On March 26th (2007), the Prince's spymaster, Robert Eringer, zoomed out of Monaco and into Italy with Jean-Leonard de Massy.

The computer navigational narrator guided them around a carnival of roads to The Most Serene Republic of San Marino, arriving at Hotel Titana at 1:45 in the afternoon.

San Marino is the world's oldest republic, boasting a millennium of democracy. Their form of democracy is this: Five families take turns running the country.

Its culture is something else. You can tell a lot about a country by its museums. In San Marino there are three: Two are torture museums-one with wax figures being tortured-and the third, a freak museum. And very many duty-free shops, abounding with knives, swords, BB-guns and replica pistols and rifles.

They had left a bright sunny day down below in Italy, near Rimini. But San Marino was enveloped in grayness and moisture. Within this medieval setting, they ate pasta, moistened their faces with a walk, and appeared at the central bank for an introduction to its director-general, to whom they extended an invitation to attend the next Columbus Group meeting.

At first skeptical about the un-official-ness of Eringer's status, Mr. Director-General warmed up quickly. He liked the idea of small countries cooperating; had even, he said, considered starting such an association himself. Not only was he enthusiastic to attend Columbus, he had a piece of bilateral business to conduct.

An Austrian was trying to buy into a San Marinese bank, he said, and they had found a Monaco connection in his C.V. Had Eringer heard of him? Could Eringer access intelligence on him?

That, in a nutshell, was the essence of Columbus: Small countries/tax havens/financial centers working together to keep bad money out.

Within two days, Eringer knew enough to tell Mr. Director-General that their bank-buying Austrian was crooked--and they denied his application to buy into a San Marinese bank.

This is how the system worked, as it had never worked before.

Back in Monaco, Eringer was introduced to Joel Bouzou, an advisor to the Prince on sport, a position the Prince recently elevated to Cabinet level. Bouzou, as Eringer understood it, was one of the few good guys around the Prince.

De Massy and Eringer briefed Bouzou on the intelligence service and enlightened him on the dynamics at play. Finally, he better understood why he had come up against cold shoulders from Gerard Brianti (ASM football business) and Bruno Philipponnat (Palace Cabinet business). Their interest was the preservation of status quo corruption, and they perceived Bouzou as an interloper who might try to clean things up.

Bouzou already had concerns about Jean-Paul Carteron and Adnan Houdrouge, with whom he had been grouped to organize a newly created entity called Peace Through Sport. So he was not too surprised, if appalled, by Eringer's revelations, about Houdrouge especially.

"But I asked the Prince if I should involve Houdrouge and Carteron and he said yes."

Maybe the Prince did not remember that Houdrouge had bribed Franck and Sylvie Biancheri--and that he went around town telling people, including the new police chief Andre Mulberger, that he had the Prince "by the balls" and "in my pocket" for paying Franck Biancheri three million euros for permission to invest in Monaco's football team.

Yet the Prince placed Houdrouge on Peace Through Sport to raise money.

Maybe Houdrouge did have something on the Prince. Though Eringer believed Biancheri kept the three million for himself, and the Prince continued to go along with the bad guys, even though he knew they were bad, because he lacked backbone for standing up to them and preferred the path of least resistance.

Or maybe the Prince was afraid to stand up to them?

Princess Caroline's second husband, Stefano Casiraghi, was connected to the Italian mafia, and brought it into the principality on building projects, much to the chagrin of the Pastor family, who otherwise enjoyed a virtual monopoly to build in Monaco.

Apparently, Casiraghi threw a party at the Palace for two hundred of his unsavory Italian friends. When Prince Rainier noticed some of them carrying guns, he put his foot down and said, No more-finito bon soir.

The Italian mafia may have said finito bon soir to Casiraghi, who died in a freak boating accident soon after. His widow freaked out over those underworld connections, and a worried Prince Rainier retained extra bodyguards for her.

As if to re-emphasize their point, the Italian mafia then tried to steal Casiraghi's corpse from Monaco's cathedral. They intended to demand a ransom--the amount of their Monaco investment--in exchange for its safe return.

In early May, Eringer had a quite alarming if not surprising report from a highly-trusted source coming out of Russia regarding one of the Prince's senior aides, who had become well known to the Russians through his relationship with General Vladimir Pronichev: He reports Monaco's national secrets and Palace activities monthly to the French. There are no secrets for the French concerning Albert's life, and the Russians are equally well informed.

What the Prince hated most was to be taken for a fool-yet he was allowing both the French and the Russians to take him for the court jester.

All of Eringer's cautions from the day he commenced work in the Prince's service had been thrown to the wind.


Coming Next: Flatulence Anyone?

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