Iain Banks: The Business

A few places have — for an arrangement, for services rendered or just outright bribes — allowed some of our most senior people to become accredited diplomats; hence our interest in the fate of General Pinochet, who was travelling on a supposedly diplomatic passport when he was arrested in London.

This seems to be the latest fad with our Level One execs; in the past we never used to bother. Perhaps it is simply that when you're so rich you can buy anything, all that's left is stuff that money normally can't buy. My own theory is that one of our Level One people bumped into a high-ranking Catholic at a party once and discovered he was talking to a Knight of Malta, accredited through the Vatican to all the best diplomatic courts (Lee Iacocca, for example).

This would leave our Level One exec at a disadvantage, because only Catholics can become Knights of Malta, and there is a strict rule in the Business that all executives — anybody above Level Six — must renounce all religious affiliations, the better to devote themselves to pursuing a life dedicated to Mammon. Anyway, some of our Level Ones possess diplomatic passports from some of the world's less savoury regimes, like Iraq and Myanmar, while some sport papers from places so little known that even experienced customs and immigration officers have been known to have to refer to their reference books to find them: places like Dasah, a trucial state on a small island in the Persian Gulf, or Thulahn, a mountainous principality between Sikkim and Bhutan, or the Zoroastrian People's Republic of Inner Magadan, between the Sea of Okhotsk and the Arctic Ocean, or San Borodin, the only independent Canary Isle.

These arrangements are useful, but they're expensive and fragile — regimes change, and if we can buy them now, who might buy them tomorrow? So there's another wheeze on the horizon; a fix for all this. We intend to buy our own state, outright.

Quite apart from giving us access to all the diplomatic passports we might reasonably require and allowing us unrestricted use of that perfect smuggling route called the diplomatic bag, we would also finally have what, according to some of the more enthusiastic Level Ones, we really need: a seat at the United Nations.

The candidate is the island of Fenua Ua, part of the Society Islands group in the South Pacific. Fenua Ua has one inhabited island, two mined-out guano outcrops, and no natural resources apart from lots of sun, sand and salt and some only arguably edible spiny fish. They were once so desperate to generate income from any source at all they invited the French to come and blow up nuclear bombs beneath them, but the French refused. They used to have to import water. They now have a desalination plant but the water still tastes, apparently, on the salty side.

Their power plant works only intermittently, there is no natural harbour on the main island, barely space for a proper airport and the reefs make it impossible for cruise ships to call even if they want to (and as Fenua Ua is devoid of natural wonders and possesses no native culture whatsoever except that based around the removal of the spines from spiny fish, they don't want to).

The place's most pressing problem is that there is no ground on Fenua Ua higher than a metre and a half above sea level, and while its reefs protect the main island from waves and the Pacific swell, they will not be able to counter the effects of global warming. In fifty years' time, if present trends continue, the place will be mostly under water and the capital will look like Venice during an Adriatic storm surge.

The deal being suggested is that if we'll build them a sea wall which will girdle the whole island, the Fenua Uans will let us take control of the entire state. As there are only thirty-five hundred dispirited Fenua Uans, it has proved quite easy to bribe almost all of them. Three referenda in the last five years have backed our plans, by a huge majority.

This was, though, not proving an easy deal to complete. Various governments had got wind of the transaction and had been quietly trying to block it, offering various amounts of aid, trading credits and personal financial sweeteners to the Fenua Ua government. The US, the UK, Japan and France had proved particularly stubborn, and while we hadn't parted with any serious money yet — just a few skiing holidays in Gstaad, a motor cruiser or two, a couple of apartments in Miami and a few other expensive gifts — we'd invested a great deal of effort in all this, only to find that every time we thought we were on the brink of closing the deal, the Fenua Ua government came up with another objection, or pointed out that the French had promised to build them an international airport, or the Japanese would finance a better desalination plant or the US had offered them their own nuclear power station or the British had suggested they might be able to arrange a visit by Prince Charles. However, according to the rumours I'd been hearing over the last few weeks, perhaps there had been some resolution of the problem at last, because the meeting at Blysecrag had seemingly been set up to bring the whole matter to a head. Pens might well be wielded, hearty handshakes shared and leather-bound document wallets exchanged, perhaps — I thought as I stood there in my waders watching Uncle Freddy reel in a lively little trout — that very evening.

'Ah,' said Uncle Freddy, throwing the car into a corner and twirling the steering-wheel until his arms were crossed. The Ferrari went briefly sideways and teetered on the edge of a spin. 'Come on, come on, old girl,' Uncle Freddy muttered; not to me, to the car. I clutched my purse to my chest and felt my legs pull up instinctively, squeezing the shiny shopping-bags behind my calves in the footwell. We continued to head for the hedge for what felt like a few seconds, then the Daytona seemed to gather itself just at the apex of the corner and its long red bonnet lifted as we roared on down the resulting straight. Cars were Uncle Freddy's weakness: the old stables at Blysecrag contained a collection of exotic automobiles — some of them very fast — that would have shamed most motor museums.

We were on our way back from Harrogate, which was about forty minutes' drive from Blysecrag, or half an hour if you drove like Uncle Freddy. He had offered to drive me into town to pick up a new dress for the formal dinner that evening. I had forgotten quite how enthusiastic a driver he could be. We had been talking — on my part largely to take my mind off the mortal peril Uncle Freddy appeared to be intent on putting us both in — about the Fenua Ua situation and I had expressed the cautious hope as detailed above that things might be settled tonight.

Then Uncle Freddy had said, 'Ah,' in that particular tone that made my heart seem to sink, while at the same time my curiosity suddenly awoke, sniffing something major.

I had been trying to distract myself from Uncle F's driving by counting the money I'd withdrawn from a couple of cash machines in Harrogate. The developed world divides people neatly into two camps: those who get nervous when they have too much money on them (in case they lose it or get mugged), and those who get nervous when they don't have enough (in case they miss a bargain). I am firmly of the second school, and my lower limit of nervousness seems to be way, way above most people's higher one. I tend to lose a lot in currency conversion charges but I'm never short of a bob or two. I blame my upbringing. I looked up from my purse at Uncle Freddy. 'Ah?' I said.

'You bugger,' Uncle Freddy said, under his breath, as a tractor blocked the road ahead and a stream of cars coming in the opposite direction prevented him overtaking. He looked at me and smiled. 'Suppose you might as well be told now as later,' he said.

'What?'

'We're not really interested in Fenua Ua.'