Spread before them now was the muddy, gray expanse of London's timeless waterway. Shakespeare had gazed on it. Handel had written music to accompany fireworks shot over it. Today a few tugs were moving slowly up the center channel, and a sightseeing boat was headed down to Greenwich. Cranes of the new Docklands development loomed over the horizon downriver.
"So what's the problem?" Vance turned to study his face. There was worry there, and pain.
"Michael, that 'individual' you spoke of. He has, in the famous phrase, 'made me an offer I can't refuse.' He wants me to handle a debt issue, corporate debentures, bigger than anything this town has ever seen. Anything Europe has ever seen."
"You should be ordering champagne."
"Not this time." He turned back to study the river. "The whole thing stinks."
"Who're the players?"
"It's supposedly to raise capital for the Mino Industries Group. I've been 'asked' to underwrite the bonds, then unload them with minimal fanfare and keep a low profile." He looked back. "But it's almost fraud, Michael. I don't think there's anything behind them at all. Nothing. The beneficiaries are just phony Mino Industries shadow corporations. Only nobody will know it. You see, the bonds are zero-coupons, paying no interest till they mature ten years from now. So it will be a full decade before the buyers find out they've acquired paper with no backing."
"Won't be the first time the sheep got sheared by a hustler."
"Michael, I'm not a hustler," he snapped. "And there's more. They're so-called bearer bonds. Which means there's no record of who holds them. Just one more trick to keep this thing below the radar."
"Typical. 'Bearer bonds' always sell like hotcakes in high-tax locales like the Benelux countries. That mythical Belgian dentist can buy them anonymously and screw the tax man."