The Business

CHAPTER FOUR

Let me explain some things about the way our company works. The first thing to understand is that we are, up to a point, democratic. Put simply, we vote for our bosses. Never mind about that for now; we'll come back to it.

Secondly, we're quite serious about insisting that if people want to rise above a certain level in the corporate hierarchy, they must renounce any religious faith they have previously espoused. In practice all this means is that an executive promoted to the rank we once called magistratus, then Deacon, and now call Level Six, has to swear they've given up their faith.

We don't insist that people stop going to their churches or their temples, or stop worshipping either in public or in private, or even stop funding religious works (though some sort of gesture in this direction is generally expected and appreciated); we certainly do not insist that people stop believing in their heads, or their souls if you will. All that's required is that people are prepared to swear they've stopped believing. This is quite sufficient to weed out the real zealots, the type of people — admirable in their way if you esteem that sort of behaviour — who would prefer to be burned alive than switch to a different branch of the same church.

Thirdly, we practise total financial transparency: any company officer may inspect the accounts of any other. This has become much easier technically in recent years, of course, with the advent of computers and electronic mail, but the principle has been around since the first century AD. Its effect is to make corruption as a rule either unachievable or only possible at a trivial scale. The main downside is complication. This was the case when people had to open up cabinets full of wax tablets for inspection, when they had to unroll papyrus scrolls, when they had to unchain books from counting-room desks, when they had to order old ledgers from storage, when they had to search through microfiches, and it is certainly the case now with computerised accounts; over two millennia, every technological advance that promised to make the task easier has been closely and seemingly inevitably accompanied by an increase in the complexity of the figures and systems involved.

Always looking for ways to cut costs, we've carried out trials which involve abandoning this practice for specific times and in certain places, intending to give it up entirely if the trials prove successful, but the results have always persuaded us that the benefits outweigh the costs.

Of course, corruption is always possible, and probably inevitable. A company worry has always been that one of our number might siphon off very small amounts of money over a long period and use that as seed capital for transactions which — though they exist outside the Business — are only possible thanks to the contacts, trust and information that person's membership of the company has brought and which grow exponentially until they distort the relationship between the apparent and real economic effect that person produces.

This sort of scam has been tried by various individuals in the past, but as a rule such perpetrators are discovered; unless they intend to bury their gains in the ground they have to do something with the profits, and an executive living significantly beyond their so easily checkable means has always been a sure sign some sort of chicanery has been going on. If somebody plays the long game of building up a big cash fund somewhere we can't see while continuing to live relatively modestly, and then retires early, suddenly seriously moneyed, to their own Caribbean island, we are not above indulging in our own style of chicanery to try and recover the funds we reckon belong to us. We aren't the Mafia and as far as I know we don't blow anybody's legs off, but it's surprising what you can do when you have your own Swiss bank and you're owed favours that go back in some cases for centuries. Actually, maybe it's not surprising at all.

Still, it is possible to beat the system, big time. In the late nineteenth century a certain Monsieur Couffable, one of our senior French executives, made a sizeable independent fortune on the Paris Bourse, which we didn't know about until he died. He'd spent every centime buying Dutch old masters, which he kept in a secret art gallery beneath his Loire château. So there you are; you do have to bury your money in the ground.

We never did get our hands on those paintings, despite having some very capable lawyers and the co-operation of the late Monsieur Couffable's widow (they were childless, he'd willed the secret collection to his mistress). Anyway, this practice has now become known as Couffabling. As a business, we try very hard not to get Couffabled.

Usually what's ours stays ours. A legitimately made fortune is never entirely personal in the Business, and specifically it is impossible to bequeath all you've made to your offspring or, indeed, anybody else who isn't one of us. The higher a person rises within our company, the greater becomes the proportion of their income paid in the form of stock options, pension rights, travel and other perks and so on.

So far so normal; lots of corporations limit the personal tax exposure of their senior people by giving them access to and often unlimited use of cars and drivers, apartments, mansions, aircraft and yachts. The Lear jet might belong to the company and be shown as a tax-liable item on the corporate books, but it's at the exclusive disposal of the CEO, who can use it to go shopping or golfing if he damn well pleases. In the same way, it's the company that pays for the box at the opera or the ball game, and the membership of the yacht or country club.

We do the same sort of thing, except perhaps more so.

The difference between us and others lies in the disposability of the assets that are nominally the property of the executive involved. Most of these can be sold back only to others in the Business, and even then there is a strict ranking of how much one can own according to one's hierarchical level.

What this means is that dynasties are difficult to establish and almost impossible to maintain; no matter how doting a father in the Business may be, he cannot pass on all his power and money to a favourite son just because he wants to. The father can make the son rich by most people's standards and he can attempt to further his boy's career in the company, but he cannot make Junior as rich as he has been or ensure that he too achieves the organisation's summit.

The vast majority of senior execs are quite happy with this arrangement, as they're usually the sort of people who believe that hard work and brains are the keys to success and have formed a dim view of any privilege which has been inherited rather than earned. This sort of attitude can actually be seen more clearly outside the Business, where quite a few very rich and successful fathers who've been in total charge of their own companies have left their children an only modest provision in their wills, not through general or specific vindictiveness but just to ensure that their offspring don't start out spoiled, and so that they too will know that if they do achieve anything it has at least partially been due to their own abilities rather than the sheer good luck of having a rich daddy.

Naturally, all this changes if the individual in the company invents something or has patents to their name. Take Uncle Freddy, for example. An Associate Level Two, he would probably only be a Level Five or Six but for the fact that he invented the chilpTM. The chilpTM is the technical name (Uncle Freddy's own; I think he's a trifle sad it never caught on) for those little containers of whitish liquid that you get in tourist class in aircraft or in cafés, service stations and not very good hotels instead of a proper jug of milk.

The original things were those ghastly little pots with aluminium covers that it took both hands to open, if you were lucky, and which — even if you opened them carefully — usually splattered their contents over you. It was Uncle Freddy who came up with the much neater modern version, which opens cleanly and can be worked one-handed; one of those things most of us look at and think, Why didn't anybody think of that before? or, I could have thought of that…Except that Uncle Freddy actually did.

ChilpsTM are, literally, tiny things, but they're produced by the billion every year; the tiniest royalty on each one soon builds up to a very considerable fortune indeed, and as Uncle F invented the thing, he's got the patent and so he gets all the money; his promotion to Level Two in the Business was honorary. That kind of thing can throw out our system a bit, but somehow we manage to accommodate even the Uncle Freddies of the world. A better solution for us as a company, of course, would have been to have owned the patents corporately, and there are a few lucrative ones which we do own, and a few more we are cautiously optimistic about.

An example is the IncanTM. This is a tube made from aluminium, plastic or even waxed paper, designed to deliver two measured doses of finely ground powder into the nasal passages. It's registered with every major patent office in the world as a way to deliver either snuff or some sort of medicinal draught into the user's nose, but nobody who knows about it is under any illusions about its real role and we have no intentions of letting it be used for such a mundane purpose.

It's a cocaine-delivery device for when, eventually, the stuff is legalised. You'll buy a pack of IncansTM no bigger than a pack of long cigarettes from wherever is licensed to sell them (by which time, of course, you may not be able to purchase legally a pack of tobacco cigarettes), pop the tab off one, snort, snort, and bingo! No chopping, cutting and ploughing into stupid little lines on a mirror or the top of a toilet cistern, unless you're so into ritual you regard that as the best bit.

I've tried them at our labs in Miami; they work. (Best of all for us, they work only once; unless you're some sort of Unabomber-style micro-engineer you can't easily refill them.) The aluminium ones are very sleek and sexy and will be the original, premium product. They look a little like silver rifle-shell cases. We may do steel gold-plated versions for the luxury and exclusive gift end of the market. The plastic version is more mass-market, more blue collar. The wax paper ones are aimed at the more environmentally aware consumer and are biodegradable.

We have high hopes for the IncanTM.

Back to the subject of corruption, racketeering, bribery, blackmail and other common business practices. Even though our organisation has always been tolerant of such victimless 'crimes' as prostitution, blasphemy, drug-taking, belonging to a trade union, sex and/or procreation outside marriage, homosexuality and so on, the societies in which we have to live and with which we have to trade have usually had other ideas, so secrecy and blackmail have never been entirely off the menu.

We are, above all, pragmatists. Corruption is frowned upon not because it is intrinsically evil but because it acts like a short-circuit in the machinery of business, or a parasite on the body corporate. The point is to reduce such behaviour to a tolerable level, not to attempt seriously to eradicate it utterly, which would call for a regime so strict and confining it would limit the abilities of the organisation to change and adapt, and stifle its natural enterprise even more severely than widespread corruption would. Even so, what we regard as a tolerable level of internal corruption is — thanks to our rules on financial transparency — positively microscopic compared to that in just about every other organisation we do business with, and it is a matter of considerable pride for us that in any given transaction or deal we will almost without exception be the most honest and principled party involved.

We're quite happy to deal with corrupt regimes and people, so long as the figures are all above board at our end. In many cultures a degree of what is termed corruption in the West has long been a respectable and accepted part of the way business is done, and we are ready, willing and able to accommodate this. (In the West, of course, it is just as common. It's just not respectable. Or publicised.) In all this, of course, we're just the same as any other business or state. It's just that we've been doing it longer and are less hypocritical about it, so we're better at it. Practice makes perfect, even the practice of corruption. It ought to be one of our mottoes: Corruption — we deal with it.

Voting for your immediate superiors usually strikes outsiders as the most bizarre of our business practices. Manual and clerical workers tend to find the concept unlikely and bizarre, while those higher up have been known to react with outraged disbelief: how can it possibly work?

It works, I guess, because people generally are not stupid, and. we do our best to recruit people who are smarter than most. It works, also, because we are used to taking, and are able to take, a long-term view, and perhaps because the practice does not extend into every other organisation we deal with and undertake joint operations with.

We have had several expensive but unpublished studies performed by highly respected universities and business colleges, which have tended to support our belief that letting people vote for their bosses means that a greater proportion of able and gifted people flourish and rise using this method than any other. The more usual system, where people are picked out from above, does have certain advantages — talented people can often rise more quickly, skipping several layers of management at once — but it is our firm belief that this leads to more problems than it solves, producing a culture where those on any given level within a company are constantly trying to find ways to flatter those above them, sabotage the careers of their colleagues on the same corporate rung, exploit, oppress and denigrate those on the levels beneath them and generally spend far too much time frivolously furthering their own selfish ends and their status within the company when they ought rightfully to be engaged in the far more serious and productive pursuit of making all concerned more money.

Our system doesn't put an end to all office politics, of course, nor does it reliably weed out every plausible rogue, gifted bully or lucky idiot, but it does make them easier to spot, control and ditch before they get too far. Gaining promotion by fooling your boss, especially one prone to flattery or sexual favours, can be relatively easy. Gaining the trust of those who work with you every day and will have to take orders from you if you are promoted is a lot more difficult.

The usual objection to all this is: Don't people tend to vote for people who'll give them an easy ride?

Sometimes they do, and a division of our company might suffer because there is a natural-born vacillator in charge, but people can be demoted by those immediately below them, too, or pensioned off, and — worst case — an entire department can be closed down from above, its structure dismantled, its duties redistributed and its personnel dispersed.

This almost never happens. People would rather elect to put somebody in charge over them who knows what they're doing and whom they respect — even if they know that some of that person's later decisions will be disagreeable — than work under somebody who will damage all their interests by taking either no decisions or only easy ones.

We have works councils, too, in most of our wholly owned subsidiaries, though those tend to be at the sort of levels I'm not terribly familiar with.

None of this means that management is powerless: it's just that the spread of any given individual's power is different, tending to spread more upwards and less downwards compared to the standard model. It's still possible for senior people to encourage the careers of juniors and it's still possible for juniors to make themselves known to seniors and benefit thereby, it's just that neither can act without the tacit consent of those who will have to live with the effects of those actions.

We run, generally, a happy ship.

So why have you never heard of us, until now? We are not conspiratorial, or even particularly secretive. We don't believe in advertising ourselves, but we're sufficiently convinced of our own probity to be relaxed about any publicity that happens to come our way.

The most sinister reason given for our relative obscurity is that because we practise financial transparency and internal democracy while frowning upon conventional familial inheritance, the world's media — generally run by people for whom any one of these ideas is anathema — regard it as profoundly in their own interests to give us as little exposure as possible.

Another reason is that we undertake many more joint ventures than we do wholly owned ones, and in such situations we always let our partner company take the credit and deal with the exposure. We are a holding company, mostly, our interests lying in other companies rather than physically manufacturing products or providing services direct to the public. So we're partly invisible. Also, we have a variety of different company names and corporate identities for each individual branch of the business, all accrued naturally over the centuries, and so have no single name — apart from the Business, of course, which is so bland, general and vague it is almost a form of invisibility in itself. We do sometimes get confused with the CIA, though, which is silly; they're the Company. Besides, they're much more open than we are: there's no sign on the DC Beltway or anywhere else pointing to our HQ.

When somebody — sometimes a journalist, more usually a competitor — does start to investigate one of our concerns, they find that the ownership trail leads (sometimes straight, sometimes only after the sort of Byzantine flourishes and convolutions which are a good creative accountant's artistic signature) to one of those places that act as the commercial world's equivalent of black holes, into which public information might fall but from which none ever emerges: the Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein, or our very own Great Inagua.

We are not, however, totally invisible. There are articles about us occasionally in magazines and newspapers, sometimes there are television programmes that touch upon our interests, and every now and again a business book will mention us. The conspiracy theories are the most fun. There have been a couple of books and a number of articles, but the true home of those who would be our nemesis was the Net and now is the Web.

We have dozens of paranoid Websites dedicated to us. According to which one you choose to believe, we are either:

(a) the major force behind the New World Order (which appears to be what Americans too stupid to realise that the Cold War is over, they won, and the world is theirs, have adopted as the new bogey monster now that Ronnie's Evil Empire has a GNP a little less than Disney Corp.);

(b) an even more extreme, hideous and sinister branch of the International Zionist Conspiracy (in other words, the Jews);

(c) a long-term deep-entryist group of dedicated cadres charged by the Executive Council of the Fourth International to bring down the entire capitalist system from within by gaining control of lots of shares and then selling them all at once to produce a crash (which is the one I find most amusing);

(d) a well-funded cabal of the little-known Worshippers of Nostradamus cult intent on bringing about the end of the financial world through a roughly similar strategy to that of the International Marxists (which may or may not imply a rethink for this plucky group of theorists if we do all make it past the millennium);

(e) the militant commercial wing of the Roman Catholic Church (as if, given the antics of the Banco Ambrosio and the Black Friars, they needed one);

(f) a similarly extremist Islamic syndicate sworn to out-perform, out-deal and out-haggle the Jews (probably the least plausible so far);

(g) a zombie-like remnant of the Holy Roman Empire, which has risen from the grave, unspeakably putrid but grotesquely powerful, to re-impose European dominance over the New World in general and the USA in particular through sneaky cosmopolitan business practices and the introduction of the Euro (top prize for invention, I feel);

(h) the front for a cartel of Jewish Negro financiers intent on enslaving the White Race (I confess I'm still waiting for my first introduction to a Jewish Negro financier, but maybe I just move in the wrong circles…except I don't);

(i) an alien conspiracy run from a spacecraft buried under the New Mexico desert, sent to bring about the collapse of (well, see any or all of the above) or

(j) just Bill Gates' retirement fund.

Heck, we've all been there; you've reinstated the underwater night-time flare-path and cleared the weeds out of your mile-long landing lake, some enterprising pilot's skimmed a dinky-looking dove-white Ilyushin seaplane successfully down over the hills and trees, kissed it on to the water and taxied noisily to the far end of the waterway to considerable applause from all those sports fans who've managed to prise themselves out of bed for the crack of noon, and then your steam catapult — guaranteed repaired by the best technicians money can buy just yesterday — suddenly goes on the blink. Hellish, isn't it? Actually I thought the pilot — a dashing Iranian — looked relieved.

'Bugger and blast!'

'Don't take it personally, Uncle Freddy.'

'Dammit, bugger and blast!'

Uncle Freddy's shepherd's crook decapitated two urns' worth of Michaelmas daisies and hydrangeas with one swinging swish.

Well, we missed the spectacle of an ex-Soviet navy seaplane being catapulted across the valley at the hills on the far side — if you looked carefully you could still see the craters where the engineers had fired old trucks loaded with steel plate into the woods to calibrate the catapult's throw — but we did get to play dodgems.

Being battered on all sides by over-enthusiastic revellers without either a decent hangover or the rudiments of driving ability while sitting in a small car resembling a garishly tin-plated slipper beneath an electrified metal grid is not necessarily my idea of the best way to ease myself back into sober normality, but it seemed only polite to Uncle Freddy to join in, after the disappointment with the catapult.

Re CW.

Who what where?

C Walker. Pay attention.

What about him?

Said Hi to him yesterday at Unc F's. Maintained he'd just flown in day before (ie Thursday). Does not compute.

Oh right: more detail on Adrian George's spotting of CW. Original message was garbled (not at my end, obviously). AG saw CW while on way to office, not in it. Glimpsed presence in cab in street. Wednesday, this would be. So? Probably that aspect was garbled too.

Never mind.

OK. How's the party going?

What party?

You mean you're not @ B'crg @ the moment?

OK, yes. Party usual low-key affair btw. Where's your ass at?

Singapore.

Fun? I always thought it was a bit like the East would be if it was run by the Swiss. (This is not intended as a compliment.)

See your point. Did you know chewing-gum's banned out here?

Yup. Lee Kwan U must have sat on a piece once and got all upset.

Wonder if there's a flourishing smuggling trade?

Careful, even talking about that sort of thing's probably a crime, or at least a misdemeanour.

Fuck em! I laugh in the face of their vicious anti-chewing-gum laws!

Yeah, you're probably safe; they'd never make it stick.

Ack. - - Goodbye.

'Kate.'

'Uncle Freddy.' I had been summoned to Uncle F's large and chaotic study in Blysecrag after lunch, while most people were still recovering from the excesses of one night and preparing themselves for those of the next.

'Jebbet E. Dessous.'

'Gesundheit.'

'Come now, dear girl. He's a Level One.'

'I know. Isn't he the one in Nebraska? Collects tanks and stuff?'

'That's right. Made the news a while ago when he bought a couple of them what-d'ye-call-'ems. Rocket thingies.'

'Scud missiles?'

'That's right.'

'Was that him? I thought that was another guy, in Southern California.'

'Oh. Maybe the other chap got caught, then, and Jebbet didn't. That would be more like Jebbet. I can't remember.' Uncle F looked confused and stared at something long, grey and untidy on the floor, which turned out to be one of the wolfhounds. The beast stretched, yawned with a single echoing snap of its extensive jaws and then — such extreme activity having entirely exhausted it — rolled flopping back over with a long sigh, and fell asleep again.

Uncle Freddy opened his mouth as though to speak, then became distracted by something on his desk. Uncle F's desk was covered to a depth of several inches with a bewildering assortment of mostly paper-based rubbish. He picked up a long, elegant-looking, Y-shaped piece of metal and turned it over in his hands, a look of intense concentration on his face, then he shook his head, shrugged and put it back again.

'Anyway,' I said.

'Anyway. Yes. Fancy paying old Jebbet a visit?'

'Do I have to?'

'What? Don't you like the fellow?'

'No, I've never met him, Uncle Freddy, though his reputation goes before. Why do I have to go and see him?'

'Well, he's sort of asked to see you.'

'Is that good or bad?'

'How d'you mean? For him or you?'

'For me, Uncle Freddy.'

'Ahm…pretty damn good, I'd say. Can't do any harm getting to know old Jebbet; very highly respected amongst the other top brass, he is, oh yes.' Uncle Freddy paused. 'Completely mad, of course. Thing is, you know his, umm, nephew or something, don't you?'

I said, 'Dwight?'

Now. There is a certain way of pronouncing Dwight's name that I find it hard to resist — sort of Dih-Wight? — when I'm trying to make it clear that the prospect of encountering the lad again has a coefficient of attraction roughly on a par with being invited to chew on a wad of silver paper. I made no attempt to resist that temptation here.

'Dwight.' Uncle Freddy looked puzzled, staring up at the study ceiling. 'Is that a real name, d'you think, Kate? That Eisenhower fellow was called that too, I remember, but then he was called Ike as well, and I could never work out which was a contraction of the other.'

'I think it is a real name, Uncle Freddy.'

'Really?'

'Yes. Don't worry. It's American.'

'Ah, I see. Jolly good. Anyway, Jebbet wants you to talk to the boy.' Uncle Freddy frowned and pulled on one pendulous ear-lobe. 'The nephew. Dwight. He's a playwright or something, isn't he?'

'Or something.'

'Thought that was the fellow. Is he any good, do you know?'

'As a playwright?'

'Hmm.'

'From what I've seen, no. But, of course, it's all very subjective. For all I know the boy's a genius.'

'Modern sort of stuff, is it? He writes?'

'Almost by definition.'

'Hmm.'

'Uncle Freddy, why does Mr Dessous want me to talk to Dwight?'

'Umm. Good question. No idea.'

'He couldn't phone, e-mail?'

Uncle Freddy looked pained and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. 'No, he definitely wants you to go there. But look, Kate.' Uncle F leaned forward and settled his elbows on the desk, causing a small landslide of papers, envelopes, old magazines, scraps of newspapers, bits of tissue and — by the sound of it — at least one until-then buried glass, which fell to the floor with a thud and a faint chinking noise. Uncle Freddy sighed and spared a glance at the stuff that had fallen. 'I think there is something Jebbet wants you to talk to the boy about; some mad idea he needs talking out of, but I've got a feeling he wants to talk to you himself as well. The nephew thing might be an excuse.'

'For what?'

'Well, Jebbet's word counts for a lot with the American people in the Business, from his own level, oh, well down past yours. Lot of these young Turk types, the keen brigade; they think the sun shines out of his behind, frankly. People like that, at the US end of things, they're making up the majority of your level these days, Kate. And the one below.'

'I know, Uncle.'

'Exactly. Exactly.' Uncle Freddy looked pleased.

'Uncle Freddy, you haven't actually answered my question.'

'What question was that, dear girl?'

'Why does he want to size me up?'

'Oh! For promotion, of course! Old Jebbet can put a lot of words in a lot of the right ears. As I say, the youngsters listen to him. He must have heard about you. You must have impressed him from afar. And good for you, I say.'

'I'm already at Level Three now, Uncle. I was expecting to wait a while yet before any more promotion. Right now I don't think even I would vote for me to step up another rung.'

'Think long, Kate,' Uncle Freddy said, and actually wagged a finger at me. 'You can't get a good impression in too early, that's what I always say.'

'All right,' I said, half elated and half suspicious. 'Would the middle of the week be suitable?'

'Just about perfect, I should think. I'll check with his people.'

'You still in York State?'

'Yorkshire,' I said. It was late afternoon on the West Coast and I'd caught Luce on her way to her shrink. 'At Uncle Freddy's.'

'Yeah. Uncle Freddy. I was thinking: is this the old guy who used to molest you?'

'Don't be ridiculous, Luce. He pats my butt now and again. But that's all. He's always been really good to me, especially after Mrs Telman died last year. I cried on his shoulder, I hugged him. If he'd really wanted to try anything on that would have been the ideal opportunity, but he didn't.'

'I'm just concerned he might have abused you in the past and you're in denial about it, that's all.'

'What?'

'Well, you seem to just do anything he tells you to and you jump down my throat when I remind you this is the same guy who's sexually harassed you in the past —'

'What? Putting his hand on my backside?'

'Yeah! That's harassment! That'd get you fired from any office, most places. Interference with your fanny. Hell, yes.'

'Yeah, my American fanny.'

'Oh, Jeez, if it had been your British fanny he should have been locked up.'

'Well, call me less than a perfect sister if I let one old guy I happen to like a lot briefly touch my bum through a couple of layers of material, the point is I don't count that as abuse.'

'But you don't know!'

'I don't know what?'

'You don't know whether he abused you or not!'

'Yes, I do.'

'No, you don't. You think you know that he didn't but you don't really know that he didn't.'

'Luce, I think we're in the same boat here; neither of us knows what the hell you're talking about.'

'I mean, maybe he did much worse things to you in the past and you've repressed all the grisly details and even the fact that it happened in the first place; you're in denial about it all and it's fucking you up!'

'But I'm not fucked up.'

'Ha! That's what you think.'

'…You know, in principle this idiocy could go on for ever.'

'Exactly! Unless you take some action to discover the truth.'

'Let me guess. And the only way to find out is to go to a shrink, right?'

'Well, of course!'

'Look, are you on commission or something?'

'I'm on Prozac, so what?'

'I prefer prosaic. What I remember is what happened. Look, I'm sorry I bothered you, Luce. I'll —'

'Don't hang up! Don't hang up! Listen, this must have been meant to happen because I was just on my way…In fact I'm here, I'm at the place. Now look, Kate, I just think there's somebody here that you need to talk to, okay? Now, just a second. Just a second. Hi. Yeah, hi. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. L. T. Shrowe. Listen, I got somebody here on the phone I think really needs to talk to Dr Pegging, you know?'

'Luce? Luce! Don't you dare!'

'May I? He is? Oh, great.'

'Luce? Don't you fucking dare! I'm not — I won't — I'm putting the phone down!'

'Hi, Doctor. Yeah, it's good to see you, it really is. Look, I realise this is kinda weird, but I have this friend, right?'

'Luce! Luce! Listen to me, goddammit! This had better be a joke. You better be in the fucking supermarket or your manicurist's or something because I'm not going to —'

'Hello?'

'…ah.'

'Who am I speaking to?'

I looked through narrowed eyes at the far side of my room. Okay, I thought. I said, 'Oh, like, gee, are you another, like, weirdo?'

'I beg your pardon? My name is Dr Richard Pegging. I'm a psychoanalyst here in San José. And who might you be?'

'San José? Jeez, isn't that in, like, California or someplace?'

'Well, yes.'

'Okay, listen, Doc, like, if you really are, like, a doc, sorta like you said, then, like, I'm really sorry, okay? But, I mean, this woman, that woman who just, like, handed you the phone?'

'Yes?'

'Well, she's been calling me now for a coupla months. I mean, the first time she must justa dialled at random or something or got me out of the book, I dunno. Oh, sorry. My name's Linda? Linda Sinkowitz? I live here in Tuna County, Florida? And I'm just, like, here, you know? And then one day I get this phone call and it's this woman Lucy something and she thinks I'm her best fucking friend or something, excuse my language, and I tell her she must have, like, made a mistake only it goes on way too long for it really to be a mistake but so okay she calls off and that's fine but then a few weeks later it all happens again and this is, like, the — Jeez, I dunno — the ninth or tenth time or something, you know? I mean, I guess she needs help or something, right, but if this happens again I'm gonna have to tell the phone company. I mean, you —'

'That's quite all right. That's fine, that's fine. I think I get the picture, Ms Sinkowitz. Well, it's been nice talking to you. Hopefully you won't be —'

'Kate!'

'Ms Shrowe, if you don't mind —'

'Doc, do you mind? It's my fucking phone! Thank you! Kate? Kate? What the fuck's this about Ms Sinkowitz?'

'Have a nice session, Luce.'

For the evening, we had a circus to entertain us.

The word was that during the afternoon — once Suvinder Dzung had been prised out of his bed and sobered up by his servants — Hazleton, Madame Tchassot and Poudenhaut had resumed negotiations with the Prince, his private secretary B. K. Bousande and Hisa Gidhaur, his Exchequer and Foreign Secretary who had arrived that morning. This negotiating party was late for dinner, which was accordingly delayed for half an hour, and then went on without them. This was a little embarrassing as we had to entertain even more rich, famous and titled people that evening compared to the Friday; however, Uncle Freddy made some ridiculous excuse for our absentees, guffawed a lot and told a series of long-winded jokes, which kept everybody entertained in the drawing room until it was decided to go ahead with dinner anyway.

My beloved was gone: Stephen Buzetski had disappeared after breakfast that morning, called away to Washington DC.

The circus, in a tent on the lawn, was one of these extreme affairs where people dress as though auditioning for Mad Max IV; they juggled chainsaws, attached heavy industrial machinery to their sexual organs and rode very noisy motorbikes while doing unlikely things with knives and flaming torches. It was all terribly macho and camp at the same time and quite entertaining; however, I'd seen it all before several Edinburgh Festivals ago, so didn't stay long. I wandered back into the main house and took myself off to the snooker room.

I tend to play quite a lot of pool while trawling the in-play hang-outs in Silicon Valley. Most of the cutting-edge dudes are young and male, and find the idea of playing pool with a mature but well-preserved lady pretty cool. Often they'll drop their guard when they realise they're going to get beaten, or become a little too relaxed and open if I let them win against the odds. Honing potting skills on a snooker or a billiard table is good practice for this sort of thing: if you can regularly make pots from across eleven and a half feet of green baize, switching to a pool table gives you the impression that the pockets have suddenly swollen to the diameter of basketball hoops.

Adrian Poudenhaut was there before me, also indulging in some solitary play. He looked tired. He was polite, almost deferential, and gave up the table for me, refusing the offer of a game. He exited the room with a wary but knowing smile.

I looked at my reflection in the room's tall windows. I was frowning. A tiny sparkle of light way in the distance caught my eye and I moved closer to the window. The snooker room was on the second floor of Blysecrag (third if you counted the American way), the last main floor before the servants' quarters in the attics. I remembered that from here, on a clear night, you could see the lights of Harrogate. Another distant blossom of light rose above the town. Somebody was letting off fireworks; it was two days after Guy Fawkes' Night, but a lot of people held their displays over to the Friday or Saturday after the more traditional fifth of November. I leant against the window-frame, arms crossed, watching.

'You look sad, Kate.'

I jumped, which is not like me at all, and turned round. The voice had been male, though I half expected to see Miss Heggies standing there, just re-materialised.

Suvinder Dzung, looking tired and a little sad himself, was standing by the snooker table, dressed in one of his Savile Row suits, tie undone, waistcoat unbuttoned, hair less than perfect.

I was annoyed at myself for not having heard him or spotted his reflection. 'Did I look sad?' I asked, giving myself time to gather my wits.

'I thought so. What are you watching?' He came closer and stood beside me. I remembered watching our own fireworks the night before, on the terrace, and him putting his arm round my waist. I edged away from him a little, trying to make it look as though I was just making room for him, but getting the distinct impression that he was perfectly well aware of what I was really doing. He gave me a small, maybe apologetic smile, and did not try to touch me. I wondered if he even remembered our early morning telephone conversation.

'Fireworks,' I said. 'Look.'

'Ah. Yes, of course. Gunpowder, treason and plot, and all that sort of thing.'

'That sort of thing,' I agreed. There was an awkward silence. 'Pretty good view, for a billiards room,' I said. He looked at me. 'They're usually on the ground floor because of the weight,' I explained.

He nodded and looked thoughtful. 'Are you perhaps a Catholic, Kate?'

'What?'

'You looked so sad. The plot in which Guy Fawkes was taking part was an attempt to restore the Catholic succession to England, was it not? I thought perhaps you were lamenting to yourself his lack of success in blowing up the Houses of Parliament.'

I smiled. 'No, Prince. I was never a Catholic.'

'Ah.' He sighed and looked out of the window at the distant lights. He smelled a little of smoke and some old-fashioned scent. His eyes looked sunken and dark. He seemed lost in his own thoughts. 'Ah, well.'

I hesitated, then said, 'You look a little low yourself, Prince. Has it been a long day?'

'Most,' he said. 'Most long.' He stared out of the window. He cleared his throat. 'Ah, dear Kate.'

'Yes, Suvinder?'

'About our telephone conversation this morning.'

I held up my hands as though to catch a basketball at chest height. 'Suvinder,' I said. 'It's all right.' I hoped I might settle the issue with just that gesture and those words, plus a look of friendly sympathy and understanding, but the Prince had obviously already decided he was going to have his say. I hate it when people are so damn programmed.

'I hope you were not offended.'

'I was not, Prince. As I said at the time, I was annoyed at being woken up, but the sentiments were most flattering.'

'They were,' he swallowed, 'sincere, but ill put.'

'The sincerity was by far the more obvious quality, Suvinder,' I said, and even surprised myself at the way the words came out. The Prince looked pleased. He gazed out the window again. We both watched the few rising sparks.

I was thinking about how high up we were, about the crags and cliffs and the undulating hills between us and the town when he said, 'It is all so flat here, isn't it?'

I looked at him. 'Are you homesick, Suvinder?'

'Perhaps, a little.' He glanced at me. 'You have only been to Thulahn once, haven't you, Kate?'

'Just the once, and very briefly.'

'It was the rainy season then. You did not see it at its best. You should return. It is very beautiful at this time of year.'

'I'm sure it is. Maybe one day.'

He gave a small smile and said, 'It would please me greatly.'

'That's very kind, Suvinder.'

He bit his lip. 'Well, then, will you tell me why you were looking so despondent, dear Kate?'

I don't know whether I'm just naturally reticent or it's some business-inspired wariness to do with giving people a handle on my possible weaknesses, but normally I'm loath to share any back-story (as Hollywood would call it) stuff. Anyway, I said, 'I suppose I always find fireworks kind of sad. I mean, fun, too, but sad all the same.'

Suvinder looked surprised. 'Why is that?'

'I think it goes back to when I was a little girl. We could never afford fireworks, and my mother didn't like them anyway; she was the kind of person who hid under the kitchen table when there was thunder. The only fireworks I ever had of my own were a few sparklers one year. And I managed to burn myself with one of those. Still have the scar, see?' I showed him my left wrist.

'Oh dear,' he said. 'Sorry, where?'

'There. I mean, I know, it's tiny, looks like a freckle or something, but, well.'

'To have no fireworks as a child, that is sad.'

I shook my head. 'It's not that, though. What we used to do was, on November the sixth each year my pals and I would go round the town where I lived, collecting spent fireworks. We' d dig the Roman candles up out of the ground and search for rockets in the woods and people's gardens. We tramped all over the bits of waste ground looking for these bright tubes of cardboard. They were always wet and soggy and the paper was just starting to unravel, and they smelled of dampness and ashes. We used to stick them in a big pile in our gardens, as though they were fresh and unused. The thing was to have more fireworks and bigger ones than your friends. I found it helped to go further afield, to where the better-off people had their displays.'

'Oh. So you were not just tidying them up?'

'I suppose we were doing that too, inadvertently, but really it was a kind of competition.'

'But why is that sad?'

I looked at his big, dark, melancholy face. 'Because there are few things more forlorn and useless than a damp, used firework, and when I look back it just seems so pathetic that we used to treasure the damn things.' I shrugged. 'That's all.'

The Prince was quiet for a while. A few more rockets lit up the skies above Harrogate. 'I used to be frightened of fireworks,' he said. 'When I was smaller.'

'The noise?'

'Yes. We have fireworks on many of our holy days and on the monarch's birthday. My father would always insist that I let off the biggest and loudest of them. It used to terrify me. I would never sleep the night before. My nurse would stop my ears with wax, but still when I set off the larger mortars the blast would all but knock me head over heels, and I would start to weep. This displeased my father.'

I didn't say anything for a while. We watched the tiny, silent sparks climbing, spreading, falling in the distance.

'Well, you're in charge now, Suvinder,' I told him. 'You can ban fireworks if you want.'

'Oh, no,' he said, and looked mildly shocked. 'I could never do such a thing. No, no, they are traditional and, besides, I came to tolerate them.' He smiled hesitantly. 'I would even say that now I love them.'

I put my hand out and touched his arm. 'Good for you, Prince.'

He looked down at my hand, and seemed to be about to say something. Then his secretary B. K. Bousande appeared at the door, clearing his throat.

Suvinder Dzung looked round, nodded, then smiled regretfully. 'I must go. Good night, Kate.'

'Good night, Suvinder.'

I watched him pad quickly, silently away, then turned back to look out of the dark window, waiting for more of the tiny lights climbing above the town, but there were none.