"Who the hell are they?" Greg asked as soon as they were out of earshot.

Julia was kneeling anxiously by her grandfather's powerchair. The old man had sagged physically. His mind was grey.

She looked up at Greg with shrewdly questioning eyes. "Thank you for making Kendric back off," she said.

He detected her thoughts flying at light speed, never losing coherence. Odd. Unique, in fact.

"You have a gland," she said after a few seconds.

Philip's low chuckle was malicious. "Too late, Juliet, you've had your three."

"Oh, you," she poked him with a finger in mock-exasperation. But there was an underlying current of annoyance.

"Di Girolamo is moneyed European aristocracy," he explained. "And he's right about us having financial ties; although being my partner is a complete load of balls. Did you ever buy 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.