The Fund. Jeff Edwards
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‘especially if you want to oversee your first project. After all, the one you’re working on is in a predominantly Muslim country.’
Next to Justine, Ali reached out and touched her lightly on the hand. ‘My wife and I thought it would be best if, when you do travel out there, that we went with you. It is an unfortunate fact that a middle-aged Muslim male would be better able to get things done than a very young and Christian female.’
‘Yes,’ conceded Justine, ‘I’ve already found that out. It was very hard at first, but then I found out that if I simply told one of the boys in the office what to say, they could ring up on my behalf and were actually passed through to the official we wanted to speak to.’
Ali smiled. ‘You shall remain in charge. I will simply be your voice.’
‘All right. I’d appreciate that,’ smiled Justine.
Suzie spoke up. ‘Then it’s agreed. We need complete makeovers for two. I think Paris is called for. Don’t you agree, Lana?’
A broad grin spread over Lana’s face. ‘Paris? Definitely! And we’ll need at least two, no, make that four, days.’
‘Hang on! How much is this going to set The Fund back?’ asked an alarmed Brian.
Lana smiled warmly at her husband. ‘Don’t worry, my love. Consider this an investment. The Fund will benefit from it in the long run.’
‘And what are Brian and I to do while our wives are wasting our funds in Paris?’ asked Toby.
Nori looked up. ‘I thought your accountant friend Mr Marks was about to call out to Jersey and Jamaica to investigate the banks we now own. Shouldn’t some of us go out there with him to check them out?’
‘Jersey and Jamaica? How does that sound to you, Brian?’ asked Toby.
‘Very worthwhile!’ agreed Brian with a grin.
‘Well, if they’re going to be away for a while I think Paris will have to put up with us for at least a week!’ countered Suzie.
‘Ye gods! There’ll be nothing left in the shops by then!’ exclaimed Toby.
‘In the meantime, Nori and I will look after matters here at home,’ said Ali.
‘I’m sure that when all get back my husband and I will be able to slip away for a short time to be with our children,’ said Nori.
‘We’ll make sure you do,’ agreed Brian.
‘Well, now that you’ve all arranged holidays for yourselves, I’d like to bring up something that Eliza and I have been discussing. It’s important,’ said Justine.
They all knew by now that Justine did not have a frivolous nature and that if she said a topic was important then it meant that she had turned it over many times already in her own mind.
‘What is it?’ asked Ali.
‘The future direction of The Fund,’ said Justine.
‘I would have thought that The Fund had an almost unlimited future,’ said Brian.
Justine nodded. ‘Given sound financial advice, that will be the case. But what I’m talking about is The Fund’s real power. The videos.’
‘What about them?’
‘How long do you think it will be before the videos are considered to no longer be a threat to the government?’
‘Years!’ said Toby.
‘How many years, Toby? One, five, ten?’
‘I don’t know. What are you saying?’
Justine rose and began to pace the floor. It was how she expressed herself when she had something difficult to say. Her hands and arms became part of her speech as she waved them around to emphasise a point.
‘True, the videos are important today. They have the power to change governments, to bring people in high places down. They are of people in the highest positions in the land at this time. That’s the trouble. In a few years from now those people will be gone. They’ll be retired, or worse, dead. You can’t threaten to expose a dead person. It just won’t work. Besides, people’s attitudes change. People of my generation just don’t care if a politician visited a brothel twenty or thirty years ago. We weren’t born then, so it’s just history to us. When Eliza and I look at those videos it just makes us laugh. For us it’s just like watching Funniest Home Videos on TV.’
‘Are you saying we should turn the videos over to the government?’ asked Brian.
‘No! Certainly not! They’re still important, and we’ll make full use of them while we can, but you all have to face facts!’
‘What facts?’ asked Toby.
‘Eliza and I looked at the figures. When we placed the PM’s brother on the Internet the site had nearly two thousand hits before the government shut it down. That was for two days.’
‘Well, that shows how much interested people were in it,’ said Toby.
‘No Toby, it doesn’t. The site was mentioned in newspaper articles.
Everyone with a computer and modem could have accessed it. On those same two days over forty thousand people around the world accessed a Harry Potter website!’
Eliza interrupted her. ‘That’s two thousand for a PM’s brother. In two years time the current US President will have completed his last term in office and must retire. Any hope of using his video then ceases to be an option. I don’t think we’d even get two thousand hits if his video were released after his retirement. Our generation is taking over and we just don’t care that much about men behaving badly decades ago.’
Brian pushed back his chair. He knew Justine well by now. ‘I can understand what you’re saying because the same idea had occurred to me. It’s worried me as well, but I thought we could have used the videos for a lot longer yet.’
Justine nodded. ‘We have a few years at best. Definitely not decades.’
‘Okay. What’s your solution?’
‘What makes you think I have a solution?’
‘Because I can hear your devious mind cranking over from here. Justine and I know you wouldn’t have brought the subject up if you didn’t have a plan.’
Justine rewarded Brian with one of her few smiles. ‘The answer is intelligence. The videos were all right for their time, but today they’re too limited. Sex is nothing now. What we have to do is collect information on a variety of people, particularly those in power. We need to collect all manner of what may seem to be useless information. We have to know everything from their shoe size to how much he has in the bank and where they’ve secreted their secret funds. There are lots of data gathering groups around that are already trying to do some of this, but we have to go beyond. We have to become a version of “Big Brother”.’
‘Why?’ asked Lana.
‘The more information we have on someone the more power we have over them.’
‘I don’t see what knowing their shoe size will do for us,’ laughed Lana.
Justine didn’t laugh. This was totally serious to her. She regarded Lana with the look of a stern schoolmistress trying to teach a naughty child. ‘Suppose we needed a favour from a government official in a very poor country. Suppose he has an unusual shoe size that doesn’t allow him to purchase the correct size locally because they couldn’t afford to stock them. So, he’s getting around in ill-fitting shoes that constantly hurt his feet. We go to him for a favour and just happen to have a spare pair of shoes in his correct size. Will he do the favour for us? To stop his feet from hurting, I think he will.’
Lana conceded that Justine had a point. ‘But this means collecting a vast amount of information. It’s too big a task for anyone.