‘When I began planning Emergence. I’m sure Dr Morrisette has told you the basis of the Emergence operation. I needed expert assistance from people I could rely on to set it up. I turned to two friends from Exeter days – Miranda Cushing and Vinod Hardekar. I offered them rich rewards if they helped me. Miranda has expensive tastes and Vinod’s career hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped. They both had good reasons to go in with me. I think they found it all rather exciting as well. Miranda pointed me in the direction of the right people to approach in several Middle Eastern oil states. She’d worked as a consultant for an international investment company that advised several of the biggest sovereign wealth funds in that part of the world. She did some of the initial sounding-out for me. Vinod’s role was to prepare a financial network of offshore entities to channel the proceeds from the auction of the land options through Quartizon and out of Nishizaki’s reach. It was Miranda who told me about Nick, passed off by Caro as Geoff Nolan’s son, but actually mine. An obvious vulnerability, but one I thought I could disregard. Unfortunately, Marty proved more assiduous in his search for me than I’d anticipated, until, in the end, I had to rescue him from pursuit by the Irishman and hide him in Iceland. And when I became aware that Nick was also on my trail I realized to my surprise that having a son wasn’t just the accidental outcome of a drunken tumble with Caro forty-two years ago … but an emotional connection I couldn’t deny, even to myself.’

‘You designed Emergence from the outset as a means of cheating Nishizaki?’