Alain will bow to his dinh on that in the end, I think. By which I mean, if their tactics are clearly different, one of them is going to raise it, and if Roland thinks his tactics will work better, whether or not Alain is convinced of it he'll trust him. But the resulting argument could be really interesting to thrash out.

And I think that sounds plausible. In which case Alain would have taken it with a nod, and sat and smoked with him, and just called that an end to the business for now. He'll examine his feelings about it in his own time, I think.