Lowson’s negotiations with Haran and the Great Father or, more correctly, his Guardian Angels, took a long time but were not as difficult as he had envisaged. In so far as anyone knew the two leaders, he knew them fairly well, and in so far as anyone knew Ralph Lowson, they knew him fairly well. They did not, of course, trust him, nor he they, but he was an important and influential foreigner and one of the few who was prepared to work for them. The fact that he was without any local political ambition, and the fact that one of the conditions of his assistance was secrecy about certain aspects of the work, gave the two leaders a good measure of the extent to which they could rely on him.
Officially, and for presentation to the rest of the world, Lowson Construction built hospitals and sch
