The Goliath Stone

The Goliath Stone is an action/adventure thriller set in the First World War & based on factual occurrences. The protagonist, Lieutenant Miles Armstrong, is a Canadian who enlisted in the Canadian cavalry & later transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. The story starts with Armstrong, who is multi-lingual, being recalled from front line service & seconded to the Foreign Office. He is told that he will fly to Rumania to rescue their queen from the Germans. Queen Marie, wife of the ineffectual Ferdinand of Rumania, is a one-time sweetheart of George V of England. Marie was a noted beauty who created as much interest in the society pages as the late Diana does in our time. The second motive of the assignment is to assist the Rumanians to recover their national treasures that had been sent to Russia for safekeeping when the Germans took Bucharest. But now the Tsar has been deposed, Russia is in revolutionary turmoil & Marie wants her country's treasures saved. Armstrong's third & secret assignment is to separate to the others. He is told that in 1907 the Irish crown jewels (the property of the English crown) had been stolen from Dublin castle. The German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, acquired them & gave them as a gift to Ferdinand, king of Rumania. Armstrong is told that he is to attempt to remove the Irish jewels & get them back to England. While being briefed in London he meets the lovely Anna-Marie DeCourville & has an affair with her, unaware that she is trying to steal one of the Irish jewels known as the Goliath Stone. With his mechanic, Sergeant O'Reilly, he flies to Jassy in Rumania, the new capital, now that Bucharest has fallen. There he meets Marie & her Canadian lover, Klondike Joe Boyle, now a Colonel in the Canadian army. Armstrong, Boyle & other go to Moscow but arrive as the Bolshevik revolution boils over, forcing them to break into the Kremlin during the fighting & recover the jewels. Armstrong again meets Anna-Marie & promises to give her the Goliath Stone.