For Queen and Country

“They’ll come for me one day. I know that this will have happened long before you read this… but I need my family to know that I did everything I could. The world must know what is happening here, and should it cost me my life… it costs me my life. ”. – Arthur P

And wallop; just like that. The numbers echoed in my mind as I tenuously tried to come to grips with what I was reading. My ordinary existence as a working class regular Joe had come to a sudden and abrupt end. My life forever changed my newly discovered wealth. My financial freedom. My Monetary independence for the rest of my life. The City of Rome was not built in a day, but a lucky hand it seemed had determined the course for my entire future overnight. My name is George Plunkett, and I am millionaire.

It all started on a Thursday spring afternoon in the City of London, emerging into daylight from the dusty world of the London Underground at Temple Station, my unzipped jacket being pulled open by unseen hands as the wind rushes into me at the station exit. As I make my way eastwards along the embankment I pass the mighty dragons which mark the western border of the City. I was on my way to collect some personal belongings of my late father, who’d passed away six months ago in China under suspicious circumstances - as was the professional opinion of the Coroner who oversaw my father’s case. To provide a degree of context, a fluent Mandarin speaker, Arthur Plunkett, my father, had been offered a very lucrative banking role four years earlier, and he and my mother had expatriated out to live in Shanghai so he could accommodate the role, after which returning to our London home became an exclusively Christmas occasion. It was reported at the time that my father had died of natural causes, however there was reason to believe there was more to the death than met the eye. The autopsy report, for one, concluded that Potassium chloride and large amounts of Sodium and were present in the blood levels – nine times higher than the usual amount for an adult male.

I decided to spare my mother’s heartache or retrieving the items herself. As a fully qualified lawyer, the office of David Sandringham QC was based in no.1 Ethel Street, a leading and highly reputable barristers’ chambers in the heart of Middle Temple, perched perfectly on the edge of the park overlooking a magnificent nymph statue fountain, its base filled with dozens of coins cast into the waters throughout the years by the wishful.

From the beautiful red brick walls and the cobbled streets which routinely feature as filming locations for an Olde worlde set for the City of London, the lane rises up to Fleet Street at the far end. With its public houses filled with smartly attired businessmen as the weekend fast approaches, iconic red buses and scores of bold black cabs, unique only to the City I’ve held in awe since I was a boy. So close by, yet seemingly in a totally different dimension of time. This hidden world is an oasis of old beauty and brilliance of some of the finest buildings that London has to offer. Overlooking the scene, the Union Jack flies proudly from the tower of the nearby Royal Courts of Justice. Unfurling from the pole, the culminating feel of the place seems to epitomise its integrity at the heart of the British Legal system.

As I make my way in, a young girl behind the reception desk invites me to sit in the waiting room, offering me tea or coffee which I politely decline. Before long, Mr Sandringham appears and greets me. He is a tall slim man with wispy salt and peppered grey hair, perhaps in his mid-60’s. We ascend the red carpet staircase to his office on the second floor where we sit down. ‘I have these items of your fathers which I have to return to you. Given the sensitivity, he explains, ‘I wished to return these in person rather than via secure mail’. As I sat opposite him, he gestures to a box on his desk, ‘As I’m sure you can appreciate, George, as bound by the Official Secrets Act that there is only so much I can disclose about the nature of your father’s life and death’. After a few moments - not immediately processing the gravity of what I’d just been told - I thanked him for his offered condolences and we parted ways.

Those three words...‘Official Secrets Act’ whirred and looped around in my head on the district line home. What could this possibly mean? –my father was a banker!

When I got back to our London home, which my parents had retained as after the Shanghai move, I eagerly rushed to the kitchen table to investigate further. Perhaps I would uncover more from the box, its items I thought, a portal to his soul.

I opened the box, the items in which include some family photos of us including one of me and my parents taken at the fairground when I was 10. Among other things were his personal laptop, his prestigious British Empire medal presented by Her Majesty the Queen apparently for charitable endeavors, a Shanghai train ticket, and a small black book. The book, seemingly insignificant and appearing as little more than a desk notebook, yet curiously out of place amongst the other objects.

But the curious little book caught my attention. Why on earth was that in here? Intriqued, I began to read…and it was at that moment that my life would be changed forever. I opened the front cover and began to read.

Acting as a cover as a high ranking executive at the China Construction Bank Corporation, it had transpired that he had been secretly working for the British Government, using his position for intelligence gathering on levels of corruption and extensive criminality allegedly being indulged in by the Chinese state.

‘Since the Communist Party’s relatively recent softening of their stance on capitalism, he goes on to explain, ‘shoddy construction projects resulting from shady underhand bribes have become an unfortunate norm in China’. As I read on, my father explains he had been assigned to reporting back to British Intelligence the sheer scale of the corruption, and in some instances the more obvious acts of criminality such as the forced labour of Uighur Muslims by the Chinese state in the grand constructions planned ahead of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Now - I never did know much about my father. He was always a very private individual, the Stiff upper Lip and the ‘Keep calm and carry on’ approach typical of the Oxford-educated Englishman born into the 1960’s Britain at the height of the Cold War. With a propensity to share and open up about his inner thoughts as elusive perhaps as a Salmon’s ability to vacate its watery domain to scale a tree, a personal life and a family life he kept very much separate; complimentary to each other yet polar opposites; both parallel, but there; coexisting, but never the two worlds colliding. Not any mistresses, or any shadiness of that kind which may be inferred, but devoted extremely nonetheless to his work by all accounts.

Already taken aback by what I was reading, what I read next sent a sharp, cold chill down my spine.

“They’ll come for me one day. I know that this will have happened long before you read this… but I need my family to know that I did everything I could. The world must know what is happening here, and should it cost me my life… it costs me my life. ”. – Arthur P

He then, rather strangely enough, then offers a few sentences in which he details how he was an ardent believer of the phenomenal potential of Bitcoin and the underpinning technology known as block-chain.

I had reached about the fifth page of the book when I noticed it. There, etched with a byro in the bottom right hand corner seemed to be some type of code, titled ‘Private Key - I leave this to my son, George Plunkett, ivory opposing the wooden clock’. I considered this for a few moments. It seemed to be a coded message… referring to a location, a location.. within our home. I took in a sharp inhale. Whatever this was, he needed to make sure that access to it was stored in a place in which only a member of our household would reasonably be able to decrypt – and indeed access its contents. Across from the great wooden clock on the mantelpiece stood a large wooden drawing cupboard. Within it, I could recall a few glass ornaments, some antiques. But there was also another item… among an array of some decorated china ornaments and the very many souvenirs from holiday destinations from over the years… and a small needle container, made of Ivory. I recalled it was about the height of a matchstick and the approximate width of a cigarette. Could this be what he was referring to? Could this be what he had so cryptically cultivated into his massage such that I should find it? I gingerly made my way to the living room where the cupboard was. Taking me a few seconds to find the needle holder, I eagerly proceeded to unscrew the delicate lid so as to not break the ancient piece of memorabilia, and sure enough, there was a small note inside.

It read a series of phrases and was titled ‘Bitcoin Private Key’. This is it! A short sentence at the bottom then read – ‘Wallet Live App, my Laptop’. As I opened up his laptop, it buzzed to life. Then I keyed in meticulously the detailed private key.

I could see from the transaction log on the Wallet app that he had made a monthly contribution to this bitcoin address without fail. Besides the unprecedented pressure he must’ve been under as a result of his espionage briefings, his role at the bank and the constant risk of being caught by the Communist Party’s Secret Police, every month from April 2017 to November of 2020, he had deposited the equivalent of $460 USD in Bitcoin to this account, equating to a value of $20,000. An account which I now held the very keys to.

Over the next few days I engaged in some research, educating myself about the process of transferring the Bitcoins from the ‘wallet’, into real money on an exchange and then finally into my bank account. I awaited the final exchange into my bank account. Would it still be worth $20,000?.. could it be worth nothing now? I recalled various news outlets report a monumental decline in the Bitcoin price back in early 2018. Hundreds of wild ideas now gushed through my head, as the screen loaded and buffered.

I had to look again to make sure this was real; then a third time; then a fourth. With the figure which greeted me, I was absolutely astounded. It was only now that the reality of what I was looking at was finally sinking in. What I had in my pessimistic nature anticipacted to be worth $20,000 or less…the balance read: five..three.. two.. seven.. nine..zero.. four.

And wallop; just like that. The numbers echoed in my mind as I tenuously tried to come to grips with what I was reading. My ordinary existence as a working class regular Joe had come to a sudden and abrupt end. My life forever changed my newly discovered wealth. My financial freedom. My Monetary independence for the rest of my life. The City of Rome was not built in a day, but a lucky hand it seemed had determined the course for my entire future overnight. My name is George Plunkett, and I am millionaire.