Kidnap the Emperor!

Why then, the visit?

There came a gentle buzz over the intercom.

Cromer leaned over, flicked a switch and said gently: ‘Yes, Miss Yates?’

‘Mr Yufru is here to see you, Sir Charles.’

‘Excellent, excellent.’ Cromer always took care to ensure that a new visitor, forming his first impressions, heard a tone that was soft, cultured and with just a hint of flattery. ‘Please show Mr Yufru straight in.’

Six miles east of the City, in the suburban sprawl of east London, in one of a terrace of drab, two-up, two-down houses, two men sat at a table in a front room, the curtains drawn.

On the table stood an opened loaf of white sliced bread, some Cheddar, margarine, a jar of pickled onions and four cans of Guinness. One of the men was slim, jaunty, with a fizz of blond, curly hair and steady blue eyes. His name was Peter Halloran. He was wearing jeans, a pair of ancient track shoes and a denim jacket. In the corner stood his rucksack, into which was tucked an anorak. The other man, Frank Ridger, was older, with short, greying, curly hair, a bulbous nose and a hangdog mouth. He wore dungarees over a dirty check shirt.

They had been talking for an hour, since the surreptitious arrival of Halloran, who was now speaking. He dominated the conversation in a bantering Irish brogue, reciting the events of his life – the impatience at the poverty and dullness of village life in County Down, the decision to volunteer, the obsession with fitness, the love of danger, the successful application to join the SAS, anti-terrorist work in Aden in the mid-1960s and Oman (1971–4), and finally the return to Northern Ireland. It was all told with bravado and a surface glitter of which the older man was beginning to tire.

‘Jesus, Frank,’ the young man was saying, ‘the Irish frighten me to death sometimes. I was in Mulligan’s Bar in Dundalk, a quiet corner, me and a pint and a fellow named McHenry. I says to him there’s a job. That’s all I said. No details. I was getting to that, but not a bit of it – he didn’t ask who, or what, or how much, or how do I get away? You know what he said? “When do I get the gun?” That’s all he cared about. He didn’t even care which side – MI5, the Provos, the Officials, the Garda. I liked that.’

‘Well, Peter,’ said Ridger. He spoke slowly. ‘Did you do the job?’

‘We did. You should’ve seen the papers. “IRA seize half a million in bank raid.”’

‘But,’ said Ridger, draining his can, ‘I thought you said you were paid by the Brits?’

‘That’s right,’ said Halloran. He was enjoying playing the older man along, stoking his curiosity.

‘The British paid you to rob a British bank?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Were you back in favour or what?’

‘After what happened in Oman? No way.’

‘What did you do?’

‘There was a girl.’

‘Oh?’

‘How was I to know who she was? I was on my way home for a couple of months’ break. End of a contract. We had to get out or we’d have raped the camels. The lads, Mike Rourke among them, decided on a nice meal at the Sultan’s new hotel, the Al Falajh. She was – what? Nineteen. Old enough. I tell you, Frank – shall I tell you, my son?’

Ridger grinned.

Halloran first saw her in the entrance hall. Lovely place, the Al Falajh. Velvet all over the shop. Like walking into an upmarket strip club. She was saying goodnight to Daddy, a visiting businessman, Halloran assumed. ‘Go on then,’ Rourke had said, seeing the direction of his glance. He slipped into the lift behind her. She was wearing a blouse, short-sleeved and loose, so that as she stood facing away from him, raising her slim arm to push the lift button, he could see that she was wearing a silk bra, and that it was quite unnecessary for her to wear a bra at all. He felt she should know this, and at once appointed himself her fashion adviser.

‘Excuse me, miss, but I believe we have met.’ He paused as she turned, with a half smile, eager to be polite.

He saw a tiny puzzle cloud her brow.

‘Last night,’ he said.

She frowned. ‘I was…’

‘In a fantasy,’ he interrupted. It was corny, but it worked. By then she had been staring at him for seconds, and didn’t know how to cut him. She smiled. Her name was Amanda Price-Whyckham.

‘Eager as sin, she was,’ Halloran went on. A most receptive student, was Amanda P-W. The only thing she knew was la-di-da. Never had a bit of rough, let alone a bit of Irish rough. So when Halloran admired the view as the light poured through the hotel window, and through her skirt, and suggested that simplicity was the thing – perhaps the necklace off, then the stockings, she agreed she looked better and better the less she wore. ‘Until there she was, naked, and willing.’ Halloran finished. ‘My knees and elbows were raw by three in the morning.’

He smiled and took a swig of beer.

‘I don’t know how Daddy found out,’ Halloran continued after a pause. ‘Turned out he was a colonel on a visit for the MoD to see about some arms for the Omanis. You know, the famous Irish sheikhs – the O’Mahoneys?’

Ridger acknowledged the joke with a nod and a lugubrious smile.

‘So Daddy had me out of there. The SAS didn’t want me back, and I’d had enough of regular service. Used up half my salary to buy myself out. So it was back to pulling pints. Until the Brits approached me, unofficial like. Could I help discredit the Provos? Five hundred a month, in cash, for three months to see how it went. That was when my mind turned to banks. It was easy – home ground, see, because we used to plan raids with the regiment. Just plan mind. Now it was for real. I got a taste for it. Next I know, the Garda’s got me on file, and asks my controller in Belfast to have me arrested. He explains it nicely. They couldn’t exactly come clean. So they do the decent thing: put out a warrant for me, but warn me first. Decent! You help your fucking country, and they fuck you.’

‘You could tell.’

‘I wouldn’t survive to tell, Frank. As the bastard captain said, I’m OK if I lie low. In a year, two years, when the heat’s off, I can live again.’

‘I have the afternoon shift,’ said Frank, avoiding his gaze, and standing up. ‘I’ll be back about nine.’

‘We’ll have a few drinks.’

As the door closed, Halloran reached for another can of Guinness. He had no intention of waiting even a week, let alone a year, to live again.

Yufru was clearly at ease in the cold opulence of Sir Charles Cromer’s office. He was slim, with the aquiline good looks of many Ethiopians. He carried a grey cashmere overcoat, which he handed to Miss Yates, and wore a matching grey suit, tailored light-blue shirt and plain dark-blue tie.

Though Cromer never knew his background, Yufru had been living in exile since 1960. At that time he had been a major, a product of the elitist military academy at Harar. He had been one of a group of four officers who had determined to break the monolithic, self-seeking power of the monarchy and attempted to seize power while the Emperor was on a state visit to Brazil. The attempt was a disaster: the rebel officers, themselves arrogant and remote, never established how much support they would have, either within the army or outside it.

In the event, they had none. They took the entire cabinet hostage, shot most of them in an attempt to force the army into co-operation, and when they saw failure staring them in the face, scattered. Two killed themselves. Their corpses were strung up on a gallows in the centre of Addis. A third was captured and hanged. The fourth was Yufru. He drove over the border into Kenya, where he had been wise enough to bank his income, and surfaced a year later in London. Now, after a decade in business, mainly handling African art and supervising the investment of his profits, he had volunteered his services to the revolutionary government, seeking some revenge on the Imperial family and rightly guessing that his experience of the capitalist system might be of use.

He stood and looked round with admiration. Then, as Cromer invited him with a gesture to sit, he began to speak in suave tones that were the consequence of service with the British in 1941–5.

As Cromer knew, Ethiopia was a poor country. He, Yufru, had been lucky, of course, but the time had come for all of them to pull together. They faced the consequences of a terrible famine. The figures quoted in the West were not inaccurate – perhaps half a million would eventually die of starvation. Much, of course, was due to the inhumanity of the Emperor. He was remote, cut off in his palaces. The revolutionary government had attempted to reverse these disasters, but there was a limit imposed by a lack of funds and internal opposition.

‘These are difficult times politically,’ Yufru sighed. He was the ideal apologist for his thuggish masters. Cromer had met the type before – intelligent, educated, smooth, serving themselves by serving the hand that paid them. ‘We have enemies within who will soon be persuaded to see the necessity of change. We have foolish rebels in Eritrea who may seek to dismember our country. Somalia wishes to tear from us the Ogaden, an integral part of our country.

‘All this demands a number of extremely expensive operations. As you are no doubt aware, the Somalis are well equipped with Soviet arms. My government has not as yet found favour with the Soviets. If we are to be secure – and I suggest that it is in the interests of the West that the Horn of Africa remains stable – we need good, modern arms. The only possible source at present is the West. We do not wish to be a debtor nation. We would like to buy.

‘For that, to put matters bluntly, we need hard cash.’

Cromer nodded. He had guessed correctly.

‘The money for such purposes exists. It was stolen by Haile Selassie from our people and removed from the country, as you have good cause to know. I am sure you will respect the fact that the Emperor’s fortune is officially government property and that the people of Ethiopia, the originators of that wealth, should be considered the true heirs of the Emperor. They should receive the benefits of their labours.’

‘Administered, of course, by your government,’ Cromer put in.

‘Of course,’ Yufru replied easily, untouched by the banker’s irony. ‘They are the representatives of the people.’

Cromer was in his element. He knew his ground and he knew it to be rock-solid. He could afford to be magnanimous.

‘Mr Yufru,’ he began after a pause, ‘morally your arguments are impeccable. I understand the fervour with which your government is determined to right historic wrongs…’ – both of them were aware of what the fervour entailed: hundreds of corpses, ‘enemies of the revolution’, stinking on the streets of Addis – ‘and we would naturally be willing to help in any way. But insofar as the Emperor’s personal funds are concerned, there is really nothing we can do. Our instructions are clear and binding…’

‘I too know the instructions,’ Yufru broke in icily. ‘My father was with the Emperor in ’24. That is, in part, why I am here. You must have written instructions, signed by the Emperor, and sealed with the Imperial seal, on notepaper prepared by your bank, itself watermarked, again with the Imperial seal.’

Cromer acknowledged Yufru’s assertion with a slow nod.

‘Indeed, and those arrangements still stand. I have to tell you that the last such communication received by this bank was dated July 1974. Neither I nor my associates have received any further communication. We cannot take any action unilaterally. And, as the world knows, the Emperor is now dead, and it seems that the deposits must be frozen…’ – the banker spread his hands in a gesture of resigned sympathy – ‘in perpetuity.’

There was a long pause. Yufru clearly had something else to say. Cromer waited, still confident.

‘Sir Charles,’ Yufru said, more carefully now, ‘we have much work to do to regularize the Imperial records. The business of fifty years, you understand…It may be that the Emperor has left among his papers further instructions, perhaps written in the course of the revolution itself. And he was alive, you will remember, for a year after the revolution. It is conceivable that other papers relating to his finances will emerge. I take it that there would be no question that your bank and your associated banks would accept such instructions, if properly authenticated?’

The sly little bastard – he’s got something up his sleeve, thought Cromer. It may be…it is conceivable…if, if, if. There was no ‘if’ about it. Something solid lay behind the question.

To gain time he said: ‘I will have to check my own arrangements and those of my colleagues…there is something about outdated instructions which slips my mind. Anyway,’ he hastened on, ‘the instructions have always involved either new deposits or the transfer of funds and the buying of metals or stock. In what way would you have an interest in transmitting such information?’

Yufru replied, evenly: ‘We would like to be correct. We would merely like to be aware of your reactions if such papers were found and if we decided to pursue the matter.’

‘It seems an unlikely contingency, Mr Yufru. The Emperor has, after all, been dead six months.’

‘We are, of course, talking hypothetically, Sir Charles. We simply wish to be prepared.’ He rose, and removed a speck from his jacket. ‘Now, I must leave you to consider my question. May I thank you for your excellent coffee and your advice. Until next time, then.’

Puzzled, Sir Charles showed Yufru to the door. He was not a little apprehensive. There was something afoot. Yufru’s bosses were not noted for their philanthropy. They would have no interest in passing on instructions that might increase the Emperor’s funds.

It made no sense.

But by tonight, it damn well would.

‘No calls, Miss Yates,’ he said abruptly into the intercom. ‘And bring me the correspondence files for Lion…Yes, all of them. The whole damn filing cabinet.’

That evening, Sir Charles sat alone till late. A set of files lay on his desk. Against the wall stood the cabinet of files relating to Selassie. He again reviewed his thoughts on Yufru’s visit. He had to assume that there was something behind it. The only idea that made any sense was that there was some scheme to wrest Selassie’s money from the banks concerned. It couldn’t be done by halves. If they had access – with forged papers, say – then he had to assume that the whole lot was at risk.

And what a risk. He let his mind explore that possibility. Two thousand million dollars’ worth of gold from three countries for a start. If he were instructed, as it were by the Emperor himself, to sell every last ounce, it would be a severe blow to the liquidity of his own bank and those of his partners in Zurich and New York. With capital withdrawn, loans would have to be curtailed, profits lost. When and if it became known who was selling, reputations would suffer and rumours spread. Confidence would be lost. Even if there weren’t panic withdrawals, future deposits would be withheld. The effects would echo down the years and along the corridors of financial power, spreading chaos. With that much gold unloaded all at once, the price would tumble. And not only would he fail to realize the true market value, but he would become a pariah within Rothschild’s and in the international banking community. Cromer’s, renowned for its discretion, would be front-page news.

And that was just the gold. There would be the winding-up of a score of companies, the withdrawal of the cash balances, in sterling, Swiss francs and dollars.

Good God, he would be a liability. Eased out.

He poured himself a whisky and returned to his desk, forcing himself to consider the worst. In what circumstances might such a disaster occur?

What if Yufru produced documents bearing the Emperor’s signature, ordering his estate to be handed over to Mengistu’s bunch? With any luck they would be forgeries and easily spotted. On the other hand, they might be genuine, dating from before the Emperor’s death. But that was surely beyond the bounds of possibility. It would belie everything he knew about the man – ruthless, uncompromising, implacably opposed to any diminution of his authority.

But what if they had got at him, with drugs, or torture or solitary confinement? Now that was a possibility. Cromer would gamble his life on it that Selassie had signed nothing to prejudice his personal fortune before he was overthrown. But he might have done afterwards, if forced. He had after all been in confinement for about a year.

Now he had faced the implications, however, he saw that he could forestall the very possibility Yufru had mentioned. He checked one of the files before him again. Yes, no documents signed by the Emperor would be acceptable after such a delay. Anyone receiving written orders more than two weeks old had to check back on the current validity of those orders before acting upon them. The device was a sensible precaution in the days when couriers were less reliable than now, and communications less rapid. The action outlined in that particular clause had never been taken, and the clause never revoked. There it still stood, Cromer’s bastion against hypothetical catastrophe.

Cromer relaxed. But before long he began to feel resentful that he had wasted an evening on such a remote eventuality. He downed his whisky, turned off his lights, strolled over to the lift and descended to the basement, where the Daimler awaited him, his chauffeur dozing gently at the wheel. He was at his London home by midnight.

Friday 19 March

‘So you see, Mr Yufru, how my colleagues and I feel.’

Cromer had summoned Yufru for a further meeting earlier that morning.

‘After such a lapse of time and given the uncertainty of the political situation, we could not be certain that the documents would represent the Emperor’s lasting and final wishes. We would be required to seek additional confirmation, at source, before taking action. And the source, of course, is no longer with us.’

‘I see, Sir Charles. You would not, however, doubt the validity of the Emperor’s signature and seal?’

‘No, indeed. That we can authenticate.’

‘You would merely doubt the validity of his wishes, given the age of the documents?’

‘That is correct.’

‘I see. In that case, I am sure such a problem will never arise.’

Cromer nodded. The whole ridiculous, explosive scheme – if it had ever existed outside his own racing imagination – had been scotched. And apparently with no complications.

To hear Yufru talk, one would think the whole thing was indeed a mere hypothesis. Yufru remained affable, passed some complimentary comments about Cromer’s taste, and left, in relaxed mood.

The banker remained at his desk, deep in thought. He had no immediate appointments before lunch with a broker at 12.30, and he had the nagging feeling that he had missed something. There were surely only two possibilities. Mengistu’s bunch might have forged, or considered forging, documents. Or they might have the genuine article, however obtained. In either case, the date would precede Selassie’s death and they would now know that the date alone would automatically make the orders unacceptable. The fortune would remain for ever out of their reach.

Yufru had failed. Or had he? He didn’t seem like a man who had failed – not angry, or depressed, or fearful at reporting what might be a serious setback to the hopes of his masters. No: it was more as if he had merely ruled out just one course of action.

What other course remained open? What had he, Cromer, said that allowed the Ethiopians any freedom of action? The only positive statement he had made was that the orders, if they followed procedure, would be accepted as genuine documents, even if outdated.

Under what circumstances would the orders be accepted both as genuine and binding? If the date was recent, of course, but then…If the date was recent…in that case the Emperor would have to be…Dear God!

Cromer sat bolt upright, staring, unseeing, across the room. He had experienced what has been called the Eureka effect: a revelation based on the most tenuous evidence, but of such power that the conclusion is undeniable.

The Emperor must still be alive.

Cromer sat horrified at his own realization. He had no real doubts about his conclusion. It was the only theory that made sense out of Yufru’s approach. But he had to be certain that there was nothing to contradict it.

From the cabinet, against the wall, he slid out a file marked ‘Clippings – Death’. There, neatly tabbed into a loose-leaf folder, were a number of reports of Selassie’s death, announced on 28 August 1975 as having occurred the previous day, in his sleep, aged eighty-three.

According to the official government hand-out: ‘The Emperor complained of feeling unwell the previous night (26 August) but a doctor could not be obtained and a servant found him dead the next morning.’

Although he had been kept under close arrest in the compound in the Menelik Palace, there was no suggestion that he had been ailing. True, he had had a prostate operation two months before, but he had recovered well. One English doctor who treated him at that time, a professor from Queen Mary’s Hospital, London, was quoted as saying he had ‘never seen a patient of that age take the operation better’.

There had never been any further details. No family member was allowed to see the body. There was no post-mortem. The burial, supposedly on 29 August, was secret. There was no funeral service. The Emperor had, to all intents and purposes, simply vanished.

Not unnaturally, a number of people, in particular Selassie’s family, found the official account totally unacceptable. It reeked of duplicity. However disruptive the revolution, there were scores of doctors in Addis Ababa. Rumours began to circulate that Selassie had been smothered, murdered to ease the task of the revolution, for all the while he was known to be alive, large sections of the population would continue to regard him, even worship him, as the true ruler of the country. As The Times said when reporting the family’s opinion in June 1976: ‘The Emperor’s sudden death has always caused suspicion, if only because of the complete absence of medical or legal authority for the way he died.’

And so the matter rested. Until now. No wonder there had been no medical or legal authority for the way he died, mused Cromer. But the family had jumped to the wrong conclusion.

‘Sir Charles,’ it was Miss Yates’s voice on the intercom. ‘Will you be lunching with Sir Geoffrey after all?’

‘Ah, Miss Yates, thank you. Yes. Tell him I’m on my way. Be there in ten minutes.’

He stopped at the desk on his way out.

‘What appointments are there this afternoon?’ he asked.

‘You have a meeting with Mr Squires at two o’clock about the Shah’s most recent deposits. And of course the usual gold committee meeting at five.’

The Shah could wait. ‘Cancel Jeremy. I need the early afternoon clear.’

He glanced out of the window. It looked like rain. He took one of the two silk umbrellas from beside Valerie’s desk and left for lunch.

2

Those who had met Sir Charles Cromer over the past twenty years knew him only as a calculating financier, who seemed to live for his bank, seeking a release in his work from a stultifying home life. In point of fact, he was a closet gangster, utterly amoral, and with more than a dash of sadism in him. This aspect of his character had long been suppressed by his intelligence, his social standing and the eminence of the professional role he had inherited.

Only twice in his life had Cromer truly expressed himself. The first time was at school, at Eton. There, as fag and junior, he had borne the crushing humiliations imposed upon him by his seniors, knowing that he too would one day inherit their power. His resilience and forbearance were well rewarded. He became a games player of some eminence, playing scrum-half for the school and for Hereford Schoolboys with a legendary fearlessness. He also became Head of House. In this capacity he had cause, about once a week, to dispense discipline in the sternest public school traditions. Sometimes he would preside, with awful formality, over the ritual humiliation of some unfortunate junior who would be beaten in the prefects’ common room. Meanwhile the prefects themselves read idly, disdainfully refusing to acknowledge the presence of the abhorrent object of Cromer’s displeasure. Sometimes, for a lesser offence, the beating would be administered in his own study. Both occasions gave him joy.