25

Gotcha

Q: So you might have had something to do with it?

A: I don’t recall. I didn’t say I might or I might not. I just said I don’t recall.

Craig Bond, asked about money transferred from Jersey¹

On 28 February 1995, the day after Alan’s release from bankruptcy, an advertisement for offshore companies caught Craig Bond’s eye in the in-flight magazine American Way, perhaps as he relaxed in his business-class seat. Soon afterwards, he was on the phone to Universal Corporate Services in Texas to buy a shelf company in the Bahamas for US$1,000, having made it perfectly clear to the sales manager that he needed one where the owner’s identity could be kept secret.

A week later, Craig phoned Universal again from Upp Hall to say that his new Bahamian company, SHC International, needed a bank account. He was advised to open one at Standard Chartered in Jersey and was sent the requisite forms.² Shortly afterwards, $215,320 was wired to his new account from Nevill Keating Pictures in London. According to the Bond Corp liquidator’s statement of claim in the South Australian Supreme Court action, this cash had come from the sale of the missing Bond Corp artworks.³

But Craig’s secret new Bahamian company was not just set up to be a money box. It was also to take over as owner of the Portrait of Captain Cook. Bollag, it seems, was being edged out of the Bonds’ financial affairs now that Alan was no longer a bankrupt.

According to the liquidator’s statement of claim, Alan’s other son, John, was allegedly involved in negotiating this reshuffle.

On or about 8 or 9 March 1995, John Bond met Bollag in Singapore at which time John Bond and Bollag discussed and arranged the cessation of the involvement by Bollag and entities associated with him, including Firstmark … in the affairs of the Bond interests including holding assets on their behalf. In the course of this meeting, John Bond and Bollag agreed that Captain Cook would be put in the name of an entity directly controlled by Craig Bond.⁴

John Bond filed a defence in the Supreme Court of South Australia, where the Bond Corp liquidator is based, in which he had accepted that this meeting with Bollag took place, but denied that the Captain Cook portrait or the above matters were discussed. He also denied any involvement with the disputed artworks.⁵

By this stage the Captain Cook had been moved from the Zuricher Freilager to a warehouse near London’s Heathrow Airport in anticipation of its delivery to the National Gallery, but in April 1995 it was moved again to Christie’s fine-art storage facility on the south bank of the Thames in Nine Elms. And for some extraordinary reason Craig Bond now went along to Christie’s in person to make all the arrangements for storage and insurance. Having gone to great lengths to establish a dummy company in the Caribbean to disguise the painting’s real owner, he identified himself to Christie’s as Craig Bond and told the firm he could be contacted by telephone at Upp Hall. And in case this hadn’t left a clear enough trail for investigators to follow, he then paid a £730 bill with a cheque from his private account at Barclays Bank in Buntingford, a small town close to the Bonds’ English country mansion.⁶

With ownership and custody of the Captain Cook portrait in Craig’s safe hands, the famous explorer stayed quietly at anchor for the next nine months. But in early 1996 Robert Bleakley found an Australian private collector who was interested in buying the painting if the problems of title could be sorted out—the collector being the famous TV game-show millionaire, Reg Grundy. Nevill and Craig consequently flew to Perth in March 1996 to ask an old school mate of Craig’s called Lee Christensen, who worked for the law firm Phillips Fox, whether there would still be legal problems selling the painting now that Alan’s bankruptcy was over.

And then all hell broke loose.

Half a world away in London, on 19 March 1996, the offices of Nevill Keating Pictures were raided by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office, who were helping Australian police investigate allegations that Bond was concealing assets from his creditors. The raiding party of eight or nine officers banged on the door at 6.30am to be welcomed by Lady Nevill’s husband Billy Keating in his pyjamas, reeking of drink and happy to chat. Her ladyship, in contrast, was taut, angry and uncooperative. Nevill’s reluctance to help, however, did not stop her visitors taking away storage receipts, records and invoices for several of the missing Bond Corporation artworks, including the Portrait of Captain Cook.

According to Nevill’s evidence on oath five months later, the police had barely left her office when the telephone rang. It was Jurg Bollag, whom she had not heard from in some time. ‘He simply said that I was “on my own” and to do what I had to do. He then wished me luck and said goodbye.’⁷

Hard on the heels of the police raiding party came lawyers for the Bond Corp liquidator, who soon obtained a secret UK court order to stop the Captain Cook being moved from Christie’s without his consent. Meanwhile, back in Australia, Craig was hit with a summons to appear before the Supreme Court of South Australia, where the liquidator, Richard England, had started secret legal proceedings a few months earlier.⁸

It was not entirely coincidence that the police and England had pounced on the paintings at exactly the same moment, for both had realised that the other was about to do so and had fought fiercely about who should go in first. But it was remarkable that the liquidator had managed to keep his investigations secret from the Bonds. This had only been possible because the court had imposed a blackout on the proceedings, after being told by the liquidator that there was little prospect of getting the artworks back if Bond got wind of what was happening. As one of England’s lawyers explained to the court:

… there is a real and substantial risk that … deliberate steps will be taken to stultify the liquidator’s investigations and to put assets beyond or further beyond reach … Further, I am concerned that … steps may be taken to manufacture or concoct evidence.⁹

The various secrecy orders surrounding the case would not all be lifted until late 2000, and only then would it become entirely clear how much evidence had been gathered. But by using the same sort of powers as Ramsay had employed so effectively to get into Bond’s Jersey companies in 1993, England’s sleuths had persuaded courts in the USA, England, the Bahamas, Jersey and the Isle of Man to crack open companies and bank accounts all over the world. They had also compelled fifty witnesses to give evidence on oath and had eventually coerced the extremely reluctant Lady Nevill to tell them everything she knew. It was a testimony to what the legal system can achieve when it’s allowed to operate as our lawmakers intended.

But when poor Craig Bond stumbled onto the stand in Adelaide’s Supreme Court on 29 March 1996 to be examined about the fate of the disputed $6 million worth of artworks, he had no clue that anyone had even been on his trail. And he clearly hadn’t the faintest idea what was about to hit him.

Back in 1990, the thirteen Bond Corp paintings had been partly paid for with a cheque from a Craig Bond company, and it was this silly mistake that had first raised suspicions: if George Way had been buying them, it seemed odd that Craig was footing the bill. So it was this that Craig was asked about first.

His explanation was that Way had phoned him out of the blue to ask whether he would lend him some money, and had then faxed him a list of the paintings. Craig told the court that he had not thought to ask what the paintings were worth, yet had agreed to lend Way the best part of $1 million.

It soon became clear, however, that this money had never been lent, and that Way had agreed to hand the paintings over to Craig on receipt of his $50,000 fee. Craig was then asked whether he knew what had happened to the artworks after this. Prefacing his answer with the word ‘Privilege’ to ensure that his evidence could not be used in any criminal proceeding, he replied, ‘I have no knowledge of the paintings and no knowledge of what happened to the paintings after they were sold to Mr Way’.¹⁰

As he stood on the stand and uttered this denial, Craig had no idea of what his interrogators knew, and even less notion of what they would soon discover. But within three months they would find out that he had delivered the Portrait of Captain Cook in person to Christie’s in April 1995 and then paid bills for storage from his UK bank account. A year later, on re-examination, they would therefore be able to make him admit that this claim to ignorance was a lie.

Q:	Let us not be in any doubt about this. At the time that you were examined on 29 March 1996 you knew well of the whereabouts of the Captain Cook painting.
A:	I’m not denying that.11

Craig was also asked in this first examination whether he had received the paintings. And again, he lied on oath, as he would do throughout his examination: ‘Privilege. No I never received the paintings’.

By the time his re-examination came round in April 1997, however, he had added some extra words in biro to make the transcript read as follows: ‘Privilege. I never received the paintings from Mr Way of High Street Galleries’.

When asked on oath why he had made this change, Craig said it was because he had had time to reflect and correct his answer. He then got himself into terrible trouble trying to explain what he meant by this.

Q:	In modifying the answer as you have, you appear to have drawn a distinction between never receiving the paintings from anybody and never receiving the paintings from Mr Way of High Street Gallery?
A:	That’s correct.
Q:	Is that the distinction you intended to draw?
A:	Yes, that’s true, that’s correct.
Q:	Why did you intend to draw that distinction?
A:	Well, because it’s the factually correct answer.
Q:	Do you mean to imply that you had in fact received the paintings from someone other than Mr Way?
A:	No, not entirely. No.
Q:	Not entirely?
A:	No.
Q:	To some extent you meant that?
A:	Perhaps.12

Craig explained on reflection in his first examination in 1996 that he might have inadvertently had something to do with the Portrait of Captain Cook. He told the court that he had been asked by Angela Nevill in 1995 to take two paintings to a high-security storage warehouse in London, and it occurred to him that one of these might have been the Captain Cook.

Indeed, on further reflection, he recalled that it was the Captain Cook. Angela Nevill had asked him to take charge of it (even though he didn’t own it) and deliver it to Christie’s to have it stored on behalf of a company whose name he could not remember. She had done this, he said (implausibly), because she had heard that he might have a claim against this company and might like to negotiate a settlement with them.

Craig told the court that Angela Nevill had then given him the name and telephone number of a company in the Bahamas. He had rung this number and spoken to a woman who ran the company. And she had asked him to sell the Captain Cook for her.

The trouble with this ludicrous story was that when the liquidator’s lawyers soon interviewed the woman in the Bahamas and asked her whether the tale was true, she told them that it was a pack of lies.

In August 1996, five months after Craig’s first uncomfortable session in the witness box, Mark Hoffmann flew to Nassau on behalf of the Bond liquidator to examine Nancy Lake, the sole director of SHC International. A Canadian accountant who had lived in the Bahamas for eighteen years, Lake ran the local office of Universal Corporate Services, acting as a director (and generally the only director) of the 150 international corporations that UCS had set up for clients.

Bahamian secrecy laws were supposed to make it almost impossible for investigators to unmask the real owners of such companies (which was why people like Craig wanted to use them) but Mark Hoffmann had obtained an order from the Bahamas Supreme Court compelling Lake to surrender her files and submit to examination, on the basis that SHC was possibly involved in fraud.

Lake told Hoffmann on oath that she had made no decisions for the company and had simply done what she was told by Craig Bond. She said that it was owned by Craig and had been set up in March 1995 with two bearer shares. Crucially, she also told Hoffmann that SHC owned the Portrait of Captain Cook.¹³

According to Lake, Craig’s Bahamian company really acted as a postbox. She had a standing instruction to send mail to Craig at Upp Hall by express post as soon as it arrived; had no authority to sign cheques or deal with the company’s Jersey bank account; and merely forwarded bank statements, unopened, when they arrived by post.

Lake had never met Craig in the flesh but had talked to him over the phone several times. He had also sent her letters telling her what to write to Nevill Keating Pictures on SHC notepaper. She was able to produce one such letter stating that SHC was the owner of the Portrait of Captain Cook and instructing Nevill to place it on the market. Another letter from SHC instructed Christie’s Fine Art to store the Captain Cook and a ‘naval portrait’.¹⁴ She then produced a handwritten letter from Craig telling her to keep only those documents that were necessary for her administration—an instruction that she had clearly ignored.

Armed with Lake’s testimony, a stack of documents and more information from other inquiries, the lawyers resumed their examination of Craig in Australia in April 1997. Under pressure, Craig’s memory began to improve slightly. He recalled that SHC was the Bahamas company. But he was sure that he had had no dealings with it.

The lawyers then produced a document showing that SHC had telexed $51,031.24 to one of Craig’s companies, Hullmes Pty Ltd, at Bank West in Northbridge on 18 January 1996. The lawyers asked him why they had paid him this money. Craig could not recall. And why had SHC also telexed $51,188.03 to another of his companies, Tambar? Craig couldn’t recall that either. Nor could he help with any information about SHC.

A:	What do you mean, what do I know about it?… I know that it’s a company registered in the Bahamas I believe, that it apparently owns some art work and really very little other than that.
Q:	Likewise, is it your evidence that you had nothing to do with the transfer of funds into the Tambar and Hullmes accounts from SHC International Inc.?
A:	Privilege. I don’t recall.
Q:	So you might have had something to do with it?
A:	Privilege. I don’t recall. I didn’t say I might or I might not. I just said I don’t recall.
Q:	Is it conceivable that you did have something to do with it?
A:	I don’t recall.
Q:	You mean you don’t recall whether it’s conceivable or not?
A:	Privilege. I do not recall.15

As the evidence began to pile up, Craig’s memory improved more markedly. He now remembered that SHC had an account at the Standard Chartered Bank in St Helier, Jersey, and what’s more, that he could sign cheques on it. So he was asked whether he knew how much money was in the account or where it had come from. He said he had no idea. Did he set it up, he was asked? No, he didn’t believe he did.

Then came the crunch. His examiner, Dick Whitington QC, produced documents from Standard Chartered, signed by Craig, which showed that he had opened the account on behalf of SHC on 7 March 1995 and that he had nominated himself as the only person who could sign cheques and the only person from whom the bank could take instructions.

Craig was then forced to admit that he had indeed opened the Jersey account.

Next, Whitington produced a handwritten letter from Craig to Standard Chartered instructing the bank to transfer the two amounts of $51,000-odd to Tambar and Hullmes—the very amounts that he had just been asked about. By this stage, Whitington had already asked who owned SHC, to which Craig had replied:

A:	Privilege. I have no idea who the owner is.
Q:	No idea at all?
A:	Privilege. No idea whatsoever.
Q:	Have you ever had any beneficial interest in SHC International Inc.?
A:	Privilege. None whatsoever.

Now he asked again.

Q:	You say that neither you nor any person, company, trust or entity associated with you had any beneficial interest in SHC International at the time?
A:	Privilege. That is correct.
Q:	You are quite certain about that?
A:	Privilege. Yes, I am.
Q:	I suggest to you that’s false.
A:	Privilege. That’s not correct.16

Armed with this denial, which appeared to put Craig at risk of prosecution for perjury, Whitington then produced a series of instructions from Craig to Standard Chartered. One was to pay money from SHC’s account to Upp Hall Leisure and Entertainment, another to pay a car company in Perth. He then produced bank documents to show that Craig had instructed Standard Chartered to close SHC’s account in June 1996 and send the balance of £29,547 to Craig’s personal account at Barclays Bank in Buntingford.¹⁷

As if this was not enough, Whitington then recited testimony from Paul Pettit, the owner of Universal Corporate Services, that Craig had instructed him to set up SHC. Once again, Craig could not remember Mr Pettit or the phone call. But once again, the lawyer had all the evidence he needed to jog his memory.

In the first place, there was a cheque for US$490 drawn on an account at the Overton Bank & Trust in Fort Worth that Craig had signed, which had been received by Universal in payment for setting up SHC. Then there were the phone records from Upp Hall which showed fax and phone calls made to Universal Corporate Services in March 1995 when the company was being set up.

Craig was now reminded that if he failed to answer questions truthfully he would be committing an offence. He told the court he was aware of this. He was then taken through all his denials again.

Did he remember Paul Pettit? No, he did not.

Did he have any beneficial interest in SHC? No, he did not.

Did he have anything to do with directing the affairs of the company? No, he did not.

Did he have anything to do with setting it up? No, he did not. Did he procure Nancy Lake to act as director of SHC? No, he did not.

Had Craig had any idea what the liquidator’s lawyers were going to produce next, he might have been more careful with his blank denials, which once again laid him open to charges of perjury. And had he been warned by Master Bowen Pain, who was presiding over the examination, that he was in serious danger of being jailed for contempt, he might also have been more careful. But he had no idea and he wasn’t warned. So he was drawn further into the trap.

Whitington now produced Craig’s own handwritten letter to Nancy Lake in the Bahamas on 21 March 1995, which referred to Paul Pettit, whom he had supposedly never heard of, to SHC, which he had denied having dealt with, and of course to Nancy Lake, whose name he claimed to have forgotten. And contrary to Craig’s denials on oath, this letter demonstrated that he had indeed called all the shots. Not only was he ordering Lake to forward all mail to him by express post and to send him Universal’s bills, he was also instructing her to destroy all copies of his correspondence, which she had clearly not done. All in all, it was a devastating document.

Q:	You didn’t expect the liquidator at today’s examination to have a letter such as this, did you?
A:	I didn’t know what the liquidator might have.18

Craig was then shown a further handwritten letter he had sent Lake in March 1995, instructing her to contact Angela Nevill with regard to selling the Captain Cook. In English that was little better than his famous father’s he had written:

Dear Nancy,

I would like to send a letter to Lady Angela Neville [sic] of Neville-Keating [sic] Pictures … the letter should be from SHC INTERNATIONAL INC and singed [sic] by you as DIRECTOR. Following is the required draft.¹⁹

Craig was now forced to agree that this showed he had in fact directed Nancy Lake in the affairs of SHC International, which he had specifically denied moments earlier. Once again, he had been caught lying on oath.

Having dealt with SHC, Whitington moved on to the aftermath of the raid by the UK Serious Fraud Office. After the paintings had been frozen by court order in May 1996, Craig had employed a firm of Irish solicitors to help him get the Captain Cook back. They had written to Christie’s in December 1996 to say that they would turn up at the warehouse and demand the painting’s return.

Whitington now produced records of calls made from Craig’s mobile phone showing calls to these Dublin lawyers, calls to SHC in the Bahamas and a call from Australia to Standard Chartered in Jersey. Craig, however, simply disputed that he had made them, either saying that he could not recall, or suggesting that they had been made by someone else using his phone. At this point, Whitington either lost his patience or decided that it was time to get tough. Turning to the judge, he said:

We think Mr Bond at this stage should be given a warning. Frankly, we think the implications for him are very serious. We think the time has come for him to acknowledge that the game is up, to stop this charade which in our view he has been conducting since Monday in persisting in saying that he can’t recall things which patently he may be able to recall. The time has come for him to appreciate he can either acknowledge his participation in these events and handle it as best he can or can press on with this charade and in our submission put himself in contempt of court but at risk of serious criminal prosecution from the authorities for a whole host of offences.

We think with great respect the time has come where Mr Bond should be given a warning as to his conduct and answers in the witness box.²⁰

Reading through the transcript it is hard not to sympathise with Whitington’s point of view. There is no question that the law lays down a duty to answer questions in such an examination fully and truthfully, and there is no question that Bond had done quite enough to risk charges of perjury or contempt, yet Master Bowen Pain chose to decline the opportunity to read the riot act. Instead of warning the witness to shape up or be shipped out, he directed his words to Whitington, telling him, ‘A decision as to whether he is given a warning is my decision. I will make that as and when I deem appropriate’.

Craig was extremely lucky to have escaped punishment for contempt much earlier, because he had led the court on a ridiculous dance for a year in his efforts to avoid being examined. After his first appearance in March 1996 he had simply failed to turn up on three separate occasions—in August and September 1996 and then again in February 1997. His last failure had been the most blatant. The liquidator’s lawyers had sent him a Perth–Adelaide air ticket, so he could have no excuse for non-attendance, and warned him that he faced a penalty of $10,000 or two years in jail if he did not show up. Regardless, he had stayed away, sending a doctor’s note from England to say that he was unfit to travel because he had a respiratory infection. Unfortunately for Craig, however, Malaysian Airlines’s computer showed that he had left Perth on 13 February after receiving the summons, with no apparent intention of returning to Australia until 28 February, which was nine days after he was due to appear.²¹

On that occasion, Master Bowen Pain had referred the matter to his superior, Justice Debelle, who had indeed summonsed Craig for contempt. Craig had then decided to give in, paying $120,000 in costs to the liquidator’s lawyers and agreeing to turn up. The matter had then been dropped, so it had cost him money but not his freedom.

In the intervening period, Craig had also been trying his damnedest to persuade courts in the UK and Australia to have the examination halted, fighting three unsuccessful legal actions on this point. He had also taken legal action to have transcripts of his examination destroyed. And finally, he had asked the court for copies of all the material that the liquidator had collected, including transcripts of interviews, so that he would know what they had discovered. But the liquidator’s lawyers had argued successfully that everything should remain secret if they were to be given a chance of success.

Once the liquidator’s lawyers had finished grilling Craig, their next key target was Alan Bond. But he was clearly just as desperate to avoid questions about the artworks as his son, and so another protracted legal battle began.

The initial order to examine Alan on oath was issued by the South Australian Supreme Court on 24 April 1997, but for convenience sake it was decided to fly to Western Australia to interview him in prison. In late May, Dick Whitington and Master Bowen Pain therefore made the trip from Adelaide to Karnet Prison Farm south-east of Perth, where the superintendent’s office had been set aside for them to hold the hearing. Meanwhile, Bond’s lawyers, Andrew Harris and Tony Howard QC, flew in from Melbourne.

As they sat in the superintendent’s office, they could see Bond walking round the yard outside, sporting Oakley sunglasses and jungle greens. But getting him inside to answer questions proved to be difficult. Having been given a month’s notice of the hearing and having waited for everyone to make the long trek to Karnet, Bond’s QC Tony Howard now raised a crucial technical objection: the court had no power to take oaths outside South Australia or to bring Bond up from his cell. The liquidator’s lawyers suggested that the superintendent might order Bond to appear under section 22 of the Prisons Act (WA) 1981, and that a Western Australian judge could certainly do this. But after a long telephone conference, Justice Heenan of the Western Australian Supreme Court decided that he could not make an order without hearing submissions over the next ten days. So the court packed its bags, and the lawyers trooped off home again.

Back in Adelaide, Master Bowen Pain soon decided it was crazy to return to Perth if it was going to cause all this argument, and ordered Bond to appear for examination in South Australia instead. But this didn’t go ahead on 1 July as planned, because Bond’s lawyers instituted fresh legal action to strike out the examination as an abuse of process. They lost this argument at the first attempt, then appealed to the South Australian Supreme Court and lost again. They then appealed to the full bench of the Supreme Court and lost for a third time in October 1997.²² Next, they sought special leave to appeal to the High Court and applied for a stay of the examination while this was heard. And when the application for a stay was turned down, they applied for another. Finally, after losing at the fifth attempt, Bond and his lawyers were forced to give in. It was the old familiar pattern of legal trench warfare, in which one could lose all battles yet still hope to win the war by outlasting the enemy. This time, however, their opponents were not going to give up.

On 23 November 1997, Alan Bond was therefore escorted onto a plane from Perth to Adelaide, sandwiched between a couple of Western Australian prison officers. On his arrival, all the other passengers were made to wait as he was whisked off in an unmarked station wagon to spend a few nights in South Australia’s Yatala prison. The following day he was brought up from the cells into the criminal court building to face his interrogator.

It had taken a huge effort to get him this far but, as so often in the Bond story, the examination now threatened to be an almost total waste of time. By an extraordinary coincidence, Alan’s old amnesia had suddenly reasserted itself. And before long he was humbly asking the court for forbearance.

Perhaps it should be put on the transcript that in the last ten years I’ve had a number of medical problems which resulted in four strokes, and I have had open heart surgery and only eighteen months ago I had a blood clot and I’ve been quite seriously ill and I have had quite a bout of depression and I have lost a lot of memory. I would like them to understand, going back, dates long ago, I have grave difficulty with remembering things.²³

This picture of frailty was in stark contrast to the portrait Alan had painted to journalist Paul Spike in November 1994 or the evidence that had been given in the Manet fraud trial in June 1994 of his robust state of health. But Bond’s court-induced memory problems proved useful yet again, because he was now able to claim that he could not recall even the most basic information.

He could not, for example, remember that his artworks had formed the Alan Bond Collection. Nor could he recall that he had been executive chairman of Bond Corporation Holdings. He had also forgotten which office he had occupied in the Bond Tower, which year he had resigned as a director of Bond Corporation Holdings and which year his managing director, Peter Beckwith, had died.

His desire to assist his interrogators also failed to impress. At one point Master Bowen Pain was moved to observe that Bond was not trying to answer the questions or listen to his questioner.²⁴

But for all that, some crucial points were conceded to the liquidator. Bond’s diary showed that he had met George Way at 11.00am on 2 January 1990, half an hour after meeting Peter Beckwith, and he admitted that he had discussed the purchase of the paintings with both of them. There was also evidence that he had discussed the sale of the pictures to Way on 19 December 1989 with Beckwith and Michael Cross, his managing director at Dallhold. So it was clear that he knew about the transaction.

Thereafter, he had met Jurg Bollag twice in London in March 1990, three times in May 1990 and three times in June 1990, sometimes with Cross and sometimes with Nevill.²⁵ He even accepted that he had discussed the Portrait of Captain Cook on at least one of these occasions, but came up with a truly wonderful explanation of why he had done so.

According to Bond’s sworn evidence, Jurg Bollag had rung him in March 1990 to say that he (Bollag) had acquired some paintings from George Way, including the Captain Cook. He had then sought Alan’s advice on selling them. It was a truly fantastic story, a real gem, which prompted Dick Whitington to ask him sarcastically:

Q:	Did you say ‘Good Heavens, what are you doing with my Captain Cook painting?’ or something like that?
A:	Privilege. It was never my Captain Cook painting.
Q:	When he told you that, were you surprised?
A:	Privilege. It’s so long ago I can’t remember.26

Perhaps it was in fairyland that Bond had mislaid his precious memory capsule. For if he really thought anyone would swallow this, he’d obviously started living there himself. But he had always lived a charmed life—as events had a habit of demonstrating.