After the abrupt termination of the Fourth Beginning, Adam and Eve Smith reluctantly settle back into their old lives until, unexpectedly, Adam is recruited by the business consultancy firm Slievens as one of their chosen executives. David Minofel, a partner in Slievens, is Adam’s sponsor.
On the evening Minofel visits the Smith’s home in Harrow to offer Adam a job, a couple of burglars burst into the Smith’s home, and beat up Adam and Eve. Just as one of the burglars is about to rape Eve, Minfoel arrives for his appointment with Adam. When he rings the bell one of the burglars sends him away but, realising something is wrong, Minofel returns, bursting into the house and killing both burglars.
Adam and Eve are both inexpressibly grateful to Minofel who reveals that he spent years in the SAS and as a mercenary before joining Slievens.
Adam’s first appointment is in Geneva, as Marketing Director of Ze D, a major Swiss pharmaceutical company. Adam’s mentor in Geneva is the beautfiul and highly intelligent Miss Gorgeous Tomic, personal assistent to the MD of Ze D. Adam quickly learns the Slievens philosophy. Define your goals, devise the most efficient way of achieving them, and act, uninhibited by any scruples.
Meanwhile, at the Smith’s house in Harrow, the other questors, including Kit, the enigmatic blind man from the Fourth Beginning, have gathered. Kit is keen to reactivate the Fourth Beginning but Eve and the other questors are less enthusiastic, fearful of retribution from whatever aborted the Fourth Beginning. Kit, undeterred, visits Adam in Geneva but meets with a cool reception.
Adam feels challenged but fulfilled by the demands of his new job. He enjoys the power he has to get things done and the extraordinary financial incentives he is given to succeed. His main task is to oversee the successful introduction of Ze D’s new drug, Angeloma. All seems to be going well until a patient on the drug dies in a clinical trial in Basel.
Adam quickly discovers that the application of Slievens modus operandi involves him in bribery, blackmail and, finally, murder.
While Adam is in Geneva, Eve discovers she is pregnant. She misses Adam and becomes increasingly concerned that his work for Ze D is taking him over. As the weeks pass, their relationship deteriorates until she confides in Kit that she thinks she has lost Adam and that their marriage may be over.
Although Adam does not fully understand Slievens objectives, he is a tremendous success in Geneva. His career, guided by Slievens, seems assured and his financial future secure. Indeed the prospect of real wealth beckons. Perhaps even more importantly, Adam feels he has found a kind of truth, not the abstract truth he had sought in the Fourth Beginning but a practical, pragmatic truth about the nature of man – and his own true nature.
Adam has no idea that Slievens and David Minofel are working for the Praesidium, a secret organisation that, for thousands of years, has been guiding man and directing history. The goal of the Praesidium is to enable man to be himself and to fulfil himself. To this end, the monitaurs, agents of the Praesidium, promote depravity, extremism, corruption, obfuscation and negativity.
Minofel is grooming Adam. He knows Adam set out on a quest to find the truth. Minofel is going to provide him with a different kind of truth, one which will satisfy him and ensure that he and Eve are never again tempted to set out with the Storyteller on another quest.
Table of Content
1. PRAESIDIUM
2. THE END OF THE BEGINNING
3. THE PARALLEL PARLIAMENT
4. ENGINEERING
5. CONFERENCE AT THE ELM TREE
6. THE JOB OPPORTUNITY
7. PRACTITIONER SELECTION
8. AN EVENTFUL EVENING
9. UNCLE RAMBLER AND NUMPTY
10. POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS ENQUIRIES
11. AN EXTRAORDINARY OFFER
12. SORTED
13. A CANINE CALL
14. GENEVA
15. DAY ONE AT ZED
16. OF THE GLORY THAT IS PAST
17. MEETING MCFALL
18. FILLING IN
19. REGROUPING
20. GIOVANNI
21. DECON
22. OF TIMES PAST
23. A GIFT
24. THE GATHERING-IN
25. DEPRAVITY
26. A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE
27. AN INTERIM REPORT
28. MEETING SPINETTI
29. ALL TOGETHER, ALL BUT ONE
30. SPINETTI’S GUEST
31. EXTREME LICENCE
32. PLANNING
33. DEBRIEF
34. DECON MEETING CONTINUED
35. TRUE LOVE
36. GOOD NEWS/BAD NEWS
37. DECON MEETING CONCLUDED
38. GROWING CONCERNS
39. BREAKING SOULS
40. CONSCIENCE
41. THE INVITATION
42. THE FIRST MEETING
43. MACHINATIONS
44. KIT MEETS MINOFEL
45. THE PARADOX OF THE PARADOX
46. FIRST MEETING
47. THINKING THE SLIEVINS WAY
48. SECOND MEETING
49. SUPERIMPOSITIONS
50. MINOFEL, ADAM AND KIT
51. REVIEW OF PROGRESS
52. I’M LEAVING
53. MAN AND WIFE
54. REMORSE, REBUKE, REVIEW
55. LEARNING CURVES
56. PHILOSOPHISING
57. THE TANGLED WEB
58. SUSPICIONS AND SCEPTICISM
59. PRAESIDIUM PLOTS
60. DECISION TIME
61. GENEVAN MACHINATIONS
62. MURDER MOST FOUL
63. A BRIGHT FUTURE
64. THE ENLIGHTENMENT
65. MEDIA FRENZY
66. BREAKING UP
67. MINOFEL’S REPORT
About the author
Academic Record
– St Marylebone Grammar School (1953 – 1961)
– B.A. (Hons) in English, New College, Oxford (1961-1964):
– M. Phil in Modern English Studies, New College, Oxford (1964-1966):
– M.A. New College, Oxford (1968).
Managing Director, Panarc International Ltd (1980 to the present)
Managing business consultancy projects (in market research, marketing and communications) and Panarc’s own commercial ventures.
January, 1985 to July, 2012, developed and managed Panarc’s Media Analysis service based on Panarc’s own Media Analysis (Max) programme.
From 2012, developed and managed Panarc Publishing, a publishing operation to publish and market his own and others’ books.