quite confidential to avoid embarrassing their prominent silent partners and risking the whole deal being scotched in the face of political opposition. Karel Marang approached Joh. Enschedé, an old and respected Dutch printing firm for the job. Reviewing the attached sample notes, they said they were the work of Waterlow and Sons Limited of London, a British printer almost as old and eminent. Since the contract insisted that the new notes be identical to the existing issue, the Dutch firm suggested that Marang take the job to Waterlow since they already had the plates and it was almost impossible to reproduce plates exactly. On 4 December 1924, Marang approached Sir William Waterlow with a letter of introduction from the Joh. Enschedé company. Marang explained that for political reasons the contract required utmost discretion and promised that Waterlow would shortly receive appropriate documentation from Lisbon. When Waterlow received letters that authorized the printing—more of Reis's forgeries—, he accepted the contract. Reis had managed to work out the sequence of bank governor names and serial numbers used by the Portuguese central bank, but had neglected to eliminate numbers already ordered. When Waterlow realized that the bills had the same numbers as some they had previously printed, they alerted the "bank" (actually Reis). He also wrote a letter to the governor of the Bank of Portugal, Inocêncio Camacho Rodrigues, in which he talked about the contracts with Marang, but the letter was lost in the mail. Since the contract had specified that the word "Angola" would be overprinted on the new notes when they reached Lisbon and before transport to Angola (they were allegedly for colonial circulation only), it was not difficult for Reis to convince the London firm that the reuse of existing serial numbers was not a cause for alarm. Result and impact Waterlow and Sons Limited printed 200,000 banknotes of 500 Portuguese escudos (which was equivalent to 0.88% of Portugal's nominal GDP at the time) with an image of Vasco da Gama, with the date of 17 November 1922, to a total face value of 100 million escudos. There were almost as many false 500 escudos banknotes as real ones. First delivery was made in February 1925, one year after the real 500 escudo banknotes with the image of Vasco da Gama began to circulate. The notes were transported from England to Portugal with the help of Reis's accomplices, José