Short Fiction Mack Reynolds (best ereader for pdf and epub .txt) 📖

“Good Lord,” Johnny McCord said disgustedly, “I didn’t say I was going to report you. Just threatened to if you didn’t resign. Now get out of here, we’ve got work to do. I’m three days behind on my reports!”

In his income bracket and in the suburb in which he lived, government employees in the twenty-five to thirty-five age group were currently wearing tweeds. Tweeds were in. Not to wear tweeds was Non-U.

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

Woolford sauntered down the walk before his auto-bungalow, scowling at the sportscar at the curb⁠—wrong year, wrong make. He’d have to trade it in on a new model. Which 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 MacArthur 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 gently the thrust pedal 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 troubleshooters, when trouble arose you wound up in the middle of it. Lawrence Woolford was to the point where he was thinking in terms of graduating out of field work and taking on a desk job which meant promotion in status and pay.

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

The Boss’ reception 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 whizz 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 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 ready and willing 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 some report on his desk which he’d been frowning at, nodded to his 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.

Finally the Boss, a stocky but impeccable career bureaucrat of the ultra-latest school, 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.”

Larry decided the faint praise routine was the best tactic, said earnestly about his closest rival. “Walt’s a good man, sir.” And then, “What’s the crisis?”

“What do you think of that fifty?”

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.

“Observe the serial numbers,” the Boss said impatiently.

They were identical.

Woolford looked up. “Counterfeit. Which one is the bad one?”

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

Larry Woolford 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? This is Secret Service jurisdiction, counterfeiting.”

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

Now they were getting somewhere. Larry Woolford put the two bills 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?”

“I was just a kid.”

“I thought you might have read about it. At any rate, obviously a government⁠—with all its resources⁠—could counterfeit perfectly 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 basics.”

“And why didn’t it work?”

“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 two-dollar denomination⁠—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?”

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 counterfeiter. Secret Service wants to know if it might be coming from abroad, and, if so, from where. If it’s a governmental project, particularly a Soviet Complex one,