‘Gebruder Sleder,’ said Hauptmertz, ‘manufactures wheels, ball bearings, brake parts and axles for railway locomotives and carriages; you supply Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Britain, Spain, Canada and the United States with these parts. This side of your business accounts for twenty-eight per cent of your company’s total revenues.

‘The remaining two per cent comes from a new development. Your company AtomSled has been set up with a massive capital investment – all provided by yourself – to cash in on the world boom in nuclear energy. AtomSled has been set up to manufacture the fuel rods and bundles for nuclear power stations. The amount of plant you have constructed, if worked at capacity, would contribute twenty-five per cent of your company’s total revenues; all it contributes at the present time is two per cent. You have so far been unable to obtain sufficient contracts. Your factory workers are on short time, yet even so you are building up a massive stock-pile of fuel, which you cannot be sure you are going to be able to sell. The financial drain caused by this is serious, but at the moment not desperate.’ Hauptmertz and Sleder stared for some moments at each other.

‘Thank you,’ said Sleder, ‘for giving me such an elaborate account of my business; I would be curious to know your sources.’

‘Yes,’ said Hauptmertz, ‘I have no doubt you would.’

‘I would also like to know who you are, for whom you are working and why you are telling me all this?’

‘My name is Carpov, Dimitri Carpov. I work for a small company in the Soviet Union which you may have heard of: it is called the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnasti – you probably know it better by its initials: the KGB.’

‘And my name is James Bond,’ said Sleder. ‘I work for MI6.’

Carpov shook his head. The twinkle had gone again from his eyes. ‘You are joking; I am not.’

‘Please continue,’ said Sleder.

‘Your wheat and textile interests: they account in total for twenty-one per cent of your revenues, which is not a lot, so we shall not for the moment concern ourselves with them. But your oil – which alone accounts for twenty-three per cent – that is interesting. The backbone of your oil interests is in El Salvador, and we have some very good connections there. We can arrange very quickly for your plant to be destroyed, and we can make it impossible for you to put up new plant in its place.

‘Your munitions interests, which account for twenty-six per cent of your revenues: I don’t think I need to convince you any further that I know a great deal about your business; I know exactly who you are paying off, and how much you are paying; we could expose you in any of a dozen different ways, and wipe out your munitions business within a matter of months.