A Little Lone Wolf - Andrew Crofts
“The eagle is probably the most powerful bird in the world, always flying alone, never in a crowd,” The Middle Eastern merchant prince I was ghostwriting for was talking with his eyes shut, a habit which, when coupled with long pauses, sometimes made it hard to tell if he had fallen asleep mid-thought. My recorder was taking care of preserving his widely spaced words, his closed eyes giving me the opportunity to look around the Aladdin’s cave of a room. Every inch of the mighty floor space was filled with objects elaborately decorated in gold. Anything that wasn’t gold was white or cream, from the endless sofas and the cushions of the heavily gilded thrones that we were sitting in to the tissue boxes that were carefully placed in order to be constantly within reach of anyone wishing to expectorate unexpectedly. Around us were panoramic views of Hyde Park from the windows of ...