A Calculated Risk by Katherine Neville (best time to read books .txt) 📗

printer in the country. We get lots of commercial engravers, and students like yourself, on tour here. When you go on the tour, you should introduce yourself to the engravers; they’d be happy to talk with you and show you what they’re doing. Whoops! Here comes the cart already, and I didn’t ask you to sign in. Just put your name and address on this log, if you don’t mind.” He handed her a clipboard with a sheet full of signatures.

Georgian printed her name carefully: “Georgette Heyer.” Next to it, in the column that read “Company Name,” she printed: “Art Students’ League.” She was happy she didn’t have time to talk further with the guard; Georgian wasn’t even sure where the Art Students’ League was located.

Waving her hand to the guard, she ran from the little glass booth, hopped into the small electric cart that was sitting before the gate, and rode away.

“I had no idea,” Georgian said as she sipped the foam from her mug of beer and peered through the gloom of the darkened bar, “that U.S. Banknote printed so many different kinds of things! I’m so glad I went on the tour and had the opportunity to meet all of you wonderful gentlemen.”

Around the brick-red Formica table sat five of the master engravers from U.S. Banknote, with large smelly sausage sandwiches half-devoured on the plates before them, and half-full steins of beer. They were all ogling Georgian with avid scientific curiosity, as if she were a new form of engraving tool.

“Just think,” she ran on, “food stamps and postage stamps and travelers’ cheques and stocks and bonds—and even leather-bound books! But don’t you have to specialize in something? I mean, is each of you an expert in everything, or are some better at … intaglio printing, and others better at roto … roto …”

“Gravure,” said one of the men, and the others laughed.

Georgian looked flustered, and let her gaze, wide-eyed with admiration for all of them, wander around the table.

“We all have specialties,” another engraver admitted. “We’re always happy to have you students come on these tours. Who knows but that some of you may become apprentices? The students of today are the master engravers of tomorrow.”

They all nodded in agreement and ate their sandwiches and drank their beer.

“But the field I’m really most interested in,” said Georgian, blowing on the foam of her beer, “is photoengraving. I’m studying photography, and what I’d like to do is turn one of my photographs into a really superb engraving. Do you do any photoengraving here?”

“Not much,” one of the engravers admitted. “The people doing the best work in that field are the Japanese; their color lithography and engraving are incredible. They do the kind of thing you’re talking about. You ought to go to some of the museums in Manhattan and see what they’re turning out.”

“We don’t do much of that here at the plant,” added another, “because we deal primarily with security instruments—things that have cash value, like travelers’ cheques, where all the engraving plates have to be hand-etched. The printing has to be very sophisticated, so the instruments we produce will be hard to counterfeit. Sometimes, this takes as many as thirty colors on a single document. Surely you wouldn’t need to do anything that complex to engrave a photograph?”

“I’d like to know how,” said Georgian. “Is there anyone you know who could show me?”

“Actually,” said one of the men, “there is that Japanese photoengraver over on Staten Island. He works out of his own home. He does sophisticated stuff—some of it commercial, but mostly artistic. Do you recall his name, Bob? Remember—he was the guy who made that plate of a one-dollar bill a few years ago, and showed the bills in a gallery. The plates were such good counterfeits that the FBI came to his house and broke them! What was that guy’s name?”

“Oh yeah,” said the other. “I remember—it was Seigei Kawabata.”

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1

It was early afternoon when Georgian, completely enveloped in her bohemian black cape, got off the Staten Island ferry and hiked up the landing plank through the falling snow. She hailed the first taxi she saw, and gave the driver the address.

She paid the driver and disembarked before an old gingerbread house on a tree-lined street. It didn’t seem the sort of spot where one would find a famous engraver; she’d expected something a bit more high-tech.

Georgian went up the icy front walk, climbed the steps to the front porch, and rang the bell. After a few moments, she heard the sound of footsteps shuffling to the door. The door creaked open and a wrinkled little face peered out.

“Mr. Kawabata?” said Georgian. The old man nodded, watching her carefully, but not opening the door any wider. “I’m Georgette Heyer; I telephoned you from the city. From the Art Students’ League.”

Georgian smiled at him as sweetly as she could, but privately cursed him for keeping the damned door half-shut; she was freezing.

“Ah yes,” said Mr. Kawabata at last, opening the door and ushering her inside. “The Art Students’ League—I lecture there myself quite often. Who are your instructors there? I’m certain I would know them. Would you care for some tea?”

Georgian was forced to admit to Mr. Kawabata, over tea and cookies, that she was not a student from the Art Students’ League. She was in fact a commercial photographer who was thinking of going into photoengraving—but she did not want any of her competitors to know she was branching out into a new field. Even to her, this excuse sounded flimsy, but Mr. Kawabata accepted it.

“Mr. Kawabata, the engravers at U.S. Banknote told me you’d done a perfect engraving of a dollar bill. Is that true?” she asked as Kawabata was leading her through his maze of high-ceilinged Victorian rooms.

Each room was immaculately clean, with hand-painted paper screens covering the tall windows, and beautiful pastel pots of paintbrushes clustered like art objects on the pale