He took it from her, put on a pair of thick glasses, held the bill up at a certain angle and then quickly handed it back. “Sorry, ma’am, I’m afraid that’s a forgery.”

“You’re right, it is,” she said casually. “But I thought it was fair to pay for fake goods with fake money.”

The man didn’t even blink; he just smiled at her benignly.

Annabelle examined the bill in the same way the man had. “The problem is that not even the best forger can really duplicate Franklin’s hologram when you hold the bill at this angle, because you’d need a two–hundred–million–dollar printing mill to get it right. There’s only one of them in the States, and no forger has access to it.”

Leo piped in, “So you take a grease pen and do a nifty sketch of old Benny. That gives anyone smart enough to check the paper a little flash and the illusion that he saw the h–gram when he really didn’t.”

“But you knew the difference,” Annabelle pointed out. “Because you used to make this paper about as well as anyone.” She held up a pair of jeans. “But from now on, I’d tell your supplier to take the time to stamp the brand name on the zipper like the real manufacturers do.” She put the jeans down and picked up a handbag. “And double–stitch the strap. That’s a dead giveaway too.”

Leo held up a watch that was for sale. “And real Rolexes sweep smoothly, they don’t tick.”

The man said, “I’m really shocked that I’ve been the victim of counterfeit merchandise. I saw a police officer just a few minutes ago farther down on the pier. I’ll go and get him. Please don’t leave; he’ll want your full statements.”

Annabelle gripped his arm with her long, supple fingers. “Don’t waste your cover story on us,” she said. “Let’s talk.”

“What about?” he asked warily.

“Two shorts and then a long,” Leo answered, making the old man’s eyes light up.

Chapter 4

Roger Seagraves looked across the conference table at the mouse of a man and his pitiful comb–over consisting of a dozen strands of greasy black hair that vainly attempted to cover a wide, flaky scalp. The man was skinny in the shoulders and legs and fat in the belly and butt. Though still in his forties, he probably would’ve been hard–pressed to jog more than twenty yards without collapsing. Lifting a grocery bag would no doubt have taxed the limits of his upper body strength. He could be a poster boy for the physical degradation of the entire male race in the twenty–first century, Seagraves thought. It irked him because physical fitness had always played paramount importance in his life.

He ran five miles every day, finishing before the sun was fully up. He could still do one–handed push–ups and bench–press twice his own weight. He could hold his breath underwater for four minutes and sometimes worked out with the high school football team near his home in western Fairfax County. No man in his forties could keep up with seventeen–year–old boys, but he was never that far behind them either. In his previous career these skills had all served one purpose: keeping him alive.

His attention turned back to the man across the table from him. Every time he saw the creature a part of him wanted to place a round in the man’s forehead and put him out of his lethargic misery. But no sane person killed his golden goose or, in this case, golden mouse. Seagraves may have found his partner physically lacking, but he needed the man nonetheless.

The creature’s name was Albert Trent. The man had a brain under the wretched body, Seagraves had to give him that. An important element of their plan, perhaps the most important detail, had, in fact, been Trent’s idea. It was for this reason more than any other that Seagraves had agreed to partner with him.

The two men spoke for some time about the upcoming testimony of CIA representatives to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, of which Albert Trent was a prominent staff member. Next they covered key bits of intelligence gathering undertaken by the folks at Langley and other agencies in the U.S. government’s vast arsenal of spooks. These folks spied on you from outer space, through your phone, fax, e–mail and sometimes right over your shoulder.

Finished, the two men sat back and drank down their lukewarm coffee. Seagraves had yet to find a bureaucrat who could make a decent cup of coffee. Maybe it was the water they had up here.

“The wind’s really picking up outside,” Trent said, his eyes on the briefing book in front of him. He smoothed his red tie over his flab and rubbed his nose.

Seagraves glanced out the window. Okay, now it was code time, just in case someone was listening in. These days nowhere was safe from prying ears, least of all Capitol Hill. “Front’s coming in, I saw on the news. Might get some rain later, but then again, maybe not.”

“I heard a thunderstorm was possible.”

Seagraves perked up at this. A thunderstorm reference always got his attention. Speaker of the House Bob Bradley had been such a thunderstorm. He was now lying in a plot of dirt back in his native Kansas with a bunch of wilted flowers on top of him.

Seagraves chuckled. “You know what they say about the weather: Everyone talks about it, but no one does a damn thing about it.”

Trent laughed too. “Everything looks good here. We appreciate Central Intelligence’s cooperation as always.”

“Didn’t you know? The ‘C’ stands for cooperation.”

“We still set for the DDO’s testimony on Friday?” he asked, referring to the CIA’s deputy director of operations.

“Yep. And behind closed doors we can be very candid.”

Trent nodded. “The new committee chairman knows how to play by the rules. They already took a roll call vote to close the hearing.”

“We’re at war with terrorists, so it’s a whole new ball game. Enemies of this country are everywhere. We have to act accordingly. Kill them before they get us.”

“Absolutely,” Trent agreed. “It’s a new age, a new kind of fight. And perfectly legal.”

“Goes without saying.” Seagraves stifled a yawn. If anyone was listening, he hoped they’d enjoyed the patriotic crap. He’d long since stopped caring about his country — or any other country, for that matter. He was now solely into caring about himself: the Independent State of Roger Seagraves. And he had the skills, nerve and access to things of enormous value to do something about it. “Okay, unless there’s anything else, I’ll be hitting the road. Traffic will be a bitch this time of day.”

“When isn’t it?” Trent tapped the briefing book as he said this.

Seagraves glanced at the book he’d given the other man even as he picked up a file Trent had pushed across to him. The file contained some detailed requests for information and clarification regarding certain surveillance practices of the intelligence agency. The massive briefing book he’d left for Trent held nothing more exciting than the usual dull–as–dirt overly complicated analysis his agency routinely fed the oversight committee. It was a masterpiece of how to say absolutely nothing in the most confusing way possible in a million words or more.

However, if one read between the proverbial lines, as Seagraves knew that Trent would do that very evening, the briefing book’s pages also revealed something else: the names of four very active American undercover agents and their current locations overseas, all in coded form. The right to the delivery of these names and addresses had already been sold to a well–financed terrorist organization that would knock on these people’s doors in three countries in the Middle East and blow their heads off. Two million dollars a name in U.S. dollars had already been wired to an account that no American bank regulator would ever audit. Now it was Trent’s job to move the stolen names on down the food chain.

Business was booming for Seagraves. As the number of America’s global enemies continued to pile up, he was selling secrets to Muslim terrorists, communists in South America, dictators in Asia and even members of the European Union.