THE SPYMASTER OF MONTE CARLO: 34) JAZMIN GRACE GRIMALDI COMES TO TOWN
A Throwback Thursday Memoir of Intrigue & Lunacy
December 2005
Tamara Rotolo notified me of her decision to visit Monaco for the Christmas holidays with her daughter, Jazmin—the child she shared with Prince Albert.
I neither encouraged nor discouraged her, but agreed to meet with them should they appear.
And so it was that we met on December 26th in a restaurant called Fusion; I gifted both with silver trinkets from Tiffany.
They had suffered a difficult few months with paparazzi hanging outside Jazmin’s school, along with uncertainty about her status even while the prince openly acknowledged having sired Nicole Coste’s son, who arrived on this earth long after his daughter.
Mother and daughter felt left out, ignored and hurt.
Especially Jazmin.
All she wanted in the whole world was to meet her father.
The first question she wanted to ask him:
“Do you have asthma?” Jazmin suffered asthma.
As it turned out, the answer was yes—Albert told me later: he suffers asthma around cats and, as a child, cold weather brought it on.
The prince telephoned me at 5:50 the following afternoon. He was going for a haircut, he said, and would drop by M-Base afterwards, in about 45 minutes, for a martini.
I mentioned that his daughter, Jazmin, was in Monaco. I suggested he meet her for the very first time, alone, without her mother, in the secrecy of M-Base.
I told him that this simple gesture would go a long way toward finalizing a solution.
“I don’t think I’m ready for that,” Albert replied.
I suggested we talk it through over martinis.
I guess it scared him off because he never appeared, nor called, and when I phoned looking for him at eight o’clock he claimed to have been waylaid by some SBM friends and now had to change clothes for the ballet at 10:30.
He said he’d call with a view to a late rendezvous, but never did.
Running away, hiding out, as usual.
That evening the prince missed the perfect opportunity to meet his adorable daughter.
On December 30th, I drove Tamara Rotolo and Jazmin across the Italian border for lunch in Bordighera—at Garibaldi in the old village.
This was where I discovered Rotolo had a serious drinking problem. Red wine, Fernet-Branca, and Grappa—she consumed every drop of alcohol in sight.
And when we dropped down to Bar Centrale for hot chocolate, she ordered another Fernet-Branca.
Back at M-Base late afternoon, Tamara drank a Pastis followed by a whole bottle of wine, leaving her daughter Jazmin upset and embarrassed.
As Rotolo drank, she grew mean and surly, taking nasty verbal swipes at her daughter, who finally took refuge in the back bedroom.
I distracted Rotolo and went back to see Jazmin, who was crying.
“Does this happen a lot?” I asked.
Jazmin tried to be protective of her mother. “We’re getting help,” she replied.
I returned to the living room. Rotolo was completely crocked. “Albert was [expletive too distasteful to repeat here],” she snarled. “I wish [again too distasteful to repeat here].”
That night, back in her hotel (the Marriott in Cap d’Ail), Jazmin became physically sick to her stomach, brought on, I am convinced, by her mother’s drunkeness.
As if that wasn’t tragic enough, at nine o’clock JLA told me by phone that the prince had met with Philippe Narmino and agreed to give him the top job at justice.
However, the official document would not be signed until the Albert’s return from a New Year’s Eve visit to Cape Town, so we still had a little time.
One of my reliable assets visited M-Base the morning of New Year’s Eve.
He told me that Gerard Brianti was the brains behind the Narmino/Pastor bad guy network; that his main link to the Prince was through Philipponnat. (I already knew this, of course, but validation is important.)
It was Brianti’s family, he added, who had stolen money left behind by Jews deported from Monaco in 1944.
According to the Paris Shoah Museum, Monaco’s police arrested and deported 200 Jews when Germany replaced Italy as occupier of the principality in the latter years of World War II.
Jean Geismar, a Belgian descendant of Albert Samdam and Alice Goughengheim, who perished at Auschwitz, had been trying to collect 1,400,000 euros his ancestors left behind in Monaco—and he was being given the runaround.
Again, Brianti was scheduled to hunt wild boar with the Prince, two weeks hence, and using that to trumpet his so-called influence over his “best friend, Albert.”
“Shoot me a boar,” I said to the Prince. “Better yet, shoot Brianti.”
I phoned Thierry Lascoste on New Year’s Eve.
Special circumstances had come to light through Tamara Rotolo’s visit in Monaco, I told him, and should be considered before final agreement.
“Like what?” he demanded.
Like, she may be an alcoholic and an unfit mother.
On the basis that Albert should care about—and have some input regarding—his daughter’s well being, I proposed a provision for Rotolo to seek counseling or join Alcoholic Anonymous in order to financially benefit from the agreement.
Or that Jazmin should be enrolled in a European boarding school like Le Rosey in Switzerland.
It was the last thing Lacoste wanted to hear, and although the prince told me he agreed this was a good idea, he apparently instructed Lacoste otherwise, saying, “I do not want her in Europe.”
Moreover, the prince and Lacoste tacked on a new condition to any financial agreement: Albert would not recognize Jazmin as her daughter until her 18th birthday.
I knew this was going to be a deal-breaker.
I had already advised Albert that recognition by her father was what Jazmin wanted most.
If he had done a simple act of human decency, meeting her in private when he had the opportunity, he would undoubtedly have staved off the drama that would blow into the Palace with hurricane force two months later.