After the demise of the illusory communist alternative, there is nothing left to counter the forces of the market. In the multinationals depicted in this novel, executives are in fact hit men, killers that use the board room, strategic planning and corporate raiding to carry our their plans and policies, all geared to gaining control of emerging nations and their resources. Their clients are dictators and their families, go-betweens and pseudo-revolutionary movements. Then there are the other people’s killers, with an inevitable Nakamura in the role of adversary.

With his sound knowledge of management theory and painstaking background work on innumerable texts dealing with economic imbalance and the limitations of capitalism (first and foremost John K. Galbraith), Morgan offers a picture of what could happen in the future. An alliance of secret services and violence and economy and finance.

Two emerging markets – Colombia and Cambodia – provide the theatre of conflict for these enterprises. Coup d’états are just corporate take-overs.

But what happens if an executive takes up the cause of the emerging nations? What happens if he decides that more social justice is needed? Or if he abandons his stock options and changes lifestyle, fascinated by an ageing revolutionary who believes in equality?

Corporate life is minutely described (meetings, dirty tricks, concert parties, power struggles) and the long dialogue between Faulkner and his mentor on the meaning of enterprise is exceptionally good. “We’re here for money, my dear Faulkner,” apostrophizes his mentor.