Duncan Kyle - The King's Commisar

'Well - nobody, apparently,' said Aston.

Malory was now sitting a trifle straighter. Lady Malory would have noticed. 'It has all been sitting there, untouched, since 1918!'

'Or before, Sir Horace. This is the point, so some would say, about Anastasia, if she is Anastasia, who has spent half a century proclaiming that she is the Tsar's youngest daughter.'

'And failing to establish it, eh?'

'So far.'

'Any other lawsuits from frustrated heirs?'

'None of significance.'

Malory brooded for a moment. 'Would that be because Anastasia's claim made others impossible?'

'Well, my own discipline is history rather than jurisprudence, Sir Horace, but inevitably, yes. While the case was sub judice no others could be determined."

'Let me get this entirely clear,' Malory said. 'There's a great deal of money -'

The historian interrupted him. 'There may be money, Sir Horace. It's not proven.'

'All right, all right. And if there is, then the surviving Romanovs couldn't go after it while Anastasia's case was sub judic e?'

True.'

'And moreover, the case was sub judice for -?'

'Decades. There were two verdicts - in 1967 and 1970. Of course,' the historian went on, 'neither accepted her as the Tsar's surviving daughter. If they had -'

'She'd have taken the lot!"

If she wanted the lot, yes.'

The conversation became lengthy. References to particular points were sought (by Malory) and produced (by Aston). That, however, was the nub of the long talk. Still, before he left 6 Athelsgate for Paddington and the Oxford train, the historian produced two further nuggets of information. The first came in the form of a lengthy extract from The War Memoirs of David Lloyd George.

'Met the old rascal a time or two,' said Malory reminiscently. 'After he was done, of course. He was PM

when?'

'From 1916 on. Until 1922, that is.'

'The point is what?'

Aston passed him the book. It was Volume One of the memoirs, open at page 82, and the wartime Prime Minister, in discussing the ordering of armaments, criticized very severely the practice of some major arms companies of accepting orders 'far beyond their capacity to execute'. And Lloyd George went on: '. . , some of them had undertaken orders on a gigantic scale from the Russian Government. When they accepted these Russian contracts they must have known that they had not the faintest chance of executing them in time . . . Their failure to execute these orders was largely responsible for the disasters which befell the Russian armies in the campaign of 1914-15.'

Malory looked up. 'Could he mean Vickers?' he asked.

'Among others. Everybody feels the lash, but Vickers in particular. Read the best bit - about Professor Pares.'

Lloyd George went on: 'A careful and considered report on the situation came from the pen of Professor Bernard Pares, a distinguished scholar who knew Russia and Russian thoroughly. He visited Petrograd in 1915 . . , and on his return presented .., a very remarkable account of the state of things in Russia .., a forecast of the wrath to come . . .

'See what Pares said about Vickers?' asked the historian.

'Coming to it now,' said Malory, and read: 'I have to submit that the unfortunate failure of Messrs Vickers, Maxim & Co, to supply Russia with munitions .., is gravely jeopardizing the relations of the two countries.

'The Russians have so far put in line seven million men. Their losses when I left Petrograd had reached the enormous figure of three million, eight hundred thousand.

'I am definitely told that so far no supplies of munitions have reached Russia from England.'

Malory's eye hurried on: '. . , failure which all Russians . . , associate intimately with the crushing losses .

. , and the obvious necessity of almost indefinite retreat

And then a paragraph which jolted even Malory. 'It has also led to threatened signs of resentment against the Russian authorities, which in my judgement must lead if continued to grave internal complications. Momentous developments . . , inevitable.'

Malory placed the book on his desk. 'Authoritative, that,' he said.

'Pares rather more so than that old rascal Lloyd George -in my view.' The historian grinned. 'But it can be summed up very simply. One, Russia places big orders with Vickers. Two, Vickers don't deliver as promised. Three, Russia has nearly four million dead. Four, the Russian Revolution follows. Five - if I may say so - Ekaterinburg, July 1918. All in a dead straight line.'

'Yes.' Malory sighed. 'As you say, a straight line. Thank you for your time.'

'Thank you for your fee, Sir Horace,' Felix Aston said. 'I'll leave the books if you like.'

'Please do,' Malory said, 'and good day.' His mind was already focused on Vickers, for it was Zaharoff's company: Vickers, Maxim & Co.

He turned suddenly. The historian was still slipping on a light raincoat. 'I say! Before you go . . .'

'Yes, Sir Horace?'

'Care for a swift whisky?' Malory rose and poured. 'One thing: how would the munitions be paid for?'

'You'd know more about that than I, Sir Horace, surely? Credits and things, I expect.'

'Perhaps, perhaps. But I'm thinking of all those Romanov holdings in overseas banks.'

'That's private money, of course.'

'Yes? I wondered about that.'

'The Tsar would hardly have spent his own money on arms, though, would he?'

'Indeed not,' said Malory. 'Er-what time's your train?'

'In forty minutes, Sir Horace, and I'm afraid I daren't miss it. I have an American guest at High Table tonight and -'Aston smiled modestly - 'there's a visiting professorship at stake.'

'It's money, you see,' Malory said. 'What about tomorrow?'

'Tomorrow is fine.'

And now it was tomorrow, and Lady Malory's instruction echoed in his mind as he waited and savoured (though not as much as usual) a Romeo No.3 with Blue Mountain coffee. David Lloyd George, he reflected, had been a wicked old devil. None wickeder.

None? What about Zaharoff?

And what a pair they made!

'Tell me,' Malory said before the historian had so much as added sugar to his coffee, 'about the relations between Lloyd George and Zaharoff.'

'Well, it's a bit mysterious.'

'I imagined it might be,' said Sir Horace. 'Do go on.'

'Not much known, actually. But there's a fascinating point. Zaharoff was - well, whatever he was: who knows if he was Greek, Turk, Anatolian, even Russian. Lot of covering-up went on in the matter of his birth. Records burned. Impossible statements sworn by a bench of bishops. You know.'

'Yes, I do. Born in Mughla in Anatolia, that's what he always said.'

'Usually said,' Aston corrected. 'But the point is he was a naturalized Frenchman. French domicile too.'

'Agreed. What about Lloyd George?'

The old Welsh Wizard slipped Zaharoff a big gong in nineteen-eighteen. Made him a Knight of the Order of the British Empire.'

'Yes, I know.'

'And ever afterwards, Zaharoff called himself Sir Basil.'

'Doesn't fit, does it? Can't do it, can you?'

"Hedid, Sir Horace, all his life. Lloyd George gave him a step up in 1921: Knight of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath. Still called himself Sir Basil but still a French citizen. Now - how could that come about?'

'I suppose,' said Malory, 'that people just assumed-'

'What, the College of Heralds? Just assumed? No, my guess is he wanted a title, a British one, and Lloyd George fixed things.'

'It would take a little doing,' Sir Horace murmured.

'There never was a fixer like him.'

Malory brooded for a moment. "Why then did Lloyd George turn savage in his memoirs?'

'He didn't. Not to Zaharoff. To Vickers, yes, but Zaharoff was long retired.'