"Destroyer - 018 - Funny Money" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)


"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 heЧand no one elseЧsignals 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 softwareЧcomputer programmingЧthat'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.