Tuesday, April 13, 2010

THE SPYMASTER OF MONTE CARLO 23: A NEW REQUIREMENT FOR 2005




A trusted asset to spymaster Robert Eringer passed disturbing news about two persons very close to Prince Albert, part of what Eringer would later come to know as The Paris Clique: Thierry Lacoste, a Paris-based lawyer known to the Prince since childhood, son of Nadia Lacoste, who for many years handled media relations for the Palace, and Lacoste's good friend Steven Saltzman, son of the late Harry Salzman, one of the original James Bond movie producers.

Both were said to be waiting in the wings for Albert to inherit the throne with their own designs in mind. Furthermore, Saltzman allegedly possessed a videotape he had made at the Prince's fortieth birthday party inside a Paris strip-club in which a young woman is apparently seen to perform a sexual act upon His Serene Highness. Salzman had allegedly taken to showing this video at select parties around Monaco, saying, "This is what I have on your Prince."

Eringer returned to Washington DC in mid-December (2004) to roll up his sleeves with a CIA team assembled to put into action the priorities discussed at their headquarters briefing two months earlier, and which were approved by Prince Albert in the interest of liaison-plus cooperation.

Eringer was told that Director's Goss's pledge to protect the Prince, and Monaco, was now accepted as agency doctrine and given high priority. (When Eringer told his mentor, a former CIA spymaster, about this so-called Goss Doctrine, the older spymaster shook his head in awe. "Your boss," he said, "will never understand or appreciate what you've done for him.")

It was a good session, everyone at CIA gung-ho, trying to please their new director. They and Eringer brainstormed excellent ideas on how to proceed operationally toward mutual objectives approved by Prince Albert.

But protocol dictated that everything be channeled through Paris and approved by LIPS, the weakest link in this short-three-link-chain.

While in Washington, Eringer also met with FBI special agents.

They informed Eringer that MING--the suspected spy and money launderer--had recently visited Sharm El-Sheikh, a shiek Egyptian resort on the Sinai peninsular. They also confirmed that MING once possessed a credit card in the name of the Monaco company to which Eringer had linked MING. And they also discovered that his Ming Dynasty antiques cost between one hundred thousand and a hundred and fifty thousand dollars per piece, usually purchased from a shop inside the Ritz Carlton Hotel in San Francisco.

Further, President George W. Bush had decided to disband the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB).

Six PFIAB members stayed at the Hay-Adams, where MING had roomed in December 2003; special agents were now checking to see which of them overlapped with MING at The Willard Hotel in November 2004.

It was gratifying for Eringer to see the FBI on MING's case-even though twenty-two months had elapsed since he had brought MING to their attention.

Prince Albert and his spymaster spoke by phone just after Christmas. Eringer updated him on developments and asked the Prince if he had any new requirements as they entered the New Year, 2005.

"Yeah," the Prince replied. "Find out where all the good looking women are."


Coming Next: A Shirt From Charvet