Casimir’s eyes hadn’t changed, but the rest of his face had. It never ceased to jar Tristan that Casimir wore a face utterly unlike the one that Tristan had known when they were growing up together in boarding school.
He started with, “Hey, Casimir, this is Tristan King from Le Rosey. I knew you there, and we met at the rather exciting events that led up to Maxence’s wedding a few months ago. I need a lawyer.”
Casimir van Amsberg worked in the entertainment industry, not in finance and big business. “I do contracts, but this is not my field. You need a specialist in finance law for this. I can refer you to somebody. I know people all over the place.”
Tristan was adamant. “We need this done right now. There are reasons. Maxence trusts you, so I trust you. I don’t want somebody I can’t trust.”
“I’ll make sure to find you someone good. I assure you, I am painfully aware of which lawyers in this town are dirty.”
“We need somebody now.”
“While I do specialize in contracts, these sorts of negotiations usually take months, if not years. Divesting a portion of a business into a separate entity is a monumental undertaking. Gaining the agreement of all the members of the board of a corporation is the worst. That part alone can take months. There are all kinds of meetings.”
“We have one negotiator who has proxy waivers for sixty-seven percent of the shares.”
“What! How the hell did you get that?”
Colleen leaned in and said into the phone, “Hi! I’m Colleen.”
Tristan said, “It’s a weird situation, and we need the whole thing to go down and the part that we carve out to be transferred to the other owner within the next three hours.”
“Are you on drugs? I live in LA, and I know when people have snorted a bagful of cocaine. You have to be high.”
“Because Colleen has all those proxy waivers, we can tell you what we need in the contract, and there are no negotiations. It’s entirely one-sided. It’s a majority owner doing what they want with a company.”
“This is the weirdest situation I’ve heard of in months, and I work with celebrities in Hollywood.”
“I need to do this right now. Come on, Casimir. I know you’re good in emergencies.”
“But the details.”
“The business we’re carving out doesn’t have any employees, health plans, separate contracts, 401(k) plans, or pension funds. It’s pretty much just a digital entity that stands on its own in cyberspace.”
“That sounds too easy.”
“It’s the only reason I think it could work.”
“Fine,” Casimir grumbled. “Tell me what you’ve got, and I’ll ask the questions, and then I can probably have the contract to you within two hours. But the next time you’re in California, you owe me lunch.”
Tristan said, “Deal.”
Colleen grinned at him. “So that’s done!”
Tristan shouldn’t tell her. It was a little mean to tell her. “By the way, Casimir is royalty, too.”
She rolled her eyes. “Nuh-uh. You said he was a lawyer.”
“Oh, Caz is a lawyer, too. He’s a younger son. His older sister will inherit the throne. But he’s Prince Casimir van Amsberg of The Netherlands, House of Oranj-Nassau.”
“Nuh-uh. No way.”
Tristan was enjoying this a little too much. “Look him up.”
She did and then goggled at her phone. “Jeez, Tristan. I’m just going to start curtsying to all your friends just in case.”
A few hours later, the CurieCoin blockchain mint, but not the vault and its stash of cryptocurrency, were a separate business and legal entity from GameShack Corporation.
Colleen shook her head. “I can’t believe that’s the only thing that Mary Varvara Bell wanted.”
“Yes, it’s quite unbelievable,” Tristan said. “Being able to mint your own money is, however, an excellent way to launder real money that you don’t want to admit you have. Mary Varvara Bell and White Holdings, Inc. can now disguise the origins of quite a lot of their money.”
“Oh. I feel kind of slimy,” Colleen said.
Tristan shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. If she doesn’t get the CurieCoin mint so she can mint new CurieCoins, she would create a new cryptocurrency that no one has ever heard of like all the dudebros, organized crime lords, and corrupt politicians out there. But it looks better if you have an older, established cryptocurrency. The SEC asks fewer questions.”
“Okay, but we helped all the minnows, and you’re going to be all right.”
Tristan nodded because that was all he could do. “And now, on to Phase Three.”
Colleen yawned. “Do you have any coffee on this boat?”
58
Dividend
Colleen
“You don’t think the bank is going to put a hold on Mary Varvara Bell’s check, like they do when you cash a big check from somebody new? Like when you can’t get the funds for a couple of days?” Colleen asked Tristan.
They were both draped over computer chairs because it was after three in the morning in Monaco. Even the yacht club at the end of the pier had been dark the last time they looked. Only an occasional tourist straggled on the streets, and one of the few circulating police cars pulled over to check on them.
“I’ve cleared everything through GrazBank,” Tristan said. “As much as Dr. Mayamiko Botha was afraid of the Butorins, it sounded like she was terrified of Mary Varvara Bell. She assured me we could start dispersing the dividends tomorrow morning at the opening of business in New York.”
“Okay,” Colleen said. “I guess the only thing left is to make the announcement.”
They drafted the post with Anjali looking over their shoulders and adding comments, and then they slapped it up at four o’clock in the morning in Monaco, which was ten o’clock at night in New York and seven o’clock in California.
This message is from TwistyTrader, QueenMod, and PikachuMod.
We have good news.
When we looked into the internal workings of GameShack, we realized that the corporation owned a great deal of the cryptocurrency CurieCoin.
Like, a massive amount of it.
Using the voting rights from the proxy waivers that you signed, we were able to sell the CurieCoins to a private investor, along with the cryptocurrency mint.
As a result, GameShack Corporation will pay out a one-time dividend of $2,000 per share to everyone who owned GameShack stock as of one hour after the close of trading in New York yesterday.
Repeat, that is $2,000 per share.
A hundred shares are now worth $200,000.
In addition, TwistyTrader will keep his promise to purchase any and all shares of GameShack stock for thirty-six cents per share. There will never be another dividend of this size. Indeed, GameShack has never paid a dividend before this one.
The moderators have collectively agreed that selling a position on a volatile stock at a profit is a sound investment strategy.
We have arranged for professional money managers to open accounts on Sherwood Forest and provide wealth management advice. These managers have all been vetted, are fiduciaries, and carry insurance. Please listen to their advice.