All Fall Down

by James Brabazon

  While he lit one of his own cigarettes, I finished the last mouthful of tea from my glass—long since stewed.

  “You were right,” he said, speaking to Baaz, who smoothed the note out between us. “The letters printed at either end of the serial number are inconsistent with the serial numbers of the bills known to be in circulation. So, in this respect, you could say that the note is a fake. It looks like . . . How to explain this?” He rested the cigarette in the ashtray and scratched his beard. “An impossible note. But many bills get printed that are never meant to be circulated. Don’t forget: you can put whatever numbers and letters you like on any plate, whether you work for the Bureau of Engraving”—he touched his chest lightly with the fingertips of his right hand—“or not.”

  “But in every other respect the bill is genuine?” I asked.

  “OK, there is always a margin of error. That, I admit. The tools I have, the software, the microscope . . . This old man’s eyes! They are good, but I am not the Fed. If I was, I would photograph this bill and blow it up the size of a house and crawl across it on my hands and knees, looking for clues. That’s what they do. Really! Crazy, no?”

  “How wide is the margin of error? How sure are you?”

  “In this case,” he said, “let us say that I am sure.” He smoothed his beard and picked up the bill. “Why? Because I have seen this note before.” I went to speak, but he held his hand up. “No! Not this one. But its twin. Exactly the same printing. Same series. Different numbers. And without, uh, ‘Arkhangel’ written on the back, of course.”

  “Where?” I asked him. “Where did you see it?”

  “Here,” he replied. “Hundreds of them were found by our Special Forces, also in Lebanon,” he explained. “During a raid. This time Israel got the blame, though. But it wasn’t us. It was—how do you say?—quid pro quo. Our mutual friend asked me to look at them. Interpret them, as you would say.”

  “OK.” I nodded. “But if you didn’t forge them, who did? The Iranians?”

  “No.” He handed the note back to me and retrieved his cigarette from the ashtray. “The Russians, of course.”

  He smoked his cigarette, and we all considered what he’d said in silence. I lit another Marlboro and tucked the packet and matches back into my jacket.

  Then he added: “But you must pay attention to what I am saying. It is genuine. It is not a forgery. This is important. We interpreters, we like to add a signature, a deliberate error, a stamp—something that proves it was us and proves it’s not real. The plates I cut in ninety-five? The ones I told you about? I ran the o in United States of America under the edge of the border that runs around the note so the top of it is hidden. That’s not correct. The o should be complete. That is a forgery.”

  “But why would you do that?” Baaz piped up indignantly. “Why ruin something so . . . perfect?” Then he added excitedly, “Is it because only God is perfect? Is that why?”

  Moshe burst out laughing.

  “I’m not a Muslim rug weaver! No, we do it for the thrill of it. If an expert, a banker, passes a note I’ve forged with a deliberate error, then the victory is even sweeter. And, anyway, printing a perfect dollar note is suicide. Economies would collapse. Presidents would fall. The Americans couldn’t let it stand. And the Arabs”—he drew his index finger across his throat—“the Arabs would hang you for it. No. No one would do it, could do it, unless they were protected. Otherwise, not even your archangel could save you. And this note”—he waved the bill with a theatrical flourish—“is perfect.”

  “But you were protected,” I replied.

  “Exactly,” he said. “I was. And now?” He shrugged. “The Haredim pray for all Jews. But not all Israel prays for us. In God we trust. But it doesn’t hurt to have an insurance policy.”

  “But”—I tried to find the words to crystallize his assessment—“how can the Russians print genuine US hundred-dollar bills? How is that not automatically a forgery?”

  “Because,” Baaz cut in, “they used plates from the Federal Reserve. That’s how they did it, isn’t it?”

  Moshe nodded.

  “Your colleague is very good. Very good indeed. Yes, this is exactly how they did it. With genuine plates.”

  I narrowed my eyes at Baaz and took a mouthful of smoke down into my lungs.

  “So, let me get this straight. This note was printed by the Russians on a US Federal Reserve plate, with a deliberately invalid serial number?”

  “Yes.” Moshe nodded. “A deliberately uncirculated number.”

  “So the Russians are working with the Americans?”

  “No.” Moshe shook his head. I breathed out hard and rocked back in my chair. “Look,” he explained patiently, “the CIA took plates to Afghanistan. They were used to print money for the mujahedin. The Russians captured them. The same in Syria with the Syrian Democratic Forces, and probably with the Kurds in Iraq. The Americans, they are very consistent. The Russians, too.”

  “The provenance?” I asked. “Can you, could anyone, say where these notes originated?”

  Moshe shook his head again.

  “All you can be certain of,” he concluded, “is that whatever route he has taken, your Mr. Franklin here has been on an incredible journey.” He stubbed his cigarette out and leaned toward us. Baaz and I leaned in, too. “But I think you already know,” he said, cocking his head to one side, “that the real question is not where the bill was printed, but what it was printed for.”

  25

  What now?”

  Baaz and I stood at the southeast entrance to Mea She’arim, hands in our pockets.

  “Food,” I said. “I’m starving. The Old City is that way.” Baaz looked doubtful. “You’ll like it. Trust me.”

  Five minutes later we passed under the pale stone arch of the Damascus Gate like a couple of jaded tourists and into the warren of narrow streets. Israel Defense Forces soldiers milled around. Elderly stallholders shouted out their wares in Palestinian Arabic. Tourist tat flooded the shop fronts: nargilehs jostled for space alongside alabaster models of the Dome of the Rock, menorahs alongside crucifixes; Yasser Arafats rubbed shoulders with Jesuses of Nazareth. Brightly colored cloths hung down above the covered walkways. Beneath our feet the smooth stone blocks that paved the Via Dolorosa led us on deeper into the maze of alleyways.

  Scruffy kids, deliverymen and tourist touts shouted and growled, coughed and whispered around us and through us and to us. Hijabed women in elegant abayas picked their way through the chaos, seemingly oblivious to the street theater unfolding around them. Here and there a blue and white Star of David draped against the stonework—but the black, red, white and green of the Palestinian flag was everywhere. We followed briefly in the footsteps of Christ before I showed Baaz into the Al-Quds Café—a decent joint that served strong coffee and good street food.

  Outside, half a dozen American girls sat by the door, giggling, juggling water pipes and fingers full of kibbeh. Inside, the waiter greeted us in English and showed us to a table at the back.

  I ordered mezze. Before Baaz could speak, I added: “Just the vegetarian stuff, please. No meat. And two glasses of fruit juice. Oh, and some extra hummus for my friend.”

  Baaz relaxed.

  The walls were hung with carpets, the tables topped with beaten metal. The food came quickly. We ate in silence. When he’d finished, Baaz gulped down the last of his juice and sat back in his chair. Crumbs of lakhma clung to the wisps of his beard. I pointed to the side of his mouth and he licked his lips like a cat.

  “Thanks,” he said. “But what are we going to do now?”

  “Order coffee,” I said.

  And think. Every minute I sat still was a minute lost looking for Rachel. And all those minutes added up could make the difference between reaching her and not, rescuing her and not. If she even needs to be rescued, I thought to myself. The fact that it
might be me who needed her help was a possibility too hard to hold on to.

  I put my cigarettes and matches on the table and the waiter brought over an ashtray. I offered to move outside, but he waved away my query with a flick of his hand.

  “Please,” he said, setting the old metal dish between us. “No problem.”

  Baaz wrinkled his nose. He truly hated cigarette smoke. I should have truly hated his being there. But whether he’d been saved by the last gasp of my conscience or the diligence of his calculations, I was glad he was, all the same. The truth was that it was already too late to protect his family. He’d entered Israel on his own passport, made no attempt to hide his identity from anyone. As far as the Shabak—or anyone else—was concerned, he was up to his neck in it, whatever it was. In Paris he chose not to run, and that choice had consequences.

  The waiter came back with our coffees—strong, spiced with cardamom and loaded with sugar—and pieces of sticky baklava.

  “The number on the note,” I asked Baaz, as he sipped at the tiny cup, “what do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “But what’s your gut instinct?”

  “My computer science professor in Chandigarh told me that gut instincts are very bad. There is a right answer and a wrong answer. Correct solutions are arrived at with facts, not hunches.”

  “What absolute bullshit, Baaz. Seriously.” I shook my head and slurped the thick black coffee carefully, so as not to get a mouthful of the grounds from the bottom of the cup. “You’re in the catacombs. There’s been a cave-in. Or a flood. The route has changed. You use what you know to make an informed guess, right?” He pursed his lips. “And don’t tell me you don’t, because I know you do. You’re still alive. No one could spend so much time down there and still be in one piece if they weren’t lucky—at least once.”

  He shifted in his chair uncomfortably. I played with the packet of Marlboros.

  “OK,” he relented, “my hunch is that the serial number is too unusual to be a coincidence—especially if you consider that the number itself is from an uncirculated print run. Besides, this man—Moshe?—he says that the printer can add any serial number they like to a plate. So maybe that prime has a purpose? As a prime, I mean.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “OK, well this is going to sound totally nuts, but there are lots of numbers on that bill, not just the serial number. The letters, they could represent values, too. And then”—he finished his own coffee—“there is something special on the reverse. This is actually exciting. Let me show you.”

  “What, here?”

  “Yes, why not?”

  “Because . . . Oh, fuck it.” I dug the note out of my pocket and unfolded it flat on its front. “There aren’t any numbers on the back—apart from 100, of course.”

  “No, you see.” He pointed to the blank space on either side of the words “In God we trust” cut in two by the spire of Independence Hall. “There are ones and zeros written in yellow. Twenty-four of them on the left, twenty-one of them on the right.”

  “Are you sure they’re numbers,” I asked him, “and not just marks?”

  “There’s no difference. A mark is a number, if you ascribe a value to it. I told you it was exciting.”

  “If you say so.” I folded the note away again and picked up the cigarettes. “Exciting how, anyway?”

  “How?” His fingers drummed the table. “It’s like I told you in Paris. Ones and zeros. It’s binary!”

  “So . . . ?” He shook his head as if I was mentally incapacitated.

  “So, Rachel is a computer scientist. Writing in binary values is what she does. One, zero. On, off. Yes, no.”

  “Baaz?” He looked at me, eyes wide with unfathomable possibilities. “There are billions of hundred-dollar bills out there in the world.” I pointed toward the window. “And, you know, quite a few computer scientists, too. So . . .”

  “But there are not billions of hundred-dollar bills out there with that serial number, connected to one of the world’s leading computer scientists. What is the probability of that?”

  “Small,” I admitted.

  “Small? It’s statistically impossible. And please don’t tell me that she fancied you, because you are totally rubbish at mathematics.”

  I let that go.

  I wondered if his professor had also warned him of the dangers of looking for false positives.

  “OK. Let’s assume you’re right. Back to my original question: what do you think it means?”

  “Probably nothing.” He smiled at me and sat back in his chair. I made a strenuous effort to keep my hands on the table and not put them around his neck. “But prime factorization is extremely important in cryptography,” he said, sensing my frustration.

  “Cut me some slack, Baaz.”

  “OK. You multiply one prime by another. The result is a semiprime, and that number secures the encryption. In order to break it, you’d need to know the numbers that were multiplied in the first place. It’s very fast to multiply two large prime numbers and get the result. But it’s unbelievably computer intensive to do the reverse. Especially if you have a big prime.”

  “How big?”

  “The semiprime? Oh, up to 617 digits. Factoring them is an NP class problem.”

  “A what?”

  “Like I told you in Paris: a nondeterministic . . .” He cocked his head, patronizingly. “A very complex problem that professors like Rachel can work on for their whole careers.”

  “OK,” I said. “Let’s start at the beginning. How do you solve problems? Easy problems. One I could understand. Like . . .” I tried and failed to think of an easy math question. “A basic equation, or something.”

  Baaz eyed me suspiciously. “Simplify,” he replied. “Get rid of all the clutter, so you can see exactly what the definites are. And then . . .” He paused.

  I nodded at him. “Go on.”

  “And then you have to choose how you’re going to do it—by brute force, trying every possible answer consecutively, or by using a shortcut, an algorithm.” He picked up a piece of the dessert. “Why, how do you solve problems?”

  “By eliminating their source.”

  I stopped fiddling with the packet of Marlboros and pulled one out. I flipped open the book of matches that Talia had given me and tore a sulfur-tipped strip of card free of the base, and then looked again. There were only two other matches missing.

  “That’s strange,” I said under my breath, closing the cover. On the front was a black 7 logo stamped over a yellow flame. Probably some spook bar in Tel Aviv. I opened it again and pulled the matches away from the back cover. Printed in neat handwriting was an Israeli cell phone number. I put my hand into the jacket pocket I’d kept the cigarettes in. Empty. I tried the other one, and there it was: an identical book of matches, only with half the matches missing and no phone number—the book Talia had given me. I stood up and left a hundred-shekel note on the table.

  “What’s the matter?” Baaz asked, stuffing the last piece of baklava into his mouth.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  —

  “KEN, REGA.”

  The bolts of the door scraped back again, the uncomfortable screech of metal dragging on metal. Moshe Mendel Katz’s face appeared with a breath of turpentine in the opening, by his waist, the close-cropped head of little Binyomen.

  “There was another question,” I said, “that I wanted to ask.” I stepped forward and pushed the door. He stopped it with his foot.

  “I’m sorry, but . . .”

  I pushed harder and put my right shoulder into the door.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “it won’t take long.” A shadow passed over the child’s face. He backed away. Moshe caught his right arm by the wrist. As he did so, I shoved p
ast them and back into the dark cavern of the studio warehouse. Baaz stepped forward, too, into the doorway, blocking the glare of the day outside. Moshe reached for the light switch. I reached for the SIG. He paused.

  “OK,” I said, “but keep your hands where I can see them.” I turned to Baaz, my palm wrapped around the grip of the pistol behind me, hidden from the boy. “Come in and close the door,” I told him. He froze. “Now!”

  Baaz, startled, did as I said. He tripped the switch and the room flared to life. I turned back to Moshe. Under the unforgiving fluorescent strips he looked pale and scared. A film of sweat covered his face.

  “Who is upstairs?”

  “Please,” he said. “The boy. I . . .”

  “Who is upstairs?” I repeated more forcefully, cutting him off.

  “His mother. Only his mother.”

  “OK, Binyomen,” I said, “be a good lad and go see Mummy. Grandpa and I have some business to discuss.”

  “Geyn,” he said to the boy, letting go of his wrist. “Ikh vel kumen bald.”

  The boy scampered off, across the storeroom and up the stairs, looking over his shoulder before he bolted through the door at the top. When he was out of sight, I brought the SIG around with my right hand. With my left, sandwiched between my first and second fingers, I produced the book of matches.

  “Smoking is bad for your health, Moshe.”

  “Max, what are you doing?” Baaz was standing to the side of us, slack-jawed. For the duration of the walk back to the traitor’s gate, he’d been pestering me about what we were going to do. Now he knew.

  “Solving an equation,” I replied. “With brute force.”

  I winked at him with my left eye, so Moshe couldn’t see. I needed to relax him a little in advance of what was about to happen. I turned back to Moshe. I had a couple of minutes maximum before Binyomen and his mother and whoever else was really upstairs stuck their noses in.