by Jon King
“Anyone we know?”
“Oh, yes. We know some of them very well indeed. They’re household names. That was the problem.”
“Wow. So what happened to the dossier?”
Lacey slid me a sideways glance. “It had an accident,” he said.
“Ah.”
A few paces further on we came on a small lay-by where a vending kiosk sold drinks and snacks—hot dogs, burgers, sandwiches, ice cream. As we approached the kiosks we were forced to negotiate a route through a flock of hungry pigeons that had swarmed there at our feet, pecking at the scraps. Somehow, I knew how they felt.
“And that wasn’t the only problem,” Lacey said. “Are you aware of Diana’s recent visit to the White House?”
“It was on the news,” I said. “By all accounts she turned the president’s head.”
“She did more than that, Jon. She damned near turned US defence policy on its head.” He emphasized the point. “She managed to convince the President of the United States to sign a treaty banning landmines, worldwide. UDS were not happy. They were on the verge of closing some very lucrative deals with the British government for one thing—one reason they took such a keen interest in the outcome of our general election.” He added: “The CIA were none too pleased, either.”
“Because of a few landmines?”
“A few landmines! Is that what you think? I should be careful where you tread, my friend.” Lacey indicated that I was inches from walking into a generous pile of pigeon shit.
I skipped around it. And the pigeons responsible.
“There are millions of landmines in Angola alone, Jon. You know that as well as I do. There are three-hundred-million deployed worldwide and a further three-hundred-million stockpiled and ready for use. That’s not counting the billion-plus antipersonnel submunitions stashed away in America’s hidden arms caches.” Lacey stopped, mid-stride, turned and caught my eye. “When Diana convinced Clinton to sign that treaty the entire military-industrial complex sat up and took note. You can be sure of that.”
“And so what—the CIA murdered her?”
“I’m not saying that.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m sure you can work it out.”
“Work it out?” I was starting to get frustrated. “Look, Lacey,” I said. “Less than two weeks ago I was told someone big was about to get hit. A week later Diana dies in a highly suspicious car crash. Now you’re telling me all this. I just need to know the truth. What are you saying—black and white?”
“If only life were that simple,” Lacey said, and dug around in his pocket for loose change. “Excuse me one moment, would you?” He turned and headed for the vending kiosk.
A beat later my new mobile phone rang, the one Katie had finally persuaded me to buy. I checked the number. It was JB.
“Just making sure you’re still alive,” he said. “How’s London?”
“All good so far, thanks. At least I think so.”
“Meaning…?”
I was still preoccupied with the green 4x4 that, by now, had driven by us a couple of times and was circling back around for another pass. Probably just a park ranger going about his daily business, my rational mind tried to tell me. But at this precise moment in time it wasn’t my rational mind I was listening to. “Ever had the feeling you’re being watched?” I heard myself say.
“Sorry, Jon. I didn’t quite catch that. The line broke up…”
“I doesn’t matter,” I said. “How are things back at the office?”
“In good hands, though I say so myself.” A small pause, then: “Your literary agent Rick Devlin called, by the way. Simon & Schuster want the book.”
“What book?”
“Our book?”
“Oh, so now someone’s showing interest you want part of it?”
“Very funny.”
· I was kidding. Even though JB was still less than convinced that Diana’s death was anything other than a tragic accident, he’d nonetheless agreed to help me investigate the incident and research material for the book I proposed to write. That I planned to use the book as a platform to petition for a public inquiry appealed to his sense of justice, and that, it seemed, overrode his personal opinion on the matter. I was very glad it did. I needed all the help I could get. And the help and support I would receive from JB over the coming years would prove invaluable.
“Listen, Jon, it gets even better,” JB was saying, undaunted by my jaundiced sense of humour. “Evidently two more of London’s top publishers want the book, as well. Not sure who they are yet, Rick didn’t say. But he reckons there could be a bidding war for it.”
“Well, let them bid away. The more they’re prepared to pay for it the more they’re likely to get behind it when it’s published. It’ll means more sales, and the more copies we’re able to shift the bigger the platform we’ll have to launch our petition for a public inquiry.” I glanced up and noticed Lacey was making his way back over to me from the kiosk, a paper cone of monkey nuts in his hands—food for the pigeons. “Listen, JB. We’ll talk about it later. I’ve gotta go. Thanks for checking in.”
“No problem-oh.”
A few moments later I was strolling with Lacey again, beside Serpentine Lake. Lacey was scattering nuts among the pigeons as we walked.
“What I fail to understand is why the CIA would become involved in the death of a British princess,” I’d just said to him.
“Think about it, Jon. Why would the CIA become involved in anything?”
I remembered what the American had said about the reasons for the CIA being in Angola in the sixties, and the seventies, and the eighties.
Oil and diamonds.
“They say for every landmine deployed in Angola more than a thousand barrels of oil go missing,” Lacey went on, “siphoned off in illicit arms deals. Then one day a meddling princess arrives on the scene and threatens to expose the entire operation. And not only that. She gets Clinton onside, as well.” We stopped outside Dell Café, on the shore of Serpentine Lake. Maybe fifty yards behind us the green 4x4 drew to a halt, too. “The landmines treaty is due to be signed in Oslo in two weeks time. But at some point between now and then Clinton will announce he’s changed his mind and decided not to sign the treaty after all.”
“What? But there’ll be an outcry.”
“Not now there won’t. Diana’s death will act as the perfect distraction. In a couple of weeks everyone will have forgotten that landmines even exist. As for Clinton, I have it on impeccable authority he’s about to run headlong into a very public sex scandal.”
“Even though he’s agreed not to sign the treaty?”
“Call it insurance—a reminder that he should never have agreed to sign it in the first place. And a warning not to cross the line again. From what I’ve been told he’ll do well to survive impeachment. Coffee?”
I nodded. “I think I need one.”
●
“What I’ve told you so far is top-secret. What I’m about to tell you is nothing short of treasonous. Listen very carefully, Jon. I will only ever say this once.”
Only very occasionally in the twenty or so years that I’d known him had I seen the face Lacey was wearing now—lips tight, brow knitted, eyes stark and doing the talking. It was his sincerity face, his I really mean this face. He only ever wore it when the heat was on, when he was about to say something that perhaps he shouldn’t. Or at least something that he felt should be treated with particular confidentiality. It was apparent that he was about to say something of this magnitude now.
We were sat outside Hyde Park’s Dell Café, drinking our coffee, watching the geese and the ducks and the pedal boats on Serpentine Lake. It was around midday and the café was populated by people taking an early lunch—chatting, eating, drinking: enjoying the views and the unusually clement weather. Three tables away a woman in her late twenties, hair swept fiercely back in a pony tail, glanced up from the magazine she was reading and seemed to peer over as
kance at Lacey. A fleeting glance, no more. I don’t think he noticed. I found myself wondering whether the ear phones she was wearing were attached to a walkman or a two-way radio device. My paranoia again.
Leaning slightly forward in his seat, his tone discreet, Lacey proceeded to tell me about the meeting he’d attended the previous year with senior Whitehall security advisor, Sir Phillip Hemming. As well as a representative from the royal household, he said, the meeting had been attended by some of Whitehall’s most influential voices, including the heads of MI5 and MI6, and of course MI6 Head of Special Operations Europe, Richard Mason—a man, evidently, Lacey had known for some years. It was almost certainly Mason, Lacey said, who had overseen the operation in Paris.
“It’s not his real name, of course” he’d wanted me to understand. “Mason. It’s an all-purpose code name he uses. He’s a high-ranking Freemason and I think the notion of using ‘Mason’ in this context indulges his deviant mind.”
“Do you know his real name?”
“He doesn’t have one.”
Lacey went on to recount the general substance of the meeting, which, he said, had been ordered from the “very highest level”. He said a “constitutional crisis” had arisen as a result of Prince Charles’ desire to marry Camilla Parker Bowles “while Diana was still alive” – he emphasized that – and that MI6 had called for a “swift and decisive action” in order to avert the crisis.
“It was decided that there was only one course of action available to us,” he said. “And it was of necessity extreme.”
He went on: “The situation at the time was far more critical than you may think. For one thing the Church was in danger of being disestablished, and if that had happened the establishment as we know it would have come crashing down like a biblical tower. It really was that serious. Ultimately it was decided that one of the wives had to go,” he said, surprisingly matter-of-fact.
“You mean Diana or Camilla?”
“One or the other, yes. Of course, MI6 had wanted the head of Diana for some while anyway, and this was the opportunity they’d been waiting for. We, on the other hand, argued that if anyone should go it ought to be Camilla. This way the crisis facing the establishment would be averted, public reaction would be minimized and Diana would be terrified into toeing the line. To us it was the perfect solution, given the options available.”
Lacey paused at this point, his brow creased, as though somewhere in there he was reliving a very unpleasant scenario. And ultimately, I guess, he was. Realizing his fingers were drumming a nervous rhythm on the table top he clasped his hands together in a tight, white knot in an effort to keep them still.
“Up to this point, of course, it was all rhetoric, all in the planning stage, as they say. It had been agreed in principle that Diana or Camilla had to be taken out, true, but I still don’t think at this stage anyone would seriously have sanctioned such an action. It was more a mutually agreed contingency plan, shall we say.”
“So what happened?”
“Two things, one after the other. Firstly, the success of Diana’s landmines campaign brought the CIA into the equation. That changed the complexion of things irrevocably.”
“And secondly…?”
He grimaced. “Secondly, Dodi Fayed appeared on the scene,” he said, and sighed, as though with resignation. “That really was the last straw. We knew then that if we didn’t act immediately, MI6 and the CIA would.”
“You mean if MI5 didn’t get rid of Camilla—”
“—Then MI6 would get rid of Diana, yes. And they would have the full support of the CIA – surveillance, logistics, intelligence – everything you need to assassinate a princess.”
“Jesus. So … what happened? I mean, Camilla’s still alive…”
The look in Lacey’s eye told me: yes, but she shouldn’t be.
He asked me to cast my mind back a couple of months, to a night in June 1997, just a few weeks before Diana’s fatal car crash in Paris. On that night, he reminded me, Camilla Parker Bowles had been involved in a car crash, too. The only difference was Camilla had survived.
“Camilla’s car crash…” I heard myself say. I remembered the accident, all right. I just hadn’t put two and two together, hadn’t for one moment considered it might have been an assassination attempt, by MI5 or anybody else. “…I remember, of course. It was all over the papers. But I never thought…”
“Why would you?” Lacey said. “It was just an accident. Accidents happen all the time and people think little of them, which is why they’re a favourite with deniable ops teams.”
“My God…”
The newspapers had described how Camilla Parker Bowles had survived the crash despite her Ford Mondeo ploughing headlong into an oncoming Volvo Estate. She’d been on her way to Highgrove to meet Prince Charles, the papers had reported, when inexplicably she’d lost control and veered across the road into the path of the oncoming Volvo.
“She thought it was an attempt on her life,” I said, recalling the newspaper story. “She said she thought someone was trying to assassinate her.”
“Yes, and now you know why. But it all went stupidly wrong.”
“Jesus…”
“Ironic, isn’t it. Camilla’s survival signalled Diana’s demise. There was no way back after that. We’d had our shot and we missed.”
Three tables away the woman with the swept-back hair and pony tail stood up to leave. Had she been listening in on our conversation? I shuddered at the thought. Even though a warm September sun was gently beating my back I gave a genuine shiver as I watched the woman fold her magazine into her bag and head off back towards Serpentine Bridge.
Lacey downed the dregs of his coffee and checked his wristwatch. “My goodness, is that the time? I must go,” he said. He pushed himself up from the table and buttoned his jacket. “Time waits for no one, not even a spy.”
“Why are you telling me all this, Lacey?” I suddenly found myself saying. We were friends, I knew that, and it wasn’t the first time we’d discussed sensitive information. But never anything quite like this. I needed to know his intention was straight. “I mean, if they find out you’ve spoken to me…”
“I’ll be in very serious trouble. Yes, I know.” He picked up his attaché case.
“So why, then?” I pressed. “Why lay your career on the line for—”
“She was pregnant,” he said, and left a pause long enough that the impact would bite. It did. In fact it stunned me to silence. “There were four lives lost in that accident, Jon, one of which was unborn. Not that this in itself was enough to prick my conscience if I’m honest. But it jarred, nonetheless.”
He let another small silence hang between us before turning and heading off.
CHAPTER 20
Brigade Criminelle Headquarters, Paris, February 1998
“I am confused, Monsieur Andanson.”
Capitaine Laurent was leafing through a statement laid out on the table in front of him. He was chewing on the end of a pencil, turning the pages of the statement with his thumb and occasionally glancing up at James Andanson as he spoke. Andanson was seated opposite him, smoking the last of a fat Havana cigar; the sparsely furnished interview room was thick with spools of aromatic smoke. Beside the Capitaine, Lieutenant Gigou took notes.
“Pardon, Capitaine?” Andanson said, the slightest hint of derision in his voice. “You are confused?”
“Yes, Monsieur Andanson. Confused. First you say you were in Saint Tropez. Then you say you were at home. Which is it? Where were you on the night the princess died?”
Andanson drew on his cigar and blew out a thick plume of smoke. “I was at home with my wife,” he said. “You can ask her. She will tell you the same.”
“We have asked her, Monsieur Andanson. She says she was in Paris.”
“Not at the time of the accident.”
“Were you not in Paris as well, to photograph the princess?”
“No. My wife arrived home at nine o’clock. I was
already at home. We spent the evening together—at home.”
“Strange. That is not the recollection of your son.”
Capitaine Laurent fingered the pile of papers in front of him until he found the statement given by Andanson’s son, James Jnr. Referring to the statement, he said:
“Your son says you were not at home that night—”
“He is mistaken.”
“—He says…” reading from the statement “… I do not know where my father was. But one thing is certain, he was not at home.” He looked back across at Andanson. “Why do you think he would say that, Monsieur Andanson?”
Andanson shrugged as he tapped ash from the end of his cigar. “Like I said, Capitaine, he is mistaken.”
“He says here that he was at home all day, but that you were not. He says he went out in the evening, and that when he returned home sometime after midnight, you were still not home.”
“What can I say? He is young. His mind is everywhere. That is all there is to it.” He edged forward in his seat. “Look, Capitaine,” he said. “On the night you are referring to I was in bed by midnight. I had a photographic assignment in Corsica the next morning and I had to be up early. I left my home at around four am and drove to the airport. You know this is true because you have the motorway toll receipt right there to prove it.” He motioned at the pile of papers on the desk in front of Capitaine Laurent.
Fingering those papers the Capitaine retrieved a regular-sized chit and turned it face up on the desk. “This receipt proves only that you purchased the toll ticket at five-forty-eight in the morning. On your BMW motorbike you could easily have been in Paris at the time of the crash and back in time to purchase the ticket. This receipt proves nothing.”
Andanson sat back in his seat.
For a long moment Capitaine Laurent studied the man opposite him. He did not believe his story, of course. He’d been a police officer for too long, almost thirty years, a detective for twenty-two of those years. He recognized the signs. He knew the signals given up by people like Andanson—the understated arrogance, the slight dilation of the pupils, the look that said I know you know I am guilty, but you will never prove it. Andanson was giving him that look now, and it made the Capitaine more determined than ever to find a way past the photographer’s defences.