‘Gebruder Sleder,’ said Hauptmertz, ‘owns, among its major assets, 842,000 acres of wheat ranch-land in Manitoba, Canada, Oregon in the United States, and Queensland, Australia. The revenues from this make up nine per cent of your company’s total revenues.

‘You own SledTex of Lecco, Italy, which is now among the world’s five largest producers of sportswear textiles, making fabrics for everything from ski anoraks to footballers’ shorts to scuba-divers’ wet-suits to asbestos suits for motor racing drivers; SledTinta of Como, Italy, one of the world’s largest textile printing plants; Sleder-Ykeng-Lee of Hong Kong, which is one of Hong Kong’s largest manufacturers of jeans, and which now has a twenty-year contract to build factories and manufacture jeans inside the People’s Republic of China. Your textile interests account for twelve per cent of your company’s total revenues.

‘Your interests in oil are spread fairly widely. You own a small field in the North Sea, but the drilling so far has been inconclusive, although you have hyped up the reports, and three major companies are interested in purchasing it at the present time. You have minor oil interests in Saskatchewan, Kenya and the North Sea, but your major oil holdings are in El Salvador, where you have made seven important strikes, and invested, if I may be permitted to say so, more than is wise, perhaps, for such an unstable country.’

Sleder continued to stare at Hauptmertz. He hadn’t moved an inch, and the ash was half an inch long on the end of his cigarette.

‘Revenues from your oil fields in El Salvador account for twenty-three per cent of your company’s total revenues.’

Sleder knocked the ash off the end of his cigarette, but did not lift the cigarette up to his mouth. So far everything Hauptmertz had said was completely accurate; and the only people in the world who knew the precise figures of the Gebruder Sleder empire were Sleder and his accountants. Someone had been giving Hauptmertz a lot of help with his homework.

Hauptmertz continued. ‘You are producing high explosives under a licence from the Federal German Government which specifies that these explosives are for industrial purposes, such as mining, only. In fact, only ten per cent of the explosives you manufacture are sold for industrial purposes. Under the banner of your company, and behind the façade of your industrial explosives business, you have a sizeable munitions empire manufacturing, and going to great lengths to sell, hand grenades, shells, mortars, landmines – and you don’t discriminate over your clientele, do you? Terrorists are among your best customers. It is all done under a perfectly innocent-looking front, and the authorities are kept very happy by the substantial annual payments, both in cash and in beautiful girls, that you make to them. This munitions empire accounts for twenty-six per cent of your revenues.’

Sleder stubbed out his cigarette. He was starting to feel uncomfortable, and he wasn’t used to feeling uncomfortable.