Spying is a risky business. And there’s nothing more cutthroat in the world than a royal court. Add the two together and, for all my sins, you had my job: Spymaster to the Prince of Monaco—a glamorous principality situated on the French Riviera, ruled absolutely by one of the world’s longest running monarchies.
Those aware of my secret service to Prince Albert II of Monaco were always curious to ask, how did we meet?
The answer: In a bar.
That was back in 1989, at Le Texan, a vibrant Tex-Mex saloon on a back-road in the Condamine quarter of Monaco. Le Texan was where the young bachelor prince could relax in the company of friends, including its American owners.
My gang of expatriates lined the bar most evenings amid cacti, a wooden bust of General Custer and a bar-relief mural of the Alamo.
It is foretelling that my first encounter with the Prince was as a source of information.
Miss Katie, Le Texan’s charismatic manager, jumped from the Prince’s table and, pointing down the bar, whispered into my ear. “What’s the story on that guy?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Albert.”
And thus, I briefed the Prince (through Kate) on an eccentric American who postured himself as a private eye.
It was also in a bar—inside Hotel Columbus, owned by race-driver David Coulthard, in Monaco’s Fontvieille quarter—that Prince Albert retained me to be his spymaster.
We sat in a booth by the window, his two bodyguards hovering nearby.
It was June 16, 2002, a Sunday, about seven in the evening. The prince sipped cranberry juice and I a Kronenbourg beer while Albert’s close friend Mike Powers sat witness to this extraordinary engagement.
Nobody—from Monaco, nor France, which is pledged to protect the tiny principality—had been briefing His Serene Highness on the political situations of countries he visited or heads of state with whom he regularly interacted. Moreover, suspicious persons constantly attempted to penetrate the Prince’s social orbit, and he desired to know more about such individuals and the entities they claimed to represent. Furthermore, the Prince expressed concern that elements of Russian organized crime were weaseling their way into his domain.
At that meeting I warned Albert that he would in time grow weary of seeing me; that I would become, by necessity, the bearer of bad news, including unwelcome information about his closest associates. I warned that as my visibility increased others would seek to discredit me—and would urge him to shoot the messenger, a theme recurrent in history.
But how did we get to this point from hanging at Le Texan 13 years earlier?
I’d left Monaco, moved to Washington D.C. and ventured into private-sector intelligence, mentored by Clair George, a former CIA spymaster, whose favorite espionage advice was this: “Always keep them guessing.”
In 1993, I went undercover for the FBI and spent nine years conducting sensitive counterintelligence operations that took me to Moscow, Havana and elsewhere.
And then one day in 1999 a worried phone call from Prince Albert’s buddy Mike Powers.
He said a Monaco resident from Serbia was trying to strong-arm him into an untenable position in an enterprise in which they were partners. Could I investigate unsavory rumors about him?
I quickly uncovered information about this individual so shocking we determined it should be brought to the Prince’s attention, not least because this individual was working hard to ingratiate himself into Albert’s social circuit.
Near midnight on December 1, 1999, inside Pizzeria St-Michel in Cap d’Ail, I briefed the Prince on this individual’s arms dealing. Horrified, Albert resolved to nix all contact with him.
The Prince had a query of his own that night: Would I investigate a Monaco-based Russian named Alexey Fedorichev? He explained that this individual had designs on ASM, Monaco’s European League football team.
Two months later I delivered my findings on Fedorichev. They were very negative and, consequently, the Prince placed the Russian at arm’s length socially—and two years later barred him from investing in ASM.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here.
Back to the bar in Hotel Columbus, where the Prince concurred with me that I, on his behalf, should endeavor to open channels of communication with two intelligence services—the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) otherwise known as MI6—from whose support we hoped the Prince would benefit.
Albert determined that I should operate outside the principality’s government structures and report only to him. As such, we conceived an old-fashioned spy service that would function, as intelligence agencies truly should, without official existence. I would be based outside of Monaco, in London—and, as much as possible, I would remain invisible, popping in and out of the principality for our covert meetings.
As an outsider, I was not aligned with any of the political and commercial factions that wage war within the principality and thus not entangled with conflicts or special interests. I could look upon Monaco as a doctor studies cancer cells, with emotionless objectivity.
Back in London a day later, I recruited a professional acquaintance to assist me with my princely mission. I’d known this person for over ten years, had sub-contracted private intelligence work to him and grown to admire his diligence and integrity.
Informally, we referred to the prince’s retainer as Order of the Monk, a play on Francois “Malizia” Grimaldi, who posed as a monk to seize Monaco from a rival Genovese family in 1297. And, tongue-in-cheek, we devised a Latin motto that summed up the Prince’s intentions: Apage Malos (Be gone evil).
Three years later, after the death of Prince Rainier and Albert’s ascendancy to the throne, we would become the Monaco Intelligence Service.
Our brief was simple, if complex in its execution: To ensure the Prince would be well informed not only during his extensive foreign travels but also about the foreigners, residents and native Monegasques who surrounded him at home.
Our mission statement:
1) To investigate individuals and entities about whom the prince voiced concern.
2) To keep the prince apprised of information, which, as his eyes and ears, would come to our attention.
3) To create liaison partnerships with the intelligence services of select countries—with a view to soliciting expert briefings and advice.
I commenced my duties by faxing a quarterly invoice (July-September 2002) on June 18 to Claude Palmero, the in-house accountant at Palais de Monaco. The Prince intended to pay the cost of my service from his own pocket and, indeed, funds were wired three weeks later from Albert’s personal account at Banque Nationale de Paris.
The Prince’s father, Monaco’s sovereign Prince Rainier III, was in ill health. His memory was fading and he lived a near-reclusive existence. He probably should have abdicated in his son’s favor by this time, but two things were happening to prevent this, the first we knew about at the time, the second we did not:
1) Monaco was in the process of renegotiating its treaty with France, part of which would create a clear line of succession within the Grimaldi family even if Prince Albert did not produce a legitimate heir.
2) Individuals closest to Prince Rainier were dissuading him, despite his inability to govern, from abdicating and allowing Albert to take the reins of power. They did this to perpetuate their own exploitation of the situation, reaping awards, titles and financial gain unto themselves and their loved ones.
Acceptance by friendly foreign intelligence services would be essential for success. So, my first trip in service to the Prince—on June 23—was to Washington D.C. where Clair George checked me into the Chevy Chase Club. I’d stayed at this exclusive country club so many times during the 1990s it felt like my second home.
It was Clair who introduced me to the world of espionage.
Maybe that’s not entirely true.
As an investigative journalist in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, the intriguing world of spies beamed me in. But it was Clair who made me part of it—with my full consent. It was what I ached to do. And I think he saw in me someone who could do it well. He provided much advice, delivered sparingly and only when the occasion demanded, including this maxim on how to handle people: “Make ‘em laugh half the time, scared of you the other half and never let them know what you’re thinking.”
It served me well as I mixed it up in exotic locations with rogue spies and intelligence officers from countries hostile to the United States.
Over martinis stirred to perfection in Chevy Chase Club’s Winter Center I took pleasure in recruiting the retired CIA spymaster to be our “chairman emeritus.”
From the get-go, he steered me through a minefield on how best to acquire information from foreign intelligence liaison partners while evading their stratagems for creating direct relationships with the Prince.
His counsel through the ensuing years was priceless.