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

you’ve embarrassed Dr. Tor,” I said sternly. “All this continental wisdom of yours is amusing only up to a point.”

“He loves you, I say,” she hissed under her breath. “You say I’m a foolish old woman, but often it takes la folle to speak the truth, out in the air where everyone can hear. The blindness of Monet, I could help—I could see the flowers for him—but there is no help for the blindness which comes from the heart.”

Just then, Georgian arrived in a tiny dress no longer than a shirt, coated in salmon-colored paillettes that glittered when she moved.

“Thor’s on his way to the Plum Room,” she announced. “Come—come! We have it all set up!”

In the Plum Room, the big printing press was at center, the tarp spread out on the floor beneath. There were tables with boxes of supplies and, mounted on the scaffold, a photo enlarger and a huge camera, both trained down upon the surface of the large table.

Georgian stood before it, twisting one leg around the other like a child, and looking at us with great round eyes.

Tor was mucking about, moving levers and switches as the equipment shifted up and down with whirring and clicking sounds. He didn’t look up when we arrived.

I wondered just how much Lelia had picked up about our little wager. She was standing—all ears—just at the door.

“Isn’t it fabulous?” asked Georgian, barely able to contain her excitement.

“It is impressive,” I agreed. “But what are you going to do with all this stuff?”

“We’re going to counterfeit securities,” said Tor, still screwing with the levers, “just as I told you before.”

“You never said that,” I told him. “I thought you were going to rob that place—the Depository Trust—to prove how easy it was.”

“Not quite,” he replied with a smile, looking up for the first time with that penetrating gaze. “I see no reason to steal securities. Not if you can arrange it so that they never get there in the first place. Why would I need a photographer, if I only planned to rob a vault?”

At last it all made sense. They would copy the stocks and bonds—keeping the real ones—and they’d put the fake ones into the vault! Why hadn’t I seen that before? But even so, I realized, there were a few unanswered questions.

“If you’re not going to break into a vault, how will you substitute the fake for the real?” I wanted to know. “It seems you’d have to swap them before they got there.”

“Precisely,” Tor agreed, with a smile.

“Let me explain,” Georgian chimed in.

She plucked a document from the table and handed it to me. It had a blue border and wavy, complex lettering. I ran my fingers over it and felt the irregular surface.

“Thor’s gotten copies of many kinds of bonds that are being traded heavily this month,” she said. “These are the likeliest to be transported to the Depository Trust just now. We’ve made multiple copies of each kind—this is an example.”

“You printed this?” I asked, and when she nodded proudly, I added, “but don’t securities have serial numbers?”

“Yes, and other identifying information, too,” Tor agreed. “We won’t know the unique identifiers for each bond we’ll be copying—not until we actually see the physical instrument itself. And we won’t see it until it’s being sent by a brokerage or bank to the Depository’s vault.”

“We’ll only have a brief time to engrave those unique numbers onto the security,” Georgian added. “That’s what I’m most concerned about—the drying time for the ink. Fast-drying ink crumbles and slow-drying ink smears. But we have to have a flawless copy.”

“This one looks pretty good,” I admitted. “Is there someone, an expert, you could ask?”

“Not unless you’d care to phone the Treasury Department and request their opinion,” Tor said dryly, leaning against the wall with folded arms.

I had so many questions, but they stood there making it all sound so simple.

“How do you plan to get your hands on these securities—knock over a Brinks truck?” I asked. “And what about watermarks? All negotiable instruments have those—even cash—”

“Ah, but we must retain some secrets,” Tor cut in with a smile. “After all—you’re the enemy!”

“That’s right!” agreed Georgian. “This is a competition! Our lips are sealed from now on.”

“I think you’re overlooking the value of my contribution,” I told them, feeling suddenly very much left out. “After all, I’m a banker. For instance—I bet you haven’t thought of the registration!”

“What registration?” Georgian wanted to know.

“When stocks are purchased by someone, they print the purchaser’s name on them. Or even if they’re registered in ‘street name,’ the title company keeps track of who the owner is. Tor’s certainly aware of that—he told me so himself.”

“Is this true?” Georgian demanded.

“Absolutely,” said Tor with that cryptic smile, “which is why we are not going to counterfeit stocks, my little feathered chickadee. We’re going to counterfeit bearer bonds instead. And bearer bonds are gold!”

During our conversation, Lelia had slipped away, and had not yet returned when the maid came to announce that dinner would soon be served. So we three headed back up the hallway.

“Just how involved is Lelia in all of this?” I asked Georgian.

“Oh, you know Mother. You can’t keep her nose out of anything. She’s volunteered her help in every imaginable way. I’m not sure she understands that it’s not just a game, though. In fact, I’m not sure I believe it myself. We’re actually doing something illegal—regardless of the purity of our motives. If we’re caught before we give the money back, we’ll wind up in jail!”

“All the more reason to keep Lelia out of it,” I agreed. “You know how she is.”

Tor was dawdling behind us, examining the paintings that hung between every set of mirrored, louvered doors.

“You don’t have to do this at all, you know,” I told Georgian. “In fact—though the whole thing was my idea—I feel over my head myself. It was Tor who turned this into a circus. He loves doing that to me—that’s why I’ve avoided