“Glad to hear your men are making such good progress.”
“They said twenty-four hours, and they’ve never failed me yet.”
The two men moved back toward the main group. The Finance Minister had his whole career on the line; it had been his idea to counterfeit banknotes and use them to purchase oil. The idea of leveraging their ability to impact stocks in the U.S. markets, and make tens of billions from options, had been Gordon’s; he’d convinced them that printing fifteen billion was nothing compared to making a hundred billion in one year by playing the markets correctly.
The minister knew full well that Gordon would also make a fortune, but he was fine with him doing so as long as they achieved their objective. There’d be more than enough money to go around over the next couple of years—they actually needed forklifts to cart the new hundreds from the printing and drying areas to the packaging areas.
This had been a bold initiative; he’d been able to sell it to their leader and commandeer considerable resources in order to create the necessary infrastructure. He knew full well that if there were any errors, if anything happened to disrupt the plan at this point, his career would be over.
Gordon had set up a personal account for the minister using a million-dollar advance from Gordon’s trading account, so the minister would wind up with around fifty million earmarked for his personal use as well. It was a nice hedge should he ever tire of the Myanmar countryside.
He returned his attention to the tour. There could be no more mistakes or oversights. They all had a lot riding on a successful outcome.
~ ~ ~
Tess glanced at the clock as she entered the bathroom, and was surprised it was already nine in the morning. She’d slept for twelve hours, unusual given that she was usually up at six on weekdays. The sleeping pills had been effective, although they’d left her groggy and vaguely anxious.
That anxiety increased as she showered and ate, and then made the call to her sister she’d been avoiding. They were three hours behind on the West Coast, she remembered, but Tess figured her sister would be up by seven to get the kids ready. A female voice answered.
“Hello?”
“Chrissy? It’s Teresa,” Tess started.
“Tess? Wha…What’s going on? Is everything okay?” Her sister didn’t get social calls from her sibling.
“No, Chrissy, it isn’t. Are you sitting down?”
“What is it? Are you pregnant? Is Dad all right? What’s up?” Chrissy demanded. She already sounded agitated.
“Chrissy, something terrible has happened. Yesterday, somebody went into Dad’s shop and robbed it…At least that’s what the police think…” Tess began.
Chrissy interrupted her. “Oh, my God. Is he all right?”
“No, Chris…No, he isn’t. They killed him, Chrissy. Dad’s dead…” Tess couldn’t go on, started choking up. She heard the phone drop on the other end of the line. Heard her sister start screaming, crying; heard her husband come rushing in, asking what had happened. The phone got picked up. It was Steve, Chrissy’s spouse, whom Tess had always thought was an asshole.
“Teresa, this is Steve. What happened?”
“I was trying to tell Chrissy…someone robbed Dad’s store yesterday…he was killed…it just happened…” She manged through her sobs.
“What do you mean? He died, and you just found out today? Or have you known about this since yesterday?”
“Steve, put my sister on the phone, okay? Please?” Tess asked.
“Why don’t you answer my questions first, and then I’ll put her on the line if I can.”
“Steve, it’s been a rough twenty-four hours. Either put my sister on the line, or I’m hanging up. Get it? I’m not going to subject myself to your bullshit. My dad’s dead, and I need to talk to my sister, not you.” Tess was starting to feel stronger, and was annoyed at Steve’s arrogance. He was an attorney; it came naturally.
“I’m sorry about your dad, but I’m a member of this family too,” Steve started again. “I think I have a right to—”
Tess cut him off. “No, you don’t. You have no rights. You aren’t a member of this family, you just bang my sister. Now put her on.” This was going well, she thought.
“How dare you—” As soon as Steve launched in, Tess depressed the off button.
Screw him. Their father had been murdered, and Mr. Sensitive wanted to prove a point and play power struggle? She wasn’t interested, and had other more pressing things to do with her time. Steve wasn’t always so abrasive, but he had an annoying quality of sneering superiority that had always rubbed her the wrong way. Normally he kept it in check, but what she had just heard on the phone didn’t surprise her one iota.
Tess took a few deep breaths, then dialed Stan’s home number. She got his machine but didn’t leave a message. He was probably en route to his shop; she’d give him a half hour and try again.
She padded into her kitchen for another cup of coffee, unnerved by her interaction with her sister, and still upset from the previous day’s horrific events. As she poured, images of her father laying dead rushed unbidden into her thoughts, causing her to break into tears again. Tess cried for fifteen minutes, until she was emotionally exhausted. She knew her reaction was typical, but also knew she needed to get past the grief so she could deal with the next few days. She wasn’t any use to anyone, including herself, as a basket case. Slowly, she talked herself into a stronger mental space: she was alive, and she would survive; she was independent and smart, tough and fit, and could tackle anything.
Shifting her mental attitude worked and she gradually felt better. She resolved to focus on prevailing in the midst of this tragedy, taking a cue from her father, who had persevered and thrived even after being run down and paralyzed. If he’d been able to do it, she could; she was her father’s daughter and wouldn’t succumb to self-pity.
As she sat staring at her door, blotting her eyes and ruminating about the last twenty-four hours, a hazy image of Detective Ron’s face floated toward the forefront of her consciousness.
What was that all about?
Was she looking for a replacement father figure? Why was she thinking of him, of all people? And why now, in the middle of all this? He was interesting in a shopworn way, but straight-laced conservative guys had never been her deal. So why had he struck some kind of chord in her? Why, in the middle of all this mayhem, did she feel a pull—an attraction?
He had come running when she was in trouble at the shop, so the least she could do was thank him; she rationalized that it wouldn’t hurt to call. She found his card and dialed the office number. It went to voicemail; she debated hanging up, and then decided to leave a message.
“Hi, Detective Stanford, it’s Tess Gideon. I just wanted to thank you for coming to the shop and checking things out yesterday. I know it wasn’t part of your investigation, and I guess I’m just calling to say…I appreciate it.” She felt dumb, but pressed on. “It meant a lot to me that you were willing to drop everything and swing by.” She paused, unsure of how to wrap it up. “I hope you’re making progress with your investigation into Loca’s murder.” She paused again. “Call me if I can help you with anything.” The voicemail beeped—she was out of time.
Call me if I can help you with anything? What was she doing? Tess thought about it; she didn’t know. But she’d felt that calling him was the right thing to do, so she had—no big deal, what was done was done. It wouldn’t kill either of them. He probably got calls from interviewees all the time. She hadn’t offered to sleep with him, just said thanks, that was all.
She recognized that her emotions had been all over the map in a fifteen-minute period, and that she probably shouldn’t be calling anyone else right now. She went into her bedroom and pulled on her bike shorts and a jogging bra.
She heard her answering machine pick up while she was brushing her teeth. It was her sister, her voice sounding scared and angry. What else was new? Tess would call back later. Right now she wanted to ge
t out and forget about everything, push herself hard and feel the burn.
Tess filled her water bottle, threw her cell into her fanny-pack along with twenty dollars, and carried her bike downstairs and out the front door. When she stepped outside, the heat slammed her in the face. It was stiflingly hot and very humid; thunderheads loomed in the distance, threatening showers later in the day and ensuring the humidity would stay unbearable for the duration.
She swung her leg over the saddle and pushed off, launched herself down the street, and began pedaling in earnest. She figured she’d be back in a few hours. Life could wait.
Inside her phone was ringing again, but when the answering machine picked up nobody left a message.
Chapter 16
Saul carefully documented the issues with the watermark so there could be no argument. After poring over the bill for a few more hours he’d noticed another glitch: the 1789 at the base of the small green “Department of the Treasury” seal on the right front portion of the bill, which had the number 100 in gray-green ink superimposed over it, had a slight flaw in the 8. The base of the 0 in the 100 on the genuine hit to the left of the 8, whereas on the counterfeit it hit dead center. It was a variance that appeared from series to series, but not within the same run.
The watermark slip was harder to be sure of, because each series was different. If ten hundred-dollar bills’ watermarks were compared, there would be slight variations among all of them, right down to the facial expressions. Before starting his comparisons, Saul had made sure to find a similar series, both the genuine and the counterfeit having a reference number starting with F. He kept over six thousand dollars’ worth of hundreds starting with different letters, for exactly this sort of comparison.
This was a fake—the best he’d ever seen.
He placed a call to his old office at Treasury in Washington, D.C., steeling himself for a battle ahead. He was viewed by many there as a nut and alarmist, so he’d avoided calling for seven years.
“Treasury Department, how can I help you?”
“Ken Pritchard, please.”
“One moment.” Thirty seconds went by.
“Ken Pritchard’s office,” a female voice announced.
“Hi. I need to speak to Ken, please. This is Saul Balinsky,” Saul said.
“May I ask what the call is in reference to?”
“Just tell Ken that Saul B is on the line and needs to speak with him immediately.”
“Please hold.” Several minutes passed.
A cautious voice came on the line. “Ken Pritchard.”
“Ken, this is Saul Balinsky.”
“Yes, Saul, long time no talk. What can I do for you?”
“Ken, I have a situation. I’m looking at a hundred-dollar bill that is without a doubt the best forgery I’ve ever seen. The paper’s right, the strip perfect, the inks, the etchings. The only telltales are the watermark, and a hiccup in one of the numbers,” Saul explained.
“Saul, we’re aware of some bills out of Russia, we’ve documented and circulated bulletins on them…” Ken had been Saul’s old supervisor. He was a career bureaucrat who wouldn’t have known a forgery if it bit him.
“This is a newer bill—2006 series. It passed every test there is. No bank would be able to tell, and an airport currency exchange passed it as clean. So unless you’re telling me a bill that Wells Fargo or B of A would certify as genuine isn’t important, pay attention. You have a problem. A big one.” He stopped. “Ken, they got the paper right, even the red and blue fiber counts. This isn’t amateur. It looks like big time, maybe even a foreign government.”
“Saul, with all due respect, that’s pretty unlikely. No country would risk our wrath by counterfeiting our currency.”
“Russia did in the late twenties. What’s to stop it from happening today? Some Middle Eastern backwater, or China, or North Korea, or Russia? There are a lot of people out there who hate us, Ken.”
“Look, Saul, I don’t discount that a lot of countries despise us. But this is pretty farfetched…” Ken wasn’t budging.
Saul had one trump card left. “That’s probably what mid-level bureaucrats thought when presented with airline-related terrorist warnings before 9/11. How would you like to be the guy who ignored the suspicious activity at flight schools?” Saul let that sink in. “Ignore this, and you’re him.”
Ken considered that. “All right, all right. I’ll send a couple of agents by to pick up the bills. Are you still in New York?” Ken still didn’t sound convinced; he was obviously just covering his ass.
Saul gave him the address. “Ken, I know we’ve had our differences, but this is Treasury’s worst nightmare. Trust me on that. The bills came through Korea. It could be China, or North Korea, or South, or one of the other countries around there, or any of the criminal syndicates in the area—but whoever, they’ve got the inks, the paper…and the expertise.”
“I believe you, Saul,” Ken said, in a tone that screamed he didn’t.
“If there’s thousands or millions of these hitting the market, you’re screwed, Ken. Send the agents by and I’ll give them some bills. Oh, and by the way—these are from a set of a million dollars’ worth. It’s not a backyard operation. Take this seriously.” Saul had done his best; now the country had to depend on a dolt like Ken.
No wonder America's adversaries weren’t worried.
“Where did you get the bills from, if you don’t mind my asking?” Ken inquired.
Saul told him the story about Robert getting them from the Korean and giving Stan the bills for verification, and then being murdered.
“Okay, Saul. I’ll get someone over there today from the New York office. Thanks for contacting us.” Ken could have been talking to an eight-year-old.
“You’re welcome.” Saul hung up, frustrated with the system that allowed wonks like Ken to run divisions responsible for important security issues. God help us if the Kens of the world were the only thing standing between us and the bad guys, Saul thought bitterly.
~ ~ ~
Ken called his subordinate and told him the story; he asked him to call the New York office and have somebody stop by and take a report from Saul. Saul’s name triggered a laugh from the second-in-command, who’d been in the same department back in the day.
“Is Saul finally wearing a tin foil hat to keep the voices away?” he joked.
“He seemed pretty serious about this. Just have a couple of guys stop by and shake hands, take the bills and bring them in for testing. You never know. Saul was eccentric, but he was also very good.” Ken had the survival skills of every good bureaucrat; he didn’t want a balls-up on his watch.
“You got it, boss. Two agents to Crazyville, on the double.”
“Save the comedy, would you? Just do it,” Ken snapped, annoyed by the familiarity in the response.
“Uh, yes, sir. Sorry. It was a little humor, is all. I’ll call immediately.” He hung up and called New York to explain the situation to the agent in charge and give him the address and phone number.
New York indicated they’d have someone stop by within six hours.
The subordinate logged the information, and per procedure, put out a low-level internal alert signaling a possible counterfeit had turned up in New York.
~ ~ ~
Gordon Samuels’ Treasury contact called him within half an hour.
“Samuels.”
“Gordon, remember you asked to keep you up on anything unusual out of New York?”
Gordon’s blood turned to ice.
“Oh, right. I remember. What’s up?” Gordon asked, his tone casual.
“We got a report of a high-grade counterfeit from a former employee, a guy who’s well regarded in some circles. Name of Saul Balinsky. Was that what you were looking for?” The contact sounded alarmed and suspicious. “Don’t lie to me, Gordon. Does this trace back to our thing?”
“I don’t think so. I was asked to keep another friend informed of anything unusual. This may be nothin
g. I’ll make some calls. Do you have contact info on Mr. Balinsky?”
“He’s in the book. Not a hard guy to find, I should think. He’s kind of got a rep in Treasury as a kook. Conspiracy theorist.”
“Oh, one of those? Well, maybe I won’t even waste my client’s time then. Counterfeits don’t sound like what they were looking out for.” Gordon was a good bluffer. Inside he was in turmoil, but his voice sounded bored.
“What were they looking out for, Gordon? Again—tell me straight.”
“Beats me. I just promised to keep an eye peeled. I’ll get back to you if this is of significance. Thanks for the heads up.” Gordon replaced the handset with a frown. Bills surfacing were a disaster. They had to retrieve them before Treasury got their hands on the notes. Had to. It was his good luck that the guy who’d spotted the fakes was viewed as a nutcase; that meant any follow-up would be low-priority.
This was bad, but they could still salvage things. He placed a call to Myanmar, the minister’s personal line—a home number he’d been given for emergencies.
The difference in time zones put the call in the middle of the night there. The phone rang for a long time. Eventually a groggy and annoyed voice answered. Gordon apologized for calling so late.
“Gordon? What’s wrong?” The minister sounded dead on his feet.
“Very bad news. Some of the bills surfaced with a currency specialist here in New York. Treasury will be going over any time to pick them up. We’re dead meat if they get their hands on the notes, and our contact is nervous. This is as bad as it could possibly be.” Gordon wanted to make sure the minister understood the magnitude of the problem.
“That is bad news. Do you have any contact information for this currency specialist?”
“Yes.” Gordon gave him the details, having already looked up Saul’s info.
“I’ll see this gets taken care of immediately. Treasury will never get their hands on these bills, rest assured.” The singsong voice sounded worried for the first time.
Fatal Exchange (Fatal Series Book 1) Page 12