On October 21st, (2006), Robert Eringer, the Prince's spymaster, dutifully manifested himself at the Palace's private entrance and was escorted to the basement bar/nightclub.
It could have been bohemian Paris, circa 1950s, with its bistro tables and eclectic collection of unpretentious art and bric-a-brac. In its center, a square bar opened on both sides onto two rooms; and a fireplace, around which one could sit, adorned by four devils.
Perhaps this was Prince Rainier's stab at decadence.
Eringer could almost imagine Jean-Paul Sartre in one corner, James Baldwin in another. Salvador Dali could also have felt at home and probably once had.
Except that this bar had been bolted shut forever by Rainier soon after he designed it, supposedly due to an unspecified "incident" involving Princess Grace.
The Prince walked in at one o'clock.
"You've been holding out on me!" said Eringer. "This is where we should be entertaining foreign intelligence services, not M-Base."
The Prince explained that until his father died he'd rarely ventured into this bar. "My father wouldn't let me play with his toys," the Prince said quietly. "Sometimes I snuck girls in when he was away."
"I have a sense that JLA's days are numbered," said Eringer. "Who will replace him?"
The Prince said JLA would depart in May or June, at least seven months away. But, he added, "I'd prefer him gone by January 1st."
They began to discuss Philippe Narmino, but Jean-Leonard de Massy arrived to join them (he was expected), so instead they addressed de Massy's status within the service.
De Massy was Monegasque, and a blood member of the royal family. However, he was not a man of independent means and would need a salary to support this position-not anything Eringer could afford even with an increased budget.
Ideally, they would need a cover job for de Massy, both to pay his salary and to conceal his true work
The Prince promised to arrange cover job and salary with Monaco's tourism office.
They helped themselves to sandwiches from a table set for a buffet deli lunch and sat down to eat without staff hovering around. A bottle of good Bordeaux had been opened.
Eringer reminded the Prince that Luxembourg, in one week, would host the first micro-Europe intelligence association meeting. Also, Eringer had requests from both CIA and SIS to meet. The Prince grabbed his diary and confirmed both meetings for December 14th.
De Massy was dismissed; the Prince and his spymaster repaired to the parlor upstairs for further discussion.
The Prince told Eringer he had recently granted an audience to Franck Nicholas, his former bobsledding teammate. A Freemason, Nicholas asked if he could bring two other Freemasons, including Conseil Nationale Vice President Claude de Boisson, for a second audience to pitch him on creating a Masonic lodge in Monaco. The Prince added that he had agreed to see them.
Had the Prince lost his proverbial marbles?
A few years earlier, Albert had instructed Eringer to investigate French Freemasons due to his grave concern about their influence in Monaco. Eringer had discovered that French Freemasonry was corrupted by organized crime.
So why on earth would the Prince entertain the idea of allowing a Masonic lodge to become established within the principality?
Resisting an urge to argue, Eringer countered that if the Prince indeed allowed Freemasons to create a lodge in Monaco, it should be on condition that, in the interest of transparency, all members publicly declare their affiliation.
The Prince ventured his opinion that a lodge in Monaco would keep out influence from Masonic lodges in France.
This had probably been their selling point.
Eringer begged to differ, pointing out that French persons holding police or government positions in Monaco would continue to be influenced by their own lodges and use a new Monaco-based lodge to strengthen their power.
Then the Prince asked: "Do you have Thierry Lacoste under investigation?"
Eringer responded thus: You have never asked me to investigate Lacoste, and I never asked you for permission to investigate Lacoste. So the answer is no. However, you may recall that FLOATER inadvertently met Lacoste through Steven Saltzman, and we reported that encounter to you. Additionally, our agent LIDDY provided Lacoste's name incident to whomever was investigating JLA.
Finally, they discussed the future of M-Base. The lease would expire in November, but they had been offered the opportunity to rent for an additional six months while they hunted for a new operational office, as M-Base had become too visible.
The Prince authorized a six-month extension.
That evening Eringer met with two representatives from the intelligence service of a Central European country.
The Central Europeans described their intelligence service and were impressed by the extent of had been created in Monaco.
And it was true: Eringer had one heck of an intelligence service operating in the Prince's name, which they-and their liaison partners-now outright referred to as the Monaco Intelligence Service, or by its acronym M.I.S. They had even struck gold badges and created identification cards for the principals, which the Prince signed.
People who understood the intelligence business were awed by what Eringer, Piers and their support team had accomplished under the radar screen.
The Central Europeans told Eringer that at a recent Club of Berne meeting, its new chairman, an intelligence chief Eringer knew, predicted that intelligence services would eventually cease to exist due to 1) the Internet age of information access 2) media attention and 3) lawyers putting restraint on operations.
Eringer differed with that analysis.
Intelligence is one of the world's oldest professions-number two behind prostitution-existing long before formalization by the likes of Sir Francis Walsingham and George Washington's spymaster, Benjamin Tallmadge. Information is power. The Internet is about quantity not quality, an overabundance of unproven data that begs this question: Does one want to be the most informed or the best informed?
As for the media, having worked both sides of the information business, Eringer found one could not generally trust journalists yet one could generally trust intelligence professionals. As an "insider," using Monaco as the example, Eringer knew that the media knew precious little of what was really going on--his own work as an example.
With regard to lawyers, the chairman nailed it. Espionage, by its very definition, breaks the laws of any country it is used against. If lawyers, who have become ever present in recent years at the elbow of spymasters, prevent a service from breaking laws, they effectively neuter it.
Eringer's own prediction was that future leaders would ignore established services and create new "unofficial" secret units to collect and analyze intelligence required for prudent decision-making.
On October 24th, Eringer flew Luxair to Luxembourg, whose foreign intelligence chief stood on the tarmac to greet him, grab his luggage directly from the hold, and speed him through the VIP lounge to a chic hotel in the old town.
That evening, the Club of Luxembourg (named as such for the purposes of this first meeting) kicked off to a flying start over a long, sumptuous supper.
Malta's intelligence chief was present and also the chief of Liechtenstein's Financial Intelligence Unit. (A few days earlier the latter had taken a call from SICCFIN's chief in Monaco asking why she had not been invited to this meeting, implying that the rodent in Andorra was absent in solidarity with SICCFIN.)
The club meeting next morning took place at a government conference center called Chateau de Senningen.
After Eringer's presentation on the genesis of Monaco's intelligence service, Luxembourg's chief provided words of support, adding that their joint operations had worked very well indeed.
M.I.S. had come into its own as a tremendous resource to its ruler.
Unfortunately, that ruler was Albert II.
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