The Princess Spy

by Larry Loftis

  These are questions that perhaps only Frank Ryan, William Stephenson, or William Donovan could answer.

  Whatever the case, with assistance from Stephenson, Ryan went to work. In another extended trip to Europe he met with bankers, financiers, manufacturers, industrialists, stockbrokers, and commodities merchants who could assist with international trade. He also met with a coterie of British military intelligence leaders, including: General Colin Gubbins, SOE chief following Hambro; Lord Selborne, minister of economic warfare; Brigadier W. T. Keswick, SOE chief of Asia; Colonel Douglas Dodds-Parker, SOE chief of North Africa; and one Ian Fleming, assistant to Admiral John Godfrey, director of Naval Intelligence.

  How Ryan balanced actual trade with foreign intelligence (if actually conducted) is unclear, but his overall goal was to thwart Stalin’s drive to expand communism throughout Europe. With most of the continent economically devastated, particularly Germany, Ryan knew that Russian agents would advance the communist agenda in each country, eventually making them Soviet satellites if it took root.

  Post-war control of Germany, historically an economic power, was critical. On October 16, with an introduction from Donovan, Ryan sent a letter to General Lucius Clay, commander in chief of US forces in Europe and military governor of the American zone in Germany, writing: “In our view the restoration of economic balance in Europe is fundamentally a problem of industrial and agricultural production. The purposes to be served by such production are the maintenance of populations and the creation of internationally exchangeable values which are essential in supporting the continuance of the productive operations.”

  And World Commerce, he explained—created to address this need—was prepared to work with private or public entities. “The financial resources available to W.C.C.,” he noted, “are substantial.”

  * * *

  In November the US leg of Aline and Luis’s honeymoon began. The couple boarded the stately RMS Queen Elizabeth at Southampton for the trip across the Atlantic, arriving in New York on November 11. As previously planned, they checked in to the Carlyle. Awaiting them at the front desk was an invitation: Elsa Maxwell was throwing a party in their honor the following night. Among the guests was Jack Warner, head of Warner Bros. Studios. Luis and Jack hit it off that night and Jack invited Luis and Aline to visit him and his wife, Ann, in Hollywood.

  At Elsa’s other parties they met the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who became fast friends, and countless other celebrities. They also hit Manhattan’s famous nightclubs, and Luis was particularly enthralled by all of the shops along Fifth Avenue. But one thing he couldn’t understand.

  “Americans are always running as if they were going to a fire,” he said to her one day. “What are they hurrying for? Nobody walks fast like that in Madrid.”

  Pearl River was their next stop and Aline worried that Luis might be bored with the small town, but as it turned out he loved it. The slow pace and friendly people were what he had imagined of America. Luis also got along swimmingly with her parents, spending a surprising amount of time in the kitchen showing Aline’s mother how to prepare a traditional Spanish dinner.

  One day Aline took Luis to see the building where she had spent elementary, junior, and high school. It was an unimpressive red-brick building facing the football field. She pointed at the rooms and explained that, starting with kindergarten, she had spent a year in each one.

  Luis looked at the building the way Aline had gawked at the ancient treasures of Spain.

  “You really spent a year in each of those rooms?”

  Aline nodded.

  “How lucky you have been. All my life I wanted to go to a school, a real school. But my father and grandfather would not permit it. Instead, the professors came to us. Never was I able to know what it was like to go to school to play games with other boys. And just when I was about to go abroad to begin the university, the civil war broke out.”

  Luis gazed admiringly at the football field. “You are so lucky to have had all those years in such a perfectly marvelous school. This is all like seeing a movie for me.”

  Aline looked at her husband. Luis spoke five languages, was an expert in art, antiques, and music, yet he had never played a football game, never attended a pep rally, never had a newspaper route. Outwardly, growing up in a palace with sixty servants, he was extremely privileged; but inwardly—in so many aspects of life that mattered—he was impoverished. And he knew it.

  One day Luis went for a stroll by himself down Pearl River’s Main Street. When he returned, he had the excitement of a child who had been to the circus.

  He had seen a barber shop, he told Aline’s mother. “I saw the sign and would really like to go. How does one make an appointment?”

  Aline’s mother glanced at his hair. “You don’t need a haircut, Luis, and you don’t need an appointment.”

  “No, but I want a haircut anyhow because I’ve never been in a barber shop in my life. In Spain the barber comes to the house. That’s no fun.”

  In no time Luis was pals with Mr. Preziosso, Pearl River’s only barber.

  * * *

  The scenery would change once again when they took up Jack Warner’s offer to visit him in California. Luis bought a car so they could drive across the country and see more of real America. Once they were in Hollywood, it was more parties and celebrities. Jack introduced them to Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, Audrey Hepburn, and Deborah Kerr. In the years to come, Hepburn, Kerr, and the Duchess of Windsor would become Aline’s best friends.

  By the time Luis and Aline returned to Spain it was June 21, 1948. They had been on their honeymoon exactly one year. It was good to be home—and Madrid was now truly home—but Aline had another reason to settle down.

  She was pregnant.

  On February 21, 1949, she gave birth to a baby boy and El Abuelo created quite a stir when he came to visit them at the hospital. Nurses and doctors alike were catching glimpses of the great Count of Romanones, and one of them placed a comfortable chair for him next to Aline’s bed. As he admired the newborn in Aline’s arms, he nodded.

  “Bueno, bueno. He looks strong. What name are you giving the child?”

  “Oh, naturally Luis, like his father.”

  El Abuelo bristled and rapped his walking stick on the floor. “Bosh! That’s impossible. This child is my primogenito and will carry my title one day. He must be called Álvaro like me.”

  Aline and Luis knew there was no point in arguing. Upon Luis’s death, this boy would become the fourth Count of Romanones. Fortunately, Aline’s next child was also a boy, born a year later, February 5, 1950, and Luis had his namesake. This child would become the eleventh Count of Quintanilla. And the year after that, they had a third son, Miguel.

  Interestingly, Álvaro inherited Aline’s brown eyes and dark brown hair, while Luis and Miguel had their father’s green eyes and light brown hair. And since Luis wanted the boys to receive the same benefits that Aline had had in Pearl River, they went to schools like other children. However, so that they would be multilingual, Luis and Aline spoke English at home, but gave the boys a French governess. They also had lessons in tennis, horseback riding, golf, shooting, piano, guitar, and, of course, flamenco. And since Luis had taken up painting—his other passion besides hunting and golf—he introduced the boys to that, too.

  Aline and the boys in Madrid, 1964. Getty Images

  One thing Luis wanted to guard against, though, was spoiling the boys. One summer when Álvaro was eight, Luis and Aline sent him to stay in Pearl River with her parents. Álvaro would have to work and learn how to make money, Luis had told him, and Aline’s mother came up with the perfect chore: Álvaro would pick vegetables in the garden and sell them door-to-door to the neighbors. Whatever money he made was his to keep.

  When Álvaro arrived and was told of his duty, he went about the work with such zeal that after a week, Mrs. Griffith told him he’d have to sell fewer vegetables because she needed some for her ow
n use.

  The budding entrepreneur shook his head. She would have to buy his vegetables like everyone else, he told her.

  * * *

  In 1956 Aline received a call from Archibald Roosevelt, the CIA’s station chief in Madrid. He told her that the organization needed assistance from former OSS agents living in foreign countries for small assignments. They were quite aware of her frequent international travels with Luis, he said, and of her extensive contacts with political leaders throughout Europe. Her job would be simple enough: if she would kindly tell him when she and Luis were about to depart for a foreign country, he would give her the name of a person they’d like her to talk to or suggest a bit of information they’d like her to uncover. When she returned from the trip, she would simply turn in a short report as she had done for the OSS. In essence, she was on call for “odd jobs.” Aline couldn’t and didn’t tell Luis about any of this, of course, but she gladly obliged. The work she did for the CIA during this period, however, remains classified.

  In 1962 the assets of her former employer, World Commerce Corporation, were sold and it ceased operations. Under Frank Ryan’s leadership WCC had been highly successful. In its last financial statement, WCC showed $16.1 million in assets, $6.5 million in liabilities, and $9.6 million in total capital.I The stated reason for its sale—“tax purposes”—is as mystifying as the cold trail left behind by Ryan himself. Whether he joined the CIA at this point is uncertain.

  That same year, just as Aline was named to Vanity Fair’s International Best-Dressed Hall of Fame, she was able to gather her best friends close: she and Luis; Audrey Hepburn and her husband, Mel Ferrer; the Rothschilds; and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor all bought homes in the new Marbella Club resort. Almost overnight Marbella had become the Monte Carlo of Spain. International media dubbed it the summer home of the “jet-setting” crowd, which attracted even more celebrities and socialites.

  American media couldn’t get enough of her. In a 1963 article spanning almost half a page, the New York Times interviewed Aline about her role as a fashion icon and included three large photos. The following year Life magazine did the same, with full-page spreads. This sleek American-Spanish countess who traveled the world, made the best-dressed lists, went on partridge shoots, and was married to a now-popular painter, was simply too alluring to pass up.

  She was also renovating and decorating Pascualete, a seven-hundred-year-old estate Luis had inherited. Located between the Spanish towns of Trujillo and Cáceres, not far from the Portuguese border, the site had stone carvings dating back to the Romans. When Aline began the work the site had no electricity, no running water, and no plumbing. While living there to supervise renovation, she ran a generator at night to provide light. Upon completion of the work she published The Story of Pascualete in London in 1963, and republished it in the United States the following year under the title The History of Pascualete: The Earth Rests Lightly.II

  During these years Aline encouraged her friends to visit Spain, and the most popular attraction was the Seville Festival, held every April. Dating back to 1847, the Feria de Abril is a weeklong event and includes horseback parades in traditional costumes, bullfights, flamenco dancing, fireworks, and drinking and eating in more than a thousand casetas (private tent parties). In 1966 Aline and Luis hosted not only Audrey and Mel for this event, but also Jacqueline Kennedy and the Duchess of Alba.

  One weekend that same year, Guy de Rothschild and his wife, Marie-Hélène, hosted an extravagant ball. Among the guests for the event were Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Brigitte Bardot, and Salvador Dalí. The evening before, during a buffet dinner in the salon, Aline was thrilled to see that Audrey Hepburn was also there.

  “I’m so excited,” Audrey said as she greeted Aline. “Do you know I’ve never been to a ball before?”

  Aline raised an eyebrow. “How’s that possible? You of all people. Why, I’ve seen you in so many balls—in War and Peace, and My Fair Lady, and—”

  “That was only in the movies, and that doesn’t count—that’s not like a real ball—it’s just work. I’ve never been to a real ball in my life.”

  Aline smiled. “Well, Audrey, you are lucky. Your first ball tomorrow will be the most glamorous ball in the world.”

  Audrey was so unlike her Hollywood persona, though; she was actually shy and not particularly outgoing. “But she had such kindness and love for everyone,” Aline explained later, “such truthfulness in her friendships, plus a bewitching sense of humor.”

  * * *

  Luis’s grandfather died in 1950, followed by Luis’s father in the late 1960s, and Luis became the Count of Romanones. By this time Aline had perfected the art of gathering and keeping friends, weaving them together in a tapestry that spanned from Madrid to Paris to New York to Hollywood. And while she was in high demand as a socialite and fashion icon, Luis’s reputation as an exceptional painter drew interest from galleries in New York and Palm Beach.

  This photo of Aline and Luis with one of his paintings appeared in Vogue in 1964. Getty Images.

  On a Thursday evening in May 1970 in New York City, Aline and Luis attended an exhibition by a talented local artist, Marsha Gayle. It was important for Luis to attend high-profile gallery showings because of his own collections, and Aline loved running into old friends, many of whom patronized the arts. The New York Times ran a story about the event three days later, on May 10, with photos of Gayle, Aline, and Luis. Missing from the photos was Gayle’s husband, who apparently was camera-shy. His name was Ryan.

  Frank T. Ryan.

  I. Adjusting for inflation, these figures would be $137 million, $55.7 million, and $82 million in 2020 dollars.

  II. The subtitle came from a Roman engraving found in the house.

  CHAPTER 26 TWIN SOULS

  Over the next ten years Aline and Luis continued on the celebrity circuit, at an even faster pace it seemed. In 1981 President Ronald Reagan appointed Aline’s former OSS colleague William Casey CIA director, and Aline and Luis decided to take apartments in Washington and New York. She could meet with Casey periodically in DC, and Luis could frequent the gallery exhibitions in Manhattan.

  In 1984 Aline was given an honorary doctorate by her alma mater, the College of Mount Saint Vincent, and two years later Miguel, Aline and Luis’s youngest son, married the beautiful Magdalena Carral in her family’s seventeenth-century home in Mexico City.

  But as life was beginning on many fronts, so it would wane on others. In April 1986 Aline received news that her dear friend of almost forty years, the Duchess of Windsor, had died at her home in Paris. After the funeral and burial in the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore, Aline was touched to learn that the duchess had bequeathed her a very special gift. In the car on her return to the London airport, Aline opened the small box. Inside was one of the duchess’s favorite pieces of jewelry: a diamond bracelet and wristwatch. Wallis had once told Aline that it contained one of her and the duke’s well-kept secrets. Aline turned it over to read an endearing engraving the duke had written.I

  The real blow, though, came the following summer. Aline had just released The Spy Wore Red, her account of her time in Madrid during the war, and was on a book tour in the United States when she received a call from Luis. He was staying with the Rothschilds in Paris and had not been feeling well, he said. Originally thinking it might be the rich French food, Luis visited a doctor who told him he had a “liver problem.” Luis flew to New York to see specialists, who advised that with a strict diet he would eventually get better. Aline and Luis returned to Madrid and carefully adhered to the physicians’ guidelines. Luis’s condition didn’t get better, however, and in mid-October he fell into a coma and died.

  Aline was despondent. As long as she’d known him, Luis had been a model of energy, vibrancy, and strength. “I felt destroyed and miserable,” she wrote later, “so I went to Pascualete—alone. Even there I felt lost. The house seemed to have lost its warmth; I missed him still more…. It was cold—all I could do was si
t in front of the burning fireplace and think of Luis who had been the heart and soul of my life. I had no interest in anything. Not even my children could help me adapt to the terrible void. He had been my love, my friend, my teacher. He had taken me to new worlds—even the world of art, antiques, and paintings. And added to that Luis’s character had been the most admirable I had known.”

  Theirs was that special, often elusive love that Dostoyevsky had envisioned more than a century before. “If it is for love that a man and a woman have married each other,” the Russian wrote in Notes from the Underground, “why should that love ever pass? Cannot it be fostered? Why should love ever pass if the husband be kind and honorable? Of course, the fervid passion of the first few weeks cannot last eternally; but to that love there sometimes succeeds another and a better love. When that has come about, husband and wife are twin souls who have everything in common.”

  Aline and Luis indeed had become twin souls, and she didn’t know how to live without him. “The great sadness that overtook me was like a sickness,” she remembered. “For a long time in Pascualete, I did not improve—but I remained there alone for one month. But eventually Pascualete was where I found some peace and gradually I returned to my normal life.”

  Aline’s life changed after Luis’s passing. She began to split her time among Madrid, Pascualete, and New York over the next thirty years, spending much of it with her children and grandchildren. When in the US, she would give lectures about her OSS days and sign books. But Pascualete, the place Luis had so loved, was her haven.