Destroyer 018 - Funny Money

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The Destroyer 18 - Funny Money

Warren Murphy

CHAPTER ONE

On the last day that his arms were attached to his shoulders and his spinal vertebrae

still formed an unbroken, flexible column, James Castellano took down his .38 police

special from the top shelf of his foyer closet.

It was in a Thom McAn shoe box, secured with heavy electrical tape that his children

could not pick or bite through, even if they had discovered it in the small ranch house

in the middle-income San Diego neighborhood where Castellano lived.

But the children were long gone now and had children of their own. The old tape cracked

in his hands as he picked it off at the kitchen table where he sat eating a hard early

summer peach and listening to his wife, Beth Marie, complain about prices, his salary,

the new elements moving into the neighborhood, the car needing repairs, and of course,

their not being able to afford the repairs.

When Castellano heard a pause, he would say "uh huh" and when Beth Marie's voice would

rise, he would say "that's awful." The last layer of tape came off with the top of the

box, uncovering a price of $7.95; Castellano remembered the shoes as being finer and

stronger than those he now paid $24.95 for.

The pistol was nestled in a bedding of white toilet paper and was caked with a Vaseline-

like substance someone at Weapons had given him years before. There was a note to

himself on a three-by-five card, hand-printed in old fountain-pen strokes with a blob in

the corner.

The hand-printed card was a ten-step program he had written for cleaning the gun. It

began with removing the sticky substance and it ended with "point it at Nichols's face

and pull the trigger."

Castellano smiled reading the card. Nichols, as he remembered, had been an assistant

district supervisor of the Secret Service. Everyone had hated him. Now the hate seemed

somewhat obscene because Nichols had died more than fifteen years ago of a heart attack,

and now that Castellano himself was an assistant district supervisor for counterfeit

currency-"funny money" as they called it-he realized Nichols had not been such a hard

boss. He had just been precise. Well, you had to be precise. It was a precise business.

"Uh huh," said Castellano, examining the absolutely clean barrel against the bright

overhead kitchen light. "That's awful."

"What's awful?" demanded Beth Marie.

"What you said, dear."

"What did I say?"

"How awful it's becoming," said Castellano, and seeing that Step Eight called for the

insertion of six bullets, he scraped around the bottom of the box until he found them.

"What are we going to do about it? These prices are killing us. Killing us. It's like

you're taking a pay cut every month," said Beth Marie.

"We'll eat more hamburger, dear."

"More hamburger? That's what we're cutting down on to save money."

"What?" said Castellano, looking up from his gun.

"I said we're cutting down on hamburger to save money."

"Good, dear," said Castellano. In place of Step Ten, which at this date would have

required digging up Assistant District Supervisor Nichols's long-dead body, Castellano

flicked on the gun's safety catch and put the pistol in the inside pocket of his gray

seersucker suit jacket. He would get a shoulder holster at the office.

"Why the gun?" asked Beth Marie.

"The office," said Castellano.

"I know it's the office. I didn't think you were about to hold up the Bank of America.

Have you been demoted to agent or something?"

"No. It's something special tonight."

"I know it's something special. You wouldn't be taking your gun out if it weren't

something special. I know I'm wasting my time even asking."

"Uh huh," said Castellano and kissed his wife on the cheek. He felt her hug him more

strongly than usual and he returned the hard embrace just to let her know that the

comfort of their relationship had not smothered his love.

"Bring home some samples, dear. I hear they're getting better every day."

"What?" asked Castellano.

"Oh, don't look so worried. I read it in the paper. You didn't tell me anything. You

never tell me anything. I read that there's a lot of counterfeit twenties around. High-

quality ones."

"Good, dear," said Castellano and kissed Beth Marie warmly on the lips. When she turned

to go back into the kitchen, he patted her on her ample backside and she shrieked, just

as shocked as she had been when they were first married and she had threatened if he

ever did that again, she would leave him. More than twenty-five years and 70,000 pats

ago.

At the federal building in downtown San Diego, Castellano entered the blessed air-

conditioned coolness of his office that made staying in a requirement for this hot

summer day. In the afternoon, a messenger from Supplies brought him a shoulder holster

and showed him how to put it on.

At 4:45 P.M., the district supervisor called to ask him if he had his weapon. Castellano

said "yes," and the supervisor said, "Good, I'll be back to you."

At 7 P.M., two and a half hours after Castellano normally left to go home, the

supervisor phoned again and asked whether Castellano had gotten it.

"Got what?" asked Castellano.

"It should have been there by now."

There was a knock on his door and Castellano told his supervisor about it.

"That must be it," the supervisor said. "Phone back after you have looked at it."

Two men entered his office with a sealed manila envelope. The envelope was stamped in

black ink: "For your eyes only." The two men asked him to sign for it, and when

Castellano signed the receipt, he saw that his supervisor had signed it, and strangely

enough so had the Undersecretary of the Treasury and the Undersecretary of State also.

This envelope had been around. Following proper form, Castellano waited until the two

men were out of his office before opening the seal of the envelope. Inside were two

small envelopes and a note. The first small envelope was marked: "Open this first." The

second warned: "Do not open without specific telephone authorization." The note from his

supervisor said: "Jim, tell me what you think."

Castellano opened the first envelope at the corner and shook out a mint-fresh fifty-

dollar bill. He held it in his hands. The paper felt real. The most common mistake in

counterfeiting was the paper. An experienced bank teller, ruffling through stacks of

bills, could spot funny money easily, sometimes even with his eyes closed. There was a

feel to counterfeit, a cheap paper kind of feel because the rag content was usually

deficient.

This bill felt real. He rubbed the corners of the bill against a piece of plain white

paper, very hard. The green ink smeared off. This was a test not so much of the ink but

of the paper. The special money paper of the United States government was not porous

enough for the proper ink to dry. So far this bill looked good. In the corner of his

office, underneath blowups of now-famous counterfeits-like the Hitler fifties that were

so good they just let them stay in circulation-was the ultraviolet light. Many

counterfeiters, in an effort to get the right feel, which would fool a bank teller,

would use commercial high rag content paper.

The flaw was that commercial rag paper was made of used cloth and used cloth had been

washed at least once and all detergents left traces that would show up under ultraviolet

light. United States money was made with unwashed rags. New rag content.

Castellano examined this bill under the eerie purplish light which made his white shirt

cuffs seem to glow. There was no shineback from the bill and Castellano knew how this

group must have done it. They had bleached fresh one-dollar bills. This paper was real.

Doing that, though, posed a different problem for a counterfeiter. They had real paper

with proper rag content but also a printing headache. Government money was printed on

big sheets and cut down. But if a counterfeiter bleached individual dollar bills and

then reprinted the paper in a higher denomination, the printing register would not be

perfect. The printing might not be centered exactly. The back of the bill might differ

in placement from the front. On this bill, the borders were perfect.

Under a magnifying glass, Castellano looked at the lines in the face of Ulysses S.

Grant. The engraving lines were clean and uninterrupted, the skillful work of a master

engraver, the sort of lines on valid bills. A photo plate made for an offset printing

press could sometimes achieved this sort of lines, but could not print them on the slick

high rag content paper he was holding. On this sort of paper, offset ink would run and

smudge and blot. Obviously the counterfeiter had hand-engraved plates and as Castellano

examined the bowl of the five that made up the fifty in the corners of the bill, he

softly whistled his admiration. A craftsman had made this bill.

The last item he checked was the serial number. On rare occasions, a counterfeiter who

had an excellent plate, correct paper, perfect register, and proper ink, would make the

last common mistake. The serial numbers would be fuzzy. Those large crisp numbers on a

bill somehow always got short shrift from a counterfeiter, who might even spend years

engraving the rest of the plate. Castellano examined each number.

"Sonuvabitch," he said and dialed his supervisor on his office phone. "Are you happy

now? It's nine thirty and I've worked five hours overtime. I've been toting around an

old pistol since morning wondering what I'm going to have to use it for and now I find

it's an old, old trick that doesn't work on the greenest recruit. I don't need any more

identification training. I'm the chief of that branch."

"So you say the bill I sent you is genuine?"

"It's as real as my anger."

"You'll swear to it?"

"You know damn well I will. You sent me a genuine. We would get these in training to

trip us up. You probably got it, too. Each sample was better than the one before until

they were giving you real ones to examine and you were pointing out flaws in the

genuine."

"Would you bet your job on it?"

"Yes."

"Don't. Open the second envelope and say nothing over the phone."

Castellano tore open the second envelope labeled "Do not open without specific telephone

authorization." Inside was another fifty-dollar bill, mint fresh. Castellano fingered

the bill, glancing at the fine engraving around Grant's face.

"I've got the envelope opened," Castellano said into the phone, cradled between shoulder

and cheek.

"Then compare the serial numbers and come on over."

When James Castellano compared the serial numbers on the two fifty-dollar bills, he said

softly to himself: "Jesus, no."

When he reported to the supervisor's office with the two bills, he had two questions

framed: Was there a mistake at the Kansas City mint? Or was America in serious trouble?

Castellano didn't bother to ask the questions. He knew the answer when he entered the

supervisor's office. It looked like a command post just before launching a small war.

Castellano had not seen so many weapons since World War II. Four men in suits and ties

cradled M-16s. They sat against the far wall with the blank bored expressions of men

controlling fear. Another contingent stood around a table with a mockup of a street

corner that Castellano recognized. He often took his wife to a restaurant on the

southwest corner and when one of the men at the table moved a hand, Castellano saw that

the restaurant was sure enough there in miniature.

The supervisor was at his desk, checking his watch with a thin blond man who had a long

reddish leather case on his lap. Castellano saw that it was sealed with a shiny

combination lock.

Seeing Castellano, the supervisor clapped his hands twice.

"All right, quiet," he said. "We don't have much time. Gentlemen, this is James

Castellano of my department. He is the one who will make the exchange. Until he-and no

one else-signals that we have a valid exchange, I don't want anything walking out of

that street corner."

"What's up?" said Castellano. His mouth tasted brassy nervous and as the coldness in the

faces of these strange men impressed itself upon him, he felt grateful they were all on

the same side. He hoped.

He wanted a cigarette badly even though he had given up smoking more than five years

before.

"What's happened is that we have been lucky. Very lucky, and I don't know why. I am not

at liberty to tell you who these men are but needless to say we are getting cooperation

whether we like it or not from another department."

Castellano nodded. He felt moisture forming on his right hand which held the small

envelopes with the two bills. He wished he was not holding them. He felt the men with

the M-16s staring at him and he did not wish to look back at them.

"We don't know how long these bills have been in circulation," the supervisor said. "It

is just possible that if they've been on the streets any length of time, they might be a

major factor in inflation. They could be making our currency worthless. I say 'could'

because we just don't know. We don't know if a lot of this has been passed or if this is

the first batch."

"Sir," said Castellano, "how did we wind up knowing anything? I didn't realize this was

queer until I saw the duplicate serial numbers."

"That's just it. We got lucky. The forger sent them to us. This is the second set. The

first set had different numbers. To prove they were forgeries, he had to produce

identical serial numbers for us."

"That's incredible," said Castellano. "What does he want from us? With his plates and

printing process, he can buy anything."

"Not anything, it seems. He wants this sophisticated software-computer programming-

that's, well, part of our space program and not for sale. Jim, don't think I'm treating

you like a child but I can only explain it to you the way it was explained to me. NASA,

the space agency, says that when you send things into space they must be very small.

Sometimes you have to send very complicated things into space and they have to do very

big jobs. This all comes under a new discipline called miniaturization. These very small

things can do very complicated things like reproduce the reactions of the retina of an

eye. Okay. This program the counterfeiter wants is a close facsimile of what NASA calls

creative intelligence. It's as close as you can get to it anyway, unless you want to

build something the size of Pennsylvania. Understand?"

"The guy who makes the fifties wants that thingamajig," said Castellano.

"Right," said the supervisor. "He's willing to swap the gravure plates for them. Twelve

fifteen tonight on the corner of Sebastian and Randolph. That's the mockup of the

corner. Our friends will tell you what takes place there. Your job primarily is to make

sure the gravure plates are valid."

Castellano saw a gray-suited man with immaculately groomed hair at the corner of the

mockup signal him with a blackboard pointer to come closer. Castellano went to the model

and felt like God looking down at a little San Diego street corner.

"I am Group Leader Francis Forsythe. You will identify the plates on the corner. The man

you will meet will be identifying the computer program. You will not leave the light of

that corner with the plates. You will be picked up by an armored car. You are not to

leave anyone's sight with those plates. Should the contact attempt to retrieve the

plates for any reason whatsoever, you are authorized to kill said contact. Are you

weapons-familiar?"

"I've got a .38 here."

"When was the last time you used it?"

"Nineteen fifty-three or -four."

"That's wonderful, Castellano. Well, just put it in the contact's face and pull the

trigger hard and often if he tries something. Let me warn you again. You are not to

leave that corner with the plates under possibility... no, make that probability of

death."

"You'd shoot me if I disappeared with the plates?"

"With pleasure," said Forsythe and gave the street corner a tap with his pointer.

"Well, I wasn't going anywhere anyhow. What good would the plates be to me? I don't have

access to this guy's paper source. What would I print queer on? Paper towels?" asked

Castellano.

"It'll take paper towels to pick you up if you try to leave that corner," said Forsythe.

"You must be CIA," said Castellano. "Nobody else on this earth is that stupid."

"Let's calm down," said the district supervisor. "Jim, this plate process is so

important it's more than just a counterfeit. It could literally wreck our country.

That's why everything is so tight. Please try to cooperate and understand, okay, Jim?

This is more than just another bogus bill. Okay?"

Castellano nodded a tired acquiescence. He saw the man with the red leather case come to

the table. Forsythe's pointer came down on a rooftop.

"This is our primary sniper post and this man will man it. It has the least obstruction

and best view. Show Mr. Castellano your weapon."

Castellano watched the fingers work the combination on the red leather case so quickly

no one could get a track on it. The case snapped open, revealing a fine-tooled thick

rifle barrel and a metal stock set in red velvet. There were eight two-inch-long

stainless steel cartridges, each tipped with a white metal substance that appeared to

have been sharpened. Castellano had never seen cartridges that thin. They were like

swizzle sticks.

The rifleman snapped his weapon together and Castellano saw that the very thick barrel

had a very thin opening. The tolerance in the boring of that weapon, thought Castellano,

must be incredible.

"I can pop out the iris of an eye at fifty yards," said the rifleman. "This is the

weapon. I saw you notice the bullets. They are designed to disintegrate when they hit

metal of any sort so we don't go damaging your plates or any machinery. They will kill

very nicely, however. They penetrate skin and are curare tipped, so if you see a little

pinprick on your contact's face, or hear a little sort of slap, you will know your man

is in the process of dying. I do not need a second shot. So once I get him, don't you go

running anywhere."

"Just thought you should know that he's the one who's going to stop you if you decide to

move anywhere with the plates," said Forsythe.

"You make me root for the other side," Castellano said and was surprised to hear several

of the men carrying M-16s burst into laughter. But when he looked over for expressions

of support to accompany the laughter, the men turned away their eyes.

He was shown the street corner again, where he would stand, and given a gray felt-

wrapped box.

"And don't forget. Try to keep the contact between you and the primary sniper. He's our

best."

The man with the peculiar fat-barreled, thin-bore rifle nodded curtly.

"When you are sure you have the right goods, fall down," said the sniper. "Just collapse

and keep the plates protected by your body."

"I'm setting up somebody for a kill?" asked Castellano.

"You're following orders," said the man with the pointer.

"Do what he says, Jim," said the district supervisor. "This is important."

"At this time in my life, I don't know if I want to be responsible for another man's

death."

"It's very important, Jim. You must know how important," said the district supervisor,

and James Castellano, age forty-nine, agreed for the first time in his life to

participate in a killing if it were necessary.

He rode to the corner of Sebastian and Latimer in the back seat of a gray four-door

sedan. One of Forsythe's men was at the wheel. The exchange item was wrapped in wire and

tape and thick plastic all inside the gray felt-covered box; this was designed to give

Castellano more time to look at the counterfeit plates than his contact would have to

look at the computer software program for creative intelligence.

The car's back seat smelled of stale cigars and the seat cover felt sticky and the stop

and go of the driver made Castellano woozy. He knew a bit about computers and the space

age and what he was delivering was designed, he was sure, to enable unmanned space

vehicles to make creative decisions when beyond the range of earth control.

But why would anyone want something like this? On earth it was next to useless, because

any normal person had many times the creative intelligence of this program.

As the limousine passed a supermarket, Castellano abruptly realized the enormity of the

mission. It was just possible that these 1963 Series A Federal Reserve Notes had already

watered down the value of the entire currency. Massive use of the printing plates he was

to pick up could account for the phenomenon of inflation during an economic depression.

In the supermarket window, he saw the price of hamburger at $1.09 a pound and it was

clear in that instant. When money is worth less, you need more of it to buy less. It was

America's money itself that was becoming worthless if these bills had been passed

massively. And why shouldn't they have been? Who could stop them?

If the assistant director for currency of the California area of the Secret Service

could be fooled, there wasn't a bank teller in the country who wouldn't accept the

notes. They were so good, they were real. And for every counterfeit bill passed, the

dollar in the Social Security check for the widow became that much less, the hamburger

cost that much more, and every savings account became a little less secure, every

paycheck bought less than the week before.

So James Castellano, who had not fired the .38 police special for more than twenty

years, who spanked his children infrequently and then only at the overwhelming urging of

his wife, prepared himself to help take a life. He told himself that these

counterfeiters were daily taking away bits of lives from people who couldn't afford

homes or good food because of inflation, and all those little losses of bits of lives

added up to the taking of one life completely.

"Bullshit," said James Castellano and took the felt-covered box out of his pocket and

rested it on his lap and did not answer the driver who asked what he had said. It was

11:52 P.M. on his watch when he got out at Sebastian and Latimer and began walking

slowly through the hot muggy night the few blocks toward Randolph.

The contact would go under the name of Mr. Gordons, and Mr. Gordons, according to Group

Leader Forsythe, would make the exchange exactly at 12:09:3.

"What?" Castellano had said, thinking that Group Leader Forsythe had suddenly developed

a streak of humor.

"Mr. Gordons said 12:09:3, that's midnight, nine minutes and three seconds."

"What if I'm there at midnight, nine minutes and four seconds?"

"You'd be late," said Group Leader Forsythe.

So Castellano checked his watch again as he walked up Sebastian and he reached the

corner of Randolph at 12:05 and with effort he avoided looking at the rooftops of the

six-story buildings where the sniper was. He kept his eyes straight ahead on the

restaurant where he had often eaten. Its windows were dark and a gray cat stared

contemptuously from the cash register drawer on which it sat. A rickety yellow Ford with

a wire-tied muffler vomiting black smoke chugged up the block with a half-dozen drunken

Mexicans and one old bleached blonde calling the world to revel. The car passed on down

the block and far off Castellano could hear an occasional honk in the night.

He remembered putting his .38 in the shoulder holster at the office but he could not

remember now whether or not he had taken off the safety. He was going to look very

foolish grabbing for a gun and then squeezing a locked trigger. What would he do? Yell

"bang"? Then again, there were those experts on the rooftops and it was too late now to

take his gun out and examine it. The night was hot and Castellano was perspiring and his

shirt became wet, even at the waist. His lips tasted salty.

"Good evening; I'm Mr. Gordons," came a voice from behind Castellano. He turned and saw

a very calm face and cool blue eyes and lips that were parted in a half smile. The man

was a good two inches taller than Castellano, perhaps six foot one or one-and-a-half. He

wore a light blue suit and a white shirt with a white and blue polka-dot tie that was

almost fashionable. Almost. In theory, white and blue were good combinations, and in

practice, a blue suit with a white shirt was very safe. But this combination of bleached

white and glaring blue seemed beyond dashing and even tacky. It was funny. And the man

did not sweat.

"Do you have your package?" asked Castellano.

"Yes, I do have the package intended for you," said the man. The voice lacked even a

hint of regionalism, as if he had learned to talk from a network announcer. "The evening

is rather warm, don't you think? I am sorry I do not have a drink to offer you but we

are in an open street and there are no faucets in open streets."

"That's okay," said Castellano. "I've got your package. You've got mine?"

Castellano felt the heaviness of his breathing as if there could never be enough oxygen

in the air this night. The strange man with the peculiar conversation seemed as calm as

a morning pond. The courteous smile stayed affixed to the face.

"Yes," the man said. "I have your package and you have mine. I will give you your

package for mine. Here is your package. They are the Kansas City Federal Reserve Notes

1963 Series E, front plate 214, back plate 108, which your country desperately needs out

of the hands of counterfeiters. It is worth more than the life of your President, since

in your eyes it affects the very basis of your economy which is your livelihood."

"Okay, okay," said Castellano. "Just give me the plates." The man was a daffodil,

thought Castellano, and reminded himself that when he was sure he had the goods he was

to fall down. He would not test his own gun. Leave it to the sniper to make this one

into a dead daffodil. Well, Castellano hadn't advised him to go into counterfeiting.

The man held the two plates bare in his right hand. Between them was a thin piece of

butcher's paper. Which meant to Castellano that the plates were already ruined from

rubbing together. It would not have been possible for the contact to hold the plates

together with the necessary pressure to keep them from sliding across one another

without exerting so much pressure as to dull the fine engraved ridges.

And it occurred to Castellano as he gave over the felt-covered box in his right hand and

took the two plates very carefully in his left that Group Leader Forsythe had not given

him instructions on what to do if the plates were damaged, although if they were damaged

that was as good as their being out of circulation. No one would pass a fifty with a

scratch in the printing.

Taking the plates, Castellano, to assure that they would never be used again, rubbed

them together hard with his left hand before he separated them to examine them. It was a

foolish move, Castellano realized, seeing the scratch across Grant's beard on the front

plate. It might have angered his contact. Castellano placed the front plate with Grant's

head on top of the backplate with the picture of the U.S. Capitol and, with a penlight,

started examining the seal. It was the J for the Kansas City Federal Reserve bank. The

spokes on the seal surrounding the J were so good that Castellano again felt a surge of

admiration for the craftsmanship. He heard his contact make ripping sounds with the gray

felt package and thought that no matter how loudly the man opened it, there would still

be plenty of time for Castellano to examine the plates. After all the man had to go

through tape and wire and plastic to get to the computer program. Castellano would not

let the ripping noise rush him.

"This program does not meet specifications," said the contact. Castellano looked up,

confused. The contact held a small wheel in front of him. The heavy tape and wires and

plastic dangled from his hands. The felt was shredded on the sidewalk at his feet.

"Oh, Jesus," said Castellano and waited for someone to do something.

"This program does not meet specifications," said the man again, and Castellano felt as

if he were being told some abstract far-off fact that had nothing to do with their

lives. Then the man reached for the plates, but Castellano couldn't return them. Even

with the scratch through Grant's beard, he couldn't let those plates out of government

hands. He had spent a lifetime protecting the verity of American money, and he would not

give it up now.

He rammed the plates into his stomach and let himself fall toward the sidewalk. He heard

an instant ping, apparently from his primary sniper with the curare-tipped bullet, but

then felt a wrench crush his left wrist with an incredibly painful cracking sound and

then there was a feel of hot molten metal pouring into his left shoulder and he saw his

own left arm go by his face with the plates washed in a dark liquid that was his own

blood and then the right shoulder socket was searing pain and that arm was under his

knee as he settled back onto the sidewalk screaming for his mother. And then blessedly

there was a wrenching in the back of his neck as if someone pulled a switch that ended

everything. His eye caught a glimpse of a bloody shoe and then there were no more

glimpses.

When the films of James Castellano's dismemberment were shown at the Treasury Building

in Washington, Francis Forsythe, group leader, ordered the projector stopped and with

his pointed touched the splotched hand holding two oblong metal plates.

"It's our belief that the plates were ruined in the scuffle. As most of you gentlemen

know, the surface ridges of currency plates are highly critical. It is the belief of

your own Treasury people that our group has ended the menace."

"But are you sure the plates are scratched?" came a voice from the darkened room. In the

dark no one saw Forsythe's triumphant little grin.

"In our group, we prepare for the unexpected. Not only did we have three movie cameras

with infrared light and film, we had still cameras with mirror telephoto lenses and

special emulsion film that could blow up a fingernail the size of a wall and you could

see the nail cells." Forsythe cleared his throat, then in a loud command, ordered a

still of the plate. The screen with Castellano's hand clutching the two plates became

dark and the room with it. Then the black outlines of an engraving plate enlarged many

times filled the screen.

"See," said Forsythe. "There's a scratch across Grant's beard. Right there."

Now there was a lemony voice speaking from the dark in the back of the room. "That

probably happened when Castellano took the plates," the voice said.

"I don't think we should argue over who gets credit. Let's just be grateful this menace

is no longer a menace. After all, no one knew this money was in circulation until our

contact, this Mr. Gordons, tried to get that space program," said Forsythe.

"How did he escape? I still don't understand," came the sharp lemony voice again.

"Sir?" asked Forsythe.

"I said Mr. Gordons should not have escaped."

"You saw the film, sir. Do you want to see it again?" asked Forsythe. His tone was both

condescending and threatening, implying that only someone who did not know what he was

doing would be so silly as to ask to see again what had been obvious. It had worked

hundreds of times in Washington briefings. This time it did not.

"Yes," said the voice, "I would like to see it again. Start where Castellano takes the

two plates and rubs them together, causing the scratch on Grant's beard. It occurs

simultaneously with his handing Mr. Gordons that false program."

"The film again, from about frame 120," said Forsythe.

"In the 140s," came the lemony voice.

The enlarged engraving of Ulysses Grant's beard disappeared from the screen and was

quickly replaced by the slow-motion movements of James Castellano offering a felt

package with his right hand and taking two dark rectangular plates with his left, and

there the lemony voice noted drily:

"Here he scratches the plate."

And when Castellano examined the front plate under his penlight, the voice noted again:

"And now we see the scratch."

Mr. Gordons's little smile remained as he tore open the package, first on the right,

then on the left, without haste but certainly without difficulty and in its slowness it

still took only five seconds to have the package open.

"What did you wrap that package with?" asked the lemony voice.

"Wire and tape. He must have had some sort of cutters or pliers in his hand to cut

through the package like that."

"Not necessarily. Some hands can do it."

"I've never seen hands that could," said Forsythe angrily.

"That hardly precludes their existence," came the calm lemony voice, and a few guffaws

cut the smothering solemnity.

"What'd he say?" hissed another voice.

"He said just 'cause Forsythe never saw it, doesn't mean it ain't."

There was more laughter, but Forsythe pointed to Mr. Gordons dismembering Castellano,

first left arm, then right arm, then snapping off his neck until only a trunk writhed on

the bloody sidewalk.

"Now tell me he didn't have an implement in his hand," Forsythe demanded, addressing the

room in general, but clearly challenging the lemony-voiced man in the rear.

"Roll back to the 160s," said the lemony voice and at frame 162, as the slow-motion film

rolled, Mr. Gordons began taking apart Castellano again.

"Stop. There. That little small tear in the forehead of Mr. Gordon. That's it. I know

what that is. It's one of your little bullets with the poison in it, isn't it? The one

you use where machinery or things you don't want damaged are involved. Correct?"

"Uh, I do believe that was a function of our primary sharpshooter, yes," said Forsythe,

boiling because the weapon's existence was supposed to be supersecret, known only to a

few persons in government.

"Well, if it worked and the man was hit and is poisoned to death, how is it that we see

him in the 240s frames, running away with the plates?"

A few people coughed. The brightness of someone lighting a cigarette broke the darkness.

Someone blew his nose. Forsythe was silent.

"Well?" said the lemony voice.

"Well," Forsythe said, "we are not sure about everything. But after a long time of our

currency being diluted without the Treasury people even knowing it, we can be delighted

with the fact that the plate has been damaged beyond further use. The menace has been

ended."

"Nothing has been ended," snapped the lemony voice. "A man who can make one set of

perfect plates can make another. We haven't heard the last of Mr. Gordons."

Two days later, the Secretary of the Treasury received a personal letter. It asked for a

favor. The sender wanted a small space program concerning creative intelligence. In

return for it, he would give the Treasury a perfect set of printing plates for hundred-

dollar bills. To prove it he enclosed two perfect hundred-dollar bills. That they were

counterfeit was proved by the fact that both bore the same serial numbers.

The note was from Mr. Gordons.

CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo and he moved easily in the predawn darkness of the alley, each

movement a quiet, precise, yet quick going forward, gliding past garbage cans and

pausing briefly at a locked iron gate. His hand, darkened by a special paste made of

beans and burned almonds, closed on the lock of the gate. With a weak groan the gate

opened. His hand silently deposited the cracked lock on the pavement. He looked up. The

building rose fourteen stories to the black-gray sky. The alley smelled of old coffee

grounds. Even behind Park Avenue in New York City, the alleys smelled of coffee grounds,

just as alleys did in Dallas or San Francisco or even in the Lord Empire of Africa.

An alley was an alley was an alley, thought Remo. Then again, why shouldn't it be?

His left hand touched brick and moved upward, feeling the texture of the building's

side. Its ridges and crevices registered in a far deeper place than his consciousness.

Now it required no more thought than blinking. In fact, thought detracted from the

greater power of a person. At the time of his training he had been told this, but he

could not believe it; after many years of training, he gradually had come to understand.

He did not know when his body and, more importantly, his nervous system had begun to

reflect the change in his mind, making him something else. But one day he realized it

had happened long ago, and then that which had once been a conscious goal was now done

without much thought.

Like climbing a smooth brick wall that went straight up.

Remo flattened his face and arms to the wall and moved his lower trunk in close and let

his legs be loose and then with the easy grace of a swan pressed into the wall and

raised his body by lowering his hands with great pressure on the wall and when his hands

were down near his waist, the inside of his large toes touched a brick edge, securing

and resting, and the hands went up again.

He could smell the recent sandblasting of the wall. When they were old and uncleaned,

walls absorbed very heavily the auto fumes of the street. But when they were clean, the

fumes were very faint. The hands floated up and then down and catch with the insides of

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