Jack Reacher 01 - Killing Floor

reproduce banknotes. It’s a perfectly logical proposition, isn’t it? If a human being in Washington can engrave the original, certainly there’s a human being somewhere else who can copy it. But they’re rare. Really good copyists, rarer still. There are a few in Armenia. The Thai operation using the squid-processor got a Malaysian to make the plates.”
    “OK,” I said. “So Kliner has bought a press, and he’s found an engraver. What about the inks?”
    “The inks are problem number three,” he said. “You can’t buy anything vaguely like them in the U.S. Joe saw to that. But abroad, they’re available. As I said, virtually every country in the world has its own banknote printing industry. And obviously, Joe couldn’t enforce his systems in every country in the world. So the inks are easy enough to find. The greens are only a question of color. They mix them and experiment until they get them right. The black ink is magnetic, did you know that?”
    I shook my head again. Looked at the sawbuck closely. Kelstein smiled.
    “You can’t see it,” he said. “A liquid ferrous chemical is mixed with the black ink. That’s how electronic money counters work. They scan the engraving down the center of the portrait, and the machine reads the signal it gives off, like a tape head reads the sounds on a music cassette.”
    “And they can get that ink?” I said.
    “Anywhere in the world,” he said. “Everybody uses it. We lag behind other countries. We don’t like to admit we worry about counterfeiting.”
    I remembered what Molly had said. Faith and trust. I nodded.
    “The currency must look stable,” Kelstein said. “That’s why we’re so reluctant to change it. It’s got to look reliable, solid, unchanging. Turn that ten over and take a look.”
    I looked at the green picture on the back of the ten. The Treasury Building was standing in a deserted street. Only one car was driving past. It looked like a Model-T Ford.
    “Hardly changed since 1929,” Kelstein said. “Psychologically, it’s very important. We choose to put the appearance of dependability before security. It made Joe’s job very difficult.”
    I nodded again.
    “Right,” I said. “So we’ve covered the press, the plates, and the inks. What about the paper?”
    Kelstein brightened up and clasped his small hands like we’d reached the really interesting part.
    “Paper is problem number four,” he said. “Actually, we should really say it’s problem number one. It’s by far the biggest problem. It’s the thing Joe and I couldn’t understand about Kliner’s operation.”
    “Why not?” I asked him.
    “Because their paper is perfect,” he said. “It’s one hundred percent perfect. Their paper is better than their printing. And that is absolutely unheard of.”
    He started shaking his great white head in wonderment. Like he was lost in admiration for Kliner’s achievement. We sat there, knee to knee in the old armchairs in silence.
    “Perfect?” I prompted him.
    He nodded and started up with the lecture again.
    “It’s unheard of,” he said again. “The paper is the hardest part of the whole process. Don’t forget, we’re not talking about some amateur thing here. We’re talking about an industrial-scale operation. In a year, they’re printing four billion dollars’ worth of hundreds.”
    “That many?” I said, surprised.
    “Four billion,” he said again. “About the same as the Lebanon operation. Those were Joe’s figures. He was in a position to know. And that makes it inexplicable. Four billion in hundreds is forty million banknotes. That’s a lot of paper. That’s a completely inexplicable amount of paper, Mr. Reacher. And their paper is perfect.”
    “What sort of paper would they need?” I asked him.
    He reached over and took the ten-dollar bill back from me. Crumpled it and pulled it and snapped it.
    “It’s a blend of fibers,” he said. “Very clever and entirely unique. About eighty percent cotton, about twenty percent linen. No wood pulp in it at all. It’s got more in common with the shirt on your back than with a newspaper, for instance. It’s got a very clever chemical colorant in it, to give it a unique cream tint. And it’s got random red and blue polymer threads pulped in, as fine as silk. Currency stock is wonderful paper. Durable, lasts for years, won’t come apart in water, hot or cold. Absolutely precise absorbency, capable of accepting the finest engraving the