By September (2004), Prince Rainier had taken a "downhill change" and the end was said to be "hastening." Sixty cigarettes a day for most of his life had taken a toll on the Sovereign's lungs and heart--and now he was failing mentally.
Decisions were being taken by a troika comprised of his personal secretary Madame Siri, his chef de cabinet (chief of staff) Raymond Biancheri, and the Palace accountant, Claude Palmero-decisions that best served the troika.
They were said to be grooming Raymond's son, Franck the finance minister, to be Prince Albert's chef de cabinet, a position that would run day-to-day operations at the Palace and be gatekeeper to the Prince.
On another front, Robert Eringer knew it would be important for the Prince to forge a warm, personal relationship with Nicolas Sarkozy, forecast to become the next President of France. Eringer's contacts arranged for Sarkozy to phone the Prince and invite him for a drink in Paris. The spymaster asked Albert to watch for this call.
When Eringer spoke by phone with Albert eight days later, the Prince had not yet heard from Sarkozy, adding, "I lost the last ten messages."
On October 28th, the Prince and Eringer arrived separately in Washington DC and at 4 p.m. a silver Lincoln Town Car sped them to Langley, Virginia, not even stopping at CIA's formidable security post.
With the Prince's approval (in advance), his aide-de-camp was intercepted and sidetracked into the agency's private museum, while the Prince and Eringer ascended in the Director's private elevator to the seventh floor.
The doors opened and CIA Director Porter Goss led the Prince, Eringer, and key officials into his office, joking that his occupation of it might be short-lived.
It was a rather prescient remark, suggesting that intelligence, indeed, was Porter's rightful vocation, even if he should have remained in Congress rather than take this job.
Back in Monaco, the Prince scheduled a November 10th meeting with his spymaster in M-Base, where he digested a report, from Italian sources, on Philip Zepter, a Monaco resident. The Italians, too, were onto the Serbian. The reason nobody had done anything about Zepter by now was because each and every special service was trying to configure a way to co-opt him.
Almost a year had passed since the U.S. President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) had met in Washington, and it was time for another, due to start on November 18th.
So, of course, MING--the suspected money launderer and spy--flew to Washington, even though he had no connection whatsoever to PFIAB--other than, in all likelihood, to spy on it.
On November 12th Eringer e-mailed notice of this to a special agent at the FBI's Los Angeles field office. Two days later, to be certain they'd received his message, Eringer phoned an FBI Special Agent at the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
No, the agent had not heard a thing from LA.
On the 17th, Eringer phoned The Willard Hotel to confirm MING's presence and convey such to the FBI.
Less than a week later, Eringer broke bread in Monaco with LIPS, though they might have been breaking wind.
LIPS had an annoying habit of ticking off a list of concepts, at the end of which he would invariably say, "Does that make sense?" And even though Eringer agreed, LIPS's follow-up was always next to nothing.
Eringer would identify areas of operation that would benefit mutual objectives, and LIPS would nod and smile and say, "All good ideas, I'll get back to you on that."
Eringer began to suspect that much of what was passed to LIPS for conveyance to headquarters--as authorized by Prince Albert--never made it beyond Paris.
Next morning, LIPS appeared at M-Base. The Prince rolled in directly from Wonderfall, a mountain resort in Italy. He appeared grubby and unshaven, clad in sweatshirt and blue jeans, perhaps in need of a shower and toothpaste.
And this was fine. Eringer had already established a rule that ties were unnecessary at M-Base, in keeping with his principle of dressing down so that no one in the neighborhood would suspect him of doing anything remotely important.
Coming Next: A New Requirement for 2005