On May 11th (2005) FLOATER hit the ground running in Monaco for another round of Operation Hound Dog, as specially requested by Prince Albert.
That evening spymaster Robert Eringer joined the Prince for a one-on-one dinner at the Palace at nine o'clock. When the Prince appeared, he seemed to Eringer a deer in headlamps. He was still not sleeping, he told Eringer, in the "big and lonely" Palace, but returning at night to his Monte Carlo apartment.
The international media had just revealed that the Prince sired an illegitimate son, Alexandre, with a black airline stewardess from Togo named Nicole Coste. (The Prince blamed the advent of this son, to Eringer, on "weakness of the flesh.")
It was thought Albert's lawyer, Thierry Lacoste, had botched the on-going negotiations with Nicole and, out of frustration, she had gone public, possessed, said the Prince, of an "African chip on her shoulder."
Albert added that Lacoste had "f----- up."
Eringer asked the Prince if he had any additional children he should know about. Albert answered no, knowing there was likely another beyond Alexandre and Jazmin.
Because of the Coste-Lacoste debacle, the Prince authorized Eringer to try to resolve the Rotolo-Jazmin situation on a human level, out of court-and away from the media.
Moving on, the Prince fumed, over Soupe Cremeuse au Cresson, about the letter Jean-Paul Carteron had sent telling him how to run Monaco, and suggested doing away with Carteron's Monaco World Summit, a private venture thinly disguised by Carteron as quasi-official. "Carteron bought his Legion of Honor," the Prince told his spymaster, pressing him to accelerate his investigation of Carteron.
The Prince also expressed eagerness for results from Eringer's investigation into Franck Biancheri; the pressure to appoint Biancheri chef de cabinet had begun in earnest, said he.
The Prince had obviously not had time to change the Palace chef, nor to instruct him to alter his menu, for the food that night was the kind of special dietary meal one prepares for an octogenarian with serious health issues, right down to plum brandy at the end-a tonic for constipation.
Alas, the Palace staff still catered to Prince Rainier's ghost.
On May 12th the Prince arrived at M-Base for a briefing from FLOATER on Operation Hound Dog.
FLOATER detailed what he had in mind for the coming week, including a stop in Paris to see Steven Salzman.
On the evening of May 13th the Prince invited his spymaster for a drink in his Monte Carlo apartment. Over Johnny Walker Blue Label whiskey, Eringer urged the Prince to clean out his stable of government ministers and start fresh with his own appointees, and do it quickly, as he would have but one shot to get his reign off to the right start.
FLOATER flew to Paris to Hound Dog Steven Saltzman, who'd been aggressive and obnoxious over the phone, insisting that his lawyer, Thierry Lacoste, be present for their meeting. (Aggressive and obnoxious were adjectives one heard over and over again applied to Salzman.)
Their meeting took place in Lacoste's office at 10 Rue Labie on May 18th.
Saltzman began by trying to corral FLOATER's "unauthorized biography of Prince Albert" into his domain on the basis that he controlled (so he said) all possible sources of information on the Prince.
Without his say-so, Saltzman told FLOATER, nobody of any consequence would speak to him. Saltzman sailed on to portray himself as Albert's gatekeeper while also suggesting he held the keys to the principality; he spoke as if he'd been granted some kind of special authority to handle or co-opt media projects about the Prince.
Thierry Lacoste backed up his client's theatrics.
It was, said FLOATER, quite the performance.
Coming Next: A Croc of a Lawyer
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