Free Killing the Emperors by Ruth Dudley Edwards Page B

had called her from Iraq to say he’d heard a few bad things about him from some old SAS-hand.’
    ‘But that didn’t make her cancel the trip.’
    ‘No. “I think this might be make-or-break weekend,” she said. “But for now I must fly. Like Chambers Dictionary, I’m Morocco bound.”’
    Milton sighed and reached for the last piece of pizza. ‘And what happened in Morocco?’
    Amiss took another mouthful of red wine. ‘She called me on Saturday evening to explain that every prospect pleased and only Sarkovsky was vile. On the plus side, she was in the Churchill suite in La Mamounia, had seen some fine Islamic architecture, been massaged with all manner of fabulous unguents in the spa, had eaten outside in a balmy breeze, and when she rang she was sitting on her private terrace, smoking a superb cigar, drinking a fine brandy, and gazing at the enormous garden which Winston Churchill pronounced the loveliest place in the world.’
    ‘And the minus side?’
    ‘The food was disappointing and she couldn’t get it into Sarkovsy’s thick head that Islamic art and architecture were worthy of admiration. Relations were already strained when he had a call that put him in a terrible mood. He’d a few by then and he fessed up. Turned out he’d an art adviser he’d been keeping secret from Jack because, as he put it, he didn’t think she was very fresh about art and he’d secretly spent a few hundred million behind her back on Hirsts and Emins and Koons and the rest of the usual suspects. Still, she’d been troubling him with her negative comments about conceptual art so he’d had an independent evaluation of the art he’d bought through the said adviser. He’d just been told his collection had gone down drastically in value.’
    ‘She didn’t sympathise, I suppose?’
    ‘She sure didn’t. She told him it served him right. That had he bought art of intrinsic value of the kind she had been trying to educate him to appreciate, he would have a collection of which he could be proud, but that by going for the trophy shock-and-awe art recommended by people without taste or scruple, he had landed himself with a load of dross which would probably be worth nothing in ten years time. And serve him right. If he had any sense, she said, he should sell the lot now.’
    ‘That didn’t go down well?’
    ‘It didn’t. He threw a tantrum and stormed off. She retired to her magnificent suite to commune with the ghost of Churchill.’
    ‘And what did Churchill recommend?’
    ‘More brandy. But she was sufficiently rattled to ask me to locate Ellis and find out if he’d learned anything more about Sarkovsky. She had a feeling that he might be having business problems.’ He gestured at Pooley. ‘Over to you, Ellis.’
    ‘He was indeed having business problems. I met her a couple of days after she got back to tell her to drop Sarkovsky, but she said he didn’t appear at all on Sunday and had sulked all the way back to London on Monday, so that in effect they’d dropped each other. She then admitted she might be tempted if he relented and repeated an earlier offer to take her on an adventure tour up the Amazon, so I gave the unexpurgated story. There were good reasons to think he’d had a business partner blown up just because he wanted one hundred percent of the company.’
    ‘He wasn’t just getting his retaliation in first in the manner of Russian crooks?’ asked Milton.
    ‘My sources didn’t think so. They’re not very judgemental in Russia, but apparently they were a bit shocked because he and the business partner had been friends from childhood.’
    ‘So how did he get away with it?’
    ‘Bribery.’
    ‘And the journalist who allegedly was murdered?’
    ‘Was a young investigative reporter from the local paper who was concerned about medical supplies bound for local hospitals being hijacked on an industrial scale and diverted into the black market.’
    ‘The link with Sarkovsky?’
    ‘Apparently she