Day After Tomorrow

I

Government employees in his income bracket and the suburb in which he lived were currently wearing tweeds. Tweeds were all the thing. Tweeds were in. You weren’t with it if you wore anything else.

Lawrence Woolford consequently wore tweeds. His suit, this morning, had first seen the light of day on a hand loom in Donegal, Ireland. It had been cut by a Swede widely patronized by serious young career men in Lawrence Woolford’s status group. These days, English tailors were out and Italians absolutely unheard of.

Woolford sauntered down the walk before his auto-bungalow, scowling at the sportscar at the curb—wrong year, wrong make. Thanks to the powers that be, it was still the right three-tone color. But he’d have to trade it in on a new model. It was a shame in a way—he liked the car. However, he had no desire to get a reputation as a weird among colleagues and friends. What was it Senator Carey McArthur had said the other day? Show me a weird and I’ll show you a person who has taken the first step toward being a Commie.

Woolford slid under the wheel, dropped the lift lever, depressed the thrust pedal gently and took off for downtown Greater Washington. Theoretically, he had another four days of vacation coming to him. He wondered what the Boss wanted. That was the trouble in being one of the Boss’ favorite trouble-shooters; when trouble arose you wound up in the middle of it. Whether you wanted to or not. Lawrence Woolford was to the point where he was thinking in terms of graduating out of field work and taking a desk job, which meant promotion in status and pay. He had to like it.

He turned over his car to a parker at the departmental parking lot and made his way through the entrance utilized by secondgrade departmental officials. In another year, he told himself, he’d be using that other door.

The Boss’ secretary looked up when Lawrence Woolford entered the anteroom where she presided. “Hello, Larry,” she said. “Hear they called your vacation short. Darn shame.”

LaVerne Polk was a cute little whiz of efficiency. Like Napoleon and his army, she knew the name of every member of the department and was on a first name basis with all. However, she was definitely a weird. For instance, styles might come and styles might go, but LaVerne dressed basically for comfort, did her hair the way she thought it looked best, and wore low-heeled walking shoes on the job. In fact, she was willing and able to snarl at anyone, no matter how kindly intentioned, who even hinted that her nonconformity didn’t help her promotion prospects.

Woolford said, “Hi, LaVerne. I think the Boss is expecting me.”

“That he is. Go right in, Larry.”

She looked after him when he turned and left her desk. Lawrence Woolford cut a pleasant figure as thirty-year-old bachelors go.

The Boss looked up from a report which he had been frowning at, nodded to his ace field man and said, “Sit down Lawrence. I’ll be with you in a minute. Please take a look at this while you’re waiting.” He handed over a banknote.

Larry Woolford took it and found himself a comfortable chair. He examined the bill, front and back. It was a fifty dollar note, almost new. He couldn’t see anything special about it.

Finally, the Boss, a stocky, tight-faced, domineering but impeccable career bureaucrat, scribbled his initials on the report and tossed it into an Out chute. He said to Woolford, “I am sorry to cut short your vacation, Lawrence. I considered giving Walter Foster the assignment, but I think you’re the better choice. It might take quite a bit of thinking on your feet.”

Larry decided that faint praise was the best tactic. He spoke earnestly, though he detested Foster, his closest rival, “Walt’s a good man, sir. One of the best when you’re in the clutch.” And then, “What’s the crisis?”

“What do you think of that fifty?” The Boss indicated it with a thumb.

His troubleshooter looked down at it. “What is there to think about it?”

The Boss grunted, slid open a desk drawer and brought forth another bill. “Here, look at this, please.”

It was another fifty. Larry Woolford frowned at it, not getting whatever was going on.

“The serial numbers,” the Boss said impatiently.

They were identical. Larry Woolford whistled softly and looked up. “Counterfeit. Which one is the bad one?”

“That is exactly what we would like to know,” the Boss said.

Larry stared at his superior, blinked and then examined the bills again. “A beautiful job,” he said. “But what’s it got to do with us, sir? Counterfeiting is Secret Service jurisdiction.”

“They called us in on it. They think it might have international ramifications.”

Now they were getting somewhere. Larry Woolford put the two bills back on the Boss’ desk and leaned back in his chair, waiting.

His superior said, “Remember the Nazis turning out American and British banknotes during the Second War?”

“Before my time, of course, but I’ve read about it, somewhere or other.”

“At any rate, obviously a government with all its resources could perfectly counterfeit any currency in the world. It would have the skills, the equipment, the funds to accomplish the task. The Germans turned out hundreds of millions of dollars and pounds with the idea of confounding the Allied financial base. They also used it to pay off some of their spies.” The bureau head grunted a laugh. “That was a dirty trick.”

“And why didn’t it work—the upsetting of the Allied financial base?”

The other nodded. “The difficulty of getting it into circulation, for one thing. However, they did actually use a quantity. For a time our people were so alarmed that they wouldn’t allow any bills to come into this country from Mexico except the two dollar bills—the one denomination the Germans hadn’t bothered to duplicate. Oh, they had the Secret Service in a dither for a time.”

Woolford was frowning. “What’s this got to do with our current situation, sir?”

The Boss said, “It is only a conjecture. One of those bills is counterfeit, but such an excellent reproduction that the skill involved is beyond the resources of any known counterfeiters. The Secret Service wishes to know if it might be coming from abroad, and, if so, from where. If it’s a government project, particularly a Soviet Complex one, then it comes into the ken of our own particular cloak-and-dagger department.”

“Yes, sir,” Woolford said. He got up and examined the two bills again. “How’d they ever detect that one was bad? It’s not my field, but I’d accept either one.

“Partly luck,” his superior told him. “A bank clerk on a computer was going through a batch of fifties. It’s not too commonly used a denomination, you know. In the sheaf he was working on the serial number was duplicated. The computer picked the fact up.”

“Couldn’t the mistake have been made at the mint? Two bills with the same serial number?”

The other shook his head. “No. Evidently impossible.”

“All right. And then?”

“The reproduction was so perfect that the Secret Service was in an immediate uproar. Short of the Nazi effort, there has never been anything like it. A perfect duplication of engraving, and paper. The counterfeiters have evidently even gone to the extent of putting a certain amount of artificial wear on the bills before putting them into circulation.”

Larry Woolford said, “Once again, this is out of my line. How were they able to check further, and how many more of these did they turn up?”

“The new computers helped. Secret Service checked out every fifty dollar bill in every institution in town, both banking and governmental. Thus far, they have located ten bills in all.”

“And other cities?”

“They checked them next. The whole country. None. They’ve all been passed in Greater Washington, which is suspicious in itself. The amount of expense that has gone into the manufacture of these bills does not allow for only a handful of them being passed. They should be turning up in great quantity. Lawrence, this reproduction is such that a pusher—I think they call them that—could walk into a bank and have his false currency changed by any teller. Why they haven’t done it, we have no idea. A pusher could go into a bank with a packet of fifty of these, and immediately have it changed into any other denomination he asked for.”

“Wow,” Larry muttered.

“Indeed.”

Larry said, “Do you want me to work with Secret Service on this, on the off chance that the Soviet Complex is doing us deliberate dirt? I thought that currently the Cold War was supposedly all warmed up.”

“So did we,” the other said sourly. “But that is exactly the idea, Lawrence. Get to work please and keep in touch with me. If you need support, I can assign Walter Foster or some of the other agents to assist you. This might have endless ramifications, and there are no limits in regard to personnel or budget.”

Larry came to his feet and snapped a snappy, “Yes, sir. I’ll get on it right this minute.”

Back in the anteroom, Woolford said to the Boss’ receptionist, “I’m on a local job, LaVerne. How about assigning me a secretary, somebody who can handle off-beat assignments?”

“Can do,” she said.

He thought about it. “And look; tell her to get hold of every available work on counterfeiting and pile it on my desk.”

“Right. Thinking of going into business, Larry?”

He grinned down at her. “That’s the idea. Keeping up with the Jones clan in this man’s town costs roughly twice my income. I’m thinking of augmenting it.”

LaVerne said sarcastically, “Then why not give up this battle to equal the Joneses? With the classification you’ve got, a single man ought to be able to save half his pay.” She added, more quietly, “Or get married and support a family.”

“Save half my pay?” Larry snorted. “And get a far out reputation, eh? No thanks. You can’t afford to be a weird these days.”

She flushed—and damned prettily, Larry Woolford decided. He took her in, all over again. She wore a minus-skirt, so that her legs could be seen all the way up to the pinkness of her inner thighs and didn’t leave much to the imagination on what dark, warm wonders lay beyond. She could be an attractive item if it wasn’t for obviously getting her kicks out of being individualistic. Minus-skirts were out in Paris, Budapest and Copenhagen, this season. The nipples, cosmetically touched up, were currently the come-on.

Larry said suddenly, “Look, promise to be a good girl and not to make us conspicuous and I’ll take you to the Swank Room for dinner tonight. After that, a few drinks in one of the latest spots and then back to my place for a friendly roll in the hay. For a long time I’ve wondered what you’ve got on the ball.”

“The Swank Room,” she said sceptically. “Is that where all the bright young men currently have to be seen once or twice a week? Get lost, Larry. Being a healthy, normal woman, I’m interested in men, but I don’t necessarily spread my legs for every walking status symbol.”

It was his turn to flush, and, he decided wryly, he probably didn’t do it as prettily as she did. He wondered about her. Did she go all-out in bed? He’d bet that she’d be a wizard at Roman fashion.

He tried to keep it light, though, and said, “You’ll be sorry. I’ve picked up some new bed techniques, imported from Sweden. Guaranteed to send you out of this world and far beyond. You’ve got to have a chandelier, even to start.”

She snorted. “I’ll bet. However, I’m an old-fashioned girl and stick to only the more normal perversions.”

“What’s a normal perversion?” Larry said. He was intrigued.

“I’ll never tell.”

On his way to his office, he wondered why the Boss kept her on. Classically, a secretary-receptionist should have every hair in place, every pore. But in her time LaVerne Polk must have caused more than one bureaucratic eyebrow to raise. Efficiency was probably the answer. The Boss couldn’t afford to let her go. The old boy probably wasn’t even laying the girl. Larry got the impression she wasn’t exactly an easy lay.