A Delicate Truth Read Free

assured on expert advice.’
    ‘Forgive me, Minister. What field
     would that be, exactly?’
    ‘Private defence contractors.
     Where’ve you been? Name of the game these days. War’s gone corporate, in
     case you haven’t noticed. Standing professional armies are a bust. Top-heavy,
     under-equipped, one brigadier for every dozen boots on the ground, and cost a mint. Try
     a couple of years at Defence if you don’t believe me.’
    ‘Oh I do, Minister’ – startled
     by this wholesale dismissal of British arms, but anxious to humour the man
     nonetheless.
    ‘You’re trying to flog your
     house. Right? Harrow or somewhere.’
    ‘Harrow is correct’ – now past
     surprise – ‘North Harrow.’
    ‘Cash problems?’
    ‘Oh no, far from it, I’m
     thankful to say!’ he exclaims, grateful to be returned if only momentarily to
     earth. ‘I have a little bit of my own, and my wife has come into a modest
     inheritance which includes a country property. We plan to sell our present house while
     the market holds, and live small until we make the move.’
    ‘Elliot will say he wants to buy your
     house in Harrow. He won’t say he’s from Ethical or anywhere else. He’s
     seen the ads in the estate agent’s window or wherever, looked it over from the
     outside, likes it, but there are issues he needs to discuss. He’ll suggest a place
     and time to meet. You’re to go along with whatever he proposes. That’s the
     way these people work. Any further questions?’
    Has he asked any?
    ‘Meantime, you play totally normal
     man. Not a word to anyone. Not here in the Office, not at home. Is that clearly
     understood?’
    Not understood. Not from Adam. But a
     wholehearted, mystified ‘yes’ to all of it, and no very clear memory of how
     he got home that night, after a restorative Friday-evening visit to his Pall Mall
     club.
     
    *
     
    Bowed over his computer while wife and
     daughter chatter merrily in the next room, Paul Anderson elect searches for Ethical
     Outcomes.
Do you mean Ethical Outcomes Incorporated of Houston, Texas?
For want
     of other information, yes, he does.
With our brand-new international
     team of uniquely qualified geopolitical thinkers, we at Ethical offer
     innovative, insightful, cutting-edge analyses of risk assessment to major
     corporate and national entities. At Ethical we pride ourselves on our integrity,
     due diligence, and up-to-the-minute cyber skills. Close protection and hostage
     negotiatorsavailable at immediate notice. Marlon will respond
     to your personal and confidential inquiries.
    Email address and box number also in
     Houston, Texas. Free-phone number for your personal and confidential enquiries of
     Marlon. No names of directors, officers, advisors or uniquely qualified geopolitical
     thinkers. No Elliot, first name or surname. The parent company of Ethical Outcomes is
     Spencer Hardy Holdings, a multinational corporation whose interests include oil, wheat,
     timber, beef, property development and not-for-profit initiatives. The same parent
     company also endows evangelical foundations, faith schools and Bible missions.
    For further information about Ethical
     Outcomes, enter your key-code. Possessing no such key-code, and assailed by a sense of
     trespass, he abandons his researches.
    A week passes. Each morning over breakfast,
     all day long in the office, each evening when he comes home from work, he plays Totally
     Normal Man as instructed, and waits for the great call that may or may not come, or come
     when it’s least expected: which is what it does early one morning while his wife
     is sleeping off her medication and he’s pottering in the kitchen in his check
     shirt and corduroys washing up last night’s supper things and telling himself he
     really must get a hold of that back lawn. The phone rings, he picks it up, gives a
     cheery ‘Good morning’ and it’s Elliot, who, sure enough, has seen the
     ads in the estate agent’s window and is seriously