The Hawk Is Dead

53

Saturday 25 November 2023

It seemed to Rose Cadoret that it was a rite of passage for every tourist in London to pose for a selfie somewhere in front of Buckingham Palace. They descended in their masses, individuals or in groups with guides holding up coloured sticks, sometimes in cagoules and rain hats, sometimes in baseball caps and T-shirts. Why did some tourists think it was OK to stand in The Mall, one of the world’s most beautiful avenues, wearing the most ludicrously shapeless and gaudy outfits?

The magnificent edifice of the East Wing, three storeys high and topped with a tall flagpole from which the Royal Standard flies whenever the monarch is in residence, is iconic. To many its presence is a serene constant and a reassurance of order that rises above whatever troubles currently ail the world.

But what Joe Public never saw, Rose Cadoret thought, was the dingy labyrinth of corridors and rooms one floor below. It could have been the basement of any institution in the world — a grand hotel, a hospital, a residential skyscraper. Down here was a never-ending, artificially lit warren of low ceilings filled with pipework, some wrapped in insulation, hazard warning signs, green baize notice boards screwed to the cream-painted walls, with the usual institutional posters pinned on them: CATCH IT! BIN IT! KILL IT! or, GERMY PLACES IN YOUR OFFICE YOU SHOULD CLEAN! along with diagrams showing hand-cleaning techniques.

With all the Palace renovations going on, the basement smelled variously of recently sawn wood or fresh paint. There were hoardings everywhere, plastic gates and building materials, as well as huge gaps in the walls and floors where exploratory drilling had taken place. As a result, there were so many places where an object — even quite a large object — could be concealed.

Conveniently.

Rose Cadoret passed a door due for updating, on which a sign read, QUEEN’S LUGGAGE LIFT STAIRS. It was next to another that read, BASEMENT FLOOR RED ROUTE — with a large red arrow pointing to a sign. YOU ARE HERE.

I am indeed! Rose thought, seating herself at the Formica table in the Cleaning Staff Office. I am very much here.

And she was, happily, very much alone.

Few members of the Household staff worked weekends, other than those guarding the Palace, and she knew she wasn’t going to be bothered down here late on a Saturday morning.

Opening her Waitrose carrier bag, she took out the five exquisite miniature jade figurines she had removed from a cabinet up on the first floor — part of a collection that had been one of Queen Mary’s passions — and for which there was already a keen buyer waiting. Then she began encasing them in bubble wrap, for their protection. When she had done that, she would take them home. In her plastic Waitrose bag of course. None of the Palace guards would raise an eyebrow at a senior member of the Royal Collection walking around with a painting under their arm, let alone carrying a bag of groceries. Which was how she had smuggled out many dozens of objects over the past months.

With these jade figurines, as with most objets d’art and paintings catalogued in the Royal Collection, it was impossible to know their true value, but some jade was worth more than diamonds, and the recent world record price for a piece of jade was a staggering $27.4 million.

Their buyer, who was paying just £100,000 each, was getting an absolute bargain. But the three of them weren’t greedy and at this price they had a very happy, discreet and reliable middleman, with whom they dealt through the dark web. These jade figurines would be despatched to private museums in the Middle East, or Eastern Europe or the Russian bloc — and sometimes even the US — to collectors who would have no scruples about obtaining a piece of another nation’s heritage at a knock-down price, and might well take extra pleasure in that knowledge. And it would likely be many decades before any of them came back on the market, their provenance long vanished in the mists of time.

Just like the three of them, she thought with a wry smile. The gravy train was coming to a halt. About to hit the buffers. Although — she hesitated — maybe train wasn’t such a great analogy, bearing in mind what had happened. Could anything they’d done have backfired on them more than the Royal Train derailment?

But, hey, always look on the bright side, as the Pythons’ song went. And go with the positives. They’d had a good run over this past year, since they’d come up with their plan. And they all knew it was the opportunity of a lifetime for the three of them. They’d all served their country, risked their lives, and for what?

To be dumped on from a great height.

Potentially court-martialled, for what exactly? For doing what they signed up for. To fight the enemy and protect their nation. So, OK, they’d lost their rag out in Afghanistan, after Jon had witnessed the torture and killing of his mate, and she’d seen what atrocities had been done to the corpse. And a very decent senior officer had nearly been stripped of his rank for standing up for them.

She didn’t believe in God. Certainly not a god who had let that happen to her friend, Scottie. But maybe there was another rival god. One who said, Life sucks. So fill your boots whenever you get the opportunity!

It was either fate, or that other, rival god, who had fixed for the three of them to all end up in varying roles within the Royal Household. Jon on the Royal Protection team and herself, Deputy Director of the Royal Collection. Initially, with her art school background, she had decided what she really wanted was excitement — and got far more than she had bargained for in joining the Army. But she had loved her time as a soldier. At first, anyway.

And that officer who had stood up for them — how could fate have arranged, years later, for him to have ended up in such a powerful position within the staff of Buckingham Palace?

The plan had been a simple one. The knowledge that there would never be an opportunity like this again, after the renovations had finished. The Palace in disarray. Priceless valuables all over the place.

It had always been an inventory nightmare for the trustees of the Royal Collection. But never more so during the ten-year renovation programme of the Palace. Paintings and statues and ornaments were constantly being moved around at the request of the builders, making it impossible for the Royal Collection team to know precisely where everything was at any given moment.

Creating a wonderful window of opportunity.

But now time was running out. Each of them — dividing the spoils equally — had already amassed considerable fortunes in untraceable Bitcoin accounts. There was an even bigger fortune in items they had stolen and safely stashed in a storage unit in Hounslow, near Heathrow Airport. A treasure trove worth tens of millions of pounds. To be drip-fed out to buyers over the next few years.

They should cut and run now, Rose knew, while they were still ahead, and not under any suspicion. But there were so many tempting rich pickings to grab while the going was still good — like these jade items. Rose knew there had probably never been an opportunity like this and there never would be again. By the time the discrepancies in the Royal Collection inventory started to be noticed, all three of the trusted Palace employees (well, four, if you included the wife of one of them, who was invaluable) would be long gone. And very rich indeed.

They were already richer than their wildest dreams. And if Jon Smoke hadn’t fucked up, they would all be even richer still.

She worried about him, because he was the liability in this trio. She was angry, too. Angry because even though they’d had an on-off relationship, she was starting to feel he did not deserve an equal share. He was a danger to them. More of a danger than an asset?