Nightwise Page 17

  Waiting nervously at the cops’ station beside the door was a young woman in her twenties, dressed in a very flattering but functional navy power suit dress. Her hair was blond and her Treasury Department ID said her name was Elizabeth Compton. When she saw us, her face switched from worried to confident in a flash. I smiled my best corporate asshole smile and pocketed the sunglasses.

  “Mr. Breenan, Dr. Isaku? Hello, I’m Liz Compton. I’ll be your guide today.”

  “Hi, Liz,” I said, shaking her hand. “Please, call me Larry. Dr. Isaku doesn’t speak much English, I’m afraid. Pleasure to meet you. Thanks so much for getting the tour together for us so quickly.”

  “Well, when Senator Hawlsey’s office contacted us and told us about Mr. Isaku’s time restrictions on his trip, we were happy to oblige.”

  I nodded. So far, Grinner’s covers for us were working great. He hadn’t gotten back to me yet on the research I had asked him with, but as far as this operation, everything was looking good. I nodded to the rope line leading to the metal detectors.

  “This way?” I asked.

  “Yes, please,” Liz said. Ichi and I walked up to the metal detector. I placed my briefcase on a conveyor belt, next to the arch. One of the federal cops popped it open. There was an iPad, some yellow legal pads, a tin of Altoids, pens, and today’s editions of the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. The cop took the iPad out of the briefcase.

  “Sorry, this has to stay at the station. No electronic devices back in the press rooms.”

  “Of course,” I said, smiling.

  The case ran along the conveyor through an X-ray scanner, which showed exactly the same contents to the seated guard. So far everything was going smoothly. Ichi and I passed the metal detector walk-through and wanding with flying colors, and I retrieved my case, minus the tablet. Ichi and I showed all the appropriate identification to the guards, signed the log book, and were both issued visitor badges to clip onto our suit pockets. Liz smiled at us both as we passed through into the wide lobby. Smiles all around. Happy happy joy joy.

  “Okay, well, let’s get under way, shall we?” she said.

  “Please, let’s,” I said.

  Liz took us past the lobby and down a series of corridors with numerous displays. Some were electronic and interactive, and others were simply wall displays with pictures explaining the contents of various cases. Most included different types of currency and a few dummy plates used to make currency. The halls were empty except for us and a few employees. The regular civilian tours didn’t start for a while yet, and I wanted us to get this done with as few other people around as we could.

  “The Bureau of Engraving and Printing,” Liz said, “is an arm of the Department of the Treasury. The Treasury Department was founded by an act of Congress in 1789 to manage government revenues. The first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, was sworn into office on September 11, 1789…”

  “September 11?” I said.

  Liz laughed. “Yes, the conspiracy theorists have a field day with that one,” she said, and then continued walking and talking. “The Treasury prints and mints all currency in circulation through the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the U.S. Mint. That’s what we do here and have been doing since 1862.”

  We paused at a large observation window overlooking a massive room full of printing presses. They were huge, over fifty feet long, churning out rivers of currency sheets. There were dozens of employees moving about the press floor in an intricate dance, sliding between the machines, avoiding the constant stream of wealth being created out of thin air. There were computer console stations at several locations above and on the press floor, manned by operators directing and controlling the creation process. The sound of the presses was muted behind the thick shatterproof windows, but the powerful vibrations of the machines could be felt through the floor and the walls. This was a place of power, but not my kind of power.

  “Our Simultan sheet-fed, high-speed rotary offset presses and our I-10 Intaglio presses produce the traditional images on U.S. currency. Our facility here produces approximately 10,000 sheets per hour, roughly 541 million dollars a day at all of our locations.”

  “Dr. Isaku’s research is into the history of the engraving process of American currency,” I said. “The senator’s office said we would be allowed access to the archive for the dies and the plates. It sounds like an amazing process.”

  Liz smiled. “Oh, it is.” She sounded as thrilled about this as I did. It was clear that this was not her normal job for Treasury. Someone on the senator’s staff had pulled strings to get her here for this private tour. She was bored with this, and she could tell I was too. It gave us a sense of camaraderie.

  “Right this way,” she said.

  She led us down a side hall, past more well-lit glass display cases mounted into the curving wall to a small lobby with two elevators. She raised her own ID badge, about her neck on a lanyard, and slotted it into a panel beside the elevator doors. The doors opened, and she ushered us into the car.

  “So, would you rather see the engraving gallery first, where our master engravers work, or the archives where we keep the master dies and plates, dating back to the beginning of the republic?” she asked.

  I looked at Ichi and asked, “Heads or tails?” in my lousy Japanese.

  “I love the intricate details of your master plan,” he responded. “Truly I am in the presence of a tactical mastermind.” Then he bowed slightly to Liz, and she smiled and bowed back.

  “Engraving, please,” I said.

  * * *

  The offices of the engravers were on an upper level in the newer annex building. We got off the elevator, walked down a hallway filled with framed photos of the building and its history, and eventually turned onto a corridor with a small office. A glass wall and door announced we were in the Engraving Department. A receptionist at the desk was listening to some music on computer as we passed. Liz waved to her, and she smiled back.

  “The engraving for the dies used in paper currency and coins is all developed in these offices,” Liz said. “There are seven engravers that each work on different parts of the dies. They develop the patterns and symbols that are put onto the plates and have input into the designs themselves, always with an eye toward how to produce a superior artistic effect while making the currency more difficult to copy or counterfeit.”

  “Only seven,” I said. She nodded. “Again, a strange number coincidence. Seven is a very powerful number in numerology.”

  “Really?” Liz said, looking at me like I was a complete moron she was being forced to endure. She hid it well, but I had seen the look enough times to recognize it. “That’s fascinating.”

  “Very strong link between seven and the Masonic lodges,” I said. “But I’m sure I’m boring you.”

  She smiled and laughed. “No, not at all. Now down this way…”

  I had kept a tight lid on my senses and powers, but now in the corridors of the engravers, I opened my perceptions slightly. My Ajna chakra opened, and I sensed vague wisps of mystical energy floating between the offices like a scent of subtle perfume. There was power at work here, but it was elusive, alchemical perhaps. I peeked into an office where a slender man in rolled-up shirt sleeves was working at a drafting table on an intricate series of lines and forms, which I recognized as the tracery on American currency. There were wisps of magical energy coming off the drafting pens and tools he was using. The symbols and patterns he was creating occasionally flared and flashed with power as he muttered quietly to himself and continued to draw. The engraver, a gaunt man in his late twenties with thinning black hair and gold wire-rim glasses, paused and looked over his shoulder at me. Something about him looked unhealthy, ill, in a way no medicine could help.

  “Please, this way to the conference room for the presentation,” Liz said in a hushed voice. She had backtracked and was right beside me. I smiled and waved to the engraver. He didn’t smile back. As I walked down the hall pas
t the other offices, all of the engravers, all slightly ill, slightly wrong men and women, had turned away from their work to stare at me. I left the scribes to their master’s work.

  We were shown a thirty-minute video about the engraving process, which included interviews with several of the engravers I had just passed. In the video, they seemed to be normal, healthy, and excited government employees.

  During the video, Liz left for about fifteen minutes. I’m pretty sure she was checking our covers and clearance again. I had spooked her, but at this point I was cool with that.

  “The woman is distrustful,” Ichi said softly in Japanese. “You have put her on edge with your crazy Yamabushi talk.”

  “Yeah, well, there is something going on here,” I said back in broken Japanese. “They are building something, reinforcing some kind of working here. We need to get a look at those archive plates.”

  Ichi snorted. “They think this engraving is detailed, that this is intricate design? Bah.”

  “Did you … did you just say ‘bah’?” I said. “No one says ‘bah.’ Not even super villains. I mean no one.”

  “I do,” Ichi said. I shrugged and shook my head.

  “Things are about to get messy,” I said.

  “Very well,” Ichi said.

  “Bah,” I said.

  After the presentation, I stood and stretched. “So, if it is not too much trouble, the doctor wanted to look around a bit down in the archives, if that isn’t too much trouble, Liz.”

  “No,” she said, smiling, “not at all.” By now her smile was an utter lie.

  We took another elevator after leaving the land of the engravers. It took us down, deep. The doors opened into a vast warehouselike room. It was temperature controlled. There were steel wire cages, each with its own lock, which stretched as far as the eyes could see. Each cage room contained different items—chests, drawers, lockers, and who knows what covered by canvas tarps. I figured the Ark of the Covenant and the formula for KFC were down in here too. Two BEP cops were stationed at a guard desk with a bank of monitors, showing security cameras all over the faculty and across the archive as well. One of the cops, a burly black guy, stood as we got off the elevator. He said hello to Liz.

  “There is a conference room down here where we can bring most of the items in the archives for Dr. Isaku to examine,” Liz said.

  “Terrific,” I said to Liz. I turned to Ichi and said, in Japanese, “Ready, Doc?” Ichi nodded. “Nonlethal please,” I added. Ichi looked at me with mild disgust, as if I had just passed wind in his presence.

  Liz directed us to a large leather ledger next to a set of clipboards on the guard desk. I offered the pen to Ichi, and he took it, looked at it, and frowned, and then looked at the ledger and frowned. He was as good at that as Liz was at fake smiling.

  He leaned over the ledger and seemed confused about where exactly to sign. The other cop behind the desk grunted as he stood. He was white with a thin mustache and had a bit of a gut. He leaned over the desk to show Ichi exactly where to sign. Ichi grabbed his head and smashed it down onto the desk, hard. As the guard went over, Ichi reached over the desk, turned the guard’s arm over, and pulled his pistol free of his holster in one smooth motion. As he was bringing it up, he fired a round at the burly guard, who was just now beginning to resister what this little old Japanese man was doing. He began to draw. Burly’s head snapped back and he fell to the ground, a pool of blood forming on the concrete floor about his head. The guard whose head had been smashed into the desk received another powerful blow to the head from Ichi, who used his own gun to pistol-whip him. He slumped over too, onto the floor near his partner. Liz was just beginning to scream at the sound of the gunshot.

  It’s okay!” I shouted. “Liz, it’s okay! Goddamn it, I said nonlethal,” I said to Ichi, gesturing toward the burly cop’s still form.

  “It is a scalp wound,” Ichi said in English. He was already moving over to the two cops and gathering their guns and ammo. “He will bleed a great deal from it, and he will have a concussion, but he will not die. Question my craftsmanship again in this endeavor and I will shoot your eyelids off.”

  Liz had gotten hold of herself and stopped screaming. She was pale and obviously frightened but was keeping her shit wired tight. Alarms were going off now. The cameras in the archives had caught what just happened, and already the building was being locked down.

  “Liz, we’re not going to hurt you, I promise,” I said. “I need to know, are there any other ways down here other than this elevator? Stairs? Loading bay?”

  She rubbed her face and looked at me with a mixture of fear and anger. “Yeah,” she said in an even voice. “There is a stairwell in the northwest corner, and there is a cargo elevator about halfway along the southern wall. What are you guys doing? What do you want?”

  “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” I said.

  “Elevator coming,” Ichi said. “They will endeavor to flank us at the stairs as well. My guns, please.”

  I slapped the briefcase on the desk and clicked it open. The concealment enchantment I had laid upon the case had worked perfectly, and now I pulled out the false panel, grabbed Ichi’s two pistols, and handed them to him. The guns were custom-made modern variants on weapons used during the Civil War, called LeMat revolvers. They were .44 Magnum pistols with a 12-gauge shotgun barrel under the pistol barrel.

  I also handed him his speed loaders for the two guns and a handful of 12-gauge shotgun shells. He put the bullets and the shells in his pants pockets. He stuffed the guards’ pistols in his belt.

  “You’ll be able to handle the stairs too?” I said. He nodded curtly.

  I took the Altoid tin out of the case and opened it. I popped a small, powdery white mint into my mouth. I offered one to Ichi. He made a sour face, then opened his mouth and allowed me to pop the mint in.

  “Bah,” he said.

  “What the hell are you two doing?” Liz asked.

  “We like to have fresh breath while we violate federal law,” I said. I looked at Ichi. “Mine’s working. Is it working for you?”

  Ichi, a LeMat in either hand, nodded and then turned to face the elevator. Get to work, his back said to me, silently. I will give you the time you said you needed. I took Liz by the arm and led her into the rows of cages.

  I heard the elevator doors begin to creak open, as Liz and I lost sight of the old man.

  “Come on,” I told her. “Let’s leave him to his work.”

  SIXTEEN

  Liz and I ran down the corridor of cages. I led her by the arm, but she seemed okay with getting away from the sounds we were hearing behind us. There was shouting. A man’s booming voice, “Drop the guns now, or we will fire.”

  There was a barking of gunfire, like a cannon firing as rapidly as a machine gun. The whole archive echoed with the rumbling. Liz looked back and then ran faster. People tend to do that with gun battles.

  My so-called third eye, the Ajna chakra, was opened wide, in part because of the enchantment on the mint in my mouth. Didgeri and I worked pretty hard to come up with a working that would function the way we needed it to through the candy. I slid part of my awareness toward Ichi and was rewarded with a view in my mind of what was happening. A cloud of gun smoke drifted around Ichi. The elevator doors were closing. BEP cops were screaming and shouting as the doors thudded closed and muffled their excitement.

  I disarmed them, Ichi thought to me, and I heard it in my head. He was moving and reloading his pistols as easily, as thoughtlessly, as someone would swallow. You understand that when the soldiers arrive, I will not be able to be so merciful.

  Yeah, I thought back to him. I hope we will be out of here by then.

  I could perceive that Ichi was moving quickly, in a shuffling run, down a hallway toward the stairwell. He turned the corner just as the fire door to the stairwell began to open. Ichi slid like a baseball player rounding third and headed for home, toward the door, a gun in each hand. The LeMats roared with
cordite-laced thunder in his hands. More BEP cops began to swarm thought the door and were greeted by a curtain of exploding lead.

  A few of the cops returned fire until their guns were shot out of their hands. One cop stepped into a bullet, and his shoulder exploded. His partners pulled him back as they slammed the fire door shut. Ichi stood gracefully, rising as if gravity did not own him. He shrugged the empty casings from his hand cannons and reloaded them. His breathing was even and normal. His mind was calm as oil on water.

  I shifted my awareness again and called out, “Didgeri, you in position for evac? Any problems?” In my mind’s eye I saw Geri and Miss Magdalena on a sandy beach, near the water. An immense bearded giant made of cast iron was struggling to arise from the sand. His massive arms, legs, and head were all erupting from the ground. Didgeri stood looking at his face, studying it. From her point of view, I could see that the sculpture, called The Awakening, was actually moving, shifting somewhat. The Initiated Man’s perceptions were slippery, bright, and distorted.

  Magdalena’s thoughts, clear and sharp, came through to me. “We’re at the National Harbor in Maryland, just over the border from D.C. Didgeri said that this was the spot where it was easiest to slip into the Dreaming. She’s already started her meditation. She took some stuff too, drugs maybe, I’m not sure what.”

  “This giant is the metal shadow of the Wandjina,” Didgeri thought. Her thoughts were vibrant, full of swirls of matter, mind, and energy blooming like erupting stars, novas of association, power, and beauty. Breathing cave drawings, spiral trails, and black suns with white triangular rays. “This place is good for stepping between the three worlds; it is a realm of fluid hypertime,” Didgeri thought to us all, “the spider web, the frame upon which the worlds were thought-born in the Dreamtime. We are ready for you, Laytham. I begin to walkabout. Find you on the path, balla. Bring you home. Magdalena is my anchor stone, my fire to lead us back out.”