Read Chapter 30: The Counterfeit

The French doors slammed behind him, and Walter ran. Not toward the gate—too open, too far—but along the mansion's limestone face, pressing himself into the shadow of a boxwood hedge as a searchlight swept the lawn thirty yards off. Somewhere beyond the hedges, a dog barked once, then twice, then fell into a rhythm of baying that raised the hair on his neck.

He found a service door recessed between two columns, unlatched, leading into a short hallway that smelled of floor wax and cigars. He slipped inside and pressed his back against the door, willing his breath to slow. The revolver felt alien in his hand—Roy's revolver, heavy and warm. He hadn't fired it tonight. Didn't plan to unless he had to.

The hallway led deeper into the mansion, away from the shouting voices and the tramp of boots on gravel. Walter moved quickly, checking doorways as he passed: a pantry, a linen closet, a maid's room. At the end of the hall, a heavy oak door with a brass plate that read PRIVATE—NO ADMITTANCE. The lock was a simple mortise. He tried the handle. It turned.

The room beyond was a study, but not like any study Walter had ever seen. The walls were lined with filing cabinets of dark green steel, each drawer labeled in a neat hand with dates and account numbers. A massive desk dominated the center, its surface clear except for a green-shaded banker's lamp and a telephone. But it was what stood against the far wall that stopped him cold.

A printing press.

Not a letterpress for stationery, or a mimeograph for office notices. This was a full-scale flatbed press, bolted to the floor, its rollers gleaming with fresh ink. Beside it, on a steel table, lay a set of engraved plates—magnificent, intricate things, their surfaces a lattice of hairline lines and scrollwork that Walter's trained eye recognized instantly.

Federal Reserve notes. Series of 1928.

He crossed the room as if pulled by a string. The plates were stacked in a wooden tray, each one wrapped in tissue paper. He unwrapped the top plate and held it under the lamp. The engraving was flawless—the portrait, the serial numbers, the ornate border work. He'd spent eleven years in banking, and in all that time he'd never held a genuine plate. But he knew one when he saw it. This was not a copy.

On the side table lay a half-finished sheet, still tacky. He lifted it carefully. The note before him—a twenty-dollar bill—was perfect. He held it up to the light and looked for the flaws that always betrayed a counterfeit. There were none. The paper had the right feel, the right color. He checked the serial number: A68740143A. He flipped it over, checked the engraving on the back. Even the tiny "20"s in the border were crisp.

His hands began to shake.

He set the bill down and stepped back. The room swam into focus: not a study, but a factory. Dozens of wooden crates lined the far wall, stamped with shipping labels. He pried one open. Bundles of notes, newly printed, stacked like bricks. He counted the bundles in the crate—fifty of them, each holding a hundred bills. He did the arithmetic without meaning to. A hundred thousand dollars in this one crate. And there were at least fifteen crates more.

A million and a half.

And that was just what was packed, ready to ship. The plate rack held more denominations—fives, tens, fifties. He opened a drawer in the table and found bundles of note paper, still in their Federal Reserve wrappers. The paper wasn't smuggled or substituted. It was genuine, mill-made, intended for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing itself. Which meant DeVries had someone inside, or had bought the paper before delivery, or had simply stolen it.

His knees gave out. He sat on the edge of the desk, trying to get his bearings.

The counterfeit was not the goal. The counterfeit was the ammunition.

A million dollars of genuine-looking bills, released into the economy through banks that DeVries controlled, could do more than make him rich. It could undermine confidence. It could trigger runs on institutions that held the notes. It could make the government's own currency suspect, accelerate the panic, collapse the dollar's value further. And when the dollar fell, DeVries would be there, ready to buy up the real assets—the land, the gold, the securities—for pennies on the dollar.

Walter saw it then, the full architecture of the scheme. It wasn't a robbery. It wasn't a fraud. It was a weapon pointed at the heart of the federal reserve system itself. DeVries wasn't just a criminal. He was an economic saboteur.

The bark of a dog from outside snapped him back. Heavy footsteps in the hallway. He killed the lamp and pressed himself into the gap between the printing press and the wall, his heart hammering against his ribs. The footsteps paused at the door. The handle turned.

A man's voice, muffled through the oak: "He's not in here. I checked the lock—it's secure."

Another voice, fainter: "Where the hell is he, then?"

"Roy said he went toward the east wall. Maybe he's already over it."

"Then we'll find him on the other side. Come on."

The footsteps retreated. Walter waited, counting his breaths, until the silence felt solid again. Then he slid out from behind the press and stood over the plates.

He knew what he had to do.

The model he was looking for a lesson in destruction. He found it in the desk: a can of kerosene, used for cleaning the press rollers. He uncapped it and poured a slow, generous line over the stacked plates, over the bundled notes in the open crate, over the sheets of currency drying on the table. The smell filled the room, sharp and oily. He hesitated at the press itself. Destroying it would cost DeVries more than the plates and the paper combined. But the press was cast iron and steel. The kerosene would burn the ink, the rollers, the wooden frame—but the metal would survive. It could be rebuilt, reconditioned, put back into service in weeks.

The plates were the irreplaceable part. Each one had taken months to engrave, probably, by an artist who either worked for DeVries or was dead. If they burned, warped, melted—the scheme would be set back by a year or more. That was the best Walter could hope for.

He found a box of matches in the desk drawer. He struck one, watched it flare, and touched it to the kerosene-soaked edge of the nearest stack of plates.

The fire caught with a whoosh that surprised him, racing along the line of fuel and leaping to the paper bundles in the crates. Within seconds, the room was filled with roaring light and heat. He backed toward the door, shielding his face, watching the plates curl and blacken in the flames. Then he turned and ran.

The hallway was empty. He made it to the service door and out into the night just as an alarm bell began to clang somewhere inside the mansion. Behind him, through the windows of the study, a flickering orange glow bloomed.

Shouts erupted from the direction of the front lawn. Men ran past the corner of the mansion, heading for the study entrance. Walter flattened himself against the wall, waiting, counting them—six. Seven. They pounded through the door he'd come out of, shouting orders, and the sound of their boots vanished into the mansion's guts.

He had seconds.

He crossed the lawn at a crouch, heading for the tree line. Boots on gravel—he froze. A guard came around the corner of the mansion, twenty yards away, his flashlight beam sweeping the open ground. Walter dropped to his belly in the wet grass. The beam passed over him, swung back, held.

The guard took two steps toward him. Then a ragged gunshot cracked from the direction of the mansion's east wing, and the guard spun and shouted something Walter couldn't make out, and ran back toward the house. Roy's false trail, burning his last coin of goodwill.

Walter pushed himself up and ran. He hit the tree line as the alarm bell died, replaced by the crackle of fire and the shouts of men trying to save what he'd just destroyed. Behind him, DeVries's mansion glowed like a lantern, smoke curling from the study windows.

He didn't stop running until the trees swallowed the light entirely.