Stones of Treason

by Peter Watson

  Too right, thought Edward. The mystery had at last been solved. And how. Wilma would explode like a mortar shell when she was told. Nancy would … he wouldn’t be able to tell Nancy.

  ‘Having established beyond doubt that they have the pictures,’ Mordaunt went on, ‘the blackmailers have now asked us to signal to them, by cancelling the royal film première on Thursday, that we can read between the lines, that we understand what they have and what its significance is. Presumably, after we do that, if we do it, we shall hear from them again, with their demands. That is why we – Her Majesty and I – thought it appropriate to bring you in now.’

  The Prime Minister bit his lip but said nothing. He was thinking.

  Mordaunt went on, ‘Obviously, this must be kept secret. A leak could be very damaging. A major scandal.’

  Lockwood glanced at his watch. Edward did the same: 12.45.

  The Prime Minister pursed his lips. ‘How long have I been in politics? Forty-two years in Parliament, anyway. I’ve seen some things … But the Crown being blackmailed …’ He shook his head, then looked hard at the equerry. ‘I take it you don’t want to call the blackmailers’ bluff?’

  Mordaunt looked uncomfortable. ‘This is the difficult part, sir. Under normal circumstances, Her Majesty would take the view that blackmailers should on no account be treated with. She is also conscious that, under the law, all people – all families – should be treated alike. What we are suggesting does, I realize, sound like special pleading. At the same time, the Crown is special, it is different. In a sense, this blackmail attempt is aimed at all of us, the entire country. If any of this leaked out –’

  ‘The events are fifty years old –’

  ‘Do you think that matters?’ Mordaunt’s eyes flashed behind his spectacles. ‘Think of the esteem the royal family is held in in this country, Mr Lockwood. And not just this country – held worldwide. Everybody envies Britain her monarchy. I don’t mean Her Majesty only, but the institution, as a focus for national feeling, a force for stability, an emotional centre that we can all share and take part in. Is it worth risking that?’

  ‘The Duke of Windsor abdicated. He was out of the way –’

  ‘You think that matters? He was still part of the royal family. Her Majesty’s father went to great lengths, extreme lengths, to stop all this leaking out in the 1940s. He was right to do so then and the Queen has no intention of letting this new version leak out now.’ Mordaunt paused and gathered himself before going on. ‘I think you should read the documents we have, sir. The Queen’s uncle was not going to be Hitler’s stooge all by himself … A dozen famous families were willing to throw in their lot with him.’

  The Prime Minister stroked one of the creases in his cheek. ‘Maybe it would be a good thing to have that out in the open.’

  The equerry leaned towards Lockwood. Edward noticed that Mordaunt’s eyes had gone very hard. He said, ‘You can’t know how detailed the documents are, sir. The Duke was to be King, the Duchess – Mrs Simpson – was to be Queen, Churchill was to be exiled in deepest Germany. The real King, George VI, was to be forced to abdicate and kept under house arrest outside Berlin. Our very own Queen would of course never have been Queen. The details are overwhelming, sir. They even list the people who were willing to throw away any resistance to Hitler and become members of the Windsors’ – the Nazi King’s – Cabinet of stooges. You would be surprised who had agreed to hold office. The Duke thought he was more popular than his brother and that his return to the throne would be acclaimed. He was a fool but he had the support of some of the most famous families in the country. Even today, fifty years afterwards, it would shake Britain to know how high – and how wide – the treachery went.’

  Lockwood was not Prime Minister for nothing and Mordaunt didn’t intimidate him. ‘So! … why not let these fine, these noble, these distinguished families sweat it out? What’s it to me?’

  ‘Because … sir …’ For a moment Mordaunt stuck his tongue in his cheek, considering his delivery. ‘Because … two of those families are represented in your Cabinet.’

  There was a silence for perhaps thirty seconds. Long enough for a flight of geese to flap by overhead and vanish out of earshot.

  Edward watched as the Prime Minister stopped stroking his cheek and pressed his fingers to his lips. By law, Lockwood had to call an election in the next few months, before February. He had a majority over all other parties in the Commons of thirty-four and was trailing in the opinion polls.

  At length, the Prime Minister looked at his watch again and said quietly, ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’ll be as brief as I can,’ said Mordaunt, his tone brisker, now that his point had been made. ‘All of this has to be kept secret. Our interests, and yours, coincide. We have tried to think it through here at the Palace and our reasoning is as follows. The crucial point in any blackmail attempt is the handover of the money. That is the one chance of making physical contact with the criminals. The government – Scotland Yard, the security services, whatever – must have expertise in this sort of thing. So that is where we need your help.’

  The Prime Minister stood up. He walked towards the french windows and looked out at the roses. As Edward watched Lockwood’s compact frame, he heard one of his shoes creak. The Prime Minister’s hands were clasped behind his back. He stared out of the window, turned away from the others, for minutes on end.

  Edward looked from Lockwood to Mordaunt. The equerry’s performance had been clinical but, in its way, impressive. No wonder Mordaunt had kept him in the dark at the weekend. Edward turned his gaze back to the Prime Minister. He didn’t envy Lockwood his decision. It must be distasteful to cover up for a weak man who was willing to be a traitor. But, with an election fast approaching, could Lockwood risk it being known that two members of his Cabinet had had fathers who …?

  The Prime Minister had turned. He took a few steps forward. With one hand he gripped the back of the chair. ‘If these people want money, why don’t they sell the paintings on the black market?’

  ‘Because the paintings are too well known. No dealer or collector with the money would touch them. Am I right, Edward?’

  Edward nodded. He addressed the Prime Minister. ‘There is a booklet, sir, which details a lot of what the Nazis looted.’

  Lockwood grunted. He seemed to have made up his mind. ‘I shall cancel my lunch,’ he said. ‘I shall stay here and read your file. If you are right, Sir Francis, this whole business could get very messy. My bodyguard has the scrambler phone: ask him to bring it in. And maybe you could organize some sandwiches and water. Better make it fizzy water. That file sounds as though it may take some digesting.’

  William Lockwood marched into the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street and sat at the first available chair. The light was going – sunshine never reached the Cabinet Room; indeed, sunshine and security rarely mix. Overhead, one jet after another growled home into Heathrow. This wasn’t a meeting of the full Cabinet – far from it. Indeed, not all the others present were ministers or even MPs. In Lockwood’s view the meeting was too sensitive for a full Cabinet. Mordaunt had asked for the Prime Minister to involve only Privy Councillors, but Lockwood wasn’t having that. With an election so close he had his own future to think of. There were not only parliamentary elections due; these days the leader of the party was elected too, if there was a rival. That contest took place every October. Since the contest that had dramatically ousted Thatcher, the leadership ballot was taken as seriously as a general election.

  Opposite him in the Cabinet Room sat the Home Secretary, Tom Lessor, a tall, lugubrious man with a crimson birthmark on one side of his face. On his left was Jocelyn Hatfield, Chief Whip, a small figure whose jacket sleeves were too long for his arms. Next to the Prime Minister was Eric Slocombe, his political adviser, and beyond him was Bernard Midwinter, the Downing Street press officer. On Lockwood’s left, the last to sit down, was Sir Evelyn Allen, Cabinet Secretary. He wore a bright lemon tie with his grey flannel sui
t; it was the only splash of colour in the entire room. The double doors were closed and the six men left alone. Lockwood had a thick blue file with him but, for the moment, it remained closed. ‘This will have to be an official committee, I suppose,’ he said, ‘but I want to stress that it is a secret committee, and must remain so.’ He half turned to Allen. ‘Let the minutes show that.’

  Allen nodded, scribbling notes.

  Lockwood looked at the faces ranged around the table. ‘You are scarcely going to believe what I have to tell you. It has taken quite a while for me to get used to it myself.’ He patted the blue folder. ‘But this is a Buckingham Palace file. It confirms the basic details.’

  The mention of Buckingham Palace caused several of the others to look up.

  The Prime Minister raised his voice. ‘We are confronted with a most unusual problem. Unique, I’d say. How serious it is, politically … well, to be frank it is too soon to tell. But it could be … catastrophic. Terminal, from our point of view. I would therefore be grateful for the thoughts and comments of those in this room, both now, when you have heard what I have to say, and tomorrow, when you have slept on it.’

  Lockwood got up and paced about the room. As he did so, he recounted the entire saga, from Anthony Blunt’s initial visit to Germany in 1945 to the three paintings Edward had received. It took the Prime Minister all of half an hour. Allen scribbled the whole way through.

  When Lockwood had finished, he stood with his back to the window, sucking the end of his spectacles. No one else spoke. ‘As of now,’ he said at length, looking at Allen, who was still busy committing these secrets to paper, ‘only the six people in this room, plus Her Majesty, Her Majesty’s equerry and Her Majesty’s Surveyor of Paintings, are aware of the threat. Apart, of course, from this “Apollo Brigade”, whoever and whatever that might be.

  ‘I am sure I need not underline the delicacy of the affair. This country has often criticized other governments who have dealt with blackmailers or kidnappers. We are about to do just that. At the same time, the royal family is undoubtedly something special in this country, far more beloved than any politician.’ Lockwood smiled grimly. ‘Myself included.

  ‘Nor do I need to remind anyone in this room that the government faces an election very soon. This is not the time for us to take undue risks with our popularity. During the afternoon I’ve read the Palace’s own file on this matter, so that I now know which members of the government come from families implicated in the Windsor business.’

  ‘Who, Bill?’ It was Hatfield.

  Lockwood shook his head. ‘It made frightening reading, I can tell you. However, there’s no need for anyone else in this room to know their names. It should be enough for me to reassure you that no one around this table is involved. But the two people concerned do have important jobs – meaning that the publicity could be damaging, politically. Given an election around the corner and our current standing in the polls, it could mean …’ He tailed off. ‘It therefore goes without saying that this “Apollo Brigade” has to be dealt with. We can’t just call their bluff.

  ‘We have a little time. It is now Tuesday; the blackmailers won’t be in touch until Thursday at the earliest. For now, I will give you my thinking and you can respond. Then we can all sleep on it and reconvene tomorrow when we shall need some decisions.’ He put on his spectacles. ‘There is now no question in my own mind that we should do what we can to protect the royal family. A royal scandal, even an old one, is worth avoiding if at all possible and this new factor about the looted Nazi pictures is pretty unpleasant. The Italians, the Dutch, the Norwegians, the French, the Austrians, the Poles, the Czechs and the Greeks all lost works of art to the Nazis, many of which have never been recovered.’

  ‘The Americans too,’ said Lessor. He had an American wife.

  Lockwood nodded. ‘The Americans too. As I now know from the Palace file, the Americans spent a small fortune at the end of the war trying to find some of these masterpieces. None of those nations is going to be best pleased by revelations that many of them were bribes for the Duke of Windsor. More immediately, of course, the interests of the country and of the party coincide. If the government didn’t offer help, if the story got out, and then the Palace let it be known that we had stood to one side … well, I think we could kiss goodbye to forming the next government. I can’t at the moment see how aiding the Queen will actually help us back into power, since we can’t breathe a word of all this. But that’s politics.

  ‘Now, I’m not bringing this matter to Cabinet – not yet anyway. There are twenty-one people in the Cabinet and it leaks like a Panamanian oil tanker. That’s why this committee was formed. At first, I’d like your immediate reactions – your gut feelings about all this. Tom, let’s start with you.’

  Tom Lessor was from Shropshire and was as monarchist as they come. ‘Surely there is no problem, Prime Minister? Legally or morally, I mean. Blackmail of the Crown is treason.’

  Lockwood smiled. ‘When was someone last prosecuted for treason?’

  ‘I don’t know, Bill, but don’t laugh. You’d have the sympathy of the country if this ever got out.’

  ‘Joss?’

  Hatfield was a QC, in Lockwood’s view a superb pragmatist who had no real convictions of his own. He simply liked to be on the winning side. The Chief Whip had the habit of cocking his chin, as if the collar of his shirt was irritating him. He did this now. ‘The key issue is security. Will the story leak? If it doesn’t leak, it doesn’t much matter what we do, politically, I mean. If it does leak, then of course we must be seen to support the Palace. As you rightly say, with an election so close, we daren’t do anything else.’

  ‘Morally?’

  ‘Ask the Archbishop of Canterbury.’

  Lockwood smiled again and looked at Midwinter. ‘Will it leak?’

  Midwinter was a Cardiff redhead with a redhead’s temper and a jaw which jutted out like the map of South Wales. Temper-losing was Midwinter’s most valuable political asset, earning him few friends but lots of respect in what had once been Fleet Street. ‘If I may put it indelicately, Prime Minister, the Palace has you – us – over a barrel. The story won’t leak from this committee. However … if you – we – don’t help the Palace, and it all goes sour, as it’s almost bound to if they have to pay up, then they will drop us in it. And they’d be right to, of course, from their point of view.’

  ‘Eric?’

  Eric Slocombe had a pencil-thin moustache, a feature which the Prime Minister’s wife, Sally, loathed with a passion. She said it made him look like an unsuccessful bookie. He also had a toupee which didn’t quite match his real hair. But Slocombe’s political acumen was as sharp as shrapnel and he didn’t gamble in politics unless he could control the odds. Lockwood, though he would have preferred a more physically prepossessing adviser, well appreciated Slocombe’s gifts.

  ‘Well,’ said Slocombe. He was one of those people who, when he talked, remained entirely immobile save for his lips. ‘The political problem, the immediate political problem, has been overlooked so far. It is not the Queen, it is not the press, and it’s not the public – at least, not directly. It is George Keld.’ He turned to the Prime Minister. ‘Mishandle this one, Bill, and Keld will have you in the Tower faster than you can cry “Canaletto”. We’ve got to keep all this away from Keld.’

  Lockwood nodded and smiled grimly. Keld was Secretary of State for Defence, the Prime Minister’s chief political rival within the party and, to many people, his heir apparent. Lockwood was sixty-nine, Keld twelve years younger, so age was on his side. He was the only person who came within sight of rivalling Lockwood in the party’s annual leadership election. If he stood. He was a very hard-line Defence Secretary.

  Lockwood walked across the room and put his hand on Slocombe’s shoulder and squeezed it. ‘Thank you, Eric, realistic as ever. And thank you all for your advice. We’ll reconvene here tomorrow morning, when we’ve all slept on it. Tom, overnight what I want from you are t
he names of Scotland Yard’s top blackmail detectives. Maybe the Yard have a list of prime suspects, or tell-tell signs that might reveal who we are dealing with. There must be blackmailers already in jail, some of whom might have heard about this “Apollo Brigade”. But don’t tell anyone why. Not yet. Better alert O’Day at MI6, too.’

  Lessor nodded.

  The Prime Minister looked at Allen. ‘At some stage, we’re going to need an operations room of some sort. Not yet – not till the blackmailers make contact and we know exactly who and what we are dealing with … but be thinking about it, will you? And again, don’t let on what you are planning for, even to people within the building.’ He raised his voice slightly and said, ‘I don’t want to overstate things but it could be that the jobs of everyone in this room depend on this little problem. We don’t want it to blow up in our faces. We’ll meet here again tomorrow, at nine-fifteen. I don’t need to remind you to come in the back way.’

  He glanced at his watch. Suddenly, to the others in the room he looked preoccupied. In a different tone, he said, ‘I must visit my grandson in Great Ormond Street hospital. The little blighter keeps having blackouts.’ There was a pause, but then Lockwood resumed in his original tone. ‘After that, I have to get changed. Dinner at the Danish Embassy. If only our royals were as innocuous as theirs.’

  ‘This way, sir,’ said the usher, showing Edward into a room filled with two round tables and gold-backed chairs with red velvet cushions. ‘I’ll tell Sir Francis you have arrived.’

  Edward didn’t sit. The chairs looked as though they had been made for a troupe of circus dwarfs. Also, he preferred to pace angrily about the room. Not for the first time, he was miffed with the equerry. Edward half understood that, in the circumstances, he couldn’t attend the conference in Paris. But he had worked hard on his lecture and had been looking forward to the jaunt. That was only one thing. He wasn’t happy either that he couldn’t tell Wilma anything. Again, he understood why – but Wilma was probably the best security risk in the entire country and it would have made his life considerably easier to tell her what was happening. As it was, she was already sulking, banging things on tables and blowing cigarette smoke into his face.