Stones of Treason: An international thriller

by Peter Watson

  ‘Did you get any sense of the man behind the voice? It seemed an assured, confident voice to me. Well educated perhaps.’

  Leith shrugged again and stood up. ‘We ought to go. Give ourselves plenty of time. Then we needn’t use the siren and draw attention to ourselves.’

  Edward stood up also but O’Day interjected, ‘Sir Francis is on the phone.’ He had called the equerry as soon as he’d heard the blackmailer’s voice. ‘He wants a word with you.’

  Edward took the receiver. ‘Francis.’

  ‘What’s he like? What sort of man is he?’

  ‘He hardly spoke a hundred words!’

  ‘But you must have some idea.’

  Edward thought, glancing across to Leith as he did so. ‘Young . . . thirties, maybe. Educated, maybe . . . Self-confident.’

  ‘British?’

  ‘Nnno, and not African, not oriental. Spanish? Portuguese? I’m guessing.’

  ‘Hmm. O’Day says he will have a mobile phone with him at the museum. If you need my advice, just ask. But keep in touch, fast.’

  It was only after Mordaunt had rung off and Edward was getting into Leith’s unmarked car that it occurred to him that the equerry, if he really wanted to stay on top of things, could have come to the British Museum himself. Edward dwelt on this thought as the car swept up the Mall and around Trafalgar Square. In Charing Cross Road, a disturbing idea wormed its way into his thoughts. He had told no one about his suspicions of Nancy, though it had subsequently occurred to him that she had asked him out, she had made all the running. Now he found himself wondering about Mordaunt. Apart from the Queen herself, Mordaunt was the only person privy to the Blunt file and the only person to know how much liquid cash the Crown had. Was that why Edward was making the negotiation and not the equerry? He hardly dared think it through: were Mordaunt and Nancy in it together?

  *

  The entrance to the British Museum was thronged with people. Crocodiles of Japanese mingled with groups of Americans, Germans and Dutch.

  On the way there, Leith had been in touch again with Mordaunt on the car phone. They had discussed whether the security people at the museum should be involved. It had its advantages and Leith would not have to tell them everything. On the other hand, the presence of O’Day and Edward might cause one or two awkward questions to be asked. They had therefore decided to ‘freelance’, as Leith put it, at least to begin with.

  Edward followed Leith across the lobby of the museum, his mind in turmoil. He examined his watch: twelve minutes to go.

  By the bookstall there was a row of three phones, two of them occupied. Leith said, ‘The blackmailers will have thought this through. They know there are three phones here and they will have all the numbers. We just have to keep one booth occupied, and the phone inside it free. There are three of us so we can take turns to use the booth. That way we won’t draw attention to ourselves. But the minute it rings, Andover, you pick it up.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we split up? We might be being watched.’

  Leith looked from O’Day to Edward. ‘Our friend didn’t insist you come alone. That’s unusual, but I can’t quite work out what it means. I’d rather stay within earshot, anyway. In case I can help.’

  They waited, forming a small queue all by themselves. From time to time, Edward scanned the crowd for anyone who might be watching them. No one stood out.

  He pulled back the cuff of his jacket and checked his watch. A minute to go. O’Day was punching the buttons on his mobile phone. ‘Shit!’ he said suddenly. ‘This bugger won’t work in here. I’ll have to go outside.’

  ‘Fat lot of use that will be,’ growled Leith. ‘How are you –?’

  The phone rang.

  Edward jumped – he didn’t know how nervous he was. Quickly he regained his composure. Or tried to. The others gathered round and, as the phone rang a second time, he reached for the receiver and put it to his ear.

  ‘Andover.’

  ‘Well done. The arrangements seem to have worked out.’

  What should Edward say? Should he take the lead? No, he thought that would be demeaning. He was non-committal. ‘I can hear you very well.’

  ‘Good. Unlucky for you, all this, eh? It’s not as if you were royal yourself.’

  Edward said nothing. The other man seemed unhurried – or maybe that was an act. Either way, he was behaving as if he had no fear the police might trace the call. He was composed and, as Leith had said, Edward was unnerved and made uncomfortable by the location – and by the idea that perhaps the voice’s accomplice was watching, somewhere in the lobby. It was also hard to be relaxed when you were standing in a clammy booth.

  It was as if the other man could read his thoughts. ‘I can picture where you are,’ he said. ‘The three booths near the bookshop . . . I’ve made scores of calls from there in the last months, while I was working on this matter.’

  Edward was determined not to ask the other man how much money he wanted – it was certainly too demeaning. At the same time, he did wish the voice would make its claim. The uncertainty was exhausting.

  ‘I love the treasures of the British Museum, Dr Andover, don’t you? Goya’s drawing of the Duke of Wellington, the Rosetta Stone, all those cuneiform tablets and ancient mummies.’

  ‘I didn’t anticipate discussing archaeology with a blackmailer!’ Edward knew he was being too sharp but maybe it would help unseat the other man. He might be an aficionado of the British Museum but he was still a criminal.

  ‘Surprised, eh? You’re in for quite a few surprises, Dr Andover, I can guarantee you that. And most of them in the next few minutes. However, yes – let us get down to business. We have been polite with each other for long enough.’ There was a pause. Then: ‘You’ve had enough time to consider what I have. You must also know what it’s worth. How much do you think it’s worth, Dr Andover? Five million pounds? Fifteen? Fifty?’

  Edward scribbled these amounts on to the back of his cheque book and passed it to Leith. He wasn’t sure how to reply. But something was called for. ‘You yourself said it: I’m not a royal. I’m the intermediary –’

  ‘What is the Queen worth, do you think? A billion certainly, these days. Four billion, I read somewhere. And what’s the Royal Collection worth, Dr Andover? You must have some idea of that?’

  Edward, horrified, said nothing.

  ‘Say a hundred million pounds each for the Raphael and the Michelangelo. Fifty million each for the Holbeins, five million each for the Canalettos. Not to mention the Bellinis, the Duccio, the Rubenses, the Raphael cartoons, the Dürers and all those Van Dycks . . . I reckon the collection alone must be worth a billion pounds – but the exact amount doesn’t matter. You see my point? Her Majesty can afford fifty million pounds. She could raise the money, if she wanted to, by selling just one picture.’

  Edward shuddered, thinking of the outcry there would be if even one drawing were to be sold from the Royal Collection.

  ‘My demands, however, are for much less than fifty million, and for far more. I told you there would be some surprises, Dr Andover. Here’s one: I don’t want any money at all.’

  Edward frowned. He hadn’t heard right, surely? Leith and O’Day were looking at him. He had heard wrongly . . . He must have.

  ‘I can understand if you are . . . confused, Dr Andover. No one ever heard of a blackmailer asking for no money, eh?’

  Edward didn’t speak. There was nothing he could say. This was not how it should be, not at all.

  The other man was speaking again. ‘No money and nothing are two very different things, of course. This conversation isn’t just a waste of time.’ The voice laughed, but it was a cackle, harsh and self-satisfied at the same time. ‘Are you listening, Dr Andover? You had better be paying attention now, because we are at last in Prime Time. The Queen, Sir Francis Mordaunt, any other bigwigs you may have brought in, will want you to recall all of this exchange. Exactly.’

  Edward stared at Leith as he listened to the voice. But he s
aid nothing.

  ‘Our terms, the Apollo Brigade’s terms, are a simple exchange. Very simple indeed. When you hear it you won’t be surprised. In fact, you’ll see the simplicity of it all. The beauty, the sheer political beauty of it all.’

  ‘What do you mean, the political beauty –?’

  At this, Leith moved closer to Edward. He seemed to grow in size.

  ‘Aha! You picked up on that . . . Well done, Dr Andover . . . Three rooms from your phone booth, barely a hundred yards from where you are standing, there are ninety-three pieces of stone. Carvings in high and low relief. Metopes is the technical Greek word for some of them but they are much better known as the Elgin Marbles –’

  ‘What –?’

  ‘They . . . they are to go back to Greece. Back to Athens and the Parthenon. Where they belong. You have a month.’

  Edward’s mind was reeling, switchbacking this way and that. This proposal . . . it was a joke, surely? It wasn’t in the script, no one had warned him it might follow this path, or anything like it. The voice was so . . . self-confident, so relaxed. And, he realised now, its accent was Greek.

  He recovered slightly. ‘That’s impossible. The Queen would never –’

  ‘It’s not impossible at all, Dr Andover, but in any case that’s not for you to decide. You will relay these . . . proposals to Her Majesty and you will add the following: in just over a month from now the Olympic Games begin in Atlanta, Georgia, in America. The Centenary Olympics, the games which should by rights have gone to Athens. Greece, as you know, is not taking part in the Atlanta Games, as a protest. We are holding our own Olympic Festival – just the original sports of boxing, wrestling, running, chariot races, javelin and discus, but it is a festival too: music, theatre, all the arts. People forget, but the original temple of Olympia, Dr Andover, was decorated with sculptures, showing the triumphs of Hercules and Apollo. Think of the publicity for the festival, when the Marbles are returned, think how the Atlanta Games will be overshadowed, think how the world, the International Olympic Committee, will regret its choice of America – brash, money-grabbing America. Greece will have its pride back, and the Marbles. People will flock to Greece to see these things. We shall have turned defeat into a magnificent victory.

  ‘We have two demands. There are a lot of Marbles and they are heavy and precious. So we appreciate they cannot simply be put in a suitcase aboard an airliner. In the first place, therefore, we want your government to announce its intention of returning the Marbles. Once such an announcement is made, at the highest level, a government could never go back on its word. Second, we expect the return to begin in three weeks. Allow another week for shipping and unloading and the Marbles will arrive on the eve of the Olympic Festival. Atlanta – America – will be gloriously upstaged.’

  Edward could scarcely keep up with all this. The man was . . . well, it was no normal blackmail, if there was such a thing. ‘You know you can’t –’

  ‘Dr Andover! You’re a nice man, I’m told. I like you. I think, from what I know of you. I like the sound of your voice, anyway. But you are an intermediary. Repeat what I say to your superiors – the Queen, Mordaunt, Lockwood, whoever. I shall call again in two days. I will speak only with you. Give me your reply at that time. The Apollo Brigade will then proceed accordingly. But no more talk now.’ The phone went dead.

  Dumbly, Edward waited, hanging on to the phone, as if the voice might come back. The others were staring at him.

  Eventually he replaced the receiver and stepped out of the booth. ‘Well?’ said O’Day. Leith just stood there.

  Edward repeated the conversation.

  Leith whistled.

  O’Day looked grim. ‘The Duke of Windsor, Sir Anthony Blunt – and now Lord Elgin. Only in Britain do we give titles to such tits!’

  *

  The flat used by Prime Ministers at the top of 10 Downing Street is surprisingly modest. There is a sitting-room decorated in blue and yellow chintzes, a small study with an eighteenth-century walnut desk and prints by William Nicholson, a compact kitchen and two bedrooms with yellow watered silk on the walls. It is well insulated from the bustle below and normally very quiet; and the phones don’t ring – they have lights which flash on and off.

  The flat was anything but quiet at the moment, however. Though it was late, the sitting-room was crowded and Lockwood was shouting. The Prime Minister was standing, a bottle of whisky in one hand and his unravelled bow-tie in the other. He had removed the latter as he helped the others in the room to a nightcap. It had gone midnight. After the episode at the British Museum, O’Day had not been able to get in to see Lockwood until five in the afternoon and then only for a few minutes. Lockwood had exploded at the news and then instructed O’Day to ‘hang on’. The Prime Minister had had to go straight into a meeting of the Northern Ireland Committee and then to a dinner for the Foreign Secretary of Vietnam, who was on an official visit. There had just been time, however, for him to instruct O’Day to call this late-night conference in the flat. The others of the ad hoc secret committee were arrayed around Lockwood in the sitting-room. Edward was also there. Lockwood’s wife, Sally, was with their daughter’s family – there was still no word from the hospital – so the Prime Minister felt free to shout without disturbing anyone other than the security guards.

  ‘I’m seeing the Queen in the morning. And that smarmy equ –’ He remembered Edward was there and looked over to him. ‘I’m seeing Mordaunt. He says nothing’s changed – but of course it has! Money is money – but these bloody Marbles! That’s political.’ He slopped whisky into Slocombe’s glass. ‘I’ve a good mind to tell him – and Her blessed Majesty – what to do with their precious mystery. Let it all come out so that everyone can see what a little shit the Duke of Windsor really was. Bah!’ He had moved away from the political secretary but now he turned back again. ‘What do you say, Eric, do we let the royals roast?’

  The political adviser pursed his lips. ‘There’s something I’m still in the dark about, Bill. How do we get from Blunt nicking these paintings at the end of the war to this “Apollo Brigade”? It’s all Greek to me.’

  Lockwood shifted on his feet. ‘Mordaunt gave me his theory this afternoon, over the phone. The Hesses are related to our own royals and to the Greek royals. The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip of Athens as he was, has a sister married to a Hesse. Mordaunt concedes that the Blunt 1945 adventure was known about in royal circles and must have reached the Greek side. After that – who knows? Blunt was a bastard. He may have had the idea himself, and approached the Greeks, or they may have approached him. He was a world authority on Poussin, the seventeenth-century French painter, whose works often referred to classical Greece. So Blunt often had to go to Greece for his research. Who knows who he met there? It’s well known – now – that Blunt liked all sorts of lovers.’

  The Prime Minister stopped for breath. He looked angry again. ‘This affair is so . . . God, Blunt was a shit!’ He groaned. ‘You see why I’m pissed off, Eric. How often do I swear like this? So . . . earn your wages . . . Shall we let their Britannic Majesties face the music?’

  Slocombe smacked his lips and grimaced as he swallowed. It looked as if he didn’t like whisky. ‘I wouldn’t advise it, Bill.’

  ‘Don’t you turn on me now.’

  ‘I’m not! You know that. May I have some water with this, by the way? It’s too grown-up for me when it’s neat.’

  Lockwood nodded at Allen, who got up and disappeared into the kitchen.

  ‘So! What’s your advice this time?’ The Prime Minister said it belligerently, standing over Slocombe.

  ‘Don’t let your feelings about Windsor cloud your judgement. In this case Mordaunt’s right. The game has changed but the way we play it hasn’t. Remember, the Elgin Marbles don’t belong to the royal family or the Crown, they belong to the nation – in effect, the government of the day.’

  ‘I see all that. But even so we can still keep our distance –’

  ‘
Hear me! If any of this story leaks out, it all will. Think, Prime Minister, how things have changed. The most important way they have changed is that a non-financial demand has been made. We couldn’t know before that they were going to do that. But the Elgin Marbles are not just art objects – they are a political symbol these days. For that reason alone the government can’t help but be involved.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, Eric, but –’

  ‘But . . . having said we would help to begin with, as you and the Chief Whip so rightly argued, here’s what will happen now, in my judgement, if we pull out.’ He paused as Allen came back with the water. Slocombe held up his glass for the whisky to be topped up. No one else spoke. ‘The Palace will leak its version of the story: that we were unwilling to help out the royal family when it was being blackmailed politically. We will be made to appear as callous and uncaring. There will be a fresh scandal in the press about the Duke of Windsor and Nazi loot and all those fancy families who were willing to join him, but who in this room can say it won’t be overshadowed by a major rift – now, in the late twentieth-century, a few months before a general election – between HM and HMG? You see my point, Bill?’

  ‘Reluctantly. Very reluctantly.’

  ‘True enough, the royal family won’t gain many friends for this fresh evidence of the Duke’s Nazi links and sympathies, but we stand to lose far more. Think how the opposition will exploit any rift between us and the royals? Think how Keld would use any of your mistakes against you in a leadership contest. That’s October – even closer than a general election. This business could do us more damage than anything else. To many people in this country – most, I would say – the monarchy is far more important than a bunch of Greek relics.’

  He gulped at his whisky and water. His face contracted as if he was in pain but it was his way of savouring the taste. ‘In theory, most people are against dealing with blackmailers but ask anyone at Scotland Yard and they will tell you that almost everyone who is actually blackmailed considers payment and most actually do pay up. Deep, deep down most people have a terrible sympathy with the victims of blackmail – which is quite separate from what they feel about blackmail and blackmailers in theory. We all have secrets, skeletons in our closets. So don’t imagine this is an ordinary terrorist crime, like hostage-taking on aeroplanes. This is a political manoeuvre but one with a difference.’