"I don't like the sound of that."

"It's the problem I mentioned to you. That 'individual' is calling in favors with me now, not the other way around. So this could be a trifle awkward, if you see what I mean."

"Ken, have you forgot I took care of you once? Remember the Toshiba milling-machine sale to the Soviets? All the posturing back in the U.S.? It could have been a lot worse for your team politically.

Afterwards you said you owed me one."

"Yes, and I still appreciate what you did, tipping me off about the French, the fact they'd already sold such machines to the Soviets years ago. It helped us dampen the fires of moral indignation on Capitol Hill." He took another sip. "I got a lot of points with the right people in the LDP."

"I just got fed up with all the bullshit. No harm done." He leaned back. "But now it's your turn."

"Fair enough." He gazed around the crowded, smoke- filled pub.

"Michael, I don't know if we really should be talking here. Care to take a walk, down to the Thames? Get a bit of air. Maybe hope for some sunshine?"

"All right." Vance tossed down a five-pound note and reached for his overcoat, draped across the stool next to them. "Weather's nice. At least for London."

Nogami nodded as they pushed through the crowded doorway and into the street. "Don't say what you're thinking. Don't say you can't imagine why I moved here."

"Never crossed my mind." Vance took a breath of the fresh air, expelling the residual smoke from his lungs. The lunchtime mob elbowed them from every side.

"You know the reason as well as I do. It's all part of our overall strategy. Japan is a world player now, Michael. I'm part of the vanguard that's going to do to financial services worldwide what we did to semiconductors and electronics. You just watch and see."

"I already believe it." He did. Japan's dominance of the world money scene was just a matter of time.

They navigated their way through the midday throng. On every side lunchtime shoppers were munching sandwiches, lining up for knick-knacks to take back to the office. They strolled past the rear of the tubular- steel Lloyds building, then headed down a cobblestone side street to- ward the river.

"But we had to come here and buy our base in order to be part of the financial game in Europe," Nogami continued, not missing a beat. "We expect to be major players before long."

"I'd say you're already one. When the Plaza Accord sliced the greenback in half, it doubled the value of Japan's bankroll. Every yen you had was suddenly worth twice as many dollars, as if by magic."

"We can't complain." He paused to inhale the gray, heavy air. "Of course the locals here in London are constantly enlisting their 'old boy' regulators to make up new rules to hamper us, but Tokyo invented that little ploy. It almost makes this place feel like home."

"Word is you play all the games. I hear Westminster Union now handles more Eurodollar deals than anybody."

"We pull our weight." He smiled and dodged a red double-decker bus as they crossed Lower Thames Street. "You name a major currency, we'll underwrite the debt offering."

"Lots of action."

"There is indeed. Sometimes perhaps too much. Which is why I wanted to talk down here, by the river. Shall we stroll out onto London Bridge?"

"Sounds good."

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 corpo- rations. 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."

"Yes, that's part of what makes Eurocurrency ideal for this, all that homeless money floating around over here. No government is really responsible for keeping track of it. In fact, every effort has been made to ensure that these debentures appeal to greed. Their yield will float, pegged at two full points above the thirty-year British government bond, the gilt. As lead underwriter I'll have the main re- sponsibility, but I'm also supposed to form a syndicate of Japanese brokerage houses here--Nomura, Daiwa, Sumitomo, the others--to make sure the offering goes off without a hitch. But that precaution will hardly be necessary. At those interest rates, they should practically fly out the door." He sighed. "Which is a good thing, because . . . because, Michael, the amount I'm being asked to underwrite is a hundred billion dollars."

"And that's just for the first year, right?"

Nogami looked up, startled. "How did you know?"

"Call it a lucky guess." He took a deep breath. So that's where the funding stipulated in the protocol was going to come from. European suckers. My God, he thought, the play is superb.

"Michael, nobody could float an offering like that and have it covered with real assets. Nobody. Taken all together that's enough money to capitalize a dozen world-class corporations." He paused. "Of course, I won't be offering it all at once. The debentures will dribble out over the period of a year, and then the next year, it starts all over again.

For five years."

"So you're supposed to raise five hundred billion dollars in the Eurobond market over five years. Not impossible, but it's a tall order."

"Especially since the ratings will be smoke and mirrors. It is, in effect, an unsecured loan." He looked away, down at the swirling brown surface of the Thames. "You know what it really means? He wants me to sell _junk bonds_. And I can't refuse." His voice came close to a quaver. "Just when I was well into earning the esteem of the European banking community, I'm suddenly about to become the Drexel Burnham of Eurobonds. I'll be operating the investment equivalent of a shell game."

"Ken, why are you telling me all this?" Vance had never seen him this upset.

"Because I have to find out what this is all about. What the money's going to be used for."

"I take it the Tokyo _oyabun's_ not talking."

"Michael, no one dares question him. You know that." His voice grew formal. "It's the Yakuza way."

"Well, you're in London now. A free man."

"It's not that simple. You may not know--it's a very well-kept secret-- that he capitalized my takeover of the Westminster Union Bank here. He put together a consortium of private financiers for me. A lot of the money was actually his. The whole thing had to be low profile, since none of our banks dared have its name associated with a hostile takeover in London. Our institutions are still squeamish about such things. They all cheered me on in private, but in public they didn't know anything about it."

"Maybe he had this little return favor in mind all along."

"To tell you the truth, I've since wondered that myself. Anyway, now he's calling in my obligation. We Japanese call it _giri_. I have to play. But either way I'm ruined. If I do it, I'll become a pariah in the European banking community. If I don't . . . well, the consequences are almost unthinkable."

"Ken, I don't know how to say this, but there's a chance this whole scenario is bigger than anything you can imagine."

Nogami turned to stare. "What do you know?"