Jack Reacher 01 - Killing Floor

that the only solution was diplomatic. Failing that, he was in favor of air strikes against it. We may live to see such a solution one day.”
    “And the second place?” I asked him.
    He pointed his finger at his grimy office window. Aiming south down Amsterdam Avenue.
    “South America,” he said. “The second source is Venezuela. Joe had located it. That is what he was working on. Absolutely outstanding counterfeit hundred-dollar bills are coming out of Venezuela. But strictly private enterprise. No suggestion of government involvement.”
    I nodded.
    “We got that far,” I said. “A guy called Kliner, based down in Georgia where Joe was killed.”
    “Quite so,” Kelstein said. “The ingenious Mr. Kliner. It’s his operation. He’s running the whole thing. We knew that for certain. How is he?”
    “He’s panicking,” I said. “He’s killing people.”
    Kelstein nodded sadly.
    “We thought Kliner might panic,” he said. “He’s protecting an outstanding operation. The very best we’ve ever seen.”
    “The best?” I said.
    Kelstein nodded enthusiastically.
    “Outstanding,” he said again. “How much do you know about counterfeiting?”
    I shrugged at him.
    “More than I did last week,” I said. “But not enough, I guess.”
    Kelstein nodded and shifted his frail weight forward in his chair. His eyes lit up. He was about to start a lecture on his favorite subject.
    “There are two sorts of counterfeiters,” he said. “The bad ones and the good ones. The good ones do it properly. Do you know the difference between intaglio and lithography?”
    I shrugged and shook my head. Kelstein scooped up a magazine from a pile and handed it to me. It was a quarterly bulletin from a history society.
    “Open it,” he said. “Any page will do. Run your fingers over the paper. It’s smooth, isn’t it? That’s lithographic printing. That’s how virtually everything is printed. Books, magazines, newspapers, everything. An inked roller passes over the blank paper. But intaglio is different.”
    He suddenly clapped his hands together. I jumped. The sound was very loud in his quiet office.
    “That’s intaglio,” he said. “A metal plate is smashed into the paper with considerable force. It leaves a definite embossed feel to the product. The printed image looks three dimensional. It feels three dimensional. It’s unmistakable.”
    He eased himself up and took his wallet out of his hip pocket. Pulled out a ten-dollar bill. Passed it over to me.
    “Can you feel it?” he asked. “The metal plates are nickel, coated with chromium. Fine lines are engraved into the chromium and the lines are filled with ink. The plate hits the paper and the ink is printed onto its topmost surface. Understand? The ink is in the valleys of the plate, so it’s transferred to the ridges on the paper. Intaglio printing is the only way to get that raised image. The only way to make the forgery feel right. It’s how the real thing is done.”
    “What about the ink?” I said.
    “There are three colors,” he said. “Black, and two greens. The back of the bill is printed first, with the darker green. Then the paper is left to dry, and the next day, the front is printed with the black ink. That dries, and the front is printed again, with the lighter green. That’s the other stuff you see there on the front, including the serial number. But the lighter green is printed by a different process, called letterpress. It’s a stamping action, the same as intaglio, but the ink is stamped into the valleys on the paper, not onto the peaks.”
    I nodded and looked at the ten-dollar bill, front and back. Ran my fingers over it carefully. I’d never really studied one before.
    “So, four problems,” Kelstein said. “The press, the plates, the inks, and the paper. The press can be bought, new or used, anywhere in the world. There are hundreds of sources. Most countries print money and securities and bonds on them. So the presses are obtainable abroad. They can even be improvised. Joe found one intaglio operation in Thailand which was using a converted squid-processing machine. Their hundreds were absolutely immaculate.”
    “What about the plates?” I asked him.
    “Plates are problem number two,” he said. “But it’s a matter of talent. There are people in the world who can forge Old Master paintings and there are people who can play a Mozart piano concerto after hearing it once. And certainly there are engravers who can