Free The Mandel Files by Peter F. Hamilton

any of my gear when the PSP was in power?”
    “Yeah. A flatscreen, and a microwave too, I think. Who didn’t?”
    “And how did you pay for ‘em?”
    “Fish mainly, some vegetables.”
    “OK. The point is this: at the local level it was all done by barter. There was no hard cash involved. I would fly the gear in, and my spivs would distribute it, sometimes through the black market, sometimes through the Party Allocation Bureau. So far a normal company production/delivery set up, right? But none of your fruit and veg is any use to me, I can’t pay the bankers with ten tonnes of oranges. So that’s where Kendric and his team of spivs comes in; he makes sure I get paid in hard currency. His spivs take the barter goods and exchange them for gold or silver or diamonds, some sort of precious commodity acceptable internationally—New Sterling was no good, it was a restricted currency under the PSP. They lift them out of the country, and Kendric converts them into Eurofrancs for me. It was a huge operation at the end, nearly two hundred thousand people; which is partly why the PSP never shut us down, you’d need a hundred new prisons to cope. Since the Second Restoration I’ve been busy turning my spivs into a legitimate commercial retail network—they’re entitled to it, the loyalty they showed me. But now New Sterling has been opened, there’s no need for Kendric’s people any more, not in this country.”
    “Kendric also used to make himself a tidy profit while he was arranging the exchange,” Julia put in coldly.
    “I would’ve thought you could have arranged the exchange by yourself without any trouble,” Greg said.
    “Nothing is ever simple, Greg,” Philip replied. “Kendric’s management of the exchange was part of my original arrangement with my backing consortium. I needed a hell of a lot of cash to fund Listoel, and I didn’t have the necessary contacts with the broker cartels back in those days, not for something that dodgy. Kendric did. His family finance house is old and respectable, well established in the money market. And he offered me the lowest rates, a point below the usual interest charges in fact. We got on quite well back then, despite his faults he is an excellent money man. The trouble is, he’s been getting a mite uppity of late, thinks he should have a say in running Event Horizon. Involve the consortium with the managerial decision process. Bollocks. I’m not having a hundred vice-presidents sticking their bloody oars in.”
    “So why are you still tied in with him? You’re legitimate now.”
    “Scotland,” Julia said bitterly.
    “Fraid so,” Philip confirmed. “The PSP is still in power north of the border so my arrangement with Kendric is still operating up there. Our respective spivs are virtually one group now, they’ve worked together for so long. It’d be very difficult to disentangle the two, not worth the effort and expense, especially as the Scottish card carriers aren’t going to last another twenty months.
    “And of course the di Girolamo house has an eight per cent stake in Event Horizon’s backing consortium. And guess who their representative on the board is.”
    “I still don’t get it,” Greg complained. “Why should a legitimate banker offer an illegal operation like yours a low rate in the first place? At the very least he should’ve asked for the standard commercial rate. And there are enough solid ventures in the Pacific Rim Market without having to go out on a limb here.”
    “It’s the way he is, boy,” Philip said quietly. “He doesn’t actually need to get involved in anything at all. The family trust provides him with more money than he could ever possibly spend. But he’s sharp. He sees what happens to others of his kind—they party; they ski, power glide, race cars and boats, take nine-month yachting holidays; they get loaded or stoned every night; and at age thirty-five the police are pulling them out of the marina. Half of the