 brought to you by Penguin. Exposure inside the Olympus scandal, how I went from CEO to whistle-blower, by Michael Woodford, read by Roy McMillan, dedicated to Koji Miyata and Wakumila, the best friends a person could ever have. Prologue. Sometimes I feel like I've spent my life at thirty-eight thousand feet, strapped in above the clouds, wiling away the hours as I cross continents with my briefcase and laptop. I know the drill, the check-in, the unsmiling passport official, the shoe removal, the phone in a tray, the overlit duty-free stores, the long hike to the gate, down the air bridge, over the threshold, and turning left to the sanctuary of the first-class cabin. Remove the jacket, take a glass of champagne, and wait as the final straggler's board. At last the armed and cross-checked announcement. Then hour after hour above the clouds until the pre-landing procedures and touchdown. Finally the bleary-eyed exit to another place. But this flight was different. All Nippon Airways 202 from London he throw to Narita, Japan, departing the 23rd of March 2011 at 7 p.m. Less than two weeks before there had been an undersea megathrust earthquake measuring nine on the Richter scale, its epicentre forty-three miles east of Oshika Peninsula of Tohoku. The largest earthquake ever to hit Japan and the fifth biggest on earth since they started recording such things back in 1900. Within thirty minutes a tsunami, peaking at a height of a hundred and thirty-three feet, struck the country's northeastern coastline. The world watched on television as the surging wall of grey water with cars, boats and trucks bobbing on its surface worked its way up to five miles inland in Sendai Province, smashing most structures in its path. It destroyed 129,225 buildings. Nearly sixteen thousand people were killed, twenty-seven thousand injured, and three thousand one hundred and fifty-five were still missing. I was flying into a disaster zone. Below me as we descended another threat remained. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant located on the coast was thumped by the full force of the wave. It remained upright, but its back-up power systems failed, and the plant's workers, soldiers and firemen were fighting to keep the radiation spewing reactor cool. If things took a turn for the worse, the Japanese authorities were secretly contemplating the possibility of evacuating the whole of Greater Tokyo, a megalopolis with a population of thirty-five million, and Tokyo was precisely where I was headed. I appeared to be the sole westerner on the plane. Many foreigners based in Tokyo were rapidly heading in the opposite direction out of the country to safety. As the plane flew through the night I slept fitfully, my mind returning to the days before I had left my home for Heathrow. With the twenty-four-hour news channels showing the desperate efforts to bring the Fukushima reactor under control, my wife had told me not to be a hero to think about her and our two children. She said that everyone would understand if I delayed my return. It would be foolhardy and irresponsible to go back now. I knew that other Gaijin foreign company presidents were not in Japan, and perhaps my colleagues would understand. But for me there was never a decision to make. I had to return. How could I possibly be the president and not be there with the rest of the company, just because it was dangerous? As we prepared to land, the softly-spoken young stewardess who had looked after me so conscientiously for the last twelve hours came over to my seat and smiled sympathetically. She passed me a plastic duty-free bag containing six bottles of tea-nant, Welsh spring water. Without any alarm in her voice, she explained that tap water was best avoided due to possible radioactive contamination, and that bottled water in the city was fast running out. It all felt decidedly ominous. Then came the anticipated bump and screech of the wheels as we touched down, and I looked through the small window to the familiar surrounds of Nadita Airport. I needed to focus my mind on the job I was there to do. A brand-new role for me, the top job in the organisation for which I had worked long and hard. I was a foreigner, yet I had been chosen to lead this huge Japanese corporation and its forty thousand employees. I had joined Olympus thirty years earlier as a salesman, and never imagined that I would become its president. Sample complete. Ready to continue?