"Trick of my trade, I'm afraid", he explained. "If you look in your handbag, you'll find a ball point pen. I put it there while you were in the entrance to the London underground. It contains a miniature transmitter which can be used as a direction finder. Following you in the car wasn't particularly easy while you were on the train but I made it in the end."

She found the pen, dumped it in his glove compartment and looked at him with caution.

"What are you - some sort of spy"?

"Not at all, he laughed, I work in Business Information which is quite different - although we may have to use some similar techniques now and then".

Seeing the puzzled look on her face, and admitting it was a bit late in the day for economics lectures, he elaborated.

"If you take a global view, and these days that is really the only view to take, more and more people are demanding a share of a world wealth that can now be produced by fewer and fewer people".

"Yet the rule of economics is that people cannot share in the wealth of the world without participating in the means of its production. So as production becomes more efficient competition by people to participate in it becomes increasingly cut throat."

"In consequence, organisations themselves become more efficient and the fight between them to produce the goods and services people want also becomes just as cut throat.

"The single most important weapon in this fight is information. Information is the thing that glues it all together and makes it work."         

"But information is not solid like a machine, it cannot physically be restrained. It resides in people's minds. It is a very leaky thing. It leaks out in conversation, it leaks down copper wires. An encyclopaedia of knowledge can be stored on a single CD - easily transported anywhere."

"With information you can be a King, without it you are nothing. Information is the key area of conflict in the world. The battles fought in the boardrooms and offices of big business are about information. Corporations devote huge amounts of resources to getting it through research or by any means and then hanging on to it - without it they die."

"Furthermore the concentrated power of these corporations is so huge that they are almost beyond the laws of a single nation state. Nowadays, the legality of an action often depends on which country you are standing in. So the information battle is largely fought with all gloves well and truly off."

"Organisations like mine, find leaks, plug leaks, seek out destructive elements - even sometimes create leaks in illegal organisations."

He looked at her to see her reaction and then continued.

"We are the mercenaries of the Information War, Samurais of the information age, hired guns, if you want to be romantic about it, ready to take on all. Sometimes we are difficult to live with - but, always for large firms, we are impossible to live without."

The worrying thought occurred to Sarah that perhaps her new found friend may not be a lot different to the crew she had just left.

"But the good thing is at least he seems to be on my side", she thought. Tim was now in full flow. His speech seemed automatic, possibly as well repeated as that Ferret Face had made half an hour earlier.

"We are involved in computerised information systems, corporate take over battles, plans for space aeroplanes, genetic and social engineering. We police the analysis of past events and give protection to plans for the future. Our global backdrop is simple - winner takes all, so we win."