Prologue
It started out very simply.
There was a set of books, filled with pages of financial information. There were columns and rows of numbers that added across and down, meaning little to any non-accountant.
But a single row of numbers in one of those books started it all. The row of numbers, and the two differing opinions about those numbers.
One man felt that the numbers were normal—they portrayed a reality that he and his family had always considered “good enough.” The numbers were numbers, and it didn’t matter how they had come into being—they just were.
But another man felt that the numbers spoke of a deeper problem, an undercurrent moving quietly beneath the sea of digits.
John O’Toole saw the numbers for what they really were, because that’s what he was paid to do. And once he had seen the numbers and the minefield they represented, he couldn’t “un-see” them, no matter how much he tried.
After a few tentative discussions with his employer, he began to feel that others should know about the problems in the ledger, other people who could do something about it. He felt the reasons piling up behind him, pushing him like an unceasing tide, to do the right thing. Even if it meant risking his life and the lives of his family and friends.
But the numbers in the thick accounting ledger were perfectly innocent.
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