies moving, it facilitated communication with underground movements across Nazi-occupied Europe. Many of the relationships Lacey developed in the First War were renewed. He worked tirelessly for a British victory over the Germans. He seemed to be everywhere at once. There were rumors again, and stories, fantastic stories. Churchill was not bothered. “I don’t care!” he shouted more than once at the mention of Frederick Lacey’s alleged excesses. “Even if it’s true, I do not care.” The official complaints stopped, but the talk never halted. It was said he used Allied shipping to move illegal cargo, even treasures of war, from place to place. Lacey’s name became attached to events, about which he later wrote he had nothing to do with. The old tales of Russian gold after World War One gave rise to new claims such as Lacey’s supposed involvement in the matter called the Quedlinburg Hoard. He was rarely asked, but when someone was rude enough to bring the subject up, Lacey calmly denied knowledge-of everything. Still people wondered. Did Lacey have anything to do with this or that? Did he?
All the while, Lacey never let Audrey slip too far back in his mind. He held Joe Kennedy Jr. responsible and secretly vowed not to rest until she was avenged. On August 8, 1944, Joe Kennedy Jr. left on a special, secret combat mission. Flying alone, over the English Channel, his aircraft exploded. In his journal, his confession, Lacey disclosed that it was he-Frederick Lacey-who used his position of influence to mastermind the sabotage of Joe Kennedy Jr.’s plane. Lacey wrote coldly of his satisfaction with young Kennedy’s death. “A debt has been paid,” he penned. “But no price can bring my Audrey back.”
By the end of the war, Lacey, not yet 50, was the wealthiest man in Europe. As reward for his wartime service he was given a peerage-Lord Frederick Lacey. It did not slow him one bit. The worldwide web of his connections continued to expand. His empire grew. Throughout the Cold War, he was the primary source of many items of Western luxury for the power elite of the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc nations. Lacey could and did move anything, anywhere in the world. Lacey delivered almost anything someone wished, someone who could pay his price. Directly related to his shipments of arms, he became the only private individual in the world fully tied in to most of the world’s intelligence services. He knew things no one else did and never betrayed a client’s confidence.
In the prime of his life, he was utterly fearless in business. Totally cool, he never required time to cogitate. He acted, favorably or unfavorably, immediately, on the spot, with no apparent qualms of any sort. To those who did business with him, it appeared Lord Lacey never had regrets, never looked back, never second-guessed. He must have had his share of losses. Who hasn’t? And who hasn’t worried about it? Apparently, not Lord Frederick Lacey. And who hasn’t hesitated, wondering if only for a moment, if they were doing the right thing, making the correct decision? Apparently, not Lord Lacey. A major part of his great success was this singular ability to decide and act when others simply couldn’t. He became known as a man you only needed to see once. He inspired others to act as he did, or to try. Often times, those who thought themselves his equal, if not his superior, made or accepted offers they would have been best to consider more thoughtfully. There were those who wished to compete with Lacey, even in style, and they usually paid dearly for the indulgence.
In the spring of 1963 Audrey Lacey’s closest friend, Margaret Lansdowne, a young woman still in her forties, died of cancer. Kenneth Lansdowne, Margaret’s husband, sent Lord Lacey a collection of letters Audrey had sent to Margaret when they were teenagers. Margaret had saved them all as a treasure. Naturally, Lansdowne had not read them. He thought they would be comforting to Audrey’s father and felt Lord Lacey should have them. Among these letters was one clearly indicating that “J. J.” stood for John-John, not Joe Jr. The information inflamed Lacey. He made no mention in his journal of regret, nothing at all about Joe Jr. No indication of remorse. Lacey wrote only of how he immediately began planning to kill John F. Kennedy.
Luigi Pirandello came closer to getting it right than Yeats. Walter thought so, even though he hadn’t read Yeats since high school and his only experience with Pirandello was the time, in Chicago in 1983, when Gloria dragged him to a performance of Six Characters in Search of an Author. He didn’t need much of a push to understand that illusion frequently masqueraded as fact. Worse still, illusion was often the accepted truth. To Walter’s way of thinking, the truth is not always beautiful. If you thought it was, and if that was all ye knew, you were lacking some important information.
For openers, he didn’t believe in God-not the God -the one true God so many said they were privileged to have some sort of relationship with and practically demanded you to do likewise. So Walter discounted everything said to be done in the name of God, for the glory of God, and most of all, everything done by men who had the balls to claim they were actually doing the specific thing God Himself instructed them to do. He could do without athletes who thanked God, or his son, for their victory. Did they really believe God chose sides? In a prizefight? Had Jesus taken the under or over in the NFL? Walter had no use for what masqueraded as God’s will. He didn’t think about it often, but when he did, he couldn’t bring himself to accept things like the Twin Towers or the great tsunami of 2005. What god would allow that? He could never get his hands around the idea that any god would want disgruntled, displaced Europeans to slaughter all the Indians in North America so they could establish a place they called “ God’s best hope for mankind.” If there was such a God, He would be one to fear, especially if you were an Indian. And Walter had been in Vietnam. He’d seen and done things no god would tolerate.
He was comfortable with facts. There could be no fact for him without evidence. He didn’t believe aliens landed in New Mexico in 1947. He didn’t believe in demonic possession. He was confident Neil Armstrong really did walk on the Moon. Walter had no use for conspiracies. He told his friend Billy he’d believe in UFOs when they stopped being UFOs. Nevertheless, he understood why lots of people believed in lots of bullshit. They had faith, something anathema to Walter and his way of life. “Faith,” he told Billy, who lived in fear of the Catholic God every day of his life, “is believing in something for which you acknowledge there is no proof.” That’s why he said they had to be Identified Flying Objects before he would say they’re real.
“You don’t have any faith?” Billy asked. “Nothing?”
“You make it sound like I’m missing something.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s for sure,” said Billy, shaking his head like he just got a phone call with bad news. “I’ll pray for you, Walter.”
He remembered Billy’s pained comment, talking with Conchita Crystal. “What’s your nephew, Harry, going to do about this?” asked Walter. “You have any idea?”
She didn’t look up, not right away. She sat next to Walter on a bench near the ticket booth for the ferry that ran between St. John and St. Thomas. They were all by themselves. The ticket window was unattended. “I don’t know,” she said. “To both questions.”
“What is it then you want me to do?”
“I want you to find him. Before they do.”
“Before who does?”
“I don’t know.”
“And when I find him, do what?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you have to know. I can’t just walk up to him, wherever he is, put my hand on his shoulder and say, ‘Tag-you’re it.’ Once I find him I’ve got to do something. And, more important, he has to do something. He can’t carry this around with him. So…?”
“Hide him. I want you to hide him, somewhere safe.”
Walter’s hand lightly touched Conchita Crystal on her soft, brown shoulder. A small gust of cool air blew in off the water. The smell of her was enough to drive a man mad, he thought. How could she have been the child she said she was? She looked up into his eyes. He smil
ed at her, a fatherly gesture, he hoped.
“I have to tell you,” he said, “I don’t understand why this is so important, so dangerous. If what you say Harry has learned is true, sure, it’s astonishing. It will be something people everywhere will be interested in knowing. But why would anyone kill him to keep it quiet-to keep it a secret? Can it be that big a deal?”
Conchita said nothing.
“Tell me,” said Walter. “Who killed John F. Kennedy? The CIA? The Mafia? Who?”
“A man named Frederick Lacey.”
“You’re kidding me, right? A man named-”
“Frederick Lacey. An Englishman. Lord Frederick Lacey.”
“What happened to the Russians, the Cubans, the right-wing wackos?” Walter shook his head in amazement. “Frederick Lacey?” he asked. “Who the fuck is Frederick Lacey?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“But he did it? You’re sure of that?”
“Oh, yes,” Chita said. “I’m sure of that.”
“Why? And what makes you sure of that?”
Conchita didn’t reply and Walter continued. “If he’s hiding now, why would you want me to find him just so he can hide again?” Walter took a deep breath-almost a sigh-and looked at Chita with unanswered questions all over his face. “Frederick Lacey, you say?”
“That’s what Harry said. I’m no stranger to trouble, Walter. Or danger. I’ve been dealing with difficult situations all my life. There are people who would kill to keep this from coming out-kill to keep Lacey’s confession a secret, to get their hands on it, to learn what it says. Harry has good reason to worry. He’s disappeared all right, for now, but they’ll never stop looking for him. Never. And eventually they’ll find him. He’s not the kind of man you are. Wherever he is now, I know he can’t be safe. You see that, don’t you?”
“You think I will find him before they do? Whoever they are.”
“I’m familiar with your reputation,” she said. “This is not flattery, Walter. I don’t think you’ll find Harry first. I know it. You’ve found other people before, haven’t you? You’ve found people no one else could. You were not the only one looking for them, but you found them, first. Right?”
“I have,” he said.
“And you have been successful because you know everything there is to know about hiding. Am I right?”
“Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but yes, I suppose you could say that, at least for the purposes of this conversation. But-”
“So, I’m asking you to reverse things. Walk on the other side of the street for a minute. Find Harry. Find him quickly, and take him somewhere no one else can find him, no matter how hard they look. You must know such a place.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know,” she said, sliding off her sunglasses so she could wipe her tears away.
My God! thought Walter. I’ve never seen eyes as beautiful as these, and where did these tears come from so suddenly? Can she do this on command?
“I’ll have to figure that out later,” she said, clearing her throat in an effort to regain her composure. “For now, I need you to find Harry and protect him until we can think of something, some way out of this for him. Do that, and when you’ve found someplace safe, and I know where he is and that he’s all right, I’ll think of something.”
Walter lowered his head, rested his hands on his knees, looked down at the wooden planks of the pier, watching the water reflect the light between the cracks in the boards. I must be crazy, he thought.
“Twenty-five thousand a week,” he said. “Two weeks minimum. Plus expenses. In advance. Cash.”
“You’re no Philip Marlowe,” she said.
“I’m no who?”
“You’re not an old movie buff either, are you?” Conchita was far more amused than Walter could make sense of. “Philip Marlowe was a private investigator, a PI. The Big Sleep? Humphrey Bogart?” She looked at him but he registered nothing. “Marlowe only charged twenty-five dollars a day,” she said. “You might as well be asking for the Czar’s gold.”
“Huh? What’s the Czar’s gold?”
“It’s just a saying,” she said. “You know, like all the tea in China.”
If she expected something from him, a reaction of some kind, she didn’t get it. Walter had nothing to say. Finally, Conchita Crystal flashed him one of her famous smiles and asked, “Cash?”
“Yes,” he said, acknowledging their agreement. A warm smile had already replaced his otherwise slightly bewildered gaze.
“I’ll have the money delivered to your home this afternoon. When will you begin?”
“I already have,” said Walter.
1920
Warm breezes, the scent of fresh flowers and the sounds of newborn birds ushered in the English spring of 1920, sweeping out the harsh winter that had gone before it. Frederick Lacey thought God himself had written a symphony, rising to a mighty crescendo, all the senses in celestial harmony, and dedicated it to Aminette. On the second Thursday of May, Aminette Lacey went into labor. By most accounts, her baby was not due for another two or three weeks. Her husband had prepared well for the birth of his child, as he did for everything. His wife would deliver their child in a rosewood bed, hand crafted, made in Indonesia and shipped to England to be christened by new life in the Lacey family. It traveled around the world on the flagship of Frederick Lacey’s commercial fleet, a vessel like God’s own spring, named Aminette.
Things did not go well. The doctor, the midwife and the attendants were helpless. Aminette hemorrhaged, uncontrollably. As the lifeblood drained from her slender body, she looked sorrowfully into her husband’s eyes. She knew the man who could do anything, could do nothing to save her. A smile as serene as any he ever saw lit up her face as Aminette died holding tightly to her daughter. Lacey pleaded with his young wife, as if by demand alone he could keep her in this world. The last thing she saw before closing her eyes a final time was Frederick’s face, racked with misery, contorted in tears. He named his daughter Audrey.
In less than a week Djemmal-Eddin Messadou made the arduous journey from Georgia to London. Lacey waited to bury his wife until her father arrived. Lacey was devastated. He moved on instinct alone. Djemmal-Eddin too was stricken with grief, but he had seen more death than his young son-in-law and was better able to recover his senses. And recovery was necessary. Djemmal-Eddin did not have the luxury of prolonged mourning. He held the fate of his people in his hands. The Bolsheviks had sworn death to him and to the Transcaucasian Federation of Dagestan, Azerbaijan and his beloved Georgia. The unexpected death of his daughter was a terrible blow softened only a little by the birth of his newest granddaughter. Yet, it was a blow from which he would recover. Aminette’s was but a single human life. And he, her father-although a direct descendant of the Great Shamyl, the Lion of Dagestan-his pain, cruelly suffered at her fate, was solitary. One woman, one man, they are not that important. The death of his country and his countrymen-those who put their trust, their very lives and the lives of their families in his keeping-would be far worse. He told Lacey he could not stay long. When the time came for him to leave, the two men stood together. With firm resolve they shook hands, then they each broke down and sobbed on the other’s shoulder. Those who waited on Djemmal-Eddin waited in respectful silence. No man would interfere at this moment. Two and a half years would pass before Frederick Lacey and Djemmal-Eddin Messadou would shake each other’s hand again.
Solly Joel was in London in May 1920. He had recently returned from a lengthy visit to South Africa, to celebrate his true loves-the fifty-bedroom mansion he called Maiden Erlegh House, on the outskirts of Reading, and the sport of kings, horse racing. Through his ownership of the City amp; South London Railway, Joel knew William Lacey from Liverpool. He had heard stories of the young Lacey and was familiar with his growing reputation and the prestige that came with his victories in The Great War. But it was in tribute to Djemmal-Eddin that he sought an opportunity to pay his
respects. Or, that’s what he said. The evening before the Georgian’s return to his native land, Solly Joel was the only guest for dinner. The three men ate together in Lacey’s dining room, a setting that could accommodate three dozen comfortably, and had more than once. Condolences were in order, but there was another, more important purpose to Joel’s visit.
Solomon Barnato Joel, Just Solly to the powerful and powerless alike, may have been the richest man in the world. It was hard to tell, difficult to get an accurate reading on matters as personal as that in those days. Following the mysterious death by drowning of his uncle Barney Barnato, the founder of the DeBeers diamond cartel, young Solly Joel assumed total control of that vast enterprise. From his base in diamond mining, Joel branched out to gold mines and soon manipulated and dominated the world market in both stones and precious metals. A flamboyant character, who thrived on bravado and basked in the glory of public attention, Solly Joel was among the first of the great industrialists and entrepreneurs to invade popular culture. With no thought of profit, he bought up the famed Drury Lane Theater in London and established a stable of the finest racehorses in the world.
His most daring adventure, the one deal everyone speculated about, was his strange and unique relationship with the Russians. When the Bolsheviks deposed the Czar in 1917, they found themselves embarrassed to become the world’s richest diamond owners. Centuries of accumulation, an act of unprecedented rape of Russian national treasure, had now devolved to and given the Communists the world’s largest, most valuable collection of diamonds. Desperate for money, hard currency with real trade value, and ideologically burdened with the Czar’s excesses, the Bolsheviks were easy prey to Solly Joel’s machinations. In a daring stroke of international hubris, Solly Joel offered to take the Czar’s diamonds off their hands and give the Bolsheviks the enormous sum of 250,000 English pounds, the most prized currency in the world. Moreover, Joel made the offer sight unseen. He would take the entire collection, as is. The Russians, in a sign that they understood nothing about money and really did mean it when they said they would usher in a new financial age for the world, accepted. They delivered the goods-in fourteen cigar boxes-and Solly Joel dutifully transferred the quarter million pounds. Improbable as it was-a schoolboy’s logic dictated otherwise-both sides concluded the transaction with apparent satisfaction. One of them had been had, and it wasn’t Just Solly. By securing the Czar’s entire collection for himself, Joel was able to stymie any possibility of the future sale of phony pieces, paraded as secret jewels from the vault of the late Czar. Had this happened, the diamond market might have spun out of control. As well, he completely eliminated the potential for any damage that might affect worldwide diamond prices had others purchased the collection. In this way, Joel ensured that all the Czar’s diamonds would not come on the market at once. Over the coming years, until his own death in 1931, Solly Joel was able to reintroduce, as he called it, piece by piece, some of the most spectacular diamond jewelry ever made. His financial wizardry was such, he did so while increasing prices, not depressing them. Of course, the Bolsheviks had no idea what those stones were really worth. They were the proverbial Christians being tossed to the lions. They were soft food for the predator. Solly Joel bought them sight unseen because he knew their actual value was perhaps twenty or fifty times what he paid. To this day some who know the diamond trade well say that figure was closer to a hundred times what Joel paid. Just Solly rightly figured the Russians for patsies. Why not the Georgians too? The purpose behind Solly Joel’s approach to Djemmal-Eddin Messadou was to find out about the Czar Nicholas II ten Ruble coins. He’d heard that the nephew of the Lion of Dagestan had tons of them.
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