Free The Marseille Caper by Peter Mayle

for a coffee in the sunshine while he went through the official dossier that Nathalie had given him.
    He found the sales pitches of the fish-sellers on the Quai des Belges much more entertaining than the documents in the dossier, which had suffered from the dead hand of creation by committee, cliché plodding after cliché in a dreary procession on every page. A brief history of Marseille was followed by a puff for the city’s selection as the European Capital of Culture in 2013 (with ten million visitors expected), followed in turn by a heavy-handed description of the charms of the Anse des Pêcheurs, a highly technical account of the process used to select the three finalists, and a reassurance—obligatory in these green times—about the total lack of damage the project would cause to the environment. The whole thing was a classic of its kind, a model of self-important bureaucratic verbiage, and Sam made a mental note to tailor his presentation accordingly. Jokes were out. Gravity would be the order of the day. The very thought of it made him yawn.
    Less than three miles away as the seagull flies, Lord Wapping and Ray Prendergast were huddled over a pile of papers in his lordship’s private stateroom. They had been going over Wapping’s portfolio of business interests, and the news was not good; worse than that, it was potentially disastrous.
    The problem was one of excessively optimistic leverage, combined with a couple of what Prendergast described as dodgy downturns in the global economy. Surefire investments had gone sour. Long-shot investments had failed to come off. There were increasingly loud rumblings of discontent from the banks, which were becoming more and more nervous about the huge loans they had made to Wapping. Even the core business of bookmaking was feeling the effects of increased competition, and the money it generated was barely enough to service interest payments.
    “In other words, Billy,” said Prendergast, “we’re stuffed unless this deal goes through. You’ll lose your shirt. Mind you, there’s still a bit tucked away in the Cayman Islands and Zurich, but you’d have to say goodbye to everything else.”
    Lord Wapping drew on his cigar as he contemplated a future without the house in Eaton Square, the duplex on Park Avenue, the lodge in Gstaad, the yacht, the racehorses, the stable of overpowered cars. Gone, all of it. And with it, no doubt, Annabel.
    Prendergast rubbed his eyes and thought wistfully about a pint of English beer. He was exhausted after spending half the night trying to squeeze some good news out of the figures. He’d also had more than enough of life on board, where he was cramped and fed strange foreign food. As for the French he’d met, he wouldn’t give any of them house room. Untrustworthy prima donnas, the lot of them. He’d advised against getting involved with this project right at the start. Ironically, it was now the only chance to save the Wapping empire. “LikeI said, if this doesn’t come good, we’re stuffed. So what do you reckon the odds are?”
    Wapping was a gambling man, and this was the biggest gamble of his life. Millions, many millions, were at stake here, more than enough to settle his debts, with plenty left over for a few new acquisitions. That was his business philosophy, always had been: you have to speculate to accumulate. It had worked well for him in the past, and despite the facts, he remained hopeful about the future. “The trouble with you, my old sunshine, is that you always see the glass half empty instead of half full.”
    “I spent most of last night looking at the glass, Billy. It’s not half empty. It’s as dry as a bleeding bone. Not a drop. You don’t have to deal with the banks, like I do. Take a look at this lot.” Prendergast took a sheaf of papers and fanned them out on the table in front of Wapping—e-mails and letters, all with the same basic message: We want our money, and we want it now.
    Naturally, the