Diana--A Closely Guarded Secret (30 page)

Yet the experience had troubled the Princess. She was close to tears as we flew back to Harare, because she knew that she was returning to comfort and plenty, while these poor, hungry children faced a trek of many miles back to their mud-hut
homes in the drought ridden countryside. Those who believe that Diana’s work was nothing more than a series of photo opportunities in glamorous locations around the world should have seen this drained, exhausted woman sitting in the back of a helicopter that day and heard her speak of the heartbreaking scenes she had just witnessed.

AFTER SHE SEPARATED FROM HER HUSBAND, Diana’s fascination with Oliver Hoare intensified. She had made him the centre of her world, and in return she demanded his complete attention. Those of us close to her found that although she could still be great fun, her mood swings became more dramatic, and accusations of treachery against members of her inner circle more frequent and ferocious. She was particularly upset when press reports began to circulate hinting at an association with Hoare. I had warned her that it was inevitable that the story would leak out. The frequency of their meetings – as well as the secrecy, which would always rouse the suspicions of any lurking journalist or photographer lucky enough to stumble over one of their assignations – meant that it could not be very long before somebody blew the lid off the story.

I did not think that Hoare was good for the Princess, and tried gently to persuade her at least to be more cautious. I also rather solemnly reminded her that there was his wife to consider. This was not a popular remark to make. The Princess hated being reminded that Hoare was married and, worse, that she herself had initially gone out of her way to befriend his wife.

As her frustration intensified, so Diana’s demands increased. Lonely and confused, she began phoning the Hoares’ house in Chelsea, making several hundred telephone calls but immediately putting down the phone if Diane answered. For Diane Hoare, a strong and proud woman, being plagued by nuisance calls from Diana was the final straw. In October 1993 she decided to contact the police.

Detectives quickly traced the calls to private numbers inside Kensington Palace. At this point I was called in by Bob Marsh, the then Commander of Royalty Protection, who, convinced that the calls were being made by a disgruntled member of her staff, asked me if I could shed any light on who that person might be. At first, I thought he was not serious, and asked him whether he honestly believed this story. He said that he did and that he intended to inform the Commissioner accordingly. I asked him why he thought a member of the Prince and Princess of Wales’s household would do such a thing, but pulled myself up when I realised that he knew nothing about Diana’s friendship with Hoare. I felt it my duty to break my golden rule and tell him about Diana and Hoare. He was shocked when I told him that he need look no further for a culprit than the Princess herself. I felt dreadful, as though I had
betrayed her. Equally, though, I could not let some innocent member of Diana’s staff come under suspicion, nor could I let my service and department suffer the consequences of being led into pursuing such innocents – public ridicule – when the truth eventually came out.

The
News of the World
broke the story, which led to the journalist, Gary Jones, scooping the coveted Reporter of the Year award. Faced with extremely bad publicity – for even the public, who adored her, drew the line at her harassing the wife of a man with whom she was infatuated – Diana brooded over what she saw as the unfairness of her persecution by the media. Not once did she show any remorse, nor did she seem to think that she had done anything wrong. She simply did her best to distance herself from the allegations. She admitted having made some calls to the Hoare house, but insisted that she had not been responsible for the majority. This, of course, like the disgruntled-member-of-staff story, was also not true. The police traced at least 400 nuisance calls to her, and might easily have charged her. She knew, however, as I did, that it was never going to get that far. Diane Hoare had made her point, and the Princess backed off. Her friendship with Oliver Hoare cooled and, before long, was over. By then, however, I had left her service.

What really troubled me about her obsession with Hoare was that it created suspicion in Diana’s mind that I, and the police in general, impinged upon her freedom. This, I am sure led to her decision to do without police protection – a decision which, I truly believe, resulted in her death.

Mickey and Minnie, Disney’s King and Queen, were there to greet us on the fifth floor of the Grand Floridian Beach Resort when we arrived on that afternoon. Harry’s face lit up. Not that he was interested in being cuddled by people dressed as two giant cartoon characters – he wanted to get to the rides. Diana was thrilled too, but for different reasons. Her sons, instead of being at Balmoral with their father, as they usually were in August, were free, free to do what other children did on holiday.

My reconnaissance some weeks earlier had proved invaluable. I advised Diana in my briefing memo that the fact that Disney is spread over 43 square miles was to our advantage in our habitual battle to outwit the media because Disney, unlike any other theme park, has a VIP package which uses reserved routes to rides and attractions, along a predetermined course. A network of restricted paths and tunnels, not accessible to the public, enabled special guests literally to pop up at the front of queues and go straight on the ride without anyone elsewhere in the park knowing which attraction they were on. Moreover, conscious of Diana’s fear of being criticised for using her royal status to secure star treatment, my memo, dated 2 August 1993, reassured her because I had recommended the VIP package for security reasons: ‘At this time of the year up to 1 million people could be using the complex. Many rides and attractions will have queues of 2 to 3 hours’ waiting. The VIP method is not queue jumping, and will not be seen by others so to be.’ The note was returned with a huge tick from her pen through that section.

Something was nagging me about this trip, however. It
came at a time when the Princess, understandably, wanted to rid herself of the trappings of royalty. As a result, she was inevitably beginning to regard her police protection as another constant reminder that although she was now distanced from the royal family because of her separation from Prince Charles, she was still enveloped by the system. The trip also took place at a critical point in her uncompromising propaganda war against her husband. With her usual sure instinct for these things, she knew that photographs of her and the boys enjoying the sort of holiday experienced by millions of ordinary people would be seen as a refreshing change, while Charles would once again be unfairly portrayed as a dreary, out-of-touch and above all absent father. It was too good a photo opportunity for Diana to miss.

From the moment Sid Bass, a senior Disney executive, had invited her and the boys, assuring them of a minimum of fuss, I had felt that she was acting strangely about this trip. I sensed that she was not being completely straight with me. As I have said, it is standard protection practice, and essential for security, to carry out a reconnaissance ahead of any visit, official or private, planned by members of the royal family. As well as the two-day stopover at Disney’s Florida complex in Orlando, she proposed to spend the rest of the week at the family holiday home of her friend Kate Menzies at Lyford Cay in the Bahamas, a short flight from Florida. As I was preparing to leave on the reconnaissance, however, the Princess told me out of the blue that she did not think that it was necessary. I was a little taken aback; she knew the rules as well as I did.

‘Ken, I really don’t think there is any need for you to go and
check this one. You must stop wasting the taxpayers’ money,’ she said.

I looked at her quizzically, before answering, ‘Ma’am, with the greatest respect, you know the police procedures. The security arrangements for any visit made by you and your sons is my call.’ Then I added, only half jokingly, ‘And since when have you been worried about spending taxpayers’ money?’

In retrospect, this was perhaps a little blunt, or even disrespectful, but we were going through one of our difficult periods, and I was not in the mood to be told how to do my job.

Diana did not challenge my decision again, but I was so perturbed that I asked her directly if she was keeping something from me. Again she refused to talk about it, but intuition told me that something was up. Although she wanted her sons to have a good holiday, I suspected that she was planning to use this trip with her sons to hit back at the Prince, as the state of their relationship continued to deteriorate, fuelled by a concerted PR offensive in the press. That was beyond my remit, however, and there was in any case very little I could do to stop her pursuing that ultimately self-destructive war except – as usual – advise caution.

On the advance security review at Orlando one of my first tasks was to address senior Disney security managers, so that between us we could ensure that Diana and her sons would be safe during their stay. Most of the professionals employed by Disney to police their resort were former state security officers or FBI agents. They were great guys – utterly professional, and convinced that if they could deal with the
visit of a US President and Michael Jackson, then looking after ‘Lady Di’, as they called her, would be ‘a piece of cake’. I was not so sure, however.

Diana’s uncharacteristic attitude to the reconnaissance puzzled me, and I still had that nagging feeling of doubt about her motives. Although she had assured me that, apart from her and the boys, only I knew about the private holiday, I had a hunch that she had released the information about her trip to the British press via a sympathetic reporter. I therefore asked one of Disney’s senior security chiefs if it would be possible to run a name check through the company’s computer. Within seconds the name Richard Kay flashed up on the screen. The
Daily
Mail
journalist was booked to arrive at the Grand Floridian on exactly the same day as Diana; even more significantly, the booking had been made on the very day that Diana had told me of her wish to go to Florida. My hunch had proved correct, and I now understood why Diana had been acting so strangely. It was clear that she had personally tipped Kay off, and I was reasonably certain that he would have passed on the information, at her behest, to the rest of the royal ratpack. She had wanted to stop my advance security check because she was worried that I might discover what she was planning. She had been right to be worried, but at least I now knew what I was dealing with.

Despite my disappointment at this sly behaviour I still had a job to do. Next day, confident that everything was under control at Disney, I flew to Nassau in the Bahamas to reconnoitre the second phase of the proposed holiday. I was met by Sergeant Glen Roy of the Bahamas Police Department, who drove me to
Lyford Cay to check the arrangements at ‘Casuarina Beach’, the house belonging to the Menzies family where the Princess and her party were to stay. It turned out to be set in a development that afforded a great deal of privacy, being part of a huge luxury complex, privately policed and spotlessly maintained. The house itself had a magnificent swimming pool with the beach less than fifty yards away and there was an added bonus at that time of the year, for despite the temperatures nudging 95°F, this was low season, with very few people around.

Diana would be accompanied by her girlfriends Kate Menzies and Catherine Soames, and otherwise by only one member of staff, the boys’ nanny, Olga Powell. William was joined by a schoolfriend, Andrew Charlton, and Harry had Catherine’s equally impish son, also Harry, as a playmate. My team consisted of Trevor Bettles, ‘Jack’ Tarr, Dave Sharp and night-duty officer PC Knights.

It soon became abundantly clear, however, that, given the size of the party, there would not be enough room in the house for the entire protection team, so I decided to try to rent a nearby villa. On the following day I was put in touch with an American named Tom Wyman, who was happy to rent out his house, with its exclusive beach frontage, and which just happened to be about twice the size of Diana’s holiday accommodation, for the reduced, off-season price of $5,000 (£3,300) for the week.

Disney had arranged everything perfectly and after our first foray into the Magic Kingdom on the day we arrived the boys were already alight with excitement. Better still, apart from Disney’s own photographer there was not a cameraman in sight. I sensed, however, that the Princess was a little edgy.

Next morning, we set off on an incredibly full programme, determined to pack in as much in as possible. As we crisscrossed Disney World underground or on the restricted paths, going from ride to ride, it became clear that the media had already arrived en masse. Some had even booked into our hotel, but Disney’s security proved to be extremely effective at keeping them away. Somehow, however, they got word that Diana and her sons were heading for MGM’s
Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular
(the two princes were obsessed with the phenomenally successful movie, starring Harrison Ford), and several Fleet Street photographers had already positioned themselves inside the auditorium.

With Diana and the boys safely settled in their seats, the show got under way. Behind us in the back row, I could hear a commotion as Disney security officers, who had decided to eject anyone they thought looked like a member of the press, set about their task with a will. Most of the press men simply left, but one of the photographers, Frank Barrett, a spirited individual from the
Daily Star
, refused to leave and started spouting something about press freedom in his loud cockney twang.

‘There is no such thing here, sir. This is the Magic Kingdom and we have our own laws and rules,’ one of the officers said as he hustled Barrett out of the auditorium. The offending cameraman was then ‘arrested’ and taken to a Disney detention centre, where he was threatened with ‘deportation from the Magic Kingdom’, until I personally intervened on his behalf.

With this kind of backup, there was no need to negotiate with the press or hold daily briefings, because we could do exactly
what we wanted without them knowing. William and Harry were clearly having the best fun of their lives, which certainly lightened the Princess’s mood, and the sense of developing tension seemed to evaporate.

Deep down, however, I was still unhappy about Diana’s decision to tip off the media about the visit. Yet much to her private irritation, the VIP system of driving along the restricted routes, or walking along the labyrinth of underground walkways, meant that for most of the time we were out of sight. So far not one photograph had appeared in the press. Some journalists had even resorted to placing an advertisement in the local newspaper, asking any tourist who had taken a photograph of the Princess and her sons to call them. So far so good – except that, mysteriously the press kept arriving in roughly the right place, albeit usually a few minutes too late. But whatever her motives (which, to be fair, were above all to ensure that her sons had a terrific holiday), William and Harry were in their element. That in turn could be relied upon to make their mother happy. I returned to my suite that evening convinced that the tide was turning, and that in a few days Diana would be her usual fun-loving self.