by Jon King
Making a mental note he replaced the cover, then turned and retraced his steps back around the sofa and headed for the frosted glass-panelled door over by the breakfast bar. The door had been left slightly ajar, he could see; it opened into a cramped, windowless office space scarcely big enough to house the desk, chair and – more pertinently – the computer he knew he would find in there. It was inside the computer casing that he’d installed device ‘B’ on his last visit, in a cavity between the motherboard and the CPU, and he’d done so in such a way that, to the untrained eye, it looked every inch one of the computer’s core components. Changing the screwdriver head – click-click – he stepped into the office and removed the computer’s outer casing, and was not the least surprised to discover that device ‘B’ had been removed, too. Mystery explained, he thought to himself. The subject must have had the apartment swept for bugs. This time he would have to be more discreet.
Having replaced the computer’s outer casing he quickly disconnected the machine from the wall socket, removed the plug and replaced it with one he carried in his tool pouch. It was no ordinary plug, of course; it contained a built-in microphone and micro-transmitter, voice-activated, and worked on a closed-cell digital network similar to GSM, though infinitely more secure, and sophisticated. Indeed, the spies back at GCHQ listening to the conversations it transmitted would hear them no clearer if they were here in the apartment in person. Even so, he would fit a second device as backup before he left, in a specially adapted light bulb he also carried in his tool pouch. He would fit that in the lounge.
“Shopping list completed,” the agent said into his concealed mouthpiece as he exited the apartment around fifteen minutes later. “He’s all yours.”
He then started back along the elevated landing and disappeared down the staircase—anonymously, like a ghost.
“Subject One already in the building,” a different agent said into her mobile phone. She was standing beside the Duke of Wellington statue, outside the National Archives of Scotland Building in Edinburgh, dressed in jeans and camel tweed jacket, milling discreetly with other pedestrians and sightseers. The Balmoral Hotel was in her sights, on the opposite side of the street. “I have subjects Two and Three approaching now.”
“Remain positioned. Call in when they leave.”
“Affirmative.”
As we approached the Balmoral Hotel my eye was for some reason taken by the commanding figure of the Duke of Wellington on the opposite side of the street. The old duke, cast in time-blackened bronze, was mounted magnificently on his rearing steed outside the National Archives of Scotland Building, and was the focus of a small group of interested parties—an Asian couple taking notes, and photos; a young man making a sketch on a pad; and several others, perhaps tourists, standing around, admiring the old soldier, him and his horse.
There was one other there, too, a woman dressed in jeans and camel tweed jacket standing slightly apart from the small crowd. I’d noticed her glance over at JB and I as we’d approached the hotel entrance. And now, flicking a sideways glance, I could see that she was talking on a mobile phone. It bothered me. I couldn’t help wondering who she was, who she was talking to, why she was there. My paranoia again? Possibly. But given that we seemed to have entered a new phase of our investigation of late – our meeting with the Doctor on the London Eye, our ‘kidnapping’ outside BBC Broadcasting House and our subsequent tête-à-tête with a faceless voice down by the river in London’s dockland; and now our ‘pre-arranged’ meeting with a self-styled prince – I figured it more likely than not that our movements were being monitored.
One eye still on the woman in the camel tweed jacket – still there, still talking on her mobile phone – I followed JB into the Balmoral Hotel.
“Good day, gentlemen.” We were greeted at the door by a rather camp concierge who ushered us through the foyer and into the hotel restaurant. He motioned towards the window table. “Your party is waiting.”
As we made our way over to the table I couldn’t help feeling this whole charade was a setup, or at best a distraction. I couldn’t help wondering what we were doing here in this chic, five-star restaurant with its walnut floors, dark-wood furniture and its 1930s-style Art Deco surrounds. Not that I was averse to luxury, nor indeed the stylized décor. But I was averse to this grumbling sense of feeling out of place, not so much in the restaurant as in myself, wary of the recent deviation our investigation seemed to have taken and wondering where it might lead us next. The seemingly random surfacing of such dubious characters as the Doctor and the ‘kidnapper’ in the past few weeks, appearing out of nowhere, like pop-up dummies at a shooting gallery, had unsettled me. JB, too. Who were they? Why, at this late stage in our investigation, had they emerged from their secret place and offered us cryptic insights into Princess Diana’s death? It just didn’t seem real.
“Ah, Jon and John I presume,” the diminutive figure seated at the table said as he stood up to greet us and offered his hand. He was not what I was expecting. Elegantly dressed in dark-blue suit and nutmeg brogues – groomed hair, stylish spectacles in transparent frames, a winning smile – he seemed every bit the princely brand he claimed to be. Except, that is, for his stature. If he was five feet standing upright, that’s all he was.
I shook his outstretched hand. “I’m the Jon without the H,” I said. “Jon King. And this is my colleague, John Beveridge.”
“Yes, I believe we spoke on the phone.”
“That’s right,” JB said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you … your … highness…?”
He chuckled, boyishly. “Good Lord, no. Please, call me Michael. It’s my name.”
“But I thought…?”
“I am Prince Michael James Alexander Stewart, heir to the Honours of Scotland, although I doubt I will ever in truth accede to those Honours. And even if I do, my name will always be Michael to my friends. Formalities are for functions and funerals. Please, take a seat.”
And that, surprisingly, was pretty much how it was: loose and informal, despite the five-star surroundings in which we found ourselves and the elevated social class of the man there with us (despite also, that I still couldn’t help feeling we were the unwitting stars in some elaborate reality show—any minute I expected the show’s host to appear and exclaim: You’ve been framed! And then we’d all wake up and go home.)
But that didn’t happen. There was no show and there was no host. Just this slightly surreal situation in which JB and I found ourselves, lunching with a guy who was either the rightful-though-deposed King of Scotland, or he was a nutter. And although the latter option seemed perhaps the most apposite, right now I just couldn’t be sure—a fact that only served to make things seem even more bizarre, even more surreal. Inwardly I counted to ten. Then, tightening the belt of my mind I sat myself down at the table and opened my attaché case in search of my ever faithful Dictaphone, and reminded myself that it wasn’t us who’d gone in search of Michael; rather, that it was the Doctor, and then our mysterious kidnapper, who’d compelled us in his direction. Why these two obscure characters had been so adamant we meet this charismatic little man remained to be seen. Hopefully all would now be revealed.
Over lunch we spoke extensively about Michael’s alleged Stuart heritage, about how, as the Doctor had affirmed, he was descended from Bonnie Prince Charlie, and about how he’d been born in exile, in Belgium, and had returned to his ancestral home of Scotland in 1976 to pursue his claim as Scotland’s rightful king.
“I’m the first one since eighteen-eighty-seven to raise the issue of the Stewart claim,” he told us, making a point also of explaining that, since the heady days of the Stuart reign in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries – James I, Charles I, Charles II, James II, Mary II, Anne: plus of course, Prince Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart, popularly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie – the family name had reverted to its original spelling of ‘Stewart’, derived as it was from the High Stewards of Scotland
in the 12th century. It was Prince Michael, we were enthusiastically informed, who was the current Head of the Royal House of Stewart.
“I felt it was my duty as de jure constitutional monarch to return to my ancestral homeland and endeavour to restore Scotland’s freedoms.”
“And they actually allowed you to do that?” I said between mouthfuls of to-die-for Shetland salmon. “They don’t mind you being here, doing what you’re doing?”
“Well, it’s not quite as simple as that,” Michael said in his ‘born-in-exile’ accent: native Belgian with a manifest Scots lilt. “I have been in Scotland now for twenty-five years and not a week goes by without some or other contact from, shall we say, Her Majesty’s errand boys. If they’re not harassing me in person then they’re doing it behind my back. Only last month I had my apartment swept for listening devices by a private counter-surveillance firm. Not for the first time, I might add. It cost me a small fortune.” He dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his napkin. “Anyway, this time they found two devices concealed in my home. Last time it was only one. But the point is they’re always breaking into my home and planting their surveillance equipment. I can only assume they enjoy my conversation.”
He laughed at his own quip, that boyish chuckle again.
Then: “They even came knocking on my door when I was in, as brazen as you like” he said, shaking his head, as though even he found that one difficult to believe. “Just checking up on me, they say. Harassing me, I say, reminding me they are always there, watching me, keeping tabs on me.” He grinned. “I of course invited them in and made them a cup of tea! Well, why not? It was eight o’clock in the morning and I was making one anyway, and I wanted them to know I wasn’t afraid of them and that I had nothing to hide. On that occasion they asked to see some of my personal family papers, and I told them I didn’t keep them at home, that they were in a vault in the bank. Do you know what they said?”
“No…”
“They said I was lying, and they pointed to a drawer in my sideboard, the top drawer, where I keep what I call my Albany File, which contains some of my family papers, my birth certificate, various letters from MPs, from the Home Office and the Prime Minister and so forth. A lot of my important papers. They said the papers we want to see are in that drawer.”
“And were they?”
“No, thankfully. As luck would have it I had moved them about a week or so before. But the point is, how did they know that I kept my important papers in that particular drawer? There is only one answer: they had seen them. They had broken into my home and searched through my personal belongings when I wasn’t there.”
For the first time since our arrival the ingenuous spark in Michael’s eye dulled to a sober, almost cynical hue.
“So you see, gentlemen, although they have allowed me to remain here, it has been at a cost. I’ve had my passport revoked for one thing, even though I am a naturalized British citizen. All I have now is this.” He produced a 1995 British visitor’s passport from his inside pocket and handed it across the table to me. Sure enough it bore the title HRH Prince Michael James Alexander Stewart of Albany. “It’s out of date now, of course, which means I am unable to travel. You might also find this of interest.”
Dipping his hand in his inside pocket once more he pulled out a letter addressed to HRH Prince Michael of Albany. The letter was from British Home Secretary, Jack Straw.
“I spoke to him,” JB said, suddenly animated, peering excitedly across me at the letter in my hand. “Or at least I tried to. They said he was unavailable for comment.”
“Why did you want to speak to Jack Straw?” Michael asked.
JB suddenly looked a little sheepish. “I was checking up on you, to be perfectly honest,” he confessed. “Doing a bit of homework.”
It was a confession Michael found particularly amusing. “Ha! And what did you find out?”
“I found out that the British Government doesn’t like talking about you.”
And JB was right, as we’d discovered only twenty-four hours earlier.
Given that we’d arrived home late following our enforced tête-à-tête down by the river, and given also that our lunch with Prince Michael had been prearranged for just two days after that, there’d been scarce time for us to do very much homework, much less compile a casebook on the mutinous prince. We had, nonetheless, made the most of what little time we’d had.
From a couple of rather obscure articles we’d managed to dig up, one in a Scottish magazine and the other tucked away in the pages of a Guardian supplement, we’d learned about Michael’s citizenship problems and also that Jack Straw had indeed written to ‘HRH Prince Michael of Albany’ outlining the government’s reasons for revoking his passport (even so, to hold that letter in my hand now made it seem all the more real). We’d learned, too, that the government had branded Michael a fraud, and even a ‘terrorist’, and had gone to some lengths to ‘prove’ his birth certificate counterfeit by circulating a copy that contained one or two significant alterations. Either the man was what the government said he was, we concluded, or he was the victim of an orchestrated smear campaign. And if the latter, why? We could only assume that, for one reason or another, Michael posed a pretty substantial threat.
For the record, we also discovered that in 1807 Parliament had declared the Stewarts ‘extinct in exile’, which basically meant that the British Government was no longer obliged to recognize the Stewart line or claim. And that included Michael. Yet Jack Straw, one of the articles affirmed, had addressed Michael as ‘His Royal Highness’ in the letter he’d written to him. Why would he have done that? we wondered. Why would Jack Straw have addressed Michael as ‘His Royal Highness’ if the government considered him a fraud and a terrorist? It didn’t make sense.
So we decided to ask him. Or at least his spokesperson. Just the day before we travelled to Edinburgh, JB called the Home Office and questioned them on why – if Parliament had declared Michael’s family ‘extinct in exile’, and no longer recognized the Royal House of Stewart; and indeed, if they considered the man a fraud and a terrorist – why Jack Straw had written to Michael and addressed him as ‘HRH Prince Michael of Albany’?
“We remain unconcerned with this person unless he makes a direct and formal challenge for the British Throne,” the Home Office spokesperson said in the absence of Jack Straw.
“Fine, but that wasn’t my question,” JB replied. “The Home Secretary wrote to Prince Michael and addressed him as ‘His Royal Highness’. Can you confirm that this means the government now recognizes Prince Michael’s status and that it will support him in his efforts to restore the Scottish monarchy?”
“We have no further comment.”
“Do you see him as a threat?”
“No comment.”
“A terrorist?”
No reply.
“Well can you tell us why you refuse to grant him a British passport?” JB demanded to know. “Prince Michael is a naturalized British citizen and yet, it would seem quite arbitrarily, you decided to revoke his passport. Can you explain to me why you did this?”
“That would be a matter for the Home Secretary to decide.”
“Can I put the question to him, then?”
“I’m afraid Mr Straw is unavailable.”
“Well can’t you give me an answer on his behalf?”
“I just did. We have no further comment.”
“But I’m a taxpaying British citizen. I have a right to an answer.”
“I’m afraid I’m unable to comment further.”
Realizing he was getting nowhere fast, JB terminated his call to the Home Office and phoned the Prime Minister’s residence instead. Ten Downing Street was equally evasive.
“I’d like to know why you refuse to grant Prince Michael of Albany a British passport?” JB said to Number Ten.
“Who?”
“His Royal Highness Prince Michael James Alexander Stewart of Albany.”
“I’m afraid that would
be a matter for the Home Office.”
“I’ve just spoken to the Home Office and they say they’re not prepared to comment on the matter. The Home Secretary recognizes Prince Michael’s royal status and also that he’s a naturalized British citizen, but he refuses to issue him with a passport. I’d like to know why.”
“One moment, please.” There was a brief pause, a faint rustling sound on the end of the line, as though the secretary was gathering paper and pen. Finally: “Would you care to tell me who this Prince Michael is, exactly?”
“He is the current senior heir to the Royal House of Stewart.”
“The Royal House of Stewart? But the House of Stewart is extinct, in exile, I believe.”
“That’s not what Prince Michael says.”
“Well it’s what the British Government says.”
“Does the British Government acknowledge the existence of Prince Michael?”
“Well I suppose if the Home Office has been in communication with him the answer must be yes.”
“But he can’t have a passport?”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask the Home Secretary that.”
“He won’t speak to me.”
A further pause, this one a little tense. Then: “Look,” the civil servant finally said, clearly exasperated. “Are you saying this person, this … this Prince Michael … are you saying he’s laying claim to the British Throne?”
“No. The Scottish Throne.”
“But the Scottish Monarchy is extinct.”
“No it isn’t. Prince Michael is the senior hereditary descendant of King James the Second Stuart of Great Britain and he is very much alive and well. Jack Straw recently wrote to him and addressed him as ‘His Royal Highness’…”