Diana's Nightmare - The Family (19 page)

As a working royal, Charles usually bore adverse headlines and the drudgery of his official chores with stoical good humour. He tried to shrug off personal criticism in the Press, once likening himself to a pheasant, there to be shot at. But once details of his married life, his most private of lives, turned up in print, he became more than annoyed, he became angry. This was his Achilles' heel. Charles knew that many of the stories were true, and the leaks only sharpened his sense of outrage. The Press got so close to the truth so often that he clearly feared the newspapers would report his guiltiest secret: the on-going affair with Camilla. In fact, James Whitaker claimed that Stephen Barry had told him that Charles shared his bed with Camilla after the pre-wedding ball at Buckingham Palace on 27 July, 1981. As Barry died of AIDS in 1986, Whitaker had respected the confidence for some considerable time. This was understandable. Aroused, Prince Charles could be a formidable opponent. Those who caught the sharp edge of his tongue were unlikely to forget it.

The chance to express his feelings came when a dozen or so Fleet Street editors were corralled one evening in an upstairs Stateroom at Buckingham Palace. The Palace had decided to do something about invasion of privacy, although a previous appeal to the editing fraternity had met with little success.

The object this time, explained Michael Shea, Press Secretary to the Queen, was to remove Prince William from the firing line of the tabloid circulation war. Whenever Prince William was taken to the park, accompanied by nanny 'Baba' Barnes and a detective, the paparazzi would swoop. A curious crowd would gather around the Prince's pushchair and it was at these times that Charles and Diana felt their first-born was at risk from a possible kidnap attempt, even a terrorist attack. If newspapers, particularly the tabloids, stopped buying pictures of William's visits to the park, the paparazzi would move on to other royal pastures. Logical though this sounded to Shea and his royal clients, it was like asking a fox to walk past the open door of a chicken coop. Even if Fleet Street agreed, the paparazzi could still sell every picture to magazines in Europe and the United States.

After a briefing from Shea, the guests were split up into small groups and offered drinks while Charles and Diana 'worked the room' under the vigilant eye of Palace officials. 'If it doesn't stop, we'll have to cancel my son's trips to the park,' Diana told one group. 'This would be a pity because I want him to mix with ordinary people. I don't want him to be brought up behind the Palace walls.'

Her voice was soft and well-modulated, not at all strident like most Sloane Rangers, who could easily compete against a combine harvester. Some sentences were punctuated by a nervous giggle. It was evident that she was ill at ease and painfully conscious of her height which, at six-foot-plus in shoes, made her very nearly the tallest person in the room. Much of her body language made her seem smaller; she hunched her shoulders, hung her head and looked up, eyelashes flashing, in the familiar coquettish way that made men swoon. Turning, she said in an aside to Peter Thompson, then editor of the
Sunday Mirror:
'Oh my goodness, they're all so SHORT.'

Diana's habit of looking up from beneath her eyelashes with that famous tilt of her head had intrigued Harry Arnold ever since he first noticed it in 1980. 'Diana collects scalps,' he said. 'Many of my friends have experienced it, Andrew Morton has experienced it, and so have I. You will be in a room full of people and her eyes will lock on you and you will have this sudden panic when you think she is looking at you. You will suddenly look behind you, thinking there is somebody there but there is no one. Then you get the euphoric feeling that she is giving you the eye because that is just how it looks. She holds this gaze for a fixed amount of time and you think, "My God, does she fancy me?" That is what many men have thought. She seems to be thinking, "I know what you are thinking - you are thinking wouldn't it be great if you could sleep with me and you cannot, and I am telling you that you cannot. But I know that is what you would like to do." It's a subtle mind game that I have seen pop stars like the Beatles do with fans. It's a tease.'

On the other side of the room, Charles had seized the chance to give his views on intrusion. He became locked in conversation with one guest and it was apparent to those within earshot that he was becoming angry. Immaculately turned out, his hair neatly clipped and his cheeks glowing pink with the health of the super-fit and very rich, Charles kept his voice, and his composure, under control. But his cheeks turned a brighter shade of pink as he made some strongly held points about the reporting of his marriage.

It was the trivia he found most offensive. What he ate for breakfast or what his wife bought when she went shopping could be of no conceivable interest to anyone. Much to his annoyance, the guest listened politely, but remained unrepentant. 'People are interested in everything you do,' he told Charles in a soft Ulster monotone. 'We give people what they want to read.'

Throughout the evening, Diana raised her eyes to the ceiling, hugged herself with thin arms and twiddled with her sapphire engagement ring. Every few minutes, she glanced over her shoulder to locate Charles in another part of the room and fix him with The Look. Each time, their eyes met for a second and that seemed to reassure her. The distinct impression was that she not only needed her husband, she was very much in love with him.

This was apparently confirmed when she presented him with the winner's trophy after polo at Smith's Lawn a few weeks later. Diana kissed him passionately on the lips in full view of the Press. Cameras clicked furiously; onlookers applauded wildly. This was one royal picture the Princess of Wales wanted to see on the front pages. It was also the last of its kind.

DIANA wasn't the only one living dangerously in the latter part of the Eighties. Charles had never been closer to death than he was at two forty-five p.m. on 10 March, 1988.

'Go, Sir, go,' shouted Bruno Sprecher, the royal ski guide, and Charles took off. Skiing for his life, he outdistanced an avalanche roaring down a mountainside above Klosters. 'The heir to the British Crown, Prince Charles, was able to ski out of the danger area to a place of safety in time,' a Swiss official reported unemotionally. According to those who were present, there was only a matter of feet in it.

Charles's friend, Major Hugh Lindsay, a former equerry to the Queen, was swept away and killed instantly, his skull fractured by a huge lump of ice. 'Major Hugh Lindsay, born 30.04.53, was taken by the avalanche, carried some 450 metres and fell over a small cliff along with the snow of the avalanche,' said the official report. Lindsay, the target of Diana and Fergie's brolly-prodding exploits at Ascot the previous year, had been among the royal party staying at a chalet at Wolfgang, near Klosters.

The official report on the tragedy by the Director of Public Prosecutions for the Graubunden district noted Charles's persistent habit of skiing outside slopes designated as safe. 'Prince Charles, as he has done frequently over the last few years, was on winter holiday in the area of Davos-Klosters and was skiing with his retinue primarily off the prepared pistes,' said the prosecutor. 'The intention was that Prince Charles would ski with his friends, Mr and Mrs Charles Palmer-Tomkinson and other members of his party while the Duchess of York had engaged mountain guide Bruno Sprecher as her personal guide. On the morning of 10 March, 1988, the group met on the Gotschna ridge and subsequently skied down the Drostobel run which had been opened. At this point, two groups were formed, one around Prince Charles, whose group skied on rapidly, and the other group around the Duchess of York who was skiing more slowly.'

Fergie, who was pregnant with Beatrice, suffered a fall into a stream and, after a medical check-up, she returned to the group's chalet to spend the afternoon with Diana. The Princess, not the bravest of skiers, had pleaded a touch of flu and stayed behind.

'Sprecher was left with no work to undertake,' said the prosecutor. 'He was therefore invited by Prince Charles's group to join them in further descents. After lunch the group consisted of Prince Charles, Charlie Palmer-Tomkinson, his wife Patty, Major Hugh Lindsay, Bruno Sprecher and Police Corporal Domenic Caviezel, who had been assigned responsibility for the personal safety of Prince Charles. They skied a route variation which took them in the direction of Hagglamad and which would then lead through the steep Rosslerkeller run. Prince Charles and Charlie Palmer-Tomkinson led the way on to the steep slope and waited for the others at what was regarded as a safe location. After the complete group had stopped on the steep slope, large masses of snow above them suddenly detached themselves.

'Four people were able to ski out of the way in time. However, Major Hugh Lindsay and Patty Palmer- Tomkinson, who were standing higher up and further back, were caught by the falling snow. While PC Caviezel was using the radio which he carried to notify the emergency and mountain rescue post and to summon aid, Sprecher was first to ski down the steep Rosslerkeller run, skiing round the sharp fall, to arrive at the mouth of the avalanche. There he was able to locate Patty Palmer-Tomkinson by means of the Barryvox avalanche locating device which he carried with him. Mrs Palmer-Tomkinson was buried under some fifty centimetres of snow.'

Charles relived the horror in a statement to the authorities. 'It was all over in a terrifying matter of seconds,' he said. 'Herr Sprecher reacted with incredible speed and total professionalism. He skied down to the bottom of the avalanche as fast as he could, having called to the Swiss policeman to radio for a helicopter. Having reached the foot of the avalanche, he located Mrs Palmer-Tomkinson and dug down to her. Mr Palmer-Tomkinson and I skied down and arrived just as Herr Sprecher had reached Mrs Palmer-Tomkinson's head. He had given her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and revived her. He gave me the shovel to dig her out but I tried using my hands as well. At this point I stayed with Mrs Palmer-Tomkinson while he quickly went to try and locate Major Lindsay with Mr Palmer- Tomkinson. They found him fifteen yards above Mrs Palmer-Tomkinson, but tragically he had been killed outright during the fall, despite Herr Sprecher's valiant attempts to revive him by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.'

'In his case, all the lady doctor of the REGA Service who had arrived with the rescue team could do was to declare him dead,' said the prosecutor, adding that Charles's skiing party had 'disturbed the snow cover by their presence and triggered the slab avalanche themselves. Other causes for the triggering of the avalanche may be excluded.'

However no individual could be held responsible because the party were 'a common risk group, indulging in skiing outside the secured pistes while taking a certain element of risk into account. Through his own personal decision to ski over the fatal slope, each individual consciously took upon himself the risks thus arising.

'Heads of state, the members of their family and their retinue enjoy diplomatic immunity in Switzerland,' the prosecutor explained. 'Prince Charles at no time invoked his immunity. It was much more the case that he made himself available to the investigating authorities from the very beginning. The criminal investigation has been discontinued.'

When news of the avalanche reached London, Maxwell immediately ordered his Gulfstream jet into the air to fly a
Mirror
team of reporters and photographers to the scene. In the confusion, it had been feared that Charles might have been killed. Maxwell was overjoyed when he learned that his life had been spared.

Although shocked, it was claimed that Charles was anxious to continue the holiday but he listened to Diana's advice to return to Britain. They flew home from Switzerland with Major Lindsay's body in a British Aerospace 146 jet of the Queen's Flight. His widow Sarah, who was expecting their first child, watched as the flag-draped coffin was received at RAF Northolt, Middlesex.

Prince Charles wrote to a friend: it's nice to know I would have been missed. I only wish everyone could have survived. But that's fate, I suppose.' Fergie was more sentimental. 'God takes the good first,' she said. As a personal tribute to the young major, Diana promised Sarah Lindsay that she would never ski at Klosters again.

IF anyone doubted that Maxwell's joy over Charles's deliverance was genuine, the question mark was removed on the heir's fortieth birthday later that year. The publisher donated £500,000 to the Prince's Youth Business Trust, a gift he described as 'his own special birthday present to Prince Charles'.

Charles did not discover that the security services had bugged his friend until after the crooked tycoon had died. Maxwell plunged from his yacht
Lady Ghislaine
and drowned off Gran Canaria in November 1991 only days before a Swiss bank exposed his criminality. Considering his connections with the Communist Bloc, including a personal relationship with the murderous regime of the Bulgarian thug Todor Zhivkov, it was understandable that Maxwell attracted the scrutiny of British Intelligence. The bugging, however, failed to stop him from secretly plundering £800 million in company assets and in shares belonging to the pension funds of his employees.

It emerged that the top-secret Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at Cheltenham had been monitoring Maxwell's private calls for some time, certainly during the period of Wendy Henry's dismissal. The Joint Intelligence Committee, which co-ordinated and assessed information from MI5 and MI6, passed 'raw intelligence' from these calls to the Prime Minister's office and Cabinet Ministers. 'The sigint (signals intelligence) I saw in the autumn of 1989 included intelligence data on Robert Maxwell taken from telephone conversations and faxes intercepted in Israel and the Mediterranean, probably from his yacht the
Lady Ghislaine
,' Robin Robison, a former JIC officer, told the
Financial Times.
It was later learned that GCHQ could also monitor any phone line in Britain, including Maxwell's Ericcson system at the
Daily Mirror.