"Tenfold returns?" chortled Angus. "You want a casino, ma'am. This is [i]finance[/i]. And no, don't talk to me about pumping and dumping, there's no real money in the stock market these days and our organization doesn't have the culture to pull that one off in any case. No, the time to invest in a war was five years ago. What I do with the money today depends on where we plan to be five years from [i]now[/i]."

A completely normal request, entirely reasonable: he does need to know what the plan is in order to make money off it. This is his job. 

The catch is that once he knows the five year plan he becomes almost indispensible.

"But yes, the old administration's agenda was just to increase next year's budget," he went on. "Harder than it sounds! Without direction, strategy, anything coming out of R&D. Let no one say that I did not deliver! I improved the budget from 80 to 100 over five years. Solid, sustainable growth! And in our traditional industries: Construction, glass, cement and infrastructure!"

And a smidge below what you'd have gotten by sticking the whole thing in an index fund. Solid 4/10 results. But at the same time, no risk, no secrets, no direction, no alternate powerbases, no agenda. That was the price of loyalty.