As a matter of urgency my name had to be cleared in France. I must get to London to pick up the papers and money awaiting me with Mr Green, my Uncle Semyon’s agent. Most importantly I must find a way to offer my skills to Mussolini, in whom all my idealism was invested. The newspapers confirmed everything I had guessed. Il Duce brought a dash of romance and tough common sense to politics. Steadfastly he refused to let the forces of international finance and communism dictate his policies as they dictated those of other modern governments. Since my arrival in Tangier, I had read all I could about the great dictator. I had seen him on the newsreels. Enthusiastically I had followed his career, noting how he had healed political divisions in Italy, bringing together a confusion of disparate radical faiths. Socialist, Christian Democrat, nationalist, anarchist, communist, republican and monarchist were united under one coherent Fascist system, tempered in the fires of self-discipline and rigorous military training. What was more, he attracted the most original thinkers and artists of the day. Film-makers, engineers, scientists of every persuasion flocked to Il Duce’s court. The Novecenta was famous as the mecca of modern art. Italian design and engineering presented a flair even the French could not match.
Miss von Bek had described this to me, of course, while crossing the Sahara. I wondered if she had succeeded in reaching Italy, piloting my ‘Bee’, taking news of me to her master even before I arrived?
When I spoke of these ambitions and ideals I was humoured by Shura. I began to feel a small frustration, even though I was still content to rest for a while and play the simple soul he wished me to be. Given that I needed to relax and restore myself, there was no better way than in an exclusive Mediterranean resort while Shura’s business was conducted. I had the pick of the best Palma whores and was left to make friends of both sexes, indulging every desire.
For all my vast and varied experience, I was still a young man of thirty. Moreover, I had gained easy access to an inner brotherhood of power and lechery, in which the most refined sexual appetites were developed and satisfied. I found it difficult to resist these distractions. Consequently, I became well acquainted with a number of Spanish officers, two or three leading Italian Fascists, French entrepreneurs, American playboys. Among the female adventuresses inevitably attracted to this company was a Romanian woman whose willingness to experiment in every sexual variation became dangerous to us both. When I attempted to break off the relationship, she grew persistent in her demands, and when at last I refused, threatened to blackmail me. I confided my dilemma to my old friend, who told me to ignore the woman. She was no threat, he said. As it happened, a day or two later Shura needed me to go with him to Barcelona and keep an eye on the yacht there while he was ashore. When we got back to Andratx she had grown bored and left, we were told, for Marseilles. Only three weeks later she was found dead ‘of heart failure’ on the promenade at St Malo, just across from the fortress. She had been attempting to watch the cricket match which the defiant British always played in full view of the French on the Jersey side. They found a telescope in her hand. There was some talk in the press of her being the employee of a foreign power.
What an exciting time in world politics! Shura told me that when people lost faith in their representatives and leaders they turned to the likes of his boss for some sort of certainty. Stavisky could act and not have to produce forty pages of double-talk first. That’s what people liked about him, just as they liked Mussolini. He could get things done quickly without excessive publicity. ‘When governments need mercenaries to do their work it’s clear to me that the world needs new governments,’ said Boris our cafe friend. And Shura had winked at me.
For all his apparent cynicism, Shura was merely realistic. Stavisky was one of those concerned men of power prepared to stand up to the corrupt forces of big business. At the Bristol there was much talk of returning to old values by new, radical methods — of ‘thinking the unthinkable’ as the phrase went in those days, ‘and forgiving the unforgivable’. Everywhere was chaos. Only ruthless, decisive action could restore society and return nations to their former pre-war stability and prosperity.
This heady talk, the intellectual cut and thrust, was a huge treat for me. In recent months, aside from brief meetings with Rosie von Bek, when we had little time for this sort of conversation, I had known only the pronouncements of a pagan prince and the opinions of an intelligent Negro, neither of whom had been exposed to the main streams of European politics.
Rose von Bek, admittedly, had prepared me for some of the ideas I now encountered, but it was elixir to my soul to hear all the details of what Mussolini was doing for Italy. The communists were ruining Germany, civil war in France was almost inevitable, republicanism was destroying Spain, the union-bankrupted British were effectively a spent force, American neutralism was fuelled by their vast domestic problems, and Stalin threatened the very foundations of Christendom. The old political structures were proving useless in the modern world; party divisions were defeating the very democracy they were supposed to defend, creating only misery and uncertainty. The majority of people were not anyway natural democrats. Careless liberalism was the enemy of everyone, even those it pretended to represent.
I began to spend much of my time with a charming young Spanish officer. Lieutenant Jaime Pujol shared many of my frustrations and much of my idealism. He was a gentle soul forever concerned about the pain of the world. How could we eradicate it? ‘It is not right that people live in uncertainty and terror. Society has failed them. Even the Church is failing them. The left offered them justice and failed to provide it. The right offers stability but at too high a price. Where can they turn? Fear is becoming a way of life in far too many parts of the world, especially in Europe. The power has been torn from the hands of the men of conscience. Gangsters rule everywhere - in Russia, in Germany, in America, and increasingly in Spain. Their “revolutions” are meaningless, self-serving and cruel. They have no religion or morality. But we cannot merely replace one tyranny with another. What’s the answer, my dear Señor Gallibasta? Not all strong leaders are gangsters, surely?’
He mourned both the fall of the old politicians and the fashion among Europe’s crowned heads for abdication. ’They are seized with some kind of collective guilt. They are frightened by what happened to their Tsar. They believe the process towards republicanism is inevitable. Mussolini has proven that idea a he, yet still they continue as if they are responding to the will of the people rather than the will of a tiny minority of leftist zealots. Believe me, Señor Gallibasta, I have every sympathy with their anger and share their understanding of the world’s injustices, but these imbalances must be addressed by men of conscience, not by the politics of envy. How has such a frightful situation come about?’
I was no better equipped than my friend to answer this increasingly familiar question and, like him, could only point to Mussolini. ‘The will of a single individual,’ I said, ‘is what it takes — if his will represents also the will of the nation. Really, it’s all fascism offers - security through unity. But it takes a great man to combine the best ideas from a collection of isms, shape them into a coherent whole and create unity. Unity must be more important than our differences. Unity must be desired by the common will. Unity cannot be imposed from above. Only a very great man can express the public will in a broad, far-ranging programme of dramatic, even revolutionary ideas. Mussolini offers our antidote to the lure of Bolshevism. But believe me, Mussolini is modern Italy as Hindenburg can never be modern Germany. Old Hindenburg lacks the common touch. Rhetoric is simply not enough. We need action. Even the best-intentioned professional politicians and soldiers are divorced from those they represent. Today’s leaders have to be men of the people who can reach across divisions and shake hands with an experienced ruling class, headed by a modern, socially concerned monarch, and arrive at a compromise which satisfies and benefits all. Italy unites her people in a common purpose to establish the rule of law and appeal to the selfless sense of community which lies within us. And the Church must help.’