Lee Child - Killing Floor

Since then, he had been poking and prying, hovering around on the edge of our hidden investigation. He had wanted in and he had been a willing helper. Finlay had used him on lookout duty. And all the time he was running to Teale with the snippets he was getting from us.

Finlay was blasting north at a hell of a speed. He flung the Chevy around the cloverleaf and mashed the pedal. The big car hurtled forward up the highway.

“Could we try the Coast Guard?” he said. “Get them to stand by Sunday for when they start shipping out? Some kind of an extra patrol?”

“You’re joking,” I said. “The political flak the president’s taken over that, he’s not going to reverse himself the very first day, just because you ask him to.”

“So what do we do?” he said.

“Call Princeton back,” I told him. “Get hold of that research assistant again. He may be able to piece together what Bartholomew figured out last night. Hole up somewhere safe and get busy.”

He laughed.

“Where the hell’s safe now?” he said.

I told him to use the Alabama motel we’d used Monday. It was in the middle of nowhere and it was as safe as he needed to get. I told him I’d find him there when I got back. Asked him to bring the Bentley to the airport and to leave the key and the parking claim at the arrivals information desk. He repeated all the arrangements back to me to confirm he was solid. He was doing more than ninety miles an hour, but he was turning his head to look at me every time he spoke.

“Watch the road, Finlay,” I said. “No good to anybody if you kill us in a damn car.”

He grinned and faced forward. Jammed his foot down harder. The big police Chevy eased up over a hundred. Then he turned again and looked straight into my eyes for about three hundred yards.

“Coward,” he said.

NO EASY WAY TO GET THROUGH THE AIRPORT SECURITY hoops with a sap and a knife and a big metal gun, so I left my camouflage jacket in Finlay’s car and told him to transfer it to the Bentley. He ducked into departures with me and put the best part of seven hundred bucks on his credit card for my round trip ticket on Delta to New York. Then he took off to find the Alabama motel and I went through to the gate for the plane to La Guardia.

I was airborne for a shade over two hours and in a cab for thirty-five minutes. Arrived in Manhattan just after four-thirty. I’d been there in May and it looked pretty much the same in September. The summer heat was over and the city was back to work. The cab took me over the Triborough Bridge and headed west on 116th. Slid around Morningside Park and dropped me at Columbia University’s main entrance. I went in and found my way to the campus security office. Knocked on the glass.

A campus policeman checked a clipboard and let me in. Led me through to a room in back and pointed to Professor Kelvin Kelstein. I saw a very old guy, tiny, wizened with age, sporting a huge shock of white hair. He looked exactly like that cleaner I’d seen on the third floor at Warburton, except he was white.

“The two Hispanic guys been back?” I asked the college cop.

He shook his head.

“Haven’t seen them,” he said. “The old guy’s office told them that the lunch date was canceled. Maybe they went away.”

“I hope so,” I said. “Meanwhile, you’re going to have to watch over this guy for a spell. Give it until Sunday.”

“Why?” he said. “What’s going on?”

“Not sure, exactly,” I said. “I’m hoping the old guy can tell me.”

The guard walked us back to Kelstein’s own office and left us there. It was a small and untidy room crammed full to the ceiling with books and thick journals. Kelstein sat in an old armchair and gestured me to sit opposite him in another.

“What exactly happened to Bartholomew?” he asked.

“I don’t know exactly,” I said. “Jersey police say he got stabbed during a mugging outside his home.”

“But you remain skeptical?” Kelstein asked.

“My brother made a list of contacts,” I said. “You’re the only one of them still alive.”

“Your brother was Mr. Joe Reacher?” he said.

I nodded.

“He was murdered last Thursday,” I said. “I’m trying to find out why.”

Kelstein inclined his head and peered out of a grimy window.

“I’m sure you know why,” he said. “He was an investigator. Clearly he was killed in the course of an investigation. What you need to know is what he was investigating.”

“Can you tell me what that was?” I said.

The old professor shook his head.

“Only in the most general terms,” he said. “I can’t help you with specifics.”

“Didn’t he discuss specifics with you?” I said.

“He used me as a sounding board,” he said. “We were speculating together. I enjoyed it tremendously. Your brother Joe was a stimulating companion. He had a keen mind and a very attractive precision in the manner in which he expressed himself. It was a pleasure to work with him.”

“But you didn’t discuss specifics?” I said again.

Kelstein cupped his hands like a man holding an empty vessel.

“We discussed everything,” he said. “But we came to no conclusions.”

“OK,” I said. “Can we start at the beginning? The discussion was about counterfeit currency, right?”

Kelstein tilted his great head to one side. Looked amused.

“Obviously,” he said. “What else would Mr. Joe Reacher and I find to discuss?”

“Why you?” I asked him bluntly.

The old professor smiled a modest smile which faded into a frown. Then he came up with an ironic grin.

“Because I am the biggest counterfeiter in history,” he said. “I was going to say I was one of the two biggest in history, but after the events of last night at Princeton, sadly now I alone remain.”

“You and Bartholomew?” I said. “You were counterfeiters?”

The old guy smiled again.

“Not by choice,” he said. “During the Second World War, young men like Walter and me ended up with strange occupations. He and I were considered more useful in an intelligence role than in combat. We were drafted into the SIS, which as you know was the very earliest incarnation of the CIA. Other people were responsible for attacking the enemy with guns and bombs. We were handed the job of attacking the enemy with economics. We derived a scheme for shattering the Nazi economy with an assault on the value of its paper currency. Our project manufactured hundreds of billions of counterfeit reichsmarks. Spare bombers littered Germany with them. They came down out of the sky like confetti.”

“Did it work?” I asked him.

“Yes and no,” he said. “Certainly, their economy was shattered. Their currency was worthless very quickly. But of course, much of their production used slave labor. Slaves aren’t interested one way or the other whether the content of somebody else’s wage packet is worth anything. And of course, alternative currencies were found. Chocolate, cigarettes, anything. Altogether, it was only a partial success. But it left Walter and me two of history’s greatest forgers. That is, if you use sheer volume as a measure. I can’t claim any great talent for the inky end of the process.”

“So Joe was picking your brains?” I asked him.

“Walter and I became obsessed,” Kelstein said. “We studied the history of money forging. It started the day after paper money was first introduced. It’s never gone away. We became experts. We carried on the interest after the war. We developed a loose relationship with the government. Finally, some years ago, a Senate subcommittee commissioned a report from us. With all due modesty, I can claim that it became the Treasury’s anticounterfeiting bible. Your brother was familiar with it, of course. That’s why he was talking to Walter and me.”