They walked over to study the corpse again. Amy knelt down and peered at the chest area.
“I’d go with psycho for now. Everything’s been removed very carefully. Definitely a very sharp instrument. Maybe surgical. Our boy’s been practicing and sharpening, thinking about this for a long time.” She stood up. “I think he’s collecting, taking trophies. Eyes, breasts, scalps. Question is why, and has he done this before, and will he do it again…”
“What do you think?” Ron hated to even ask.
“Oh, I think it’s safe to say if it’s a psycho he’ll do it again. Like I said, he knew what he wanted and what he didn’t. I’d say he’s a collector.” She considered the mutilated corpse. “I hope I’m wrong.”
Ron glanced at the body, rubbed his face, and sighed.
“I hope so too.”
* * *
The flight was on time, and Robert had a car service drive him into the city. It was too late to stop by his shop, so he went to his apartment on the upper West side. He’d left his wheelchair with the doorman, who obligingly came out with it when he arrived.
Robert had lost the use of his legs thirteen years ago when he’d been run down while crossing the street (with the light) to his shop. A shard of bone had severed an important bundle of nerves, leaving him wheelchair-bound for life. He was philosophical about the resultant change—he was still alive, which was better than many who’d been hit by a car.
His wife died one year after his accident, from complications arising from recently developed multiple sclerosis. Forty-four years old. She had a seizure and struck her head in the bathroom, then drowned on her own vomit, while he was at the shop. No rhyme or reason to it. She’d never harmed a fly, always wished everyone the best—and was now gone from this earth. Those were the breaks, sometimes. Lousy, but what could you do?
Robert carefully placed the cash into a brown paper bag and then locked it in his bookshelf safe. He’d put it into the safety deposit box tomorrow, keep it safely squirreled away until he needed to buy more inventory.
After reviewing his messages and preparing for bed he clicked on the late night news, feeling every one of his fifty-eight years weighing heavily. Having clocked almost six thousand air miles in the last fourteen hours, his last thought as he drifted off to sleep was that he was too old for this shit.
* * *
The Corral had been full earlier that evening, with all the bike messengers stopping in after work to dull their pain and socialize. By eleven it had pretty well cleared out. Some had gone clubbing, others to score, and some had gone home to work on books or art or sculpture. It was an eclectic mix, the messenger crew, and you never knew what the next biker’s story was.
Tess had been a computer programmer, gifted, working for one of the Silicon Alley firms. One afternoon she’d just gotten up from her workstation in the middle of a line of code, glanced around, and had a meltdown—started crying, and hadn’t been able to stop. She walked out and spent the next three weeks in bed, depressed and despondent; it was a major depressive episode that ended with a bungled suicide attempt.
She felt like she’d been trying so hard to live up to everyone else’s expectations, she’d constructed a life she hated, and was stuck. A fistful of pills had seemed like a pretty good idea at the time.
After a trip to the ER where she got her stomach pumped, she was admitted to a mental facility for observation for a week, where they put her on a cocktail of anti-psychotic meds and forced her to “share” her feelings with a parade of casualties. Upon release, she was directed to a therapist and wished the best of luck.
She had spent the next month trying to figure out what she wanted to be when she grew up. No answers had been forthcoming, so she decided to take a year off from computers and do something mindless, where she could keep in shape while she got her act together. On a lark she’d applied for a job at Red Cap Courier. That was two years ago.
She was still working on figuring things out.
The depression was always lingering at the periphery, but she had successfully held it at bay by adopting a new, less demanding lifestyle, and focusing on self-actualization rather than impressing people.
One of the hot topics at the Corral had been that Loca hadn’t shown up for work the last two days. Not a rare occurrence in the messenger world, but not expected from her—she’d never missed a day in her year with the company. Policy was that after one unexplained absence you were history, no exceptions. Red Cap accepted orders based on available staff, and if you were down for a shift and flaked, the company was materially harmed. You only got one chance.
Loca, real name Angelina, was well-liked by the crew and she’d been in good spirits the night before last. She was one of the dependable ones, didn’t have a drug or alcohol problem and was relatively stable. An aspiring comic, she was just into the bike gig to pay the bills until she hit it—which nobody doubted she eventually would. Tess was concerned. She’d called Loca’s house last night but had gotten the machine.
Weird. They were friends, and she always called back.
Tess hoped she was okay—the city could be a rough place to live.
* * *
Seung had scored earlier and was feeling good about the night’s prospects. He’d been at his favorite club, partying with a few buddies, until he got tired and decided to call it a night. He didn’t have a job; a small-time trust-fund kid from his father’s side, he saw just enough payout every month to keep his condo and his bad habits.
He dealt a little here and there to supplement his income, and that hobby had turned into enslavement over time. Smoking heroin had turned into skin plinking on weekends, which had turned into shooting up twice a day…He now considered himself fortunate his dealing covered his nut. Although pretty soon, his cut of the watch sales would put a hundred grand in his pocket.
He was buzzed from the alcohol and anxious to slam, so he was clumsy as he fumbled for his door key, failing to register the men on either side of him until everything went black. When he came to, he was tied to his dining room chair, naked and shivering, already starting to hurt.
He tried to focus, shook his head. That’s when he saw the two figures sitting on the other side of the room and realized he was in serious trouble.
One of them spoke, conversationally, slowly.
“Our friend Seung likes the needle. Look at the track marks. Tsk, tsk. He should know better. Drugs kill.” The man spoke in Korean but had an accent Seung couldn't place.
“Yes. And I bet he’ll start to go into withdrawals soon. That’s no fun at all. He’s already shaking.” The taller man had the same distinctive accent, which Seung now recognized—Burmese. Like his cousin.
The smaller man looked at Seung, sitting naked, vulnerable. “I was going to cut off your toes, one by one, and then fingers, then your ears, then your nose, until you tell us what you did with our property. I still may, but only after you’ve gone cold turkey for a while. I hear that’s hell on earth.”
The other man smiled and held up a syringe. “Or you can tell us what we need to know, and you can go painlessly. Your choice. You’ll still be dead, either way. Like your cousin. And his two little girls. The second little girl was pretty far gone by the time he told us about you. God rest their souls.”
This was bad. Very bad. They’d gotten his name from his cousin, so they knew. Everything. Fuck.
Maybe he could lie, get the overdose.
“Give me the needle and I’ll tell you.” He struggled to concoct a story, head fuzzy from the blow and lack of heroin. “I gave the briefcase to my supplier—he’s going to convert it into diamonds. His name is Jung, runs the Poodle club. I’m supposed to meet him in the next few days and get the stones.”
The man appeared to consider it. “I think you’re a lying dope fiend. Gave the goods to your dealer, huh? Let’s try this in eight hours. In the meantime, here’s something to think about.” He walked over and placed a strip of tape across Seung’s mouth, and th
en pulled a test tube of clear liquid from his pocket and sprinkled the contents onto the young man’s lower torso. The skin started to smoke and crackle.
“A little acid does a world of good for the memory. See you in a few hours. Next time you lie to me you get more acid, and believe me, the second time’s worse than the first. And the needle option will be gone if there’s a lie number two.” The man smiled at him, just a little fun between friends, as Seung lost consciousness from the pain.
Six hours later he told them everything.
They lied about the needle.
The taller man squirted the syringe’s contents onto the floor while the smaller man cut off Seung’s fingers. The blood loss and the withdrawals would kill him slowly, but the last batch of acid poured onto his face would keep him conscious till the very end.
Chapter 4
The warehouse was already heavily guarded, but ever since the incident every person entering or leaving was also being methodically searched. Vehicles were kept away from the vicinity by a barbed wire enclosure, and workers had to go through an entryway equipped with an airport metal detector and x-ray system—about ten years out of date, but still effective.
Hong patiently moved through the elaborate system, noting the additional security at the entrance. He was always amazed at the stark contrast between the surrounding countryside and the world within the walls of the compound. It was like being transported through time into the distant future, a future of technological possibility and endless abundance.
In a country where much of the population was starving to death, a country that had been devastated by political turmoil and natural disasters, where the total GDP was thirty-three billion dollars, the government had spent a billion dollars to build a production facility and create a sterile environment, sparing no expense on sophisticated machinery and systems. Hong’s steps thudded on the polished concrete floors, and he wondered to himself how much just one of the large lighting grids suspended overhead cost. No doubt enough to keep many families alive for years. It seemed wasteful, but who was he to question the wisdom of the master planners who had envisioned this plant? Better to keep to one’s responsibilities and leave the big thinking to others.
Questioning superiors was culturally forbidden and a sure ticket to a radically shortened life expectancy, and Hong wasn’t ready to join his ancestors quite yet. Still, he wondered how much of the hardware had been necessity, and how much had been someone padding their procurement budget.
Climate control kept the building at a constant 68 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was lit up like a football stadium twenty-four hours a day. Diesel backup generators ensured fail-safe power availability in a region known for constant blackouts. If the facility was left unprotected, power fluctuations could damage sensitive devices and play havoc with the computers and lasers. That would be unacceptable; he understood the prudence in the cumbersome engines.
Still more money had to be spent for the necessary raw materials, the appropriate laser technology, a supply of the correct inks, fibers, and coded strips, etc. Out of the entire expenditure, a relatively small chunk had gone for technological espionage, to obtain information on classified aspects of the process.
Hong was a member of the “design team,” one of the trusted experts—at least until recently, when trust had been replaced with suspicion and paranoia.
He reflected on the last year’s efforts, the endless stumbling blocks and hurdles his team had overcome. Sixty-hour work weeks had been the norm; the high pressure was a constant reminder of the importance of the project and the significance of the risk.
Getting the paper right had been hardest—the composition, thickness, finish, feel, watermarks and security thread had to be perfect. You couldn’t buy this paper anywhere. Hence the conversion of one of the military facilities to paper manufacturing.
After they got the twenty-five percent linen and seventy-five percent cotton base correct, they spent months on the various red and blue synthetic fibers: the variations in the lengths and thickness required precise matching, as well as counts per square centimeter. The color-shifting inks and the background color matching had also been problematic and time consuming to replicate. Once they finally pegged them, they adopted a multi-stage printing process.
The final hurdle to cross, creating the engraved plates for the intaglio printing, had been relatively trivial—advances in high-resolution scanning made replicating the detail on the actual artwork only a minor challenge, whereas years ago it had been the biggest problem. Technology was a marvelous thing.
Hong moved through the facility to the clean room, where the technologists on shift wore white jumpsuits and face masks they discarded when they exited, stripping down to their underwear before donning street clothing. The security procedures hadn’t been as complex before the incident, but as soon as the new procedures were implemented, even the most minor infractions or breaches became capital offenses.
Inside, a team of three lab workers was setting up the first “real” run, having ironed out the bugs from the last test batch. While those bugs were imperceptible except to a trained eye with a microscope, they were still evidence of something amiss, and couldn’t be tolerated.
The head of the team glanced around distractedly at his colleagues as Hong moved to his position by the bank of switches, then gave a nod. The elaborate machines were engaged, and the complex meshing of so much technology began.
A type of paper harder to create than a nuclear bomb was fed into one end, and less than a minute later a sheet came out the other end. Robotic arms on tracks moved it to a drying bin that resembled a catering tray holder, where the newly minted sheet of bills waited for the next run through another press.
Each set of bills required multiple runs for the different inks. It was complicated. Time consuming. Involved. It was why they’d had to acquire so many presses to generate adequate volume.
The finished product was an official-looking building surrounded by trees on one side, and an austere man’s portrait in the center of the opposite side looking out into eternity with an expression of what might have been impatience, lips slightly pursed, with a delicate twinkle of amused irritation.
Benjamin Franklin, at your service.
They were perfect U.S. $100 bills, brought to you by the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. Now indistinguishable from the genuine article.
A virtually limitless supply of hard currency to support an economy on the brink of collapse. It was a new lease on life for Myanmar , and an opportunity to slowly subvert the U.S. financial system and savage the hated opposition of the Myanmar government using economic means rather than military.
It was perfect.
Almost.
Somehow, some way, a week before, a million dollars of the final test run had disappeared. That batch had several small imperfections—almost undetectable, but still, imperfections that could cause the whole plan to collapse.
If the U.S. discovered its highest common denomination bill was being counterfeited this accurately, they’d know it was only possible using the economic resources of a government. The sophistication required to counterfeit perfectly required a huge investment, and if the Treasury Department really started looking, tracing ink and press and laser purchases, it was only a matter of time until they came knocking on Myanmar ’s door.
To combat the problem in the short term, the U.S. could always freeze cash transactions involving late-generation hundreds and simply issue a new currency and require verification of each serial number for an exchange. Inconvenient, but doable, and a definite possibility once the scope was fully appreciated. The U.S. government had been trying to discourage the use of cash for years, so it might secretly relish an exchange program.
Myanmar had to find out who took the cash and where it went, quickly. Even one bill in the wrong hands could render the whole program a failure. The new batch had the imperfections corrected, so only the test batch was a problem.
But it
was a huge problem - one that had to be resolved at any cost.
* * *
Tess rose early, nudged her boyfriend Nick awake, and jumped into the shower. She lived in a small loft apartment in Soho, which had transformed over the last decade from a dangerous fringe neighborhood into a gentrified area filled with yuppies.
She waited for the water to heat and inspected her body with approval.
Just turned twenty-eight; not bad, not bad at all. Lean and rock hard from bicycling six to seven hours per day, solid muscle in peak condition. She could kick some serious ass, that was for sure, and was in better shape now than in her teens.
She touched the tattoo on her arm. Kanji script, the symbols for fire and water. Her hair was naturally straight and very dark, almost black—the black Irish in her, her Mom used to say. High cheekbones, full lips, eyes with a slight Asian cast to them, very dark with a lot of green. Pierced tongue, pierced navel; she’d thought about piercing her nose but had never gotten around to it.
Tess enjoyed the rush of the warm water on her breasts; it felt tingly, and she became a little aroused. It must be that time of my cycle, she thought absently as she shut off the water and grabbed her towel.
She stepped out of the shower and studied her torso in the mirror. A six-pack, medium-sized breasts, five foot five and one hundred thirteen pounds soaking wet. It was actually a struggle to keep ingesting enough calories to maintain that weight—she figured she was burning three thousand or more per day from the riding.
Too bad the pay sucked, though not too bad if you were fast.
She watched as Nick stumbled into the bathroom, bleary-eyed and hung over; he’d stayed out late at rehearsal and was considerably worse for wear. He liked his booze and blow a little more than most—not too unexpected for a musician. Nick had a typical New York, Gen X slacker band-dude look and was going nowhere. But then again, she was a bike messenger, so whatever.
Fatal Exchange Page 3