John was reluctantly obliged to agree that the business was not quite as dull as he had imagined. His father was an excellent teacher, and seduced his son just as he had been seduced — by technical elegance, by excellence, by shining schemes, tinged only slightly with black.
He was lured into Peter’s world slowly but surely. If a politician or a bureaucrat stood in the way of a scheme, the question was not the rights and wrongs of his position, it was, simply, how do we get rid of him? Bribery? Once assured of the worth of the scheme, John did not object too strongly to bribery, or a scandal in the local paper, or a little blackmail, or a little of everything. John would work it out, for the greater good, without immoderate distaste, and then he would use the power of the business with re
