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The Goliath Stone is an action/adventure thriller set in the First World War. It is based on factual occurrences. The protagonist, Lieutenant Miles Armstrong, is a Canadian who enlisted in the Canadian cavalry and later transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. The story starts with Armstrong, who is multi-lingual, being recalled from front line service and seconded to the Foreign Office.

He is told that he will fly to Rumania for the purpose of rescuing the queen of that country from the advancing Germans. Queen Marie, wife of the ineffectual Ferdinand of Rumania, is a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and a one-time sweetheart of George V of England. Marie was a noted beauty who, relatively, created as much interest in the society pages as the late Diana does in our time.

There is a second motive for the assignment, and that 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 and Marie wants her country's treasures saved. Armstrong has a third and secret assignment, 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 and gave them as a gift to Ferdinand, king of Rumania. Armstrong is told that he is to attempt to remove the Irish jewels from the others and get them back to England.

While being briefed in London he meets the lovely Anna-Marie DeCourville and 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, which is the new capital, now that Bucharest has fallen. There he meets Marie and her Canadian lover the fabled Klondike Joe Boyle, now a Colonel in the Canadian army. Armstrong, Boyle and other go to Moscow but arrive as the Bolshevik revolution boils over, forcing them to break into the Kremlin during the fighting and recover the jewels. Armstrong again meets Anna-Marie and promises to give her the Goliath Stone.

Armstrong survives train wrecks, armed attacks, the capture and rescue of Anna-Marie, the theft of 100,000,000 dollars in gold bullion, and the bombing of a ship to fly away with Anna-Marie, O'Reilly, the Goliath Stone... and a few bars of gold.

Facts: The recovery of the crown jewels did happen but the gold bullion was never returned to Rumania and the Soviets denied all knowledge of it. Boyle was an actual character and his liaison with Queen Marie was a celebrated affair. Most elements of the train journey are based on actual fact, including the royal steam engine kept at instant readiness on an obscure branch line throughout three years of bloody warfare.