Funny Money td-18 Read online

  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 cou
ghed. 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.