I leaned my head against the window as we glided over the ...



Counterfeit

a novel, by Sam Gill

Part One

One

I leaned my head against the window as we glided over the Potomac and back into downtown Washington. The grey fall sky that had threatened all morning finally melted into a soft rain, pattering against the windshield.

“Ionia, how do I work the windshield wipers?”

I lifted my head and looked over at Christian, slumped in the driver’s seat with his characteristically poor posture and looking confusedly at the branches jutting out of the steering wheel. “I don’t know,” I replied. I had bought the car – my first – only last week and had not yet driven it in rain. “Try the right one.” A few clicks brought the wipers to life and they quickly established their incessant, but soothing rhythm across the damp windshield.

“Good guess,” said Christian. He took his gaze off the road for a moment and gave me a sympathetic smile.

“I haven’t really used the car much since I bought it,” I said. “I still walk to work everyday. Who knew the first time I needed it for something other than groceries would be a funeral?” Arthur Mantes, my supervisor and mentor of sorts died suddenly several days ago. A heart attack during an evening stroll. “I’m sorry this is how you had to spend your visit. I know you can’t get away from school as often as you’d like,” I said, before looking at him and adding, “But I really did appreciate your company today. I realized this morning that I’ve never even been to a funeral before.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he shrugged. “That’s what friends are for. And it’s nice to see you, anyway. I’m just glad to see that you’re doing ok.”

Christian was more than a friend. We met the first week of college, both overwhelmed by the experience. I, the fresh-faced, stereotypical Korean-American girl, under orders to study economics, or biology, or some subject “with a future” (as my father said), found the new world of philosophy and literature intoxicating and seductive. Thousands of miles away from home, I discovered an intellectual ardor suddenly awakened, as though some program had been secretly wired into me at birth, dormant and waiting for the right moment to hum and whirr into life. My dazzled and hungry intellect made me an attractive target for the young Christian Pender. A would-be philosopher king from a small Midwest town, he arrived at university shocked to have met his match in nearly all his peers. Humbled by his new surroundings, he took my intellectual innocence as tacit consent to his mentorship and leapt at the chance to take someone under his wing, reaffirming his belief that his mind truly was a gift to the world.

I eventually acquiesced to my parents’ nagging voice and gave up on early experiments in the humanities, finding myself permanently in a chemistry lab by the end of my second year. Yet I never relinquished my friendship with Christian; and, though I quickly outgrew his patronizing efforts to initiate me into the mysteries of Western philosophy, I found in him a way to nourish that new part of me that could not subsist on science alone. We moved in together before our third year – a situation that required fervent assurances to parents that we were not, in fact, dating -- and lived through the tragedies and comedies that all college students secretly yearn for. After four years of this tumultuous bliss, marked by occasionally criticisms of each other’s respective boy- and girlfriends, various fights about the definition of “clean” in relation to dishes, and more than one rousing party, we left college with a friendship that was no longer a choice, but a welcome fact of life.

“Take the next right,” I said as we passed into the lush, tree-lined streets of lower Georgetown. “It’s number 45. Probably just off the corner.”

Christian guided the car around the corner before slowing to a stop in front of a modest Victorian row house. It stood three stories, but seemed to shrink from its extravagant neighbors. The brick had been painted a light yellow and the house glowed as if rebelling against the approaching winter. We got out of the car and climbed up the steps. Helen Mantes, Arthur’s wife, was waiting just inside the door, clad in a black dress and overcoat. She wore her silver hair loose around her shoulders.

“Ionia,” she said warmly, embracing me. “I’m so glad you made it.”

I returned her hug and introduced Christian. We both attempted to muster something like a consolation.

“It was a surprise,” she sighed, looking away as the sadness tugged at the corners of her eyes. Yet when she looked up again, something like joy crept back into her face. “Oh, Arthur had so much affection for you, Ionia, I swear he acted like you were our daughter. He would go on and on about your talents from the very day you started. I swear even I was beginning to think of you as a part of the family.”

Like his daughter. A profound grief suddenly welled up inside of me. Arthur was the lead analyst in the Secret Service Forensic Services Division. After graduating, I joined the division as a chemist, analyzing and classifying counterfeit currency in support of Secret Service investigations. Most people associate the Secret Service with presidential protection, but it was originally chartered to combat the counterfeiting of American greenbacks during the Civil War. It still retains jurisdiction over counterfeiting of United States currency. In its nascent stages, the Secret Service counted on agents to be fully capable of distinguishing counterfeits from authentic dollars. Now special agents in the field rely on a team of scientists who, in turn, make use of the highly advanced technology in identifying counterfeit notes.

From the very beginning, Arthur Mantes encouraged me to rely on more than chemistry. He taught me how to discern a counterfeit note without running it under infrared light or examining its ink with a mass spectrometer. “Yes,” he had said, “Those tools are important and you can never be sure without them. But learn to trust your fingers and your eyes; they are more accurate than any laboratory instrument. We, all of us, handle money everyday. It is something we know almost as well as ourselves. The key is not to learn what real money looks like, but to cull the innumerable experiences of money from the profound depths of our memory. What does a new dollar feel like? An old one? Do the new and old currencies weigh the same? Are all denominations identical, or are they different animals, each with unique habits and behaviors? I can’t teach you all of these things, nor must I. You already know them, just as all Americans do. But you will succeed where they cannot because you are one of a select few who are conscious of this sensory knowledge. It the other side of a rainbow, a series of colors that you perceive and others do not.” There was something thrilling about hearing such exhortations from a dedicated scientist and I found his unqualified faith in my abilities especially flattering. From the day we met, I saw in him an approval that I had felt my parents would never concede.

Caught off-guard by my sadness, I quickly excused myself and headed down the hall toward the kitchen as I heard Christian whisper an apology to Helen Mantes. I had been to this house once previously, when Arthur told me privately that I was to be the youngest forensic scientist every promoted to group manager in the history of the Secret Service. I headed to a terrace adjoining the kitchen where, that day, he told me about the promotion while Helen was pouring drinks in the kitchen. Once outside, I sucked in the cool air as tears streamed down my face and I remembered the pride in Arthur’s voice.

“As you know, I’ve always thought highly of your abilities, Ionia,” he said. “I think it will be best for both of us if we make a change in the forensic services.”

I recall feeling a momentary shock at those words, sincerely believing he was about to fire me. It was about a year ago, just before my twenty-fourth birthday. I was still young enough to fall for a wise old man’s tricks.

Before I could say anything, he turned to me and starting laughing when he saw my expression of despair. “I’m not going to fire you!” he exclaimed. “I’m promoting you.” Relieved, I began laughing along with him. Now he was gone.

“You alright?” I started. It was Christian. I had been so lost in thought that I hadn’t heard him come out on the terrace.

“Yeah,” I said as I wiped the tears from my eyes. He took off his jacket and placed it around my shoulders, which I hadn’t even realized were shaking from the cold fall air. The only black dress I owned was intended for warmer weather.

“Thanks,” I said, white vapor floating from my mouth.

We both looked out into the backyard and watched the raindrops strike the brightly colored fall leaves, urging them off their branches. The soft sounds of the rain and the murmuring of conversation in the house as other guests arrived from the funeral filled the edges of our silence. Christian finally spoke.

“I guess you two were closer than I thought” -- and then he paused abruptly, as if pondering his next words – “That thing Mrs. Mantes said, about treating you like a daughter. I guess I just didn’t realize that you hadn’t told them yet, your real parents I mean. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry I never ask. I just don’t know what to say.”

My parents -- my real parents -- were overbearing to a fault, and even that was putting it mildly. As long as I can remember, academic excellence and a docile attitude was expected, even demanded, of me. By the time I reached high school, I felt like my parents exemplified so many stereotypes about Asian immigrants that I was living in the syndication run of some kind of perverse, Korean-American sitcom. But my discontent, easily confused for teen angst, did not fester into resentment until college. My father literally screamed at me when I told him I wanted to “study philosophy like my friend Christian.” What was I thinking, he asked. I was supposed to be pre-med or economics. He leveled manifold threats, including excommunication. Things really started to fall apart, though, when he told me that I was ungrateful to the sacrifice he and my mother made for me. My father and mother are not just Korean, but North Korean. So am I. They fled when I was two years old, giving up everything, risking all of our lives and even those of their friends. They did it, they said, to give me the chance they never had. My father interpreted that to mean the chance to be what he wanted me to be. My refusal constituted an affront to the risks they took, they said. I had thought that the advantage of raising me in the United States was precisely so that I could choose my own life. My father called that selfish and in so doing inflicted a wound on our relationship that has never fully healed.

An eventual armistice was achieved in my decision to pursue chemistry, although I was strictly forbidden to consider an academic career. It was a private laboratory or nothing. I had certainly harbored an interest in chemistry before inhaling the scent of philosophy, and I eventually regained that interest, but in the first year after our familial truce, it felt more like a sentence to hard labor. Like all prisoners, I created my own self-affirming culture of resistance. Christian, still persona non grata around my house thanks to his unfortunate roll as philosophical muse, was one part of that culture and the Secret Service Forensic Sciences Division was the other. I have never told my parents that I work there. They think I am gainfully employed at a private chemical engrineering lab in Virginia.

Christian could see that Arthur Mantes had come to fill the void that remained in me after this falling out. My parents and I still talked and I visited them frequently. In a sense, it was business as usual. Still, I could not help but yearn for the affection, approval and encouragement I received from Arthur. As he and I grew closer, I realized that whatever “business as usual” meant between my parents and me, it wasn’t complete. I needed someone to believe in the decisions I made for myself. Christian was that someone and, until a few days ago, so was Arthur.

“It’s ok,” I said. “And I know you feel partly responsible about the whole thing with my parents, which I’ve told you is ridiculous. It’s their fault. Not mine and definitely not yours.”

“But if I’m really your friend,” he replied, “I need to be willing to support you on this, not pretend it doesn’t exist.”

“Well, thank you.” I smiled genuinely. “I appreciate that.”

We stood in silence for a moment longer.

“It’s cold out,” he shivered. “Should we go back inside?” he asked, looking at me imploringly as he slid open the glass door to the kitchen.

“I think I’d like to go home, actually,” I said and followed him into the kitchen.

Our escape was slowed by the pack of forensic scientists and special agents who worked at the Secret Service. Some were fairly young and, like me, had learned their trade from Arthur. Others were even older than Arthur, perhaps his mentors back in some distant past. Christian and I tried to shuffle past most of the other guests, but I talked to several forensic analysts, especially those from the group I managed. After several extremely sympathetic glances, I realized with mild embarrassment that my face was probably streaked with tears and ducked into the bathroom, leaving Christian with some 35 year old computer technician who worked with our group.

I rinsed my face with cool water but it was no use. The person staring back at me in the mirror still looked haggard and shaken. I pulled my shoulder length black hair into a pony tail and looked for a small towel to dry my cheeks. Unable to find anything other than the hand towel next to the sink, I opted for a bit of toilet paper and dabbed at my face. As a child, I always thought I looked like my father, but now I only recognized some younger version of my mother or at least how she appeared in a single, worn photograph which she kept hidden in her sock drawer. It was a picture of her as a teenager standing next to a young boy. They wore traditional North Korean clothing, she in a dark peasant’s dress, he with work overalls and a small billed cap. I found it when I was seven and snooping around the house one afternoon, like most children who believe their parents have some kind of hidden treasure buried beneath folded clothing. I didn’t confess to finding the picture until a few years later, asking her who the boy was. She told me it was her brother. I asked if she still talked to him and she said no before running out of the room, trying to hide tears. I was afraid to inquire further, but in a courageous moment at sixteen I broached the topic again. She told me that he had become a dissident in high school and tried to organize a protest on the 70th birthday of Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s late leader and father of current president Kim Jong Il. The government got wind of the protest and he was arrested along with his co-conspirators. They never saw him again.

I surveyed myself in the mirror one last time and sighed, unsatisfied with my attempt to clean up. Christian’s jacket still hung around my shoulders, contributing to my disheveled appearance. I could tell from the width of the sports coat that Christian’s once lank frame had started to fill out a bit, though not from any efforts at the gym. He had arrived at college the quintessential Midwesterner, tall and lanky with dusty brown hair and a strong, chiseled face. He grew up in the city, but I could easily imagine him in overalls baling hay or doing whatever it is people do on a farm. Not a few girls gravitated toward his looks only to be surprised by the pretentious, urban character that sprung forth as soon as he opened his mouth. We made an interesting pair and I don’t think either of us felt at home in the cultural roles that we felt had been scripted for us. Maybe that’s why we got along so well.

I exited the bathroom and found Christian still trapped by the computer technician who was gesturing excitedly with his hands. Christian’s eyes wandered the room desperately and when he saw me a look of relief spread over his face and I could tell by his manner that he was excusing himself as politely – and quickly – as possible. He nearly dashed across the room to me with one of those “Don’t ever do that again” looks. For the first time all day, I wanted to laugh. “Having fun with the hoi polloi?” I chided him as we moved toward the front door.

“I’m no elitist,” he began defensively, “But to all the reasons I decided to pursue a PhD in philosophy, I have to add another. For the last three years, I have not talked to single person in an IT field.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad. You just don’t have patience for other people.”

“Have you ever talked to that guy? I mean, seriously, he–”

Before I could finish, I heard Helen Mantes beckon to us from somewhere down the hall. We turned around and she walked toward us, carrying a small envelope. “Ionia,” she said. “I nearly forgot, but I found this on Arthur’s desk this week as I began cleaning out his office.”

She handed me the envelope. It was a standard, white, letter sized security envelope with a Post-It note on the front, reading “FOR IONIA” in Arthur’s handwriting.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’m afraid I don’t know. But I imagine it was something he wanted to give you just before he died,” she hesitated, “I must confess that I considered opening it, but something stopped me. I’m sorry I even thought about doing such a thing.”

“It’s ok,” I said. “But thank you for giving this to me.”

I didn’t open the envelope, but slipped it into my purse and made for the door. After exchanging a final hug and a final set of awkward condolences, Helen Mantes bid us farewell and we returned to the car. Christian got back behind the wheel and drove us out of Georgetown and into northwest Washington, where I lived.

“Well, aren’t you going to open it?” he asked after a few minutes.

“What? Oh, the envelope. Sure, I guess.”

I pulled it out of my purse and turned it over. The back flap wasn’t sealed, just folded inside to keep the envelope shut. Inside I found a small plastic sheath encasing a pristine fifty dollar bill.

“What is it?” Christian asked.

“Just a fifty dollar bill,” I said, utterly perplexed.

“Your inheritance!” he joked before looking at me to make sure I laughed. When he saw the serious expression cast over my face, he muttered a small apology. But I was lost in my own thoughts. Why would Arthur want to give me a fifty dollar bill and why was it enclosed in plastic? I turned the bill over and saw another Post-It affixed to the other side of the protective sheath.

“There’s a note,” I said, more to myself than to Christian. I read it aloud:

Dear Ionia,

Show this to no one.

Yours,

Leon Warnerke

Two

“Who is Leon -- what’s his name -- Warnecke?” Christian asked as he brought the car to a halt in front of my apartment.

“No, I think it’s Warnerke,” I responded. “And, to answer your question, I don’t know.”

“Why would he want to give you fifty dollars?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why would it be a secret?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why would he do this through Arthur? Does he know both of you?”

“I don’t know, Christian! I’ve never heard of this guy, this Leon Warnerke, before. Stop asking these questions, ok? You’re weirding me out!”

“You’re the one who got the letter,” he muttered. We sat silently in the car for a few more minutes until I murmured an apology.

“I’m sorry I yelled,” I said. “This is weird, but I can’t think about it right now. Let’s just go in, ok?”

We plodded up the steps of my building, the day’s fatigue pairing with gravity to slow our ascent. We reached my third floor apartment and I fumbled around in my purse for the keys, my mind still on the envelope, the note, the fifty dollar bill. As soon as we entered, Christian walked into the kitchen and started opening and closing the drawers.

“What are you looking for?” I asked from the living room, which was separated from the kitchen by only a small bar.

“Phone book. Where’s your phone book?”

“It’s in here.” I motioned to the bookcase at the other end of the room. I plopped down on to my couch, a dingy used thing, but comfortable enough, and kicked off my shoes. “Who do you need to call?”

He didn’t answer but pulled the phone book off the shelf and started paging through it. I closed my eyes and tried to sink as deeply into the couch as possible. The funeral, the strange letter, the whole day was too much for me to sort out. I just wanted everything to disappear for a bit, for the world to become as uncomplicated as it felt last week, when Arthur was alive and I was looking forward to Christian’s visit. We should have spent the weekend watching bad movies and gossiping about friends’ marriages.

“Let’s get dinner,” I suggested. “What do you want?”

No answer.

“Chriitian?” I opened my eyes to find him scrawling something on a small piece of paper.

“Sorry, uh, what?” he asked, not bothering to look up.

“What are you doing?”

“Writing down all the Warnerkes in the area. There are four. No ‘L’ Warnerke, though. There’s a C Warnerke, a George Warnerke, a Raphael Warnerke, and a T Warnerke.”

I closed my eyes again, squeezing them tightly in exasperation.

“Let it go,” I groaned.

“Don’t you want to know who that letter is from?”

“Not now, I don’t. Maybe not ever. I just want this day to end.” I reopened my eyes in time to catch a look of disappointment flash over Christian’s face.

“All right,” he said, forcing a smile. “We’ll drop your little mystery. For now, anyway.”

I ducked into my room and pulled off my dress, looking for something more relaxed to wear. I opted for the simple grey sweater that I found draped over a chair and pulled some jeans off the floor. Back in the living room, Christian had tossed his suit and tie on the floor in a rumpled heap. He had also put on some jeans, but left on the collared shirt he had worn all day with his suit. I considered obliquely asking whether he wouldn’t prefer to wear something different, but thought the wiser of it, knowing how he would respond. We went out and shared pizza at a local dive. It was full of students from nearby American University and we enjoyed eavesdropping on their conversations, mostly stories about nights spent partying or pranks played on each other. We wrinkled our noses in disgust when one of them disclosed a bit too much information about some night spent with this girl or that boy, pretending we were above such discussions (though, of course, we were not). Soon enough, the day’s events faded from our immediate thoughts and we began the traditional reminiscing about former classmates and speculating about those we’d lost track of. After a leisurely dinner, we returned to my apartment and watched reality dating shows on television. At first we derided the scurrilous characters willing to appear on such programs, but as we grew more tired, running commentary turned to sporadic quips, turned to silence.

Soon I was blinking away sleep and looked over to see Christian doing the same. I unilaterally decided to turn off the television.

“I can’t stay up like I used to,” I said with a yawn. “What time is your train tomorrow?”

“Seven.”

“I didn’t even know you could get up that early.”

“Not sure I can. But a visiting professor is giving a lecture tomorrow morning and I want to catch it. The train ride to New York is under three hours, but enough time to get a little sleep. I’ll be fine.”

“Right, well, government work starts at nine, so I don’t get up that early. But wake me up to say goodbye.”

“Yeah, yeah. You lazy bum.”

I forced myself from the depths of the couch and started heading toward my bedroom.

“Ionia, I just have one question.”

“Yeah?” I said, yawning again, even more deeply this time.

“I know you don’t want to talk about the envelope,” he began as my expression darkened, “But I need to know, have you been honest with me about what you do?”

My frustration that Christian had brought up the mysterious envelope gave way to confusion. “What do you mean?” I asked. “I work as a scientist at the Secret Service.”

“Is that all?”

“Christian, I’m tired. What are you getting at?”

“This is all just weird, isn’t it? A letter sitting out on the desk of a dead man. Nothing inside but a fifty dollar bill and a note from someone you’ve never heard from. Instructions to keep it to yourself. How did your boss die, again? A heart attack while out for a walk? Did he even have a history of heart problems?”

I tried to respond. “What, are you suggesting someone killed him?”

“I don’t know, but I know this doesn’t add up. Is there something about your work I don’t know about? Would I even want to know?”

“Stop!” I cried. “This is crazy. You watch too many spy movies. My name is Ionia Han, I work as a chemist at the Secret Service Forensic Services Division. It exists, it isn’t some front for a super-top-secret-undercover operation and if you’re willing to miss your lecture I’ll even give you a tour. Arthur Mantes died of a heart attack. I don’t know why he left me the envelope or the fifty dollar bill and I don’t know who Leon Warnerke is. I know this is all very strange, but I promise you it adds up, though I’m not sure how just yet. What I am certain about, however, is that I’m too tired to figure it out right now. It’s been a long weekend and a long day and I just want to go to bed. I’m sorry this visit wasn’t what either of us expected. I’m just, just,” I didn’t know how to finish and just stood there dumbly.

We stared at each other until Christian spoke.

“No, I’m sorry, Ionia. You’re right. I do watch too many spy movies. I guess I just wanted to make sure you’re safe.”

“Well,” I said, moved by his concern, “I can promise you that I’m safe and, as a nerdy chemist, I’m exceptionally risk averse.”

Christian seemed to accept this and gave a loud yawn while he stretched out on the couch.

“Thanks for hosting me,” he said, closing his eyes and feigning sleep before adding, “Get some rest. You need it.”

“Good night,” I replied and retired to my room. I pulled off my clothes and ducked under the covers. Christian was right, I did need some rest. Yet I lay awake as the day’s events tugged at me like a gentle wind whispering the coming weather in my ear. I felt the warning whistling past me, but I couldn’t decipher the words. Strangely, what bothered me most wasn’t the fifty dollar bill or even the cryptic note; it was the way the envelope had been left for me. Why did Arthur Mantes need to put a Post-It note reminding himself to deliver an unsealed envelope to me? Mantes was as deliberate and sharp a scientist as I had ever seen and he possessed an exceptional memory. He could tell me every detail of a particular counterfeit dollar he had analyzed years before: how it was made, what it felt like, where the counterfeiters had gone wrong, even the chemical composition of the paper and ink. Sometimes I would find a sample from an old investigation he had assisted, perform an analysis of it and then innocently ask him about it just to test his memory. And his gift for remembering was not savant-like, limited only to chemistry. In fact, in the three years I knew him, I don’t think he ever needed to be reminded of anything, whether it was an appointment, a name, or a phone number. Something just wasn’t right.

I had promised Christian that everything added up, but now I felt like the one who needed convincing.

Three

Predictably, Christian didn’t wake me up but left a note thanking me again and promising to call when he got back to New York. I knew he wouldn’t call, but would instead apologetically email me in several days and probably blame an “avalanche” of reading or something like that. It didn’t really bother me and I found the whole routine rather amusing in the end. Friendship isn’t a theatre that hosts different shows every month, but one of those off-Broadway dives that replays the same show over and over again. That’s what makes it a comforting institution.

I went to work surprisingly refreshed and felt comfortably removed from the rigors of the weekend. I could barely remember the anxiety that kept me awake for so much of last night and my worries, along with the envelope, the bill, the note and even the funeral seemed more like a dream than anything. A sudden spike in active counterfeiting investigations at the Secret Service made it even easier to forget the events of the weekend. A printing press responsible for a series of high quality counterfeits was recovered in an FBI-assisted raid from an organized crime syndicate in Columbia. More counterfeits emanate from Columbia than anywhere else in the world. The Secret Service now maintains a permanent presence in Bogotà and conducts joint operations with United States and international police agencies in order to combat bogus dollars, euros and other major currencies. Forged American banknotes produced by this press had proliferated widely over the last few years and the discovery was a breakthrough for a host of ongoing investigations. Before Secret Service special agents could proceed, they needed a forensic analysis confirming that the counterfeits they were investigating did, in fact, originate in this press. I was put in charge of the project.

The only reason a banknote is worth more than the paper it is printed on is that it stands in place of something that doesn’t, strictly speaking, exist. It represents a value, a powerful, abstract substance that means something insofar as it can be exchanged for goods or services. Money is as close as we can come to physically touching this value. It is a way of capturing value and bending it to our will. But if we can’t trust money, if we’re not sure that it’s real, then value eludes us. Money is a matter of faith. We have to believe that the paper we are holding is truly money.

Before a national paper currency was issued in order to finance the Union during the Civil War, faith in paper money was hard to find. State banks produced their own notes, a boon to would be purveyors of funny money. Even after a few government employees began hand signing and cutting United States Legal Tender, dubbed the greenback for its color, in the basement of the Treasury Department on August 29, 1962, spurious notes abounded. To combat the rampant production of illegal counterfeits, Edward Jordan, the Treasury solicitor, brought the Secret Service into being on July 5, 1865, inaugurating the first federal police force and the militant wing of the religion of money, its Defender of the Faith.

Now, over 100 years later, as I worked with my team to process scores of sample counterfeits and link them definitively to the recovered printing press, that faith was as safe as ever. Its means of preservation are, however, unique, because it is a faith that relies on science. Yes, science, which had once precipitated a crisis of faith through its demand for evidence, empirical observation, and proof, which had drawn back the curtain on nature and revealed the miracles of life and the cosmos through predictable and comprehensible laws, properties and axioms. But at the Secret Service Forensic Services Division, we use science to show counterfeits for the imposters they are and to ensure that faith in legal tender remains secure. Armed with infrared analysis and mass spectrometry, we can not only discern with absolute certainty authentic banknotes from counterfeits, we can even trace generations of counterfeits back to a common origin.

For four days, my team worked day and night in order to construct a kind of genealogy of counterfeits produced by the South American printing press. The oldest and most primitive sample we called the “Parent Note,” or PN, and gave it a unique five digit number: PN-53496. We then gave the entire series a special letter, S, and assigned each note we linked to the press with its own five digit number. By the end of the day Thursday, we had definitively determined all of the notes in Secret Service possession that came from the printing press and even ruled out a few that were incorrectly believed by special agents to have originated in the press. After the parent note, the oldest generation was S-65798 and the most recent was called S-99000. By S-99000, the counterfeiters had improved their technique dramatically, but the printing press and the basic materials used remained the same. This was all we needed. In another week, a sample from each generation would be consigned to a flat file drawer within a cavernous library where at least one counterfeit note from every Secret Service investigation is stored.

Our work was considered a resounding success and, by the end of the week, congratulations were pouring in from all corners of the service. I even received a phone call from the director, applauding the speed with which my team had not only crafted the counterfeit genealogy, but also published a full report of the scientific results, perfectly fit for legal proceedings against alleged counterfeiters. He called me a credit to the Secret Service and hinted that I could expect a promotion sometime in the coming year. My only regret was that Arthur was not there to share in my triumph.

On Friday night I went home both elated and exhausted. Throughout the week I had worked late into the night, verifying lab results, editing the report and even working in the lab myself when there were too many tests for my team to run. It had been thrilling. Since my promotion last year, I had been involved in direct lab work less and less, but chemistry was my profession and my passion. Being a group leader had its benefits, but the role was more that of manager than scientist and it was a role I was still learning, with a language and culture all its own. I could always sense the worry in my group members’ voices each time one of them called on me to help with a test or to verify the results. They feared imposing on me or, worse still, appearing incompetent. But I always relished an excuse to get back into the lab and once again immerse myself in my native tongue, the language of compounds and molecular structures. This last week there had been no regret in their voices. Every available hand was needed, including mine.

I threw myself onto the couch as the adrenaline and excitement that had carried me through the week slowly drained out into the weathered cushions. I began to nod off, as though a deep sleep had spent the week hidden within me and now saw its chance to wrest possession of my body away from my conscious mind.

The phone rang.

I ignored the first ring, resisted the call of the second, but by the third I was on my feet and headed toward the receiver.

“Hello?” I groggily asked.

“Ionia, it’s me, your mother.”

It was all my tired body could do to suppress a groan. This was the last thing I needed. Maybe after a good night of sleep – no, a great night of sleep – I could deal with mom, but not now. I had no idea what sermon she had ready or what concern was nagging at her this week, but I just wasn’t in the mood tonight. Even worse, after complaining to me, she would ask after work and then I would need to construct some elaborate and plausible lie. I had spent nearly every day of my adult life unmasking counterfeits, but every night I was one. The irony was not lost on me and it made the lying just that much more unbearable, but in this case lies were better than the truth, for me and for my parents. Like money, functional families require faith and trust. However unjust the terms, I violated that trust when I took a job at the Secret Service. My lies kept both sides happy.

Still, she was my mother and I wasn’t going to tell her I was too tired to talk. I just had to say something and hope for the best, hope tonight’s conversation required no fabrications.

“Hi mom, what’s up?”

“What do you mean ‘what’s up’?” she asked impatiently. “Haven’t you been watching the news?”

“No,” I said, picking up the television controller. “It’s been pretty busy at work, I—”

The TV flashed life and the professional tone of the newscaster filled the room.

“We have to remind you that these are early reports, but word is coming in from our desks in Seoul and Washington that North Korea is agreeing to relinquish its nuclear program and allow full access to inspectors. Our sources report that talks are being scheduled for next month to discuss a complete normalization of relations between the North and South. There is also word, although this is being characterized as only rumor, that the talks will precede an organized effort aimed at reunification. Again, we must stress that these are only rumors. We have no idea what prompted this sudden turnaround by North Korea, which only last month is believed to have conducted an underground nuclear weapons test. Obviously, if these rumors are true, this is a momentous day in the history of North and South Korea.

I repeat, our sources in Seoul and Washington . . .”

I held the phone to my ear speechless. After what seemed like ages I must have said something because my mother said, “I know, I can’t believe it either.”

“What does dad think?” I asked.

“He doesn’t know what to think. Neither do I really. We thought we had left that life behind forever, now maybe we’ll have a chance to go back in our lifetimes. But it’s too early for that, of course. No one knows what this all means yet or if it’s even really happening.”

Go back. It occurred to me, for the first time in my life perhaps, that North Korea was our home. All three of us were born there. For them, it was a chapter in a life they were still leading, for me a just a prologue beyond the reach of memory. They left friends, family, an entire life behind. And though I left nothing, I suddenly felt as if there were something there for me, too, the secret about who I really was. I had always described myself as Korean-American, but that Korean part remained inscrutable to me. What was it? Was it the facial features that set me apart from my friends in the San Francisco neighborhood where I grew up? Was it just the genes I inherited from my parents? American dollars are made from a specific mixture of three parts cotton and three parts linen. Only a special machine can combine the ingredients just right. Maybe there was a special formula for being Korean, or American, or anybody. Could it, too, be forged with the right equipment and know-how?

My mind was racing, trying to comprehend the implications of this news. “What does dad think?” was replaced by “what do I think?” and a thousand other questions. I was about to throw a few hundred of them at my mother when there was a sudden and sharp knock at the door.

“Mom, someone is at the door, hold on a sec.” I put down the phone and walked to the door. It was Christian. His eyes were wide with excitement and he looked wild, as if he had spent the week substituting coffee for sleep.

“I found Leon Warnerke,” he said, hurriedly stepping across me into the apartment. He was agitated and unruffled; his mere presence seemed to fill the room with nervous energy. My skin began to crawl and I instinctively backed away.

“Who is he?” I asked, my heart already falling into my stomach as I realized Christian hadn’t given up the mystery I so desperately wanted to forget.

“He’s dead.”

Four

“Mom, I’ll call you back,” I said and put down the receiver without waiting for a response. Christian paced back and forth for a few steps before perching on the couch and then, unable to sit, he leapt up and repeated the process.

“What do you mean, ‘dead’?” I asked.

He wasn’t listening to me, but instead to some long train of thought steaming through his head, refusing to heed any signal or station.

“Can you compare handwriting? I need to check something,” he said, not bothering to look up.

“What do you mean dead?” I was shouting now.

He stopped suddenly. “Oh,” and then as if finally realizing what was running through my head, “Oh, no, no. He’s not dead, like, he died yesterday. Leon Warnerke died a hundred years ago.”

I lowered myself onto the couch and emitted a sigh that expressed either relief or defeat. Someone new had not turned up dead in the last week. Still, I wanted that envelope and its contents to disappear and, until Christian appeared at my door, I had succeeded. But what had been intended for me had captured Christian’s imagination. What are my options, I wondered as I placed my head into my hands, slowly running my fingers deeper into my hair, pulling the skin of my forehead taught. I could kick Christian out and demand that he give up his search (after all, it belonged to me, didn’t it?); or, I could ask him to clam down and start over.

“Christian, none of this is making any sense to me,” I said, forcing myself to sound reasonable, even motherly. “Please just start from the beginning and fill me on what you’ve been doing all week. We’ll go from there, ok?”

“You’re right,” he said and then, as if purging his anxiety through an act of pure will, repeated more evenly, “You’re right.”

He walked to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. As he walked back, I noticed that he had brought nothing with him, but the red sweater and jeans he was wearing and the small satchel he had used to carry books and schoolwork since we were in college. The thought that something had driven him to such frenzy that he just hopped a train and rushed down made me nervous. Christian could certainly be described as impulsive, but he frequently gave up projects as quickly as he began them. Christian’s obsessions were short and violent bursts of activity, followed by periods of boredom and disenchantment before he latched onto some new interest or idea. To an outsider, his approach life appeared casual, but I knew it for an intensity with no patience for the pace of the world.

He sat on the chair opposite me and leaned forward, the intensity not abated but harnessed.

“I wrote down those names last weekend, remember? The four Warnerkes in the DC phonebook,” he said.

“Sure, I remember.”

“I spent Monday just like I told you – first to the seminar and then I just did some reading in the library and went home. When I got there and emptied my pockets, I pulled out the list. I had forgotten about it. On a whim, I decided to call the four numbers.”

“A whim?” I asked, skeptically.

“I swear, really, I didn’t have any intention of thinking about that envelope. I just thought, why not just find out if this has something to do with a person in Washington? Sure, giving someone you don’t know (or who doesn’t know you), a fifty dollar bill is weird, but there must be some decent explanation. Of course, none of them knew or had heard of Leon Warnerke. So I gave it up.”

“No, you didn’t,” I said. “You’re here, aren’t you? Claiming you’ve found this Leon Warnerke, even though he hasn’t been alive for – what did you say? – a hundred years.”

“Just wait. I’ll get to that.” He took another drink out of his glass and paused, as if thinking about how to continue. “Where’s the envelope?” he asked suddenly. “This will all make more sense if I can show you something first.”

I wanted to refuse to get the envelope, to resist any attempts by Christian to make whatever insane theory he had developed the last week more plausible, but of course I acquiesced. When I was couldn’t sleep Sunday night, I got up a took the envelope out of my purse and buried it beneath a pile of paper in one of my desk drawers, as though I could somehow subdue the power I felt it exercising over me. As I felt around the bottom of the drawer now, I thought I could feel that magnetic warmth once again, an energy pulling me into its world.

Eager to be rid of it, I handed the envelope to Christian as soon as I returned to the living room. He pulled out the plastic sheath containing the fifty dollar bill and turned it over to examine the note, pulling it close to his face. He then directed his attention to the Post-It note on the front, the one reading “FOR IONIA.” His eyes gleamed. I could tell he felt vindicated. This could only get worse now.

“Look at these two notes,” he said triumphantly.

“Yeah, so?” I said, only halfheartedly examining them.

“So? Don’t you do this for a living?” he asked impatiently.

“I’m too tired for this. Just tell me what you’re getting at.”

“On Tuesday, a funny thing happened,” he said, seeming to change the subject. “I went in to talk to my academic adviser and he told me to sit a wait for a minute while he filled out a birthday card. He put the card in an envelope and wrote on the front ‘For Jenny.’ She’s his niece, I think.”

I was confused. “What does this have to do with my envelope?”

“I’m getting there,” he said. “Anyway, when I saw that, a latent memory popped into my head of these two Post-It notes, the one on the outside of the envelope and the one on the fifty dollar bill. I hadn’t thought it at the time, but suddenly, seeing them with my mind’s eye, I became convinced that the handwriting was absolutely identical.”

I saw where he was going with this and I snatched the envelope and plastic casing out of his hands, examining them more carefully than even Christian had. I had never been trained in handwriting analysis -- forged checks and other financial fraud was left to a different team of forensic scientists – but I had spent perhaps hundreds of hours analyzing printed currency with a magnifying glass or a microscope, comparing the illustrations and markings. Christian was right: to the naked eye it was impossible to tell the two notes apart.

“You think Arthur wrote both of these notes,” I said, catching up to Christian’s train of thought.

“Exactly,” said Christian, now sure that he had sold me on the crucial step of whatever theory he was about to foist upon us both. He continued, “And so I tried to form a hypothesis, something to get me started. Arthur writing the note accounts for some of the mystery. If Leon Warnerke didn’t want you to show the fifty dollar bill to anyone, why would he entrust it to someone else.”

“So you think it was Arthur who didn’t want me to show it to anyone.”

“Right. So then I wondered why he wouldn’t either sign it as Arthur or just leave no signature at all. I also couldn’t figure out why he would tell you to keep a fifty dollar bill secret and leave it at that, laying aside, of course, the inherent oddness of any request to keep a fifty dollar bill secret at all.”

“Right, right,” I nodded my assent, feeling myself unable to resist being pulled along by Christian’s enthusiasm.

“So my hypothesis was that the signature was some kind of message.”

“A code, perhaps?” I asked.

“That occurred to me,” he replied. “But I’m not very good at anagrams or codes or anything like that, so I decided to do what I was good at and see if it led to anything.”

“And what, exactly, are you good at?” I could feel the corners of my mouth pulling into an inquiring smile.

“Going to the library, of course.” Now we were both smiling and what a week a go I hadn’t understood and feared now seemed like a game, a puzzle to be unraveled.

I supplied the last piece: “And you found Mr. Warnerke.”

“Right, and when I did, I was sure that he was the Leon Warnerke I was looking for.” He paused, frowning for a moment, and then asked, “Did you examine the fifty dollar bill yet?”

“No,” I replied, an answer which, though truthful, nonetheless surprised both of us. My instincts should have been to look at it immediately. It would have been impossible to imagine one counterfeit analyst giving a banknote to another as an innocent act, somehow bereft of significance. Currency analysis was our language. Perhaps if I had figured out where or how to look, the fifty dollar bill would have said more to me than any mere epistle ever could. So why didn’t I look at it? Maybe I didn’t want to think about Arthur any more that weekend or, less likely but possible, I was afraid of what it might mean: a cryptic message left after his death in terms that only a close associate – and not just any close associate, but me -- could understand. Yet, I thought to myself, I still should have looked at it, if even once.

“I don’t know why I didn’t,” I offered instead, unable to generate any explanation that would satisfy Christian or myself. Fortunately, he did not appear phased by this revelation, instead too swept up in his discoveries and theories.

“Anyway,” he said, “I spent most of the day Wednesday looking for any reference to the name Leon Warnerke and the only thing I found was this.” He pulled a dusty old volume out of his satchel. It smelled old, like books that lie unused in the stacks for years. The binding was no longer original and I could see the flaking edges of the yellowed pages even though the book was quiet old.

“He wrote a book?” I asked, perplexed.

“No, an article,” said Christian. “Just a few pages really. This is the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution from 1893,” he explained as he opened the volume to a small scrap of paper he must have torn out of a notebook in order to mark the page. “It includes a paper delivered to the Photographic Society of Great Britain by a one Leon Warnerke. It’s called ‘Photographs in Natural Colors, by the Process of L. Lumière.’”

“What does this have to do with the note?” I interrupted. “Why do you think Arthur was referring to this Leon Warnerke?”

“That’s what I thought at first, too,” he responded. “In fact, I just said that I knew this was our guy as soon as I found him, but that’s not true. When I discovered this article, I felt I had maybe hit a dead end. But since there was no other path in front of me, so I just plodded along this one. Even though I didn’t have much hope of a worthwhile result, I became obsessed with cataloguing every reference I could to the Leon Warnerke who wrote this paper. I worked in the library nonstop, going home only to sleep. Then, this morning, I found this –” he pulled what looked like a photocopy out of the satchel and handed it to me “—and then I became really sure this was our guy.”

It was a photocopy of a newspaper article. The language looked like French, but that was only a guess. The copier had barely managed to capture the faded print. “Is it in French? What does it say?” I asked, unable to read it.

“It is French,” he answered. “It’s an article from 1898 reporting that noted photographer Leon Warnerke was arrested for passing counterfeit Russian rubles in Paris. He would not disclose where he received them, but claimed he had no idea they were counterfeit. The sentence was later suspended.”

“Counterfeits? Is that what you think the connection is?” Since Christian had convinced me the handwriting on the two notes might be the same, I had willingly been carried along by his theory, but now I grew leery of his belief that this was the solution to our riddle. “This just seems like a coincidence.”

“Maybe, but I’m not so sure. Listen to the beginning of that paper I found in the Smithsonian report,” he said as he began reading from the article, “’About two years ago Prof. Lipmann, of the Sorbonne, at Paris, succeeded in producing photographically a colored image of the solar spectrum, based on the well-known principles of interference. He used for that purpose a plate coated with an albumen, collodion, or gelatin sensitive film.’”

Christian paused and looked up at me expectantly.

“So?” I replied, unsure what response he awaited.

“Most people elude history entirely. That it brushed up against Mr. Warnerke on a few occasions by chance was surely unremarkable. And the lightest grazes they were: I found a few short biographies in ancient photographic journals and anthologies, but nothing of interest. There was some debate about whether he was born in Russia, Moravia or somewhere in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but there was little at stake in which of the three it was. He was well known as an engineer in St. Petersburg for the first third of his life before moving to London where he would rise to prominence as a student of photography.”

“I don’t see where this is going,” I replied, my interest waning and the week’s fatigue suddenly filtering through my body again.

“When I first read through this journals, I kept thinking about a ‘photographer’ as a fellow running around and snapping family portraits – and there certainly were such photographers – but think about that article. Warnerke was a student of the developing science of photography. He was merely accused of passing counterfeit notes, but he was probably one of the few people in 19th century Europe that had access to the materials and the know-how to counterfeit money.”

“Wait, you’ve found an article and a few references to the guy and now you’re accusing him of being a counterfeiter?”

“I’m alleging that it’s at least possible.”

None of this made any sense. “Why would Arthur drop a reference to this guy?” I asked aloud. “What would he be trying to tell me?”

“I don’t know, but if there were ever a man just famous enough to be known at all, yet obscure enough to welcome conspiratorial speculation, he was it. I’m guessing it’s a reference he thought only you would be able to decipher.”

“But why wouldn’t he just tell me whatever he was going to tell me?”

Christian’s face darkened and I knew what he was thinking. “Maybe he didn’t have time.”

“Just say it. Just say you think he was murdered.” My body went cold just considering the possibility.

“I don’t know and I’m not ready to guess. What I do know is that none of this might mean anything if those two notes were written by different people. So I think the first thing we need to do is verify that. Do you have any thoughts on how?”

“Yes,” I said absently, still preoccupied with the gruesome thought that someone would kill Arthur. “There’s a handwriting scanner at work. It will tell us with fairly good accuracy whether the two notes match.”

“Well, it’s pretty late now, so we can’t move forward on this today,” he said as he placed the book and the article back in his satchel. “I know, Ionia, I had trouble thinking about what this means, too. The chance that, you know, something bad might have happened to Arthur. But we don’t know anything yet. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe it’s just a game. Maybe . . .” he trailed off.

I forced a smile. “Yeah, you’re right. It might be nothing and we won’t know until tomorrow anyway.” A yawn caught me by surprise. “I think I might just go to sleep.”

“Sure,” said Christian, concern still in his eyes.

“One more question,” I said as I started to walk towards my bedroom. “You could have just called me with all of this information. Why did you get back on the train and come all the way back to Washington?”

He was still hunched forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped but limp. His head lowered so that it sunk toward his chest, he looked pensively at the floor before finally answering.

“This morning in the library, I wondered about what might have happened to Arthur. And I thought to myself, ‘What if I had been pulled into some kind of dangerous situation without even knowing it? What would I want my best friend to do?’” He looked up at me. “This was the answer that came to me.”

I walked over to Christian and, without a word, gave him a hug. Then, just as silently, I retreated to my room. As I undressed for bed, I thought of Christian laying there on the couch, sleeping in clothes he had worn for who knows how many days, and I realized with relief that I would not spend the night alone in my apartment, vulnerable to whatever danger was now lurking in our worst fears.

That night, my dreams were filled with a hundred different murders of Arthur Mantes. Each time he died, I could see him vividly gasping for help, calling out my name. He was shot, stabbed, and poisoned innumerable times and in as many different places, his house, the office, on the street in broad daylight. Yet in none of these countless scenarios could I dream of a single reason why.

Five

The next morning we got into my car and drove to the Secret Service building on H Street, not far from the White House. There was a guard at the parking lot, but otherwise we might have been the only people in the Forensic Services Division wing of the complex (this was a government job, after all). We walked through the empty corridors to my office so that Christian could put down his satchel. It was sparsely furnished, just a desk, a chair, my computer, and a few filing cabinets.

“Feels just like home,” Christian joked. I responded with a wry look. It was just an office, as far as I was concerned. Only 25 years old, I worried about some of my older coworkers who decorated their offices until they became unrecognizable as workspaces. I wondered if they spent so little time at home that transforming their place of work into one was the only way to cope. I didn’t want that to happen to me. The idea was to keep my own office so basic, I had no choice but to escape in order to stay sane. Anyway, my empty office took on a sort of ascetic quality that appealed to me somehow.

After he deposited his bag under my desk, we went down a flight of stairs to the first subbasement. We traversed a sterile, fluorescent lit corridor past several rooms until we came to one that housed a set of modern but large computers.

“This is the technical services room for the financial fraud people,” I explained as we entered. We sat down in front of one of the terminals and I keyed in my username and password.

Christian noticed I was logging onto the Secret Service internal network and asked, “Will someone be able to track what you’re doing?”

“Track isn’t quite the right word,” I replied, “But if someone with the right clearance wanted to know, they could probably check. Why?”

“Just curious,” he said, but I could see the worry on his face.

“Now you’re just being paranoid,” I scolded. “Whatever is going on, I’m not ready to believe it’s some kind of Secret Service conspiracy.”

He assumed a sheepish grin and we both started chuckling.

“It’s been a long week,” he said while laughing. It was nice to have something to laugh about and, for a moment, it took my mind off the fears that had been fomenting since last night. The resurfaced, however, as soon as I opened the scanner next to the computer and placed the two notes inside it, along with a small card that I pulled out of my purse, which I had kept with me.

“What’s that?” asked Christian.

“It’s a birthday card Arthur gave me a couple of years ago. I took it out of my desk this morning. The program we’re using requires a fairly thorough sample of a person’s writing. I hope this is good enough; it’s the longest thing I have in his handwriting.” As the scanner started whirring to life, I stood up and waved Christian to come with me.

“Where are we going?” he inquired.

“This will take a few minutes,” I said, gesturing toward the computer. “While we’re waiting, I thought we’d go to an empty lab down the hall with some basic examining equipment. I want to take a look at that fifty dollar bill.”

We left the computer room and moved down the hall to a large room. Two long work tables spanned almost the entire room. Chairs were placed an even intervals along each table and for each chair there an adjustable light extended out of the center of the tables. It was a space designed for the kind of rudimentary examination of documents or currency I was about to perform. I sat down at one of the tables and Christian pulled a chair over and placed it next to mine. I pressed a small circle under the lip of the table and out popped a drawer containing a rule, several different types of magnifying glasses, pens, pencils, a notepad and a few other tools. I heard Christian mutter “cool” under his breath.

“What are you going to do?” he asked, now speaking at a regular volume.

“I’m going to take a very basic look at this bill,” I said while I pulled the plastic sheath containing the bill out of my purse. “I just want to be able to determine whether or not it’s a counterfeit.”

“You can do that just by looking at it?” he asked incredulously.

“Definitely. I might not be able to tell you what ink was used or the composition of the paper, but no counterfeit can resist the scrutiny of a magnifying glass so long as the eye on the other side knows what to look for.”

“Huh,” was all he said, clearly impressed.

Just as I was about to pull the banknote out of its plastic covering, I remembered that I wasn’t wearing any gloves. I walked over to the dispenser by the door and slipped on a pair of one-size-fits all latex examining gloves, the same kind used in doctor’s offices. I pulled out another pair and gave them to Christian, just in case I wanted to point something out to him.

Gloves on, I pulled the bill out of its protective shield and felt it between my fingertips, though the tactile sensation was a bit dulled by the gloves. If this note were part of a real Secret Service investigation, I might have looked for another sample (counterfeit notes rarely travel solo) and felt it with my bare hands. I didn’t one to risk tainting our one bill, though, so this would have to do.

“The paper is the right weight,” I said aloud for no reason, perhaps to let Christian feel involved.

Now to examine at the individual elements marking the banknote. An authentic United States bill – of any denomination – is designed almost solely to thwart counterfeit. A few patriotic archivists here and there might imagine that the presidential portraits and famous governmental buildings serve as constant reminders of our national history, but they are, in fact, among the most sophisticated, and therefore hardest to replicate, elements comprising the bill. Anyone who has ever looked at United States legal tender, especially the most recent editions of certain denominations, will notice details so gaudy they would offend any aesthetic. But an aesthetic can be copied, or at least imitated. Fine, complex detail is another matter altogether. The beauty of a United States banknote is its deliberate, precise, and extensive ugliness.

The bill was one of the new “big head” fifty dollar bills, so called because of the enlarged portraits, and was part of a series of new notes rolled out over the last few years to combat high quality counterfeiting done overseas. To date, I had not seen a counterfeit of a “big head.” Not only had they been in circulation for a limited time, they employed some incredibly daunting security features. I pulled out the magnifying glass and ticked them off as I surveyed the bill. It had the enlarged portrait of Ulysses S. Grant, of course, and next to his bulbous head were the “symbols of freedom” . The background was a rusted mix of red and orange, rather than a basic off-white. Several microscopic words were scattered around the bill and, though I couldn’t read them with the low intensity magnifying glass, I could see that they were where they should be. I then adjusted the lamp and held the bill directly in front of it. As I suspected, the watermark and security thread were there. Finally, I shifted the bill back and forth to verify it had the color shifting ink. Sure enough, the ink shifted from green to black to green again.

Finally, to be thorough, I rescanned the bill with the magnifying glass, just to check for any obvious printing errors. The lines and markings were absolutely flawless and, despite my near constant intimate contact with currency, I could not help but marvel at the incredible elegance and craftsmanship displayed on the fifty dollar bill. Taken as a whole, the many details were incongruous and an eyesore, but the level of skill devoted to the monetary instrument was stupefying.

“So, what do you think?” Christian asked expectantly, awakening me from my reverie.

“Well, it’s one of the new ‘big head’ bills,” I said, pointing to the portrait, “And I’ve never seen one of those successfully reproduced.”

“So it’s not a counterfeit?” He sounded a bit deflated.

“I couldn’t tell you proof positively without testing the paper and the ink, but I would find it extremely unlikely. It has all of the security measures implanted by the Bureau of Printing and Engraving – I mean, all of them. Every last one. And the craftsmanship is flawless—” Suddenly I paused, unsure why, and just stared at the note in my hands. Something wasn’t right. This bill was just too perfect. “But—” I began before stopping again, unable to continue.

“But what?” asked Christian.

What could I tell him? The bill was too perfect. Not even I could believe something like that. As a scientist, I had to acknowledge this banknote was almost certainly genuine, yet something kept nagging at me. I decided to ignore it for the time being.

“But nothing,” I said, collecting myself. “There is as real a fifty dollar bill as I’ve ever seen.”

I could tell Christian had been hoping the bill was a counterfeit, that he had been pinning some as yet unsupported part of his theory on it. Behind those eyes I knew he was reassessing and revising whatever hypotheses he had been entertaining.

“The handwriting comparison should be ready,” I said while placing the banknote back in its casing. I stood up, discarded my gloves and moved toward the doorway. Christian got up more slowly than me, but I heard him take off his own pair of gloves and fall in behind me as I walked into the hall. As soon as we reached the computer room, the feared result screamed at us from the computer screen.

Match.

Six

We stared blankly at the screen, neither of us daring to speak. I’m sure I knew what Christian was thinking because I was thinking the same thing. What do we do now?

“Why don’t you grab everything off the scanner?” Christian suggested. “No need to stay down here.” As good a plan as any, I supposed. I carefully picked up the two Post-It notes, placing the one reading “FOR IONIA” back on the front of the envelope and the other one on the plastic case shielding the fifty dollar bill. I then put the envelope along with the birthday card back in my purse and logged off of the computer terminal. We returned to my office in silence. I sat behind my desk, my head resting in my hands, and tried to think. Christian paced back and forth, one hand cupped around his chin.

This office really is drab, I thought to myself while looking around. It wasn’t the sparse furnishings, but the strange off-white color of the walls that paradoxically seemed to grow darker under the glare of the fluorescent overhead lights. Perhaps it was a color that had been proven to increase productivity or reduce employee dissension. Still fixated on the walls, I leaned back in my chair and started smoothing out my hair, strand by strand. After a few moments, I noticed that Christian had stopped pacing and was looking at me, smiling dumbly.

“What?” I asked, still carefully stretching out wisps of dark black hair and then letting them fall to my shoulder.

“You always used to do that when you were nervous. I could always tell when you had a test the next day,” then he laughed, “Or a big date, anyway.”

I immediately stopped self-consciously, though I couldn’t suppress a smile. I muttered, “Thanks for telling me now. I’ve probably been doing it in public for years now.”

“What are friends for?” he asked rhetorically before taking up the extra chair in front of my desk. His expression once again grew serious. “Ionia, I want to talk to Helen Mantes. She might know something about all this.”

“Why wouldn’t she have told us? She just gave us the envelope, remember Christian? She handed it to me as if she had no idea what it was.”

“I do remember,” he said, considering my objection before continuing. “But she might know if he was under some kind of duress, if he seemed worried or agitated.”

I still did not want to believe this possibility, that Arthur was in trouble or, worse, being pursued by some unknown force. “Look Detective Pender,” I said, bitter sarcasm ringing off my words, “I know you want to crack the case, but we don’t even know there is one. All we know – and not even with 100% accuracy, mind you – is that Arthur wrote both notes. Maybe it was just some game Arthur wanted to play or a joke. Maybe Leon Warnerke was a currency counterfeiter and investigating his life was a hobby for Arthur, something to get him through his old age. You heard Helen Mantes. He thought of me like a daughter. He probably just had something planned for me, something he hadn’t even completed. That’s why it’s all so cryptic, because it wasn’t finished when he tragically died of a heart attack.” I nearly spat the final words at him.

Christian said nothing, clearly wounded by my harsh words. He hadn’t deserved any of it. He was only here because he cared about me and worried that his worst case scenario – whatever it was – might be right. If it were his choice, he probably would be sleeping right now or watching college football on television, not sitting in the Secret Service Forensic Services Division getting told off by his ingrate of a friend. I felt my cheeks redden with shame and cast my eyes down toward the table.

“I’m sure you’re right,” he said quietly. “And if you are, then I’ll bet a five minute chat with Helen Mantes will confirm as much, and we can have the leisurely weekend we didn’t get last week.”

“You’re right,” I said meekly, thankful he had given me a graceful way out. I knew Christian understood that I was afraid. Afraid about the truth of what might have happened to Arthur and, even more frightening, afraid that now I might be involved with the kind of people who would kill and the kind of thing someone might kill for. I thought of the note affixed to the fifty dollar bill, the urgency now resoundingly clear: “Show this to no one.” Christian’s unspoken suspicion that Arthur’s death was not a natural tragedy -- but something far worse -- was starting to make terrifying sense.

* * *

For the second time in a week we drove through Georgetown, this time with me behind the wheel. The fall leaves gave the neighborhood a rust colored background, much like the fifty dollar bill tucked away in my purse. It was another grey day, remarkably similar to the day of the funeral, though it had not yet started to rain. When we turned the corner onto Arthur and Helen’s street, my throat caught. A cavalcade of police cars lined the curb in front of the Mantes home and thick bands of yellow police tape cut a wide swath around the house. Lights flashed on top of every cruiser, obscuring my attempts to see through the bustling scene.

I pulled the car to an abrupt halt opposite the house and Christian and I dashed out of the car and toward a police officer who seemed to be standing around keeping watch. He put his hands up as we approached, urging us to back away from the area.

“Who’s in charge here?” I frantically demanded. “I need to speak to whoever’s in charge.”

“Look miss,” he said patronizingly, “I can’t let you do that. I’m sure I can help you with whatever you need.”

I barely listened to him and reached into my bag for my Secret Service credentials. Because I wasn’t an agent, I didn’t have the luxury of a badge to flash at the officer, but I hoped my official identification would be enough. As I fumbled around in my purse, I heard the officer started shouting and looked up to see Christian walking underneath the tape and towards the house.

“Hey, wait! You can’t do that!” screamed the cop futilely. Christian paid him no mind and started jogging towards the house. I ran after him as the police officer tried to raise the alarm in the already hectic scene. Other police officers and detectives were moving everywhere. My blood turned to ice when I saw DC Metro forensic analysts moving in with carts of equipment.

Inside the door, I found two police officers restraining Christian. At first he tried to wrestle himself away from their grip, but suddenly fell quiet motionless. I followed his eyes to the floor and saw what had frozen his resolve. Streaks of dried blood ran along the wall and down part of the staircase.

“What’s going on here?” asked a voice which brought everything to a halt. I wheeled around and saw a tall man standing in the doorway behind me. He had black hair with streaks of grey and wore an olive trench coat over a cheap blue suit. If any crime drama I had ever seen was accurate, I could safely assume this was the detective in charge of the crime scene.

“Excuse me, detective,” I said so calmly I surprised even myself. “My name is Ionia Han, I work for the Secret Service.” I handed him my credentials. “My friend and I –” I gestured toward Christian “—are good friends of the Mantes family. We came by for a visit and saw the police cars. Is everything ok?”

The detective looked down at my Secret Service identification card, his eyes narrowed in thought. I could tell he was weighing his options and, from the look of the scene, they had arrived within the last hour. He looked to my face and then to Christian’s and could see the concern in our eyes. He sighed and signaled for the two uniformed officers to release Christian. Motioning for us to follow him, he walked back out the door and onto the front steps. He spoke quietly so we had to move in close to hear him talk.

“About an hour ago a 911 call comes in from a woman identifying herself as Helen Mantes. She says there is an intruder in her house, up in her husband’s office. They tell her to stay put, that a squad car is one the way. Cop arrives a few minutes later and finds the front door open, sees a body lying at the foot of the stairs, calls it in.” He surveys the scene and looks back to us. “Then this.”

“A body?” I gulp.

“I haven’t been radioed a positive ID yet, but it was an older woman, so I’m guessing your friend Helen. She wasn’t dead when the officer found her. An ambulance took her downtown right away.” He handed me back my Secret Service card. “I don’t know if she’s ok or not. I’d suggest that you go to the hospital. They should be able to tell you her condition.”

“Thanks detective,” I said and started to walk toward my car, so shocked by what was happening that I didn’t even check if Christian was behind me. After taking a few steps, I stopped and turned back around. “Detective?” I called out as I saw him walk back into the house. He turned around and raised his eyebrows.

“I just have one other question,” and gestured to indicate I wanted to ask it in privacy. He walked towards me and moved in closely so the other police officers couldn’t hear. I felt Christian standing attentively just behind my right shoulder.

“Was there some kind of struggle?” I asked, “Was it just some kind of burglar or something?”

“Obviously, it’s way too early to tell anything like—”

“I know,” I interrupted. “I know, but was just wondering what you might be speculating.”

He brought his hand up and started scratching behind his head, as if he knew what he was about to say was against his better judgment.

“Look, you’re a professional, right?” he asked and I nodded in response. “Well, from one professional to another, I’ve gotta say that this is all sorta weird.” He drew even closer. “I’ve got a record of a 911 call about an intruder, but there are no broken windows or doors, I mean absolutely no signs of forced entry. And the weirdest thing,” he stopped and dropped his voice to a whisper, “The weirdest thing is I got a woman shot with a pretty powerful gun—” I winced “—and neighbors who were here all day that say they heard nothing. A woman shot in her own home in the middle of the day? I seen a lot, but I never seen no cat burglars do something that crazy. Never.” With that he left for the house shaking his head and muttering to himself as if we had forgotten we were even there.

I took a deep breath and tried to collect my senses. Helen. We needed to check on Helen. Christian’s face was pale and his eyes were glazed over. I grabbed him and pulled him toward the car. His arm felt stiff and lifeless in my hand, like that of a mannequin. I blazed toward the hospital, my foot pressing hard on the pedal. When we reached the hospital, I yanked the car into the small driveway in front of the emergency room door. It was reserved exclusively for dropping off and picking up patients, but I just left the car and ran through the doors. Christian had awakened enough to follow me. I asked at the desk about Helen Mantes, saying a thousand prayers in my head for her to be alright. The receptionist typed the name in and picked up a phone, saying she had someone asking after Helen Mantes who had been admitted in the last hour or so. She put down the phone and looked up at us sympathetically. At 12:11 PM, Helen Mantes died in surgery.

Seven

I don’t remember driving home, or walking up the steps to my apartment, or even changing. I just remember sitting in my living room, holding a cup of tea and wearing an old college sweater and a pair of sweat pants. I wasn’t afraid, or confused, just numb. I had never before felt so numb, so unable to muster anything resembling an emotion.

Christian stood in front of the window, hands at his sides, like a sentry keeping watch. “I think it’s time we consider seriously the possibility that Arthur was murdered,” he said without turning around. “And that the same person murdered his wife.”

I nodded, which of course he couldn’t see.

He continued, “I also think it’s likely that you’re in danger.”

“Do you really think so?” I asked. “Why would this person come after me? What have I got to do with any of this?”

At this Christian broke his statuesque pose and walked over to my purse. He pulled out the envelope, opened it and threw the fifty dollar bill on the coffee table in front of me. Arthur’s words stared back: “Show this to no one.”

“Show this to no one?” Christian asked aloud. “Ionia, I think whoever killed Helen was after this. You heard the detective. This didn’t look like a robbery. Someone walked into her house on a Saturday morning and went straight to Arthur’s library. A Saturday morning, for God’s sake.”

“I know, Christian, I was there, too.” This wasn’t really happening, I told myself, it just wasn’t.

As if sensing my thoughts, Christian walked over to the couch and sat down next to me.

“Look, Ionia,” he said softly. “I know you’re scared. Christ, I’m scared, too. People you care about are dead. Someone I met just last week has been murdered.” He trailed off, as if just becoming aware of what he said. “I think we should go to the police,” he said with sudden conviction. “Give them the envelope. Tell them everything.”

Up until that point, from the moment we learned Helen Mantes had died until Christian spoke those words, I had felt completely disembodied. Everything I had heard or said was transmitted through some other Ionia, a kind of translucent medium, filtering external stimuli before feeding them into my shocked consciousness and then constructing an intelligible response. Now I awoke to the gravity of the situation and the necessity of what I had to do.

“No,” I replied with equal surety.

“No? Are you crazy? Why not?” Christian was taken aback, unprepared for the finality of my response and my rejection of what he must have considered the only reasonable option.

“What if you’re right?” I asked. “What if Arthur Mantes was being pursued and wrote that note as a message to me? The message is clear. I’m not supposed to show the fifty dollar bill to anyone. He entrusted it to me.”

“So?” Christian yelled, livid. “Earth to Ionia. He was killed for that thing and so was his wife. Killed, Ionia!”

“I know,” I said, more to myself than to him.

He took my shoulders gently in both hands. “Then why would you risk the same thing happening to you?”

“Arthur wasn’t reckless. If he didn’t go to the police himself, then he must have had a good reason.” And there was something else, too. “You heard Helen last week, Christian. I was like a daughter to them. Would you risk the life of your daughter unless something important, something huge, depended on it?”

He didn’t respond, but I could tell from his resigned expression that he was giving up. His eyes seemed to darken as if knew there was no way he could talk me out of my decision. He reassumed his post at the window. For over ten minutes he stood there, motionless, peering out into the street below. Finally, he spoke:

“As soon as the police are gone, we need to get into Arthur’s house.”

“Why?” I asked, stunned.

“Because I don’t think whoever killed Helen Mantes knew what he was looking for in Arthur’s office,” he replied crisply before turning to face me. “But I do.”

Eight

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “You said yourself you think whoever killed Arthur and Helen was after the fifty dollar bill.”

“They were. They are,” he said, reminding us both that we might be next. “But whatever Arthur was trying to hide, that bill was only a piece of it. Your job is to examine money and you decided it’s just a regular fifty dollar bill. Arthur had the same job. He must have known you’d examine it at some point and come to that conclusion.”

“So the fifty dollar bill doesn’t tell the whole story, but why go back to their house?” The very idea of returning to the place where Helen Mantes was killed in cold blood sent a chill running through my body.

“Before we went back there earlier,” he answered, “A thought was running through my mind, something I wanted to ask Helen Mantes. When you yelled at me this morning, you proposed that maybe researching Leon Warnerke was a hobby for Arthur.”

Recalling the morning’s outburst renewed my sense of shame. I scolded Christian when all he was trying to do was look out for me and, after what happened to Helen, my rant looked even more ridiculous.

He continued, “I think you must have been right. The few things I collected—” he gestured towards his carryall “—they took me hours to find and collect. He couldn’t have assumed you’d know who Leon Warnerke was or have time to find all of this and more on your own.”

I was confused. “But you said before that you thought he was trying to tell me something by signing the note that way.”

“I still think that’s what he was doing, but now I think it was a more immediate signal. He didn’t want you to go to the Library of Congress and dig through old manuscripts and journals, he wanted you to look in his library.”

It made sense. If Arthur really was being pursued and wanted to convey a message no one else could decipher, then he needed a code that only I could crack. As Christian had said, most people elude history altogether, but if there were ever a man just famous enough to be known at all, yet obscure enough to welcome conspiratorial speculation, Leon Warnerke was it. I could imagine Arthur spending his weekends digging through archives, collecting brief Warnerke appearances in the historical record, and trying to construct an account of some double life: respected photographer by day and illicit counterfeiter by night. When he was pressed for time, he chose that hobby as the disguise for whatever urgent message he wanted to pass along to me.

“But what about the fifty dollar bill?” I asked. “I can’t fit that into your theory.”

He shrugged. “Neither can I. But we don’t have much else to go on right now.”

“We may as well give it a shot tonight then,” I agreed. I was about to add that time was of the essence, that whoever had killed Arthur and Helen would surely kill again for whatever secret the fifty dollar bill, the note, and the life of Leon Warnerke safeguarded, but I held my tongue. The thought couldn’t have been too far from Christian’s mind anyway.

We would have to wait for nightfall and even then the house might still be under police protection. With nothing else to do and wanting to give my mind at least a small respite from the morning’s events, I did what any other 25 year old would do and turned on the television. It was on the same cable news channel I had been watching when my mother called last night.

“The morning brought truth to yesterday evening’s rumors that North Korea is willing to relinquish its nuclear weapons program. In a joint press conference this morning, the United States ambassador to South Korea announced, alongside the South Korean ambassador to the United States and a North Korean dignitary, that the three nations have scheduled talks for November 20, just over a month away. The agenda? The conference was brief and the press was not allowed to ask questions, but all three sides indicated that the plan was to slowly phase in a complete normalization of relations. They did not indicate whether reunification would be discussed at the talks, but hinted that both sides sought that ultimate goal.”

“Are you kidding me?” Christian mused as he sat down next to me.

“This is what my mom called about yesterday, right before you showed up.”

“Where did this come from? Didn’t North Korea test a bomb last month?”

“Yep,” I agreed. “It’s pretty strange. Maybe there is unrest in the regime.” Kim Jong Il had steadfastly held power after inheriting leadership in 1994 from his father, Kim Il Sung, who was also the first leader of North Korea after the Second World War. There were constant rumors of turmoil and unrest. There was, of course, the usual American grandstanding, which included assigning North Korea membership in the Axis of Evil, a set of rogue nations so labeled by the Bush administration in 2002. In the 90s, reports leaked out about a massive famine leaked as the workforce was more or less constantly mobilized to develop North Korea’s defense capabilities. The country seemed to be willing to do anything to protect itself from external threats, even if that meant sacrificing its population, ironically enough. Facing instability within and without, it was inconceivable that a regime, even one as authoritarian as Kim Jong Il’s, could possibly stave off all dissent. Perhaps some rival faction had finally wrested control away from North Korea’s quasi-royal family.

“Man, reunification. What did you mom say?”

“As of yesterday she didn’t have too much to say. She did mention going back.”

“Going back? Like, for good?” he asked incredulously.

“I dunno. I doubt it, knowing my parents. They aren’t that adventurous.”

“They were adventurous enough to come here, I suppose.” He wasn’t really thinking while he said it. It was a throwaway comment, a way to respond while he bathed in the mind numbing light of the television. But it set my head ringing. I had drawn up what I thought was a coherent and definitive picture of my parents, one in which they were risk averse to a fault. I blamed our whole falling out about what I was supposed to study and what career I would pursue on that picture. To some extent, it may have been correct. They may well have wanted me to pursue a safe career, one they knew would produce financial security for myself and their grandchildren (if there ever were any). But it wasn’t the whole picture. At one time, when urged by appropriately grave circumstances, they took a larger chance than is ever demanded of most people. It was strange, too, that I had never thought about it that way, because one of my chief resentments against my parents was that they kept reminding me of the sacrifice they made and the risks they took in leaving North Korea.

“I never though about it that way,” I said.

“Thought about what?” he asked, unaware of the doorways his question had opened in my mind.

“I always saw my parents as these super strict figures, authoritarian even.”

“Yeah,” he replied dismissively. “But doesn’t everyone ages 18 to 24 see their parents that way? Doesn’t that, like, define our demographic? I mean, I’m 25 and my parents still bother me, too. They think grad school is a huge waste of time.”

“Sure, but I always wrote them off as somehow quintessentially Korean, or North Korean, and I set myself in opposition to that. But they’re not quintessentially anything, are they? They took it on themselves to do something most people don’t do, to escape and gain opportunities they knew they would never have.”

Christian sat up more attentively. “Look, Ionia, what your parents did was incredibly courageous. But I don’t think that feeling different from them makes you ungrateful, if that’s what you’re worrying about. If you think you’re squandering their efforts by being incredibly successful in a noble profession, then you’re wrong. Now,” and here he smiled, “It is true that your parents don’t exactly know what profession that is, but let’s think of that as a technicality for now. The point is, you are different from your parents and you’ve followed your own path. At the end of the day, I can’t imagine they would have come to this country for any other reason than to give you the freedom to do your own thing. I’m sure they’ll see that eventually.”

“Yeah, I guess” I said, unsure if I really did agree with him.

We both settled back into the couch and let ourselves be reabsorbed back into the television.

* * *

I opened my eyes and saw Christian once again on duty in front of the window. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been sleeping. Amid all the excitement of the last few days, the news about North Korea, which normally would have kept me at rapt attention, faded into mere white noise, drowning out my other fears and permitting me much needed rest.

“What time is it?” I asked, my throat still thick from sleeping.

“You’re up,” he said, turning to face me with a smile. “Thought maybe you’d gone into hibernation. It’s eleven.”

“Eleven?” I’d been asleep for over six hours. I pulled myself off the couch and lumbered toward the bathroom. “Can you make coffee while I shower?” I yawned across the room.

“Sure,” he said and dutifully moved into the kitchen.

I had to wake myself up for the night’s escapade. I had never broken into a house under police surveillance before, but I felt safe assuming that it required sharp attention. I cast off my clothes, which were stale the way all clothes are after one sleeps in them. I shuddered thinking that Christian hadn’t changed since he arrived and even then his clothes appeared to have already weathered a good part of the week. We’d have to do something about that, I decided as I stepped into the warm shower.

After I got out and changed into new clothes, I followed the scent of fresh coffee into the kitchen. Christian had already poured himself a glass.

“I just put on another pair of jeans and a different sweater,” I said as I filled a mug to the brim. “Do you think that’s appropriate for breaking and entering?”

He just chuckled and took another sip of his coffee. It surprised me that I could make fun of what we were about to do and I said so to Christian.

“Older generations always seem to criticize our peer group for using sarcasm or faux irony to cope with life,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “Seems like a decent strategy tonight.”

Nine

We weren’t really sure what to bring with us, although I did have the presence of mind to grab a flash light and Christian recommended a screwdriver and a pocketknife. As the car hummed along the empty streets of Washington, doubts accumulated in my mind. Up until now, we had been, at the very worst, unwitting and unwilling participants in whatever was going on, but tonight we were going to cross firmly to the other side of the law. Before, I had been convinced at least subconsciously that I could put this all aside on Monday morning as I got ready for work. It was a naïve assumption, but one that I could entertain, nonetheless. Now I felt that whatever puzzle we were endeavoring to solve, it would define the contours of my life for the foreseeable future. An unappetizing prospect.

I pulled the car onto Arthur and Helen’s street, but kept moving as I past the house.

“What’re you going?” Christian asked, baffled.

“Just want to see if the police are still there. And I don’t want to park right in front of the house anyway.”

He nodded as if to say “of course that’s what you do when you sneak into a crime scene.” What choice did we have? The hundreds of movies and television shows we had watched growing up would have to rise to the situation (just as we had) and transform from fictional, and largely inaccurate, representations of real life and instead serve as a useful reservoir of knowledge, tips, and on-the-spot training for our real life adventure. It wasn’t fair, I supposed, to all the directors, aiming to entertain and not educate. But then, life isn’t fair, I said to myself sourly, my thoughts turning to Helen Mantes.

“Just our luck,” said Christian, looking out the car window. “The place is deserted, not a police car in sight.”

“I suppose that means we have to go through with this then,” I sighed. I had guiltily indulged my reluctance on the drive over by hoping a police guard would still be posted at the scene.

Christian didn’t answer and, as soon as I stopped the car a few houses down, he got out and tried to walk as stealthily as possible to the abandoned house. I got out behind him and, together, we ducked under the police tape still cordoning off the property. I began moving up the front steps, but Christian pointed to a path around the side of the house and started towards it, not waiting to see if I followed. The path led to the backyard, terminating under the terrace. Using a low window sill as a toehold, Christian lifted himself onto the terrace and extended a hand to help me up. I guessed what he was thinking: the Mantes probably didn’t ever lock the terrace door. He put his hand on the latch and closed his eyes, as if wishing it to slide open. It did. We both breathed a sign of relief.

No one lived in the house any longer, but I still felt as if we were violating Arthur and Helen’s privacy in entering. The house appeared frozen in time from the moment Helen had been found shot; there were even a few dirty dishes left in the sink. We waded through this eerie stasis into the hall and towards the front of the house where the stairs would lead up to Arthur’s office. We had agreed before leaving my apartment that would be the place to start looking. Once we reached the stairs, we were careful not to step into the blood stains still marking the floorboards. I gulped back emotion as I peered at the blackish smears, barely distinct through the darkness cloaking the house.

Upstairs, I led Christian to Arthur’s office and flipped on the flashlight, careful to aim it towards the floor to avoid alerting any passersby or neighbors of our presence. Maintaining my care with the light, I started looking through Arthur’s desk. Christian seemed most interested in the two bookcases on the opposite wall and cleverly opened his cell phone, using the backlight to read the binding of the books.

The desk was almost empty and my heart sank as I remembered that Helen Mantes said she had cleaned out the office after Arthur died. Whatever we were looking for may have been moved or even thrown out, especially if it were something of which no would suspect the importance.

“There’s nothing here,” I whispered across the room. “I’ve checked all the drawers, except for the bottom one which is locked with a combination. Helen must have taken everything.”

Christian didn’t respond, but just nodded his head as he continued scanning the bookshelves. I grew increasingly agitated and self-consciously turned off the flashlight. What were we doing here? I gave my fears free reign. Any moment now, I felt, one of the neighbors would see the car suspiciously parked in the road and alert the police. They must all be on edge anyway, what with the break in and killing that took place just over twelve hours ago. We should leave, I said to myself urgently.

I was about to grab Christian by the collar and yank him out of the office when he spoke:

“A-ha!”

“What?” I asked as I scampered over.

“It’s the Gesichte der Photographie,” he said triumphantly.

I was lost. “The what?” I asked.

“Josef Maria Eder’s History of Photography,” he translated. “It has one of the best accounts of Leon Warnerke’s life that I read.”

“So this isn’t anything new then. Let’s go.”

“Hold on,” he said. “This means we’re on the right track. It means his Leon Warnerke is our Leon Warnerke. And—” he started flipping through the pages of the massive volume until he reached a certain page, “—here it is, the life of Leon Warnerke. Look.” He pointed to the margin where, bathed in the light of his phone’s LCD, a series of three numbers separated by hyphens had been jotted into the margins. He smiled. “You said one of the drawers has a combination lock?”

I shone the flashlight on the lock.

“What’s the standard way to do this?” he asked.

“Three clockwise past the first number, one counterclockwise, and then one more clockwise,” I replied, though I wasn’t really all that certain.

He carefully turned the lock according to the combination and, sure enough, it clicked open on the last number. The drawer was the bottom one on the right side of the desk, the kind of drawer one could use for hanging files. I peered inside, seeing nothing but shadows. Christian took the flashlight out of my hand and nearly ducked his head into the drawer he was so close. He poked around for a minute, then got down on his knees, and reached all the way to the back of the drawer with his arm. I heard a peeling sound, as though he were pulling tape from the desk’s wood paneling.

In his hand lay a small, letter sized portfolio. It had a sort of flap that could fold over, enclosing the contents by means of a small drawstring. He untied the cover and opened envelope, while I again took hold of the flashlight and aimed it at the folder. He pulled out a small stack of extremely worn paper, covered all over in some kind of script. It was tied into a bundle with red ribbon.

I was about to ask him what it was, not thinking of course that he probably had as little idea as I, when suddenly I heard the tinkling sound of glass breaking downstairs, followed by the unlatching and creaking sound of what I frantically guessed was the front door. We both froze. Hearing light footsteps coming up the stairs, Christian acted first, quietly sliding the papers back into the folder and crouching beneath the desk. He motioned for me to do the same. My body pressed low to the floor, my expansion and contraction of my lungs sounded loud without any other noises to drown them out. The only memory to which I could compare the sensation was that of being tucked away in my parents’ closet during games of hide-and-go-seek.

The soft steps drew closer and a silhouette appeared at the door. Looking through the gap under the desk, I could only spy the shadowy figure from the knees down. The dark outline now walked into the room and towards the desk. With no time to think, I drew my legs under me and planted my feet so that I was crouched in a little ball with my shoulder against the side of the desk. As soon as I saw the legs stop a few inches from the desk, I threw my entire weight against it and, as I had hoped, it slammed into the figure, knocking him (or it) back with a grunt. I then bounded over the table swinging the flashlight at what looked like a head. Luckily, my flashlight caught the intruder – or intruder among intruders – square in the side of the head and the body of what now looked clearly like a man crumpled to the floor.

“Run!” I yelled at Christian, who was standing behind me dumbfounded. Together, we dashed out of the room and down the stairs. The front door was standing open, the window smashed in. No longer conscious of the neighbors, we ran down the front steps and across the street to my car. I peeled the car around as Christian was still closing his door. Blood rushed into my ears and my cheeks tingled.

“Is anyone following us?” I demanded as I wheeled the car through the streets of Georgetown. Christian just sat panting and clutching the folder in his hands.

“Christian!” I shouted, “Is anything following us?”

Finally he turned around in his seat and squinted into the darkness.

“No,” he said raggedly. “No, I don’t think so.” But he maintained his vigil, refusing to take his eyes from the empty road behind us as I sped off into the deserted Washington night.

Ten

Neither of us slept that night. We didn’t do much of anything, really. Some strange power prevented us from touching the mysterious folder sitting in the middle of my table. We were too frazzled and in shock to talk much about anything, especially the man I had attacked.

Eventually, after quiet some time, Christian spoke. “That was some pretty quick thinking there,” he said. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“I dunno,” I said and rubbed my shoulder which was still a bit sore from ramming the desk. “It just came to me. I think I got lucky with the flashlight, though. I was mostly just flailing away.”

“Well, I’m impressed, anyway,” he gave me a weak, but reassuring smile. “Why don’t you go try and sleep a little bit?”

“Yeah, maybe I will,” I replied and shuffled off into my room. I laid on top of the covers for a couple of hours, but didn’t sleep. As soon as the sun started coming out, I returned to the living room to find Christian on my computer.

“Whatcha up to?” I asked.

“I’m checking the train schedule,” he said. “I need some clothes. I’ve been in these things for, well, you don’t want to know. We can catch one at Union Station in about an hour. It won’t take me long to get my stuff. We could be back by the late afternoon.”

Under normal circumstances, taking the train to New York and back in one day would have been a ridiculous plan, but I had no desire to stay at my apartment alone after the last night’s events. Christian did need fresh clothes and the prospect of getting out of Washington, if even for a few hours, seemed enticing.

“Ok,” I said. “Let me just grab my jacket and we can head to Union. Why don’t we take the Metro so I don’t have to park?” In reality, I wanted to avoid driving a car I secretly worried had been identified by whomever I attacked last night, but I didn’t want Christian to think I was paranoid. I made sure I had the envelope with the fifty dollar bill before we left, glancing at Christian to check that he put the folder we retrieved from Arthur’s office into his carryall.

The Metro cars were empty – not surprising for a Sunday morning – and, once we arrived at the station, we had no trouble buying tickets to New York. I slept almost the entire journey while Christian pieced together a breakfast consisting of a bagel and an apple that he purchased at Union Station. He woke me up as the train pulled into Grand Central Station. We hailed a cab to the Upper West Side where Christian lived and went to school. He lived alone in a small studio and it took him only a few minutes to throw some shirts and jeans into a backpack.

“Is that all you need?” I asked stifling a yawn.

“Should be ok,” he responded.

By the early afternoon, we were back at Grand Central Station and boarding a return train to Washington.

“A New York minute,” I quipped as the train rolled out of the station.

He didn’t respond, but stared out the window. Soon I joined him, though there was little to see as the train moved mostly underground until resurfacing in New Jersey.

“Ionia,” he asked after a little while, “Did you see the person yesterday?” Aside from Christian’s compliment of my escape maneuver, neither of us had talked about what happened until now and I was still hesitant to think about the traumatic sequence of events.

“Not really,” I said honestly. “I’m pretty sure it was a man, though.”

“Ok.” He seemed satisfied.

“Did you look at the folder yet?”

“Yes, while you were sleeping on the train ride up here.”

“What’s inside?” I asked, wondering if it was worth the trouble or if we had recovered useless love letters Arthur Mantes had been storing for decades.

“It’s a bunch of old letters,” he said. “I mean really old letters. They’re all from the 19th century.”

“Who are they between?” I asked, perplexed.

“A lot of people. But I think it’s mostly the correspondence of Leon Warnerke.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, although not every letter is signed by him. There are a lot of strange names.”

“What are the letters about?” I was genuinely intrigued now.

“All kinds of different things. I haven’t read them all and they’re tough to get a handle on. They’re not in any order and they were written over several decades in multiple cities. I need to make a chart when we get back to Washington.”

“Huh,” I said, unsure what to make of our discovery.

He continued, “But some of the letters, the ones that interest me the most, concern the arrest of a woman name Josephine Dobrovlska in 1872.”

“What did she do?”

“She was caught trying to enter Russia with counterfeit rubles.”

“In 1872? That’s almost thirty years before you said Leon Warnerke was caught in Paris trying to pass counterfeits.”

“I know,” Christian said, his eyes wandering back to the window. He began tapping his teeth with his fingernail. I could tell he was thinking through whatever he had read in the letters, trying to piece together their meaning – if there was one. I, too, tried to get my mind around whatever Arthur was trying to tell us. For better or worse, Christian’s theory seemed to gain strength by the hour. Not only did Arthur happen to own a book on photography that contained a Leon Warnerke biography, he even wrote the combination to his desk lock in the margin of the Warnerke entry. So it was likely he was referring to this Leon Warnerke, the photographer, in the signature of his note. And if he wanted me (and only me) to find those letters in the drawer, then signing the note “Leon Warnerke” seemed like a safe bet. Who else would know to look in the photography book? He was able to leave the combination right out in the open, under everyone else’s nose, so to speak.

Looking over at Christian, it occurred to me that this message, if it really was what Arthur had intended, wouldn’t have reached me without his help. I wouldn’t have discovered who Leon Warnerke was or thought to have looked in the Josef Eder’s History of Photography. And, even in the unlikely event that I might have figured those things out, I wouldn’t have gone back to Arthur’s study alone. Whatever secret Arthur was guarding, a secret so valuable that it had cost him his life and that of his wife, would have remained buried or, perhaps, have fallen into the wrong hands.

“I’m going to take all of this stuff to the Library of Congress tomorrow,” Christian said, as if he could hear my silent thanks and wanted to assure me that he would remain by my side, my comrade in arms.

“Do you have a card? You need a card to get in,” I said.

“I grabbed one the last time I visited. Thought it might come in handy sometime. Though I’m not sure I quite had this in mind.” We both laughed. “Obviously, you should go to work tomorrow.”

Work. I hadn’t even thought about it. But he was right. I couldn’t simply stop going. Anyway, whoever was in Arthur’s house last night probably knew he worked for the Secret Service. If I stopped turning up at work, I might draw unwanted attention to myself. This all assumed that whoever was tracking Arthur didn’t know who I was yet.

The very thought that someone capable of killing might be on my trail now was chilling and I tried to push it out of my mind. I reached into my purse and pulled out the fifty dollar bill. I had no doubts about my initial conclusion that it was authentic, but I decided peeking at it again would calm my turbulent mind. Looking at currency for me was instinctive, a kind of mental exercise that didn’t require conscious thought. I didn’t see a fifty dollar bill, I saw a particular collection of elements that were more or less accurately grafted onto a particular kind of paper in a particular way. I imagine this must be how gearheads approach cars. They don’t just see a specific make or model, they see the engine, the frame, the chassis, the detailing. They can break down and analyze the composites as fast as most of us recognize the whole.

Ignoring my earlier caution, I slipped the bill out of its sheath. I held it close to my face and gently rubbed the note in between my finger tips, gleaning what little insight I could into its composition. Even now, under the far more accurate scrutiny of my paper hands, the paper seemed to have the appropriate weight and texture. No matter how skilled the counterfeiter, the paper is among the most difficult elements to master. Its texture is neither smooth nor rough, but creates the sensation of grazing one’s fingers over a microscopic, but topographically diverse landscape, full of hills and valleys.

Jutting out of these rolling hills, the ink itself forms a series of mountain ranges spanning the paper. Where the paper is something slightly less than smooth, the lines of ink are sharp and seem to reach up out of the paper into the recesses of one’s fingertips. This effect results from a specific printing process called intaglio, in which the desired image or design is etched into a printing plate. The printer covers the plate in ink, so that it flows down into the grooves forming the design, and then cleans the excess ink from the plate, leaving only that ink that has filled the pattern to be printed. Paper is then brought under the plate at a tremendous pressure of approximately twenty tons. This squeezes the paper into the carved printing plate. Wherever the design has not been printed on the paper, it feels ever so subtly raised on one side and just as lightly depressed on the other.

I must have been frowning to myself, because Christian spoke up. “What is it?” he asked eagerly, perhaps curious to know if I saw something new, something I had missed yesterday in the lab.

“Nothing,” replied absently, still gazing at the bill, before explaining, “The Bureau of Printing and Engraving, which prints U.S. currency, uses two printing process in these new ‘Big Head’ bills: first, a more traditional kind, called offset printing, is used for this reddish sort of background.” I showed him the bill as he leaned over the table separating us. “Offset printing means that the ink is first transferred from the printing plate to a rubber sheet which is then used to impress the image into the paper. It’s a useful technique, especially because it is a fairly easy and reliable way to alter the background of the money before printing all of the other images. But it’s also much easier to copy. A large number of counterfeits we receive use offset printing.”

“So this might be a fake?” he asked, eyes brightening.

“Not so fast,” I said. “The designs on this bill were printed using the intaglio process.” I went on to explain the process and let Christian touch the bill to show him the unique texture intaglio printing produces. “Forgetting for a moment the color-changing ink, which raises an entirely different set of issues,” I continued, “It might be possible to forge a note of this quality, but only if one could procure an intaglio press.”

“Is that hard?” he asked.

“Yes, extremely,” I responded and watched the excited spark fade from his face. “Not only are intaglio printers unbelievably expensive, it is also quiet difficult to purchase them. Only governments can buy them for making money, officially anyway.”

“So it would be impossible?”

“Well, I’ve seen intaglio notes before, but only a few. Did you ever hear about the ‘supernotes’ that circulated during the nineties?” He shook his head. “They were made with an intaglio press. In fact, they were the reason the Bureau of Printing and Engraving decided to launch the new ‘Big Head’ notes. Some people accused Iran of producing the supernotes, although the Secret Service has never agreed with this assessment, mostly from lack of evidence. In any case, intaglio notes are extremely rare and I’ve never seen a ‘Big Head’ intaglio note, especially of this quality.”

Christian slumped back into his seat, heaved a sigh, and went back to the Warnerke letters in order to hide the sullen expression on his face. He so desperately wanted the fifty dollar bill Arthur Mantes had left for us to be a counterfeit. Some theory was kicking around his head that he hadn’t told me, but I knew that it required the fifty dollar bill to be phony. Though he was visibly disappointed, I knew he would not give up the chase. He would find a way to make his theory work or he would persevere until he unearthed the solution to our riddle.

What I didn’t tell him then, in part because I cannot recall why I thought this, was that I began to suspect – no, was certain -- that the fifty dollar bill was, in fact, a counterfeit. I had no reason, no evidence to substantiate this sudden belief. But I could not shake from my head Arthur’s advice: “We, all of us, handle money everyday. It is something we know almost as well as ourselves. The key is not to learn what real money looks like, but to cull the innumerable experiences of money from the profound depths of our memory.” Pouring over the fifty dollar bill in an attempt to coax out its secrets only revealed more evidence that it was authentic. Yet I could not silence a relentless voice echoing within me: I know money, it said. And this is not real.

Eleven

I delicately adjusted the microscope lenses, bringing President Grant’s whiskers into focus. It was Monday afternoon and only now did I have the chance to take a closer look at the fifty dollar bill. Christian had worked late into the night sifting through the letters, occasionally muttering a bemused “hmmm” or jotting something down in a small notebook. I would have welcomed a similar diversion and restively spent the evening flipping through television channels or reading a magazine. Nothing captured my attention for long and my thoughts constantly hovered back to our tussle the previous night in Arthur’s office. I scanned my brain over and over, but could not arouse any memory of what he might have looked like.

Meetings occupied most of the morning, but I could barely listen to the dull series of briefings, instead I heard only the banknote beckoning from inside my purse. Fortunately, a light workload allowed me to delegate most of my responsibilities -- a newfound advantage to a position of management, I noted contently – and I scurried down to the lab in the early afternoon to finally have a look at the fifty dollar bill.

I squinted through the ocular lenses as the bill slowly glided across the stage, the dark, engraved lines flowing beneath my eyes like currents and eddying into the various designs adorning the bill: President Grant’s hardened eyes, his salt and paper beard, the rumpled bowtie slung around his neck. Every detail was quite impeccably done and, as I explained to Arthur on the train the day before, the bill featured the telltale raised lines resulting from intaglio printing. Under the microscope, the effect was even more pronounced and the ink seemed to thrust up out of the paper, as I imagine the patterns ice skates cut into the ice must appear to fish.

Nothing about this bill said counterfeit. With the aid of the microscope, I saw only the flawless work of the master engravers who meticulously cut each of the bill’s images into steel plates. It was an art form really, I thought. This was the first time since training that I had carefully examined a genuine United States banknote and I realized how easy the artists and printers who painstakingly crafted United States currency made my job. Who could counterfeit such perfection? The thin lines of age and worry that had been indelibly etched by the sights and smells of brutal warfare, shone from President Grant’s weathered face like service medals. On the opposite side, even the inanimate Capitol building came to life, the minute flags atop either wing seemingly fluttering in the summer breeze. The engravers’ steel burin had not so much cut an image into the plate as it had breathed life into the memories of American history.

I flipped the light off the microscope and pulled away, pinching the bridge of my nose. “What are you trying to tell me?” I sighed aloud, my consternation echoing into the empty lab. I deposited the fifty dollar bill back into the envelope and ascended the elevators back up to my office. Sitting and my desk and lightly tapping a pen against the wood surface, I sat in a confusion soaked silence and felt trapped between my profession and my intuition. The bill was too flawless to be a counterfeit. No artist could recreate such raw precision. A brilliant copy is still a copy, always eager to betray its falsity through some signal, not matter how subtle. Yet what message could Arthur hope to send through a regular, government issue, completely genuine fifty dollar bill?

A feeling welled up in my stomach, one I could recall experiencing only once before. Early in my second year at the Forensic Services Division, Arthur called me into his office, visibly disappointed.

“Did you complete the report on F-10567?” he asked.

“Yes, I filed it earlier today,” I replied, sensing his irritation. “Is there something wrong?”

“Did you do an ink analysis?” he pressed further.

“No, I asked Peter to do it,” I answered, referring to one of my coworkers.

“And you didn’t check the result?”

“No,” I said, casting my eyes downward, now understanding that something had gone wrong with the result.

“I talked to Peter an hour ago and he took the wrong sample down to the spectrometer,” Arthur explained. “The conclusions of this report are correct, but they describe the wrong bill, not F-10567. I ran the correct ink sample myself, and this bill isn’t even in the F family.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, “It won’t happen again.”

“I hope not,” he said. “You’re very good at what you do, Ionia, but care is not a talent. It is a practice and you must exercise it constantly or it will atrophy.”

I didn’t respond, but stared blankly at the floor. Arthur’s approval nourished a part of me that my parents had neglected, but because of this affection, the thought of disappointing him stung even more. Most people would simply move on from such chastisements, understanding that accidents happen. I could not shake the feeling I had left Arthur down.

“Oh quit looking at the floor,” he mock reproached, a normal tone returning to his voice. “I know you didn’t intend such carelessness and I’m not angry. You’re the best we have and you’re usually meticulous. That’s probably why this oversight surprised me.” He smiled before continuing, “And I know I won’t always be around to catch you. That’s all.”

My embarrassment ebbing away, I met his eyes again.

“How did you know it was a mistake?” I asked.

“I looked at the rest of the assessment and something nagged at me,” he said. “I can’t tell you what really. And then I looked at the bill and was sure something was wrong. On a hunch, I decided to talk to Peter. The rest you know.”

“On a hunch?” I asked in disbelief.

“You remember what I told you. Science is fallible, especially when the ink sample test is wrong,” he chuckled. “I’m not just an old man blowing smoke. You’ve got to trust your senses, your instincts. They will get you far in this business. I can promise you that.”

But here, in this moment, my intuition wasn’t getting me anywhere. I wanted to trust whatever was telling me this bill was a counterfeit, but I worried I was just chasing a ghost. Paper money isn’t supernatural, visiting our world from a realm beyond the hold of science. Three years of training told me that this bill should have already disclosed its secrets to me. I would know if it were a fake. And yet the same three years of tutelage under Arthur told me I already knew it was a fake. If only Arthur were here to leave just a few more clues, to tell me with a glance or a look that I was on the right track, I thought ruefully, the hot salt of tears welling up in my eyes. If Arthur were still here, there wouldn’t even be a mystery to solve.

My cell phone stirred, dragging me out of my reverie. I wiped my eyes before answering. It was Christian. He had been spending the day at the nearby Library of Congress in order to continue piecing together the letters.

“Oh my God, oh my God, Ionia,” he was babbling. “He knows who we are! Oh man, what are we going to do?”

“Wait, what? Who knows who we are? Just calm down,” I said, my own pulse quickening at his frantic voice.

“The guy from the office!” he exclaimed. “The other night. That guy, you—” Realizing he had been yelling, he lowered his voice. “The guy you knocked over in Arthur’s office. I just saw him!”

“What?” I said, my mind racing. “Where? How do you know?”

“I was sitting in at a desk here in the stacks and went to the bathroom. When I came back, there was this guy thumbing through the letters.”

This still wasn’t making sense. “How did you know it was him?” I asked.

“He had a bandage on the side of his head.”

Excuses and explanations flooded my mind. Surely, anyone could have a bandage on the side of his head. Perhaps he was a clumsy librarian who had taken a book to the head while reshelving one day. Maybe some antiquarian or archivist interested in old letters noticed the yellowed paper on Christian’s desk and walked over to take a peek, not thinking to explain the nasty fall down the stairs he had taken the week before. How I wished these alternate explanations were true, knowing full well they were not. Christian must have been right.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Nothing, he saw me coming and left. If I hadn’t just gone to the bathroom, I probably would have, you know—” he didn’t finish the thought. “Anyway,” he continued. “I just gathered up all the stuff and ran out into the lobby, where there are more people.”

“Did he take any of the letters?”

“No, I don’t think so.” I heard the sound of paper shuffling through the phone. “No, he didn’t. I have everything here.”

“Ok,” I said, my voice coated in at least temporary relief. “Where are you now?”

“Still in the library. I’m gonna go home. Take a taxi or something. Ionia—” He paused and then said, “That could be the guy that killed Arthur and his wife and he knows who I am.”

I heard the quivering fear in Christian’s voice and I felt just as terrified. The sense of losing my implicit sense of safety, that previously subconscious belief that I could come to no harm, was like the ground suddenly turning to ice. I could still move and walk, even run, but each slippery step warned I might lose my footing at any moment. Still, I tried to stay calm. I had to.

“Look Christian,” I said, forcing an easy tone. “It’s going to be ok. He found you at the library and knows what you look like, but he doesn’t know who you are. Just take a cab home and wait for me there.” I checked the clock. It was already after four. “I’ll leave right now,” I continued. “I’ll meet you there, ok?”

“Yeah, sure. I can do that,” he seemed to be telling himself.

“Oh, one more thing,” I said hurriedly before he hung up. “What did he look like?”

“What did he look like?” he tried to recollect. “I dunno. I guess he looked like you. You know, Korean.”

He absently mumbled a goodbye and ended the connection. The man in Arthur’s office -- the man possibly pursuing us -- was Korean? It probably didn’t mean anything. It could have been purely coincidental. After all, my involvement in this whole affair had nothing to do with the fact that I was Korean. My parents could have come from anywhere and I still might have wound up at the Secret Service and in this mess. Yet Christian’s report still gave me pause and I could not fight the feeling that this puzzle kept adding layers and pieces faster than we could keep pace. Soon, however, the urgency of the present began ringing in my head, reminding me that our pursuer – whoever he was – was more than a new riddle. Much more. With two people already dead, this man was a threat. I needed to get home and meet Christian.

I packed up my things and rushed outside into the cool fall air. I walked with determination, quickening my pace to a near jog. As I approached Thomas Circle on Massachusetts Avenue, I grew concerned about being out alone in the open, even though it was still daytime. Convincing myself it would ensure that I arrived before Christian to the apartment, I hailed a cab and retreated into its safe interior. It was late in the autumn and even by the time we reached my nearby apartment, the light was beginning to fade.

I paid the cab driver and walked toward the steps leading up to my building. The main flight of stairs spiraled inside the tall, red brick row house, but outside a small set of steps led to the front door. On either side of the steps, a retaining wall held back small clumps of bushes and soon to be leafless trees. As I ascended the first step, my attention was diverted to my purse as I fumbled about for my keys and I did not notice a dark figure step out from behind the retaining wall. Without warning, a hand light clasped my arm near the elbow. I started, instinctively pulling away.

“Don’t be scared, Ionia,” said a voice.

Trembling, I looked at the man standing before me. He was not tall, but not short either, and had short dark hair. I could tell he was young, not much older than I, if that. A large overcoat hung about his shoulders untied and revealed a dark turtle neck sweater and dark slacks. His looks were distinctly Korean. Stretched across his right temple was a white bandage.

Twelve

The man let go of my arm and, gaping at the bandage, I realized suddenly that this was the man whom Christian had spotted at the library this afternoon, the man I struck in Arthur’s office and, I thought grimly, the man who may have killed Arthur and Helen.

“How do you know my name?” was all I could think to ask.

He aimed a glance at the door. “It’s written on the buzzer to your apartment,” he replied. “I’ll admit that I followed you here two nights ago after you, well, let me have it.” He pointed to the bandage on his forehead and, much to my surprise, he smiled.

“I’m not going to hurt you Ionia,” he said soothingly, sensing my unease. By now he had released my arm and stood a couple feet away. Despite the fear induced adrenaline surging through my body, I noticed a Korean accent peeking through his words.

“What do you want with me?” I asked. “Why were you following Christian?”

“Christian?” he asked, raising his eyebrows in puzzlement. “Oh, your friend at the library. I need your help Ionia. I need whatever Arthur Mantes gave you.”

I decided to feign ignorance. “What are you talking about?”

“I know Arthur left something for you, Ionia,” he sighed. “I need it. It’s the only way I – we – can bring his killers to justice. You want that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, conjuring a delivery as earnest as my nerves would allow. “Arthur died of a heart attack.”

He sighed and his face took on a resigned expression along with a hint of remorse, I remarked fearfully, as if he was going to regret what he would have to do next. He reached into his pocket and I tensed myself to run, jump, anything to get away. Just then the blaring of a loud siren overpowered my frantic escape plans and I saw a police car pull up to the sidewalk. Christian was running across the street to meet it. Everything blurred, washed out by the flashing police lights. When I looked back, the mysterious bandaged Korean was gone.

“Are you ok?” I heard Christian’s voice call out from behind me.

“Yeah, I—” I trailed off looking at the blank space where the man had been standing. Where had he gone?

“You alright, ma’am?” came an unfamiliar voice. I turned to see a police officer giving me a concerned look from beneath the bill of his cap. “Your friend here called us. Told us some man grabbed you at the entrance to your building.”

“I got here just as he jumped out,” Christian chimed in. “I decided to call the police.” My adrenaline renewed and I lowered my hand to hide the paper from the cop’s view. Had Christian told the police that it was the same man who had stalked him the library? Had he told them about the envelope, the banknote, about everything?

“Your friend told us the man looked unfamiliar and that’s why he was concerned,” the officer said. My breathing slowed in relief and I gave Christian a subtle look of thanks.

“No, uh, yeah,” I stuttered. “I had never seen the guy before. He was just looking for bus fare or something. I’m ok, really.”

“Just a panhandler?” he asked skeptically.

“Yeah.”

“Ok, ma’am. Well, you have a nice evening then.” He walked back toward his car before turning around again. “And ma’am. If you see this guy again or he grabs you, don’t be afraid to let us know, ok?”

“Yes officer, thank you,” I tried to say as nonchalantly as possible.

We stood in silence in the street as the flashing lights atop the police car dimmed to a stop and the cruiser lurched off the curb and into the flow of traffic. Unable to support the anxiety generated by the gaggle of fears and questions nagging at me, I tiredly slumped my shoulders and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Let’s get inside,” said Christian, looking around nervously as though our pursuer might still be skulking in the shadows.

“So, are you ok?” Christian asked as soon as we entered the apartment and the door clicked shut.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m fine. You?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” he said. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t run over. I called only a few moments before that cop arrived. He was patrolling a block over or something. As soon as the lady on 911 let me go, I started running across the street.”

“It’s ok,” I said.

“I just don’t want you to think I would have, you know, abandoned you to that guy.”

“It’s ok, Christian,” I insisted. “I don’t think you’re a coward.” I smiled, chuckling a little to lighten the mood, perhaps more for my benefit than his. But my thoughts again turned serious.

“So you didn’t tell the police anything?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I pretended I had never seen the guy when I called 911.”

Christian may have worried that he let me down when he called 911, but now I knew that he would support my decisions, even if he thought I was wrong. Just two days ago, when we Helen Mantes was killed, Christian wanted to go to the police and I said no, that I wouldn’t betray Arthur’s instructions to keep the envelope and the fifty dollar bill secret. Now, the day we became aware of the imminent danger to ourselves, he stood by my decision, thought it may have risked both of our lives. He was a true friend, I though gratefully, and whispered a thank you.

“Anyway, this is our case to crack,” he said with a forced boldness, as if he could read my thoughts and to remain stalwart against his own persistent doubts. His curiosity once again taking over, he asked, “So what did the guy say to you?”

“He asked for the fifty dollar bill,” I responded before correcting, “No, he asked for whatever Arthur had given me. Told me he needed it. He said it was the only way to bring Arthur’s killer – no, killers – to justice.”

“That’s it?” Christian asked, he eyes widening, begging me to go on.

“That’s all.”

“Well, what did you say?” he asked.

“I said that Arthur didn’t give me anything and that he had died of a heart attack.”

“Do you think he believed you?” Christian asked hopefully.

“No,” I said dejectedly.

We sat quietly in my living room, each considering the day’s events and trying to sort out what to do next. Christian spoke first.

“So the fifty dollar bill does mean something,” he stated. “I mean, that guy was after whatever Arthur gave you, which is the fifty dollar bill.”

“Right,” I agreed. “But I took a look at it today under the microscope and it looks like a regular fifty dollar bill. I can’t figure out why it’s so important.” Or, I left unsaid, why it’s worth killing for.

Christian frowned to himself, as if willing a solution from his mind.

“I will run some more tests tomorrow,” I promised. I hesitated to reveal my intuition that the bill was a counterfeit, in part because I had no proof other than a gut feeling. Now that the strange man had demanded the bill of me, I felt I could state my desire to continue examining the bill without telling Christian any more of my suspicions. I’m not sure why I didn’t want him to know what I was thinking. We had little to go on already and surely nothing to lose. Maybe it was my professional pride, my unwillingness to risk being wrong about anything concerning counterfeit money. Or perhaps I was worried my own imagination was running wild, that I was confusing intuition for a desire that the bill be a counterfeit and somehow present us with any easy solution. Either way, I said nothing.

“Have you made any progress on those letters?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Some,” he said. He rifled through his carryall and produced a notebook along with the stack of letters. Unconsciously, he brought his hand to his head and started tousling his hair as he started to explain what he had found.

“Let’s see,” he said, thumbing through the notebook. “So there was, strictly speaking, only one Leon Warnerke. According to official accounts, he was born in 1837 in Russia and grew up in St. Petersburg. He stayed in Russia, working as a civil engineer, before moving to London in 1870 and there opening a photochemical laboratory. He received awards for a few different innovations in photography. He founded a business and photographic journal back in St. Petersburg in 1880, although he did not live there. In 1898, he received a sizable sum of rubles for inventing some device – I haven’t found out what, exactly – and it was the attempted use of these rubles, some of which were counterfeit, that landed him on the wrong side of Johnny law in 1898. After his sentence was suspended he isolated himself in Geneva and died a pauper on October 7, 1900.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s how the story is supposed to go, but these letters,” he started pulled them from the carryall, “They don’t all match that and I’m trying to figure out why.” He divided the letters into several piles in front of me. Pointing to them in succession, he said, “These letters are written in Russian, these are written in Polish, these English, and these French.” The largest two stacks were letters in Polish and English, whereas only a few letters populated the Russian and French ones.

“A well educated 19th century Russian could have known all these languages,” I suggested.

“He might have,” Christian agreed. “But it gets stranger.” He looked back to his notebook. “I found old London census data from 1881 and 1891, where he lists his place of birth as Austria, or the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. But not one of these letters is written in anything resembling German.”

He turned to another page in his notebook and resumed before I could attempt to explain away the apparent inconsistency.

“These letters are written by all kinds of different people, and not all are between Leon Warnerke and his associates. The main names I found were: Wladyslaw Malachowski, Josef Horodice, Franz Schulz, and Franz Wolf. There are some other names here or there, but all letters are either written by or addressed to those four names, plus Warnerke.” He then reached into his carryall and found still another small stack of paper, which he explained were with the letters but were not correspondence.

“This name Wladyslaw Malachowski is definitely important,” he said, holding the new set of papers. “He wrote a lot of the letters, almost as many as Leon Warnerke, but all of these documents are Malachowski family records. One of them is a will, in fact, for a man named Julian Simon Malachowski, father of Wladyslaw Malachowski. He died on April 26, 1865, and left large land holdings in Poland to his son, Wladyslaw. I don’t have all of this translated yet, but I’m doing my best.”

“How did you translate this?” I asked, suddenly remembering that Christian didn’t speak half of these languages.

“Well, I have the French and English covered,” he replied. “And then I got lucky. One of the reference librarians was an old Polish guy who knew Russian. He enjoyed the chance to help work through the worn handwriting and antiquated, idiomatic Russian.”

“Anything else?” I asked, overwhelmed by the seeming incoherence of it all.

“Just one last thing,” he said. “There are two newspaper clippings among the letters. The first is from 1872 and details the arrest of a woman named Josephine Dobrovolska. The Russian authorities detained her at the border of Poland and Russia with 20,000 fake rubles. The other article is from a French newspaper dated 1897, the year before Leon Warnerke was arrested in Paris, and theorizes at length about a Europe wide anarchist plot to bring down the economies of Europe through counterfeit currency. Une nouvelle maneouvre anarchiste, the paper called it.”

I stared at him blankly.

“‘What does it all mean?’ you’re wondering,” he said softly and began gently repacking the papers before sliding them back into his carryall.

“Well?” I asked, expectantly.

“I don’t know,” he exhaled. “I don’t know yet. There’s something here. I’m sure of it -- absolutely sure of it -- but I don’t know what. Maybe I can finish these translations tomorrow and make some headway.”

Once Christian had everything back in the satchel, he placed it to the side of the couch and stood up. He said, “I’m going to go take a shower, if that’s ok.”

“Sure,” I replied as he started down the hallway toward the bathroom. Then he stopped.

“You know,” he began, moving back to the couch, “There are a few things I can’t figure out yet.” He sat down and counted out with his fingers. “First, how did that guy know Arthur had left you something? Did he know who you were?”

“Yes,” I said. “Wait, no. When I asked how he knew who I was, he said he looked at the label on the buzzer. Although, he could have been lying.”

“Maybe,” Christian considered, “But we still need to find out how he knew Arthur had left you something. Second,” he continued, “Let’s say the bill is a counterfeit or something is wrong with it.”

“Christian,” I interrupted, “I—”

“I know you’ve examined it,” he cut me off, “And I know you’re very good at what you do. Maybe it’s not a counterfeit, maybe it’s, it’s—” he waved his hands searching futilely for some concept to act as a temporary placeholder, “Maybe there’s just something wrong with it or whatever. I don’t know. My point is, why is Arthur involved with this guy at all, especially when it comes to money, counterfeit or not?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.

“Arthur’s job, for longer than you and I have been alive, was to investigate crimes concerning currency. Whatever Arthur got himself mixed up in, it also had to do with money. But why would he leave you with a fifty dollar bill that he didn’t even show to the Secret Service? He even forbade you from showing it to them or anyone. Why wouldn’t he trust the agency to which he gave his life?”

As though he had said all that he wanted, Christian once again stood and made his way back to the bathroom, escaping the oppressive atmosphere of the living room, the air now thick with the uncertainty he questions raised. I heard him turn on the water and I tried to imagine the steam from the warm shower washing away my growing doubt and fear. Christian was right. What had Arthur been mixed up in? And why did he pull me along with him?

Thirteen

The next morning Christian returned to the library, despite yesterday’s unexpected visitor. I went to work and planned to indulge my inexplicable suspicions about the fifty dollar bill by performing a detailed ink analysis. I had decided the night before that the only way I could assuage my intuition that the bill was counterfeit, a feeling that had been constantly poking at me, would be to simply rule out such a possibility by submitting it to as many tests as possible. Arthur may have been right that intuition was an indispensable part of discerning true from false, but science had the final word.

After the usual glut of morning meetings, tolerable only because they confirmed that we still had no new projects, I returned to my office briefly to eat some lunch before heading downstairs to the lab in order to test a sample of ink from the fifty dollar bill. As I bit into a turkey sandwich that I had purchased on my way to work, a knock echoed off my half opened door.

“Come in,” I said as I swiveled my chair around to face an unfamiliar figure stepping through the doorway. He was tall and lean. He wore a deep blue suit and I could perceive the fine quality from the cut of the fabric even across the room, although something about the suit, along with the white shirt and conservative tie, told me that he had no desire to stand out. He was older, I guessed forty, with short, graying hair and a few lines of age spread across his forehead. His jaw seemed cut from a block of ice, as if he had just stepped from the reels of a gritty, spaghetti Western.

“Am I interrupting anything?” he asked in a soft, but steely voice.

“No, no,” I said, realizing with chagrin that a piece of mayonnaise hung on the side of my lip. I scrambled for a napkin as I asked, “What can I help you with?”

“My name is William Wood,” he said extending his hand. I leaned up from my chair and took it, not receiving the firm handshake I might have expected, but a light grasp. With the other hand he reached into his pocket and handed me a badge and identification card. He was a Special Agent.

“How can I help you Agent Wood?” I asked.

“I usually teach out at the academy,” he replied, referring to the Secret Service Training Academy in Beltsville, Maryland, just outside the District of Columbia on the way to Baltimore. “But I used to do some work in Internal Affairs.” Rather than speak directly to me, he walked over to the bookshelf to one side of my desk and inclined his head as if he were reading the titles of the books lining the shelves. They were not personal—just some field guides and annual reports. Still, I felt a bit violated.

“The Academy? What brought you all the way down here?” I said, trying probably unsuccessfully to hide mild indignation.

“Well, someone in Internal Affairs had a few questions to ask you, pretty routine stuff, but there’s a bunch of work going on, so they called me in.”

“Have a seat,” I said, motioning to the chair behind him. I asked, “What kind of questions?”

“About Arthur Mantes,” he replied as my throat tightened. “We have to complete a report whenever an active employee dies, even from natural causes. Like I said, pretty routine stuff.”

“Shoot away,” I said, trying to appear as relaxed as possible.

“Ok,” he said and flipped open a small notepad he had been carrying, the kind reporters use on television. “Oh, do you have a pen I could borrow? Thanks,” he said with a smile as I extended him a ballpoint pen that had been lying on my desk.

“Let’s see,” he continued, tapping the pen on the notepad and staring at it as though reading from previous notes. “You were close to Arthur Mantes, is that correct?”

“He was my supervisor when I arrived and conducted my training,” I replied guardedly.

“That all?” Wood raised his eyebrows.

“Well,” I qualified, “We certainly got on well. I believe he thought highly of my abilities. We had a good working rapport, I suppose.”

“Did you ever see him outside of work?”

“I’m not sure why this is important,” I said, although Agent Wood’s look suggested he didn’t care what I thought. “Yes. When I was promoted to group leader, he invited me to dinner at his house.”

“Group leader at, how old were you, twenty-four? He must really have thought more than highly of you.”

“I said, he was impressed with my abilities.”

“Indeed, indeed,” he said, tapping his notepad again with his pen and then scribbling a few notes down. “And did Mr. Mantes show any signs of physical distress or discomfort in advance of his death?”

“No,” I said. “The heart attack was a surprise to everyone.”

“Right,” he said, again writing something down. “Ok, Ms. Han, I think that about does it.” He got up to leave and then stopped.

“Oh, one more question, I’m sorry,” he smiled.

“Yes?” I said as impatiently as I probably looked.

“Did Arthur Mantes give you anything before or after he died?”

My heart thudded to a stop. I wondered if he knew about the envelope, how he could have possibly known.

“What do you mean?” I stammered, “I mean, how could he give me something after he died?” I sounded as if I were gulping for air.

“Yes, right,” he said, bemused. “I suppose I meant, did he leave you anything?”

“No, nothing at all,” I blurted out unconvincingly.

“Right then,” he said, making a final notation is his pad. “I’ll be leaving. Do let us know if you forgot anything. They like these reports to be complete.” As he turned to leave, I could have sworn that he flashed me a menacing sneer. I tried to tell myself dismissively that I was just flustered and reading too much out of it. It was just a look. That’s all. He may have even smiled for all I really knew.

“Take care, Agent—” I left the sentence dangling in midair, unable to remember his name.

“Wood,” he smiled, “Special Agent William Wood.” He walked out the door into the hallway.

I took deep breaths, trying to calm myself. Nothing about that man added up. He knew too much. The name, the bizarre story about being an instructor called in for the day, that sickly sweet smile he kept flashing. It just wasn’t right. I picked up the phone and called the Secret Service internal operator.

“Hi, could you please connect me to Special Agent William Wood?” I asked.

“Just a moment, ma’am,” came the anonymous voice on the other end. “I’m sorry, there is no Special Agent William Wood.”

“Ok, can you put me through to Beltsville then, please?”

“Just a moment.”

I heard a few clicks and then the phone started ringing.

“Secret Service Academy, how may I direct your call?” The receptionist would know that I was calling from an internal number.

“Yes, I’d like to speak with an instructor. The name is William Wood.”

“I’m afraid there’s no one here by that name. Are you sure it’s right?”

“No, I’m not. Must have gotten bad information. Could you send me back to the operator?”

“Sure, just one sec.” I waited for the operator to answer.

“Yes, could you send me to Internal Affairs? Thanks,” I said. When the receptionist answered, I tried once more, knowing what answer I would get.

“Yes, I’m looking for Special Agent William Wood,” I said.

“I’m sorry, there is no Special Agent Wood in this office. Would you like me to check the general directory for you or send you back to the operator?”

“No, that’s fine, thank you” I said. I was about to hang up the phone in frustration when an idea stuck me. “Wait, just one moment, there is one other thing.” I shuffled paper across my desk looking for the office phone book which was updated each month. I flipped through the pages until I found what I was looking for. “Could you please connect me to John Ashbury? I believe he’s in your office.” I picked the name of the first intern I could find who was working in Internal Affairs. Students from area universities interested in federal law enforcement could join up for a semester or two, with obvious security restrictions on their activities and placements.

“Hi, this is John,” said a timid voice. I hoped my plan would work.

“This is Special Agent Smith,” I said gruffly. “I need some information and I need it now. Look up an inquiry on Arthur Mantes.”

“Sure, just a second, sir, uh, ma’am, I mean, yeah, ma’am.” That was the reaction I was praying for. I needed someone who wouldn’t ask questions about who I was or what kind if authorization I had. I heard a keyboard clicking on the other end.

“Hurry up,” I ordered impatiently, reveling in my newfound role, “I don’t have all day here.”

“Sorry sir, er, ma’am,” he said apologetically. “Here, I have it. You’re looking for Arthur Mantes from Forensic Services?”

“That’s him.”

“It says this inquiry was closed a few days ago.”

“What are the conclusions?”

“Um, it says ‘Died of natural causes.’”

“Ok,” I said. “Keep up the good work.”

I put down the phone and frantically considered what to do next, wondering how long it would take this imposter to leave the building. I again picked up the phone and called Andrew, the middle aged man who worked at the front desk.

“Hi, Andrew, it’s Ionia,” I said hastily into the phone. “A man just left my office. Tall, blue suit, grey hair. Did he leave yet?”

“Yeah, yeah I remember him,” said Andrew. “Serious looking fellow.”

“That’s the one,” I said.

“I think he just left.”

“You’re sure?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure. You wouldn’t miss a guy like that.”

I put down the receiver and sank back into my chair, the energy that had propelled my sudden burst of detective work dissipating into the stale air of my office. That name, William Wood, was tickling the edges of my memory. It carried the familiarity of a distant fact or story more than an acquaintance forgotten. On a hunch, I swiveled back to my computer and keyed “William Wood Secret Service” into an internet search engine. As soon as I saw the results listed on the screen, it all flooded back. Sometimes memories are only tenuously held back, as if by a dam to which the smallest adjustment will prompt a collapse and allow the raging currents to burst forth.

Two years ago, maybe, Arthur and I were sitting in his office at the end of a slow day. He was telling me stories about the origins of the Secret Service. Collecting historical paraphernalia related to counterfeit detection during the early days of the Secret Service -- and even before -- had been a favorite hobby of his. He often liked to orate to me from across his desk, sometimes detailing a mid-nineteenth century counterfeit detection manual he had found, other times relating epic adventures about how ill-equipped federal agents tracked down wily and dangerous counterfeiters along the frontiers of the growing nation. On this day, he leaned lazily back in his chair with his hands folded behind his head. The small tufts of white hair crowning his bald head glistened in the sunlight piercing the room from the small window behind him. As he spoke, he looked toward the sky as if he were merely describing to me a story taking place before his eyes, visible only to him.

“A year after the 1862 Legal Tender Act brought a national currency into being,” he said in a professorial tone, “the Congress allocated 25,000 dollars to combat illegal counterfeiting of the new greenback notes, already rampant. Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase resorted to democratic government’s most definitive maneuver: delegation.”

I sensed I was supposed to laugh at this obvious joke, but could only manage a chuckle. Disappointment was written plainly across Arthur’s face, but he was not deterred.

“Secretary Chase was no fool. Who better than Solicitor of the Treasury Edward Jordan, Schoolteacher, party traitor, political opportunist, and nepotist, to restore trust in the full faith and credit of the American government? True to his reputation, Jordan successfully squandered the initial funds -- and an additional 100,000 dollars -- on local law enforcement before inaugurating the Secret Service on July 5, 1865, by making an impetuous and brash ex-soldier and legal assistant its first chief.”

Now I was interested. “Who was that?” I urged him on.

“Ah, good question. He was a scurrilous man, one who had run amok in the army before joining federal anti-counterfeit efforts. In the days before the Service existed, he had held suspected forgers without bail or legal counsel as an operative in nascent anti-counterfeiting activities. Who better than a man who with no regard for authority, real or symbolic, to head an organization with no charter or statutory recognition?”

“What was his name?”

“William P. Wood.”

I berated myself for not remembering sooner, when I might have stopped this imposter, who had waltzed into my office with a cavalier stride. The ruse was so obvious it was as if he had almost been daring me to question his authenticity. I closed my eyes and sucked in slow, deep breaths to calm the anger rising in my chest. I needed to take stock of what had just happened. A man with forged Secret Service credentials had come to my office asking about the fifty dollar bill. I wasn’t completely careless. I had taken a good look at the man’s badge and identification card and they appeared completely legitimate. Instinctively, I had even checked the weight of the badge and it seemed right. He also must have had a valid building card, because he walked right up to my office. These items were too hard to obtain, impossible, I would have said until now. This man had to be well connected.

Like the Korean man last night, this intruder knew to come looking for me, knew that Arthur had given me something. And, like the Korean man, it was not clear he knew precisely what Arthur had given me, although ignorance may have been part of his ruse. But then, I thought to myself, I didn’t really know what Arthur had given either. Sure, I knew he had left me a fifty dollar bill, but that’s all it seemed to be: a regular United States banknote. What these men knew was the answer to the most important question, the one that continued to elude me: what is so important about this fifty dollar bill? What did Arthur have or know that at least two different people, both Korean and American wanted? The Korean man said that he needed the bill to bring Arthur’s killers to justice. Was that a lie? Or had the American killed Arthur? Were the two men, the Korean and the American, in league together? Too many questions. I pulled the fifty dollar bill out of my purse. “What are you?” I whispered, as though it were capable of answering.

Fourteen

I didn’t know how to begin tracing the two men. My cell phone lay in my hand with Christian’s number looking out at me from the display. I had contemplated calling him several times, not quite able to press the green call button. I was safe and there was nothing he could do now besides worry, I had decided. And anyway, the work he was doing at the library was more important than speculating about our pursuers. We needed to figure out whatever Arthur was trying to tell us through that note. Christian was convinced that the secret lay somewhere buried in the life of Leon Warnerke. It was as good a theory as any.

Pulling my white lab coat over my yellow blouse, I took the elevator down to the laboratory floor. If nothing else, I could proceed with the ink analysis I had been planning all morning. Maybe it would help clear my mind or at least distract it from the thought of two men whom I ruefully imagined were lurking outside in the shadows, waiting to pounce on me after work.

Just the sight of the sterile, fluorescently lit laboratory filled me with a sense of relief. The machines stationed about the room didn’t understand suspicion, fear, belief, or emotion; they could only produce numbers and charts and graphs. After days of feeling lost in a conspiracy novel, I was only too happy to be back in a room populated by the implements of science. This laboratory housed several devices used for ink analysis, all with abstruse names: visible-near infrared chemical imaging macroscope, xenon lamp, stereomicroscope, microspectrophotometer. A human eye might glance at an ink stained page and guess with moderate success between ink from a pen and that used for newspapers. These machines could help a forensic scientist distinguish between multiple ink sources on the same page, correctly differentiating between otherwise identical inks, even identifying them by brand or the length of time they had stained a page.

The machine I sough was the large L-shaped metallic apparatus in the corner, the mass spectrometer. At the microscopic level, different chemical substances vary by weight, depending on the composition of the molecules. Some elements are heavier than others and some chemicals are more complex combinations of atoms. For example, everyone knows that water is H20, signifying two hydrogen atoms bound to one oxygen atom. Water has a substantially different atomic mass than the propane gas used to fire camping grills, otherwise known as C3H8, which stands for three carbon atoms and eight hydrogen atoms.

The mass spectrometer identifies an unknown substance by calculating its atomic weight and comparing that weight to a list of possible chemicals. Once we know the chemical composition of an ink, we can crosscheck it against a gigantic ink database the Secret Service manages jointly with the Internal Revenue Service. Cataloguing over 8,500 inks dating back as far as 1920, it is the largest collection of its kind. Because the Secret Service keeps track of the physical characteristics of every banknote it retrieves, we can establish linkages between newly recovered banknotes and those from older or different investigations by matching the ink. More than anything, the ink was the fingerprint every counterfeiter left on his work.

I first scraped a small piece of ink from the bill and placed it onto a slide that I inserted into one end of the machine. The vacuum at the end of the machine reduced the pressure surrounding the ink sample, sublimating it into a gas. It then flowed down a long tube, the first branch of the machine’s L structure, while a beam of electrons bombarded it, converting the ink molecules into electrically charged ions. A series of slits filtered the ions into the crook of the L, called the mass analyzer, and they passed a magnet hugging the machine’s metal tubing. Because ink had been separated into charged ions, they would curve at different trajectories as they flowed along the magnet, the lighter ions banking sharply and the heavier ions taking a shallower turn. At the end of the other branch of the L, a detector finally measured how far the ions had traveled and then calculated the ratio of the ion’s mass to its charge. I just had to wait for the resulting graph of these mass-to-charge ratios, called a mass spectrum. The entire process takes under five minutes. The next step would be inputting the mass spectrum into the computer back in my office, which would then identify the ink by matching it to a list of mass spectra for inks we had already logged into the database.

There wasn’t really anything to watch in fact, although I waited for the machine to finish so I could clear the small area of the machine where I had placed the ink sample and collect the results. As I listed to the machine hum to life, I wondered what my own mass spectrum would look like. Bombarded by electrons, would my body separate into North Korean and American ions? And, if so, what would the composition look like, how much would each country claim? I had no memory of North Korea or Pyongsong, only my parents’ stories. Their desire to escape had defined me and my sense of my origins, as though my relationship to North Korea were one of perpetual flight. I felt that if I were to travel there and try to stand on level ground, it would flow beneath me, not allowing me to descend and grab hold of the earth.

And my American ions, the heavier ones, could I look at them in isolation and make sense of them? My American matter was so corrupted by my Korean appearance and background, I’m not sure it could exist as a separate entity, taken apart and analyzed like the ink. It had always been easier for me to make Korean friends, like it was somehow natural in my overwhelmingly white high school and, later, the similarly white college I attended. Christian was the exception that had proved the rule and even then he had seemed like an escape from what I felt had been my social fate to associate only with other Koreans and Korean-Americans. I simply could not avoid being subsumed by my Korean self. At best, I could only become a Korean-American, an indissoluble molecular compound.

The sound of the printer pulled me from my daydream and I glanced at the printout while I walked over to computer console next to the mass spectrometer. I would be able to download the requisite information onto a small disk so that my computer could digitally extract the data. The graph didn’t mean much to me, just a series of peaks, not unlike the lines produced by an echocardiogram. I was certainly capable of measuring various points on the line in order to determine the ink’s mass and, consequently, its molecular structure, but it was a time consuming process, one a computer could accomplish instantaneously.

I trekked back up to my office and inserted the disk into the computer. As it silently chugged through the data, my cell phone rang, producing a mild buzzing in my purse.

“Hello?” I answered without checking who was calling.

“Hey, it’s me,” said Christian. He voice was tense, worried.

Concern entered my voice immediately. “What’s going on?”

“You’re never gonna believe--,” he stammered into the phone, almost too quickly for me to comprehend. “Some guy— an agent – came into the library. He was asking all these questions, about you, Arthur—”

“An agent, who was—” I began to ask in bewilderment before it dawned on me. “Let me guess,” I continued, “You ran into Special Agent William Wood.”

After I explained my clairvoyance to a perplexed Christian, describing my own encounter with Agent Wood and my discovery that he was an imposter, Christian told me the whole story. As he recounted each detail, I could hear his voice return to a calm, level pitch as though just talking about his discussion with Agent Wood -- now a temporary nom de guerre even if it wasn’t his real name -- were cathartic and allowed Christian to assume the status of narrator rather than participant. Agent Wood had approached him in the library and asked if Christian knew me. Christian had no reason to doubt the man’s credentials and at first worried that something had happened to me. He told Agent Wood that he was in Washington visiting me and asked if I were all right. Agent Wood replied that I was and then asked Christian what he was doing in the Library of Congress. This struck him as an odd question, he told me, and he lied, telling Agent Wood that he was just doing some dissertation research. Agent Wood then inquired whether Christian knew Arthur Mantes.

“What did you say?” I asked, my blood surging more quickly, worried Christian may have given something away.

“I decided to answer honestly,” Christian said. “To see how he might react.”

“Honestly?” I choked.

“I told him that I didn’t know Arthur Mantes, but that I had attended the funeral with you. He greeted this with raised eyebrows and asked if Arthur had left you anything after the funeral.”

“And?” I said, sensitive to even the slightest pause in the conversation.

“And nothing. I said I had no idea.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, not exactly. I decided to challenge him. I told him I wanted to know what this was all about, why he came all the way to the library to talk to me.”

I found myself admiring Christian’s audacity. Secret Service Agents are hard people to stare down and, though an imposter, this man played the part impeccably. Even I had found him imposing, a commanding physical presence. Even his friendlier expressions gleamed with a quiet ferocity.

“And how did he respond?” I asked approvingly.

Christian sighed. “He growled something about ‘Secret Service business’ and wheeled away.” I could hear the disappointment in his voice, like a child who, challenged by the bully, resolves to meet him in pitched battle in the schoolyard only to find that it is the larger bully who fails to arrive out of fear. The relief of avoiding a fight is sullied by wasted courage. “Anyway,” he continued, “I knew something wasn’t right and that’s when I started generating all kinds of theories about who this guy might be. I got myself pretty worked up by the time I called you.”

“Well, you sound ok now,” I said. I could tell he was worried that I wouldn’t believe he had really stood up to Agent Wood, that instead I would surmise he had been scared senseless the whole time, just as he sounded when he called. I tried to comfort him by suggesting Agent Wood probably would have avoided relinquishing any worthwhile information.

“Yeah, I guess,” he agreed, the resignation still clinging to his voice. “At least I didn’t fall for his trick.”

“No,” I laughed, “You saw right through it. Hey,” I said, changing the subject, “I need to finish something up here and then do you want to meet for dinner before heading back to my place?” We agreed on sushi and I gave him directions to a place near my apartment.

“And remember to take a taxi,” I cautioned, sorry to break to the jovial mood.

I hung up the phone and rested my chin on my folded hands. I couldn’t help but dream about how nice it would be to just grab dinner and talk about nothing, rather than comparing stories about Special Agent William Wood or the bandaged Korean or whatever gangster we might run into next. The fifty dollar bill had attracted a such a motley band of pursuers that they seemed better suited for a Bond film than reality. What was real anymore? I asked myself. Just over a week ago, I was a twenty-five year old with a good job and a pleasantly boring life. Now I was holding on to what was beginning to seem like the prize of the century, at least for those who kept asking about it, a growing and mysterious list to be sure. Would the determination and zeal driving the Korean man or Agent Wood dissolve if they both knew that all I had in my possession was a fifty dollar bill and an enigmatic goodbye note? For a moment, it certainly felt like a tempting solution to my wearied sense of judgment.

With a start, I remembered that the ink analysis. I turned back to my computer where the result flashed on the screen in front of me. One match. A click of the mouse brought full report to the screen. When I saw it my heart sank. The fifty dollar bill wore the precise brand of color changing ink used on the “Big Head” fifty dollar bills. The industrial and security ink company the Bureau of Printing and Engraving had hired to produce the ink used a special formula that it did not sell to another nation or corporation. I did not know it until that moment, but a part of me had intensely clung to the intuition that the note had been counterfeit, blind to the many caveats or cautions I had repeated to myself the past two days, tempering the eventual disappointment I sensed would accompany conclusive proof that the banknote was genuine. This place inside me, perhaps the source of my intuitions, where they would return and feed whenever I tried to ignore or dispel them, collapsed or, rather, was crushed by the weight of a cold, unwelcome reality. My instincts had been wrong before and I didn’t know why it was so painful or unexpected this time. As a scientist, I knew intuitions, even wrong ones, were a starting point in pursuing the ultimate goal, namely, the truth. But this time the truth did not satisfy me. Perhaps I had been influenced by Christian’s hope that the bill were a counterfeit. Or perhaps, I wondered ominously, with two friends already dead, there was something larger at stake that just the truth.

I must have stared at the computer screen for at least fifteen minutes before a deep sigh brought me to my feet. I grimaced, full of the acute pains that attend disconsolation, in my stomach and head. I dragged myself to the door and hailed a cab. At dinner, I could barely taste the rolls of fish and rice I ordered. I did not ask Christian about his research that day or even mention Agent Wood. After seven years, Christian knew better than to ask what was bothering me and he spent most of the meal staring at his plate and making occasional small talk. I felt bad that I might have ruined his dinner, but I couldn’t shake the power of my conviction. That bill just was not right. Maybe I would run the ink test again, I said to myself, although I had trouble marshalling support from my forlorn spirits.

When we returned to my apartment, Christian unbuttoned his green and blue windowpane shirt, kicked off a worn pair of loafers and stretched out on the couch. He pulled a small notebook and a library book from his carryall and began working on something silently. I saw thankfully that he would let me weather out my frustration in peace, confident I could come to him if I needed anything. As a gesture of gratitude, perhaps, I decided not to hover like a storm cloud in the living room and I retreated to my bedroom and flipped through an old magazine. Before long and after only a few yawns of warning, I drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.

* * *

When one wakes up suddenly, after a nightmare or some loud noise, it’s hard to know precisely what brought such an abrupt end to slumber. It’s usually guesswork, later deduction based upon the plate shattered across the kitchen floor and the guilty cat standing on the counter or the tumbled pile of books one stack so precariously the night before. This time, I thought I heard a crash out in my living room, but I really only remember waking up with a start, still clothed and the magazine lying on my lap. As I raised my head from the pillow, I heard shouting that was soon drowned out by my racing pulse and thumping heart. I slid off my bed and crept to the door as quietly as possible, just barely pulling it open so I could hear.

“Where is the girl who lives here?” I heard someone demand. “Is she in her room?” A few moments of silence followed and then I heard a sharp clapping sound and a dull thud on the floor.

Fifteen

“We’ll do this all night,” the voice said again, almost gleefully. The thud had been Christian. Whoever was talking had hit him. I couldn’t let this continue. Without a thought, I rushed out the door and greeted not one intruder, but two. Their heads whipped towards me as soon as I entered the living room. One of them aimed a gun at me, arresting me in mid stride. Paralyzed, I tried to take it all in. Christian was lying on the floor with his hands tied together. One man stood over him, the other one, who was holding the gun, stood back a few feet. The man aiming a gun at me was wearing dark pants and a dark turtleneck sweater. The other man, standing over Christian, was dressed similarly, but wore a black car length coat. They were both unmistakably Korean.

“There she is,” the one standing over Christian said. He straightened himself and turned to me as though he didn’t consider Christian much of a threat. “This can all end quickly,” he said as he walked toward me. “Whatever Arthur Mantes gave to you. Just hand it over to us and we’ll leave. You’ll never see us again.” Without the door muffling the sound, I could hear his Korean accent clearly, although it was different and less familiar than that of the bandaged man. My gaze remained transfixed on the gun in the other man’s hand, his face expressionless, as if shooting me would do little to alter his day. I didn’t know what to do or say. I didn’t want to give up the fifty dollar bill, to fail.

Christian suddenly spoke up. “That’s all you wanted?” he said as though irritated, I remarked with shock. The two men looked back at him, although the gun did not veer away, but stayed pointed at my chest.

“I know what he gave her,” he said, pulling himself up as the two men warily watched on. “He gave an envelope.” I wanted to cry out and stop him, but what could I do? Could I ask Christian to risk any more than he already had, to risk his life even, just to protect the fifty dollar bill. What would that save, anyway? A theory that maybe it meant something, but nothing more. But I felt my shoulders slump. We had lost.

“What do you mean an envelope? What’s in it?” asked the one with the jacket, the one who had done all the talking so far. He had a hawkish nose and a smooth, oval shaped face that was contorted in anger or frustration.

“I dunno,” shrugged Christian. I started. He knew as well as I what was in that envelope. My own shoulders rose again as I wondered hopefully what Christian was up to.

“Show it to me,” the man commanded and Christian started moving towards me. Still motionless, my eyes followed him as he ambled carefully across the room and, as he passed me, I swore I caught the glint of a near smirk in his eyes. My God, these men have guns, I wailed to myself, this is no time to get cute.

“Where are you going?” the man barked.

“To my carryall,” answered Christian and I realized then he had no intention of giving up the fifty dollar bill, envelope or note. I turned ever so slightly when Christian arrived at his satchel and began reaching inside.

“Easy now,” warned the man.

“I’m a graduate student,” Christian replied wryly. “I don’t have a gun.” He reached into one of the front pockets and pulled out a small white envelope, not dissimilar from the actual envelope Arthur had left for me. He walked over and held it out to the man, who snatched it from him and tore it open.

“I saw Arthur’s wife give that to her after the funeral,” Christian said casually.

“It’s empty!” the man spat back.

“I told you that’s all—”

“Shut up,” the man interrupted. “We asked you nicely where your friend was earlier,” he motioned towards me, “and now you think we’ll believe this crap.” He waved the envelope vigorously before tossing it to the floor. He reached under his jacket and pulled a gun from somewhere behind his back.

“Enough of this,” he said, his tone now level and grave. He turned to me and smiled. “You know where it is. I’ll make it an easy choice,” he said as he aimed the gun at Christian’s head. The other man kept his gun trained on me, with that same emotionless stare. He had small eyes, like buttons sown deep into his full face, carrying no spark of anger or intention.

“Ok, I’ll give it to you,” I said meekly. My throat was so dry I had barely been able to whisper the words. I knew then that these were the men who had killed Arthur and Helen, these men who stood ready to execute my best friend just to get what they wanted. Before now, people like this had only existed for me in the abstract, as a capacity. The fifty dollar bill was desired by people “capable of killing,” it was something “worth killing for.” Now I was face to face with people about to commit murder. It was too much. I had to hand over the envelope to them and pray that they believed it really was all Arthur had given me. This fifty dollar bill had to save at least one life after all those that had already been sacrificed to it.

“It’s in the purse over there,” I pointed to the side of the couch where I had left it when we had arrived after dinner.

“I hope so,” the man said, “For both your sakes.” He stalked over to the couch and picked up the purse. The tension in the room continued to build palpably, knowing what this man was prepared to do if the envelope and fifty dollar bill did not satisfy him. Even his partner, a stoic compatriot until now, began to shift uneasily, those tiny eyes darting from me to Christian and back. Though he no longer had a gun pointed at his head, Christian stood frozen, shocked by the threat that had just been leveled at him and perhaps by his own failed bid to scam his way out of this mess. I saw then that it was, in fact, Christian and I who were generating the electric tension in the air. It was a tightly wound fear that we secreted like a cold sweat, because we saw that perhaps we were about to die. The secret that Arthur guarded, the one that led to his death and that he tried to pass along to me, did it penetrate his heart with this fear every day that he held it, because he knew it might one day strike him down? In a moment when I could have justifiably thought only of myself, I felt oddly and achingly sad for Arthur, for the burden he carried for so long and of which I had only this bitter and brief taste.

The man with the jacket thrust the purse into my face.

“Take it out,” he snarled and contorted his face still further. “Slowly, so I can see it.”

As I reached into the purse, the front door burst open and a figure barreled across the room into the button-eyed man, knocking the gun out of his hand. They wrestled on the ground, the button-eyed one lunging for his lost firearm and the new one, still a blur, yanking him back down to the ground before they exchanged blows again. The man in the jacket spun around and raised his gun to shoot the new intruder but hesitated, not wanting to kill his accomplice. They were too close to allow a clean shot. Christian and I remained locked into place for a few moments before looking at each other knowingly. We both charged the man with the jacket who was no longer paying attention to us. I saw his scrunched up face release into unsuspecting alarm as Christian and I sent him sprawling. His gun slid a few feet away and Christian dove for it, accidentally kicking it still farther across the room with a curse.

The man in the jacket, now disarmed, bared his teeth and walked towards me. Christian leapt to his feet and tried to get in between us, but the man simply tossed him aside. I found myself shuffling gamely backwards trying to escape. The man grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me against the nearest wall. I felt my head crack against the drywall and I slumped dizzily to the ground. I looked around and the surrounding room felt murky, as if I were peering through smoke or mist. I shook my head trying to clear my vision and saw the man standing over me, his eyes searing with hate. He no longer cared about his companion. His dark face showed only one intention. Me. He lowered his hands, again to my shoulders and pulled my limp body up against the wall. As he reached back his fist, a loud bang shook the room and everything froze.

My vision first centered on that fist, hanging in midair full of violent force, but soon my eyes freed themselves of its hold and started moving about the room. Christian lay sprawled under the table. The man stayed close to me, but had let go of my shoulder with his other hand and now craned his neck to see what had taken place. My eyes followed his neckline, past his profile to see the new intruder standing over the button-eyed man holding a gun. The dim buttons were now glazed over and a dark stain on his black sweater slow spread across his chest. I recognized the man with the gun as soon as I saw the bandage covering his forehead. He had saved our lives.

Everything unfroze. The man with the jacket saw his gun lying by the door and shot after it. The bandaged man dove after him but was too late. Gun in hand, the man with the jacket opened fire. I heard the bandaged man grunt as I dropped to the floor in self-defense. I hugged the floor of my apartment for a few moments before I realized that the shooting had stopped. Ever so slowly, I raised myself off the floor and gingerly surveyed the room. The door hung open. The man with the jacket was gone I guessed that he had shot aimlessly to cover his retreat. Next to the couch lay the bandaged man clutching his side. A groan under the table told me Christian had regained consciousness.

I took possession of my senses and started moving more quickly. My muscles shed their stiffness as if I had just woken up from an extended, therapeutic sleep. I went first to Christian.

“Are you ok?” I asked as I propped his head under my arm.

“Yeah,” he grimaced. “It’s just a bump on the head.” He rolled himself over and got up, rubbing the back of his head with his hand. “I’m fine, really,” he reassured me.

I then tentatively walked over to the bandaged Korean man. The sense of purpose that had rushed into me moments ago now flagged. Yesterday this man grabbed me outside my apartment and demanded whatever Arthur had given me, not knowing it was a fifty dollar bill. Today he saved my life. Why? Was it to secure the envelope and banknote for himself, to keep it from these men? I decided that was an unlikely option and that, whatever his motives, he deserved my help. I knelt down and rolled him onto his back. He abruptly yelped in pain and I realized that he had been shot where his hand was still pressed tightly to his side, the blood now oozing through the cracks in his fingers.

“The bullet just grazed me,” he said as if reading my thoughts. He opened his eyes, but only just enough to peer through the lids held taut and narrow from the pain I could imagine was shooting through his side. I reached over him for a pillow from the couch to rest his head on when his other hand grasped my forearm.

“Ionia,” he said, panting, his voice low. “You, Christian, both of you need to get out of here. More will be back to finish the job those two failed. And the police—” he trailed off.

“Who were they?” I asked.

He took a deep breath and swallowed. “Not enough time. Just go. Go anywhere.”

“Look, he’s right,” Christian said from behind me. “We probably shouldn’t even have stayed here tonight. We can go to New York.”

“Ok,” I sighed. “Here, help me lift him.”

“What?” whispered Christian with astonishment.

“He saved our lives,” I hissed, aware that the bandaged man could probably hear our deliberations. “We can’t just leave him here.”

I could see from his face that he saw no point in arguing with me. He knelt on the opposite side and placed his head under the man’s armpit, motioning for me to do the same. Together, we lifted him off the ground and heard only a grunt in response. Considering he had been wounded, I counted this at least a small victory. We dragged him slowly down the steps to my car parked out front. When able, he tried to step along with us in order to ease the load. Panting from both exhilaration and exertion, we paused at the foot of the stairs before sliding him into the backseat of car as gently as possible. After we had set him along the length of the backseat, I caught Christian staring at the side of the yellow blouse I was still wearing.

“What is it?” I asked. He just pointed and I looked down at a giant red stain running from the bottom of my ribs down to my waist. In a moment of panic, I yanked upward on the side of my shirt, frantically feeling with my hand for the wound. Finding only smooth, unmarked skin, I realized with a bit of embarrassment that blood from the bandaged man’s wound had soaked through to my shirt. The same thing must have occurred to Christian because he ducked into the car and carefully pulled off the man’s dark trench coat, the same one he’d been wearing last night, and unbuttoned his red shirt, tucking it under the man in order to inspect the wound.

“Not that I’m an expert,” Christian said from inside the car, “But I don’t think this wound is that bad. The bullet just sort of cut into him, I think.” He backed out of the car. “What should we do?”

“I’ll use his shirt to stop the bleeding,” I said. “Get in front and start driving.”

“Do you have the keys?”

The keys. They were in my purse upstairs, along with the envelope, the fifty dollar bill and Christian’s carryall full of the Leon Warnerke letters and his research. We certainly weren’t cut out for this new line of work, I said to myself as I dashed up the stairs and into the apartment. I thought to grab a clean towel from the kitchen before running back downstairs and outside. I tossed Christian the keys and noticed the relief pouring over his face when he saw his satchel in my hand.

“You have the envelope?” he asked as he pulled open the driver’s side door.

“In my purse,” I said and then checked to make sure everything really was in my purse. “Let’s get going.”

I placed myself behind the passenger seat and cradled the wounded man’s head on my lap. I applied the towel to the wound at his side. Christian brought the car to life and peeled away from the curb. The brief jostling brought the man’s eyes open briefly.

“Thank you,” he murmured, looking up at me with a pair of dark eyes that appeared alert even in his weakened state. Somehow, I read sincere gratitude from those eyes and, if I hadn’t known better, I would even have said that he was trying to smile in thanks.

“What’s your name?” was oddly all that I could think to say.

“Bae,” he said as he closed his eyes. I felt his head grow heavier in my lap and his body relax. From the slow rise and fall of his chest, I could tell he had lost only consciousness, nothing. I squeezed the towel more tightly on the wound and gazed out the window as Christian guided the car out of Washington. To the east, a mild glow on the horizon hinted that the sun would soon be arcing over a new day. As we pulled onto the interstate, the car moving onward as urgently as the speed limit would allow, I knew that I was leaving more than yesterday behind me.

Sixteen

I looked down at Bae’s dark and peaceful face and noticed for the first time that it bore a kind of careful elegance. His soft features were much more tender now than they had been the night before, when I saw him as a threat and not a potential ally. Was he an ally, though? I wondered. My gaze shifted to the bandage covering his forehead and, unthinkingly, I gently peeled it back to reveal a small bruise and scab. He shifted soundlessly in his sleep and I hastily replaced the bandage, my cheeks reddening, either from how invasive I suddenly felt examining the wound or the awkwardness of having inflicted it in the first place. I then checked the towel I had been holding to his side and saw that the bleeding had slowed considerably. After refolding the towel, I replaced a fresh patch of it on the skin of his torso, where the wound shifted in a soft mix of red, blue and black under the highway lights floating past.

About an hour and a half into the drive, Christian turned on the car radio.

“You’d better keep it down,” I said softly. “Bae’s sleeping.”

Christian turned around in his seat and shot me a wry look. “Well, I’m driving at six thirty in the morning after being shot at,” he grumbled, but complied before I had a change to cut right through him with a glare. He scanned the dial until he tuned the radio to a Philadelphia news station. I casually listened as the signal grew stronger, but didn’t pay particular attention to news about the stock market or a contentious highway appropriations bill that had just passed the Senate. After awhile, the sound of the radio entered my ear only as a pleasant buzzing. Then I heard something that caught my attention.

“Turn it up,” I commanded.

“I thought I was supposed to keep it down for—” Christian mumbled, leaping at the chance to even the score.

“Just turn it up,” I pleaded impatiently. Again he acquiesced, too tired to push his luck. As he adjusted the volume what had been a mere buzz separated into distinct words spoken by a young woman.

“Next months peace talks between North and South Korea have hit an unexpected barrier today with some conservative South Korean legislators calling North Korea , a quote, ‘criminal state.’ Powerful far right politician Lee Chung Hee from the fringe South Korean Freedom Party went so far as to denounce the authenticity of North Korea’s stated willingness to relinquish its nuclear weapons or truly normalize relations.”

A man started speaking in impassioned Korean, but volume soon dimmed to make way for the monotone voice of a translator. The disjunction between the translator calm enunciation and Chung Hee’s roaring voice was startling. Why did translators always seem as if they were reading children’s stories?

“The North Koreans have done nothing to make good on their promises since the sunshine policy took effect,” he said referring to former South Korean President Kim Jae Dung’s policy to provide economic aid and attempt to strengthen relations between the two nations, for which Jae Dung later received the Nobel Peace Prize. The course of action originated in a historic summit in June of 2000 between President Jae Dung and North Korean dictator Kim Jung Il. In the year immediately following the summit, small families that had been divided were allowed brief reunion visits. The groundwork was also laid for eventual reunification, although progress on all fronts has languished since the initial meeting. “Last month’s nuclear test should have been the death penalty for any relationship between the North and South and for continued economic aid, money that we can now reasonably guess is used to help fund nuclear weapons. The upcoming summit should not address normalization between the two countries, but economic sanctions of a nation that can only be categorized as an enemy, not a neighbor.”

The broadcaster’s voice resumed.

“Lee Chung Hee continued by stating he had proof that, in addition to an illegal nuclear program, North Korea actively participated in a host of other illicit activities. He promised to present his evidence on the eve of the talks. Diplomats from the North and South as well as ambassadors from the United States dismissed allegations of any additional wrongdoing by North Korea are, quote, ‘spurious rumors and innuendo,’ claiming that the only issue left to resolve was the nuclear program. They said they remained optimistic that the talks would continue with, quote, ‘ the full support of both governments and all the people of the world who wish to see a unified North Korea within their lifetimes.’”

“I wonder what he thinks about all this,” Christian mused, referring to Bae. I didn’t reply and hoped my silence would dissuade further inquiry. The truth is that I had begun to wonder the same thing myself. Four people had now come after the fifty dollar bill: Bae, Agent Wood, and the two men who broke into my apartment tonight, one of whom was dead. Tonight’s intruders clearly had no idea what they were looking for, and I suspected the same was true of Bae and Agent Wood. The odd thing was that, with the exception of Agent Wood, everyone who wanted the fifty dollar bill was Korean. What was the connection?

“They’ve all been Korean,” Christian said, as if continuing my train of thought out loud. “Except for Agent Wood, they’ve all been Korean. Do you think it has something to do with the nuclear talks?” He smirked, intending a possible link between the upcoming negotiations and our situation to sound outlandish. But I couldn’t suppress the thought that maybe such a link did exist. Anything seemed possible at this point.

“Why would Arthur get involved in Korean politics?” I asked.

“Or how?” Christian added.

“Right, or how,” I repeated to myself quietly.

By tacit agreement, we put a moratorium on further speculation and did not talk throughout the remainder of the drive. The radio signal faded in and out as we moved away from Philadelphia and on to New York. Bae did not stir, thoroughly lost in a regenerative sleep, and the slow rhythm of his breathing had me fighting to keep my own eyes open even as the sun climbed higher in the early morning sky, casting violent reds and yellows across the increasing density of industrial parks and urban housing that signaled our approach to the city. We just missed the onslaught of traffic and soon Christian had guided us through the narrow canyons twisting beneath the masses of skyscrapers and high rise apartments to the front of his own building.

“Let’s both take him up,” he said, shutting off the engine. “Then we need to find a place to park the car.”

“You’re going to leave him alone in your apartment?” I raised my eyebrows.

“I’m not going to let you stay alone with him.” Christian said, attempting to close off any discussion.

“Let me?” I raised my eyebrows still further. “He saved our lives. I don’t think he’s going to hurt me.”

He sighed and slumped his shoulders. “Ionia, I’m not trying to tell you what to do, ok?”

“I know,” I said, already regretting the tone I had taken a moment ago. “Look, he’s hurt and I think we owe it to him to make sure he’s ok. I promise you I’ll be fine. Just trust me.”

“It’s not you I need to trust,” he said, but I could tell from his voice that he was conceding this disagreement to me. “Ok, let’s get him up then.”

As we hauled him out of the car, Bae began to wake up. His eyes widened in confusion, but he was too weak or tired to resist. Stepping along weakly, he helped us carry him to the elevator and up to the apartment. Once inside we laid him down on the couch, a green beast that was older and more worn than mine. Faced with no alternative position, I self-consciously sat next to him with his head on my lap and pressed the towel to his side. Though he had not been fully awake, even as we made our way from the car, he now returned to his deep slumber. Christian shot me – us, perhaps -- a disapproving look and put the carryall and my purse, both of which he had remembered to take from the car, down next to me.

“One more thing,” he said and felt awkwardly around Bae’s waist. “Here it is.” He pulled a gun from underneath Bae and held it dangling from his fingertips, as if it were a dirty sock. He looked at it with equal disgust and slid it into his desk drawer. As he pushed the drawer closed, he looked over at me to be sure that I knew it was there. “Ok, I’m going to go find somewhere to park the car now. It may have to be outside of Manhattan, so I don’t know how long this will take.” I simply nodded.

Christian shut the door behind him and I glanced around the room, a quintessential graduate student hovel. The studio apartment had a small kitchenette next to the front door that was separated from the rest of an apartment by a small bar equipped with two tall stools. The couch stood on one wall and Christian’s desk on the other. The third wall contained a bank of windows which looked out to the street several floors below. Light from the windows spread over Christian’s twin sized bed. Intimate company must not have been much of a priority, I thought, swallowing the urge to laugh. Between the couch and the kitchen a small passageway led to a bathroom and walk-in closet. The room was painted a faded yellow, but the real decorations were all Christian’s: books, clothes, magazines, stacks of paper and photocopied articles all lay strewn impossibly across the room. The floors and surfaces could only be imagined they were so densely covered in a dense layer of bachelor squalor.

As I surveyed the room, I soon found myself once again blinking back the soothing waves of sleep.

* * *

I slowly opened my eyes and had to let them adjust to the room, whose yellow walls were now bright with the midday sun. With a start, I noticed that I was lying lengthwise on the couch with a beige blanket from Christian’s bed draped over me. I stood up quickly and walked around the apartment although it was clear Bae had left. The bloodied towel lay neatly folded next to my purse along with a small note. I picked it up and read its one, neatly printed line:

Thanks for helping me.

Sorry,

Bae

Sorry for what? I asked myself before answering bitterly, Sorry for being part of this stupid mess at all, perhaps. I was sorry about that, too.

I collapsed back onto the couch and pulled the blanket over my head, trying to insulate myself from the outside world. Like all children, I once enjoyed a brief period in which my linens seemed the perfect material for constructing a fortress that was immune to foreign invasion or at least parents. Christian’s sheets didn’t feel as sturdy as those, but they would have to do. What was going on? I felt as if I had asked that question hourly the last few days, only it didn’t seem like the same question, repeated over and over, but a new, larger question each time. When each new player entered this drama, the “What” in “What was going on?” seemed to grow larger and larger. But last night, with a gun pointed at me and bullets whizzing around my apartment, I decided I no longer wanted to know what “What” was. I just wanted it cast me aside, leave me alone and continue on its way. Arthur wanted to share some important secret with me, but did he think to ask if I wanted to share it with him? Bae, the two men last night, Agent Wood, maybe they cared, but I sure didn’t. And I was willing to bet Helen Mantes didn’t either. I fought back tears as I pulled my knees up to my chest and hugged them close, just wishing it would all go away.

The door opened.

“Hey, I’m back,” Christian called out. “Ionia? Ionia are you ok?” I heard the worry in his voice.

“I’m fine,” I said lazily, my voice muffled by the blanket.

“What are you doing?” he laughed. Snorted, more like.

I realized I probably looked quite stupid, a small ball of person huddled under the covers. I kicked off the sheet and flattened my hair, trying to recover a modicum of dignity. “Nothing,” I sighed.

He looked around, still laughing, and then a frown invaded his face. “Where’s Bae?” he demanded, his tone suddenly becoming serious.

“He left,” I said matter of factly and handed him the note.

After he read it, he gave a small “hmph” and then said, “You didn’t see him leave?”

“No,” I replied and cast my eyes downward. “I fell asleep.”

He again adopted that look of deep concern, the same one he gave when I insisted on staying alone with Bae in the apartment.

“Christian, look at me, I’m fine,” I said defensively and extended my arms as if to display my robust condition.

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled and walked back to the door where he picked up a small suitcase. “Here,” he said, placing it next to the couch, “These are some clothes I picked up. I’m not sure on size, but, well, they should be ok.”

I was moved at the gesture, especially after a sleepless night spent driving -- not to mention dodging bullets. “Wow thanks,” I said. “Where did you get them?”

He scratched the back of his head and shifted his feet while he looked about the room awkwardly. “Um, an ex-girlfriend. She’s another graduate student.”

“That’s a pretty big favor, especially unannounced,” I said and tensed my whole body to prevent myself from bursting into laughter. I could only imagine the look on her face when he showed up at her door asking for women’s clothing. “What did you tell her?”

“I don’t even remember, something about a female cousin and a lost suitcase. And no, she wasn’t too happy about it.” His face confirmed my suspicions and twitched as he recalled the extreme verbal flailing he probably received. He pulled a chair from under the desk, pushed off the clothes lying on top of it, and sunk down into it. I could see the dark circles under his eyes and his complexion was ashen. I felt a deep pang of sympathy for Christian, though on reflection I could only guess I looked the same way to him. He leaned back, eyes closed, and ran his hands through his hair while he inhaled deeply.

“I need to sleep,” he groaned. “But first, I want to tell you what I found out at the library yesterday. I didn’t want to say anything in the car, not around Bae.”

I nodded in agreement. Bae may have saved our life, but that told us little about where his loyalties lay or what his agenda really was. Christian reached for his carryall and started pulling out the letters and his notebook.

“I’ll get out the envelope,” I said.

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” said Christian, but I had already picked up the purse. I reached into the inner pocket where I had stored it but my fingers couldn’t find anything. I started rummaging around frantically. Where was it?

“Don’t worry,” he said, “We really don’t need it now.”

In a panic, I yanked the sides of the small purse open and dumped all the contents onto the floor. Items tumbled across the hardwood floor: my cell phone, wallet, lipstick, a small notebook, a few pens, and on top of it all sat the envelope, now a bit crumpled and torn. The Post-It note saying “FOR IONIA” remained affixed to the front. With shaking hands, I picked it up and reached inside finding only the other note, the one signed Leon Warnerke. The tears I had managed to hold back earlier now flooded my quivering cheeks.

The fifty dollar bill was gone.

Seventeen

Christian seemed to slump further into his chair and looked up toward the ceiling. “Well, now we know why he was sorry,” he mused, referring to the note Bae had left. “It’s ok, Ionia.” He walked over and sat next to me on the couch, awkwardly placing an arm around my shoulders. “It’s ok, really. You said yourself you didn’t think it was a counterfeit.” He was right, of course. I had no idea why the bill was so important. In fact, I don’t think I was even crying because the bill had been stolen, although that did distress me. It was everything. The immensity of the whole situation, which had driven me so childishly under the blanket a few minutes ago, now poured out of me in a hard rain of tears. Strangely, what I had wished for, that the fifty dollar bill would just let go of me and wander away had finally happen and, rather than feeling released, I only felt myself tugged deeper into a mess I could not understand.

“I cried this morning, too,” Christian said as he withdrew his arm from my shoulders and looked away at some distant point across the room. “After I found someplace to park the car, I just sat in it and bawled.” He looked at his hands. “I gripped the wheel so hard my knuckles turned white. Jesus,” he breathed, looking over at me. “Someone pointed a gun at my head last night, Ionia. I mean—” His voice trailed off and I could see that he was again struggling to choke back tears. This time I embraced him.

“We’re up to this challenge,” I said without thinking and, after the words left my mouth, I decided then that it must be true. I silently walked to the bathroom and began washing my face. The kitchen faucet started running and when I returned to the main room, I saw the Christian had filled two glasses with water. I drank my greedily before sitting back down on the couch.

“Christian,” I began. “You’re right about the fifty dollar bill. I’ve been meaning to tell you since last night that I did an ink analysis yesterday and it has the exact ink that is used for American bills.”

“Which would be impossible to forge,” Christian finished.

“Not impossible, but I’ve never seen it. They would have had to buy the ink from the same company. You can imagine the short leash the Bureau of Printing and Engraving keep on the whole process. I can’t imagine a back alley deal for some of that ink.”

“So it’s probably not a counterfeit,” he sighed.

“I know that it was important for some theory you have about Leon Warnerke and what the note means. And there’s something else,” I paused, unsure whether to continue. “I’ve thought it was a counterfeit, too, since the train ride back from New York on Sunday. I don’t know why and maybe that’s why I’ve been afraid to say anything. But there’s something just wrong with that fifty dollar bill.” I could feel a twinge of pain in my stomach, a kind of aftershock, akin to the profound disappointment I experienced yesterday when I saw the results of the ink test. “That’s why I want it back. There must be something I’ve overlooked, some mistake or flaw. I just, I just,” a void filled the sentence before I could summon the words, “I just know it.” And then I did know it. I knew that the fifty dollar bill was counterfeit, regardless of the ink test. I had never been so certain of anything in my life. This conviction, which should have affronted my professional devotion to scientific evidence, did not unravel the foundations of my belief but instead left a renewed sense of confidence coursing through my veins. It was as if I could now really be a scientist, sure that when I next saw that fifty dollar bill, I would know exactly where to look. If I see it again, I thought with a worried gulp. I consciously shook off my angst and reached out again for that newfound certainty that it was only a matter of time before I wrestled out the banknote’s secrets with ease.

“But we can’t worry about that now, because we don’t have the banknote,” I said, but my voice was bereft of regret. Instead I sat up straighter and spoke with a vivacity I could no recall having felt once in the last week. “What we do have is your research and I think you’d better fill me in on whatever you discovered yesterday.”

Christian was feeding off of my sudden energy and the color slowly returned to his cheeks. “There’s a lot to tell,” he said, a smile pulling up the corners of his thin lips. “But it will be best told over breakfast.” I could not have agreed more and my stomach grumbled along its assent.

* * *

My beaming eyes warmly greeted the giant stack of pancakes and heap of scrambled eggs and I dug into my food with gusto. The small diner sat on a street corner and consisted of one main dining room and a kitchen. Booths lined the two street facing walls and a hodgepodge of mismatched tables and chairs filled out the center. Most of the tables sat unoccupied save for the plates and dishes left by the just departed morning crowd. I felt a twinge of guilt when our narrow faced waitress took our order tiredly, her sagging eyes begging for rest after a busy morning. But only a twinge and it vanished instantly when I remembered my own early morning ordeal. I piled food into my unfathomably empty belly until I was sure bits of pancake had fit snuggly into all the recesses of my stomach. I saw Christian attack his plate with similar enthusiasm and we soon relaxed in the booth, completely stuffed and sipping on a digestif of diner coffee, an unmistakable secret recipe known only to the proprietors of appropriately greaser diners. I knew my vast knowledge of chemistry would be hopeless to crack the formula.

“So,” I said as I placed my steaming mug of coffee next to my empty plate, “What have you found out about Mr. Leon Warnerke.”

“Surprisingly little,” replied Christian and then lifted his hand to request patience when he saw my eyebrows rise questioningly. “But this Wladyslaw Malachowski character, I discovered a lot more about him.”

“That name was in a lot of the letters, right?” I asked trying to remember our conversation two nights ago.

“Right,” he confirmed. “Actually, a lot of the letters are written by him.” He pulled out a notebook. “In fact, the earliest set of letters is a series dating from October 1861 all the way to June 1865. It’s a correspondence between Wladyslaw Malachowski and Josef Horodice written almost exclusively in Polish. The friendly librarian helped me translate all of them and I can tell from some of the back references that the group of letters is incomplete. I can only assume some were lost or that Arthur was unable to acquire them all.”

“What are they about?”

“That’s not easy to answer, both men often write in vagaries and with oblique references to events. I had to do some other research in order to even postulate what they might be talking about. Here’s the first letter, from Malachowski to Horodice.” He handed me a page from his notebook and I saw that he had written out an English translation of the letter in what looked like rushed handwriting.

“I need a translation for this translation,” I chided him.

“Look, it’s legible,” he said impatiently and rolled his eyes. “I was in a hurry. Just read it ok?”

St. Petersburg

October 30, 1861

Dear Josef,

My father has called me back to Minsk and I will leave tomorrow at dawn. I hope this letter finds you well and I implore you to travel to Minsk to see us. That wretched man who we thought had taken everything has now deprived us of even the semblance of government and civil law. I am now old enough and my education sufficient that I may join my father in his glorious cause. Where they failed thirty years ago, they are now ready to succeed. In hearing reports from my father, I am become convinced the conditions are now ripe for change. The general public now sees that the custodians care nothing for them. Please write to me in Minsk if you cannot yourself make a visit, thought it would be most joyful to see you, even in these dark times.

I remain always,

Your humble servant and friend,

Wladyslaw Malachowski

“Who’s the ‘wretched man’ and why is Wladyslaw traveling to Minsk?” I asked, utterly baffled.

“I asked myself the same thing,” he said, explaining, “After we finished the translations, the first thing I did was arrange all of the letters in order and this, as I said, was the first one. At first I was as perplexed as you are, but then it seemed to me that Wladyslaw was clearly writing about public events: he references “government and civil law” and talks about something that happened thirty years before the writing of the letter. So I started doing some general research on 19th century Polish history to see if I could make sense of any of it. Minsk is the modern day capital of Belorus, but the first thing you need to understand is that Poland, Belorus and the other Baltic states didn’t technically exist at the beginning of the 19th century. Together, Russia, Prussia and Austria partitioned Poland in 1795. There was a brief movement towards national autonomy after Napoleon swept through during his Russian campaign, but that evaporated when he was finally defeated in 1815. Russia regained control of the eastern part of Poland which at that time included parts of what is now Lithuania and Belorus and, before the partition, they formed a vast swath of land called the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.”

“So he was going from St. Petersburg to Minsk, which, in 1861 was part of Poland, although that section of Poland was actually part of Russia?” I tried to recap.

“More or less. It was annexed to Russia, anyway, and the Russians ran the government, although it employed some Poles.” He continued, “In 1830, several secret societies formed by Polish radicals banded together and rose up against Russian rule during in what would be later known as the November Revolt. By 1831, the Russian forces had routed them and 6,000 of the revolutionaries fled to France where they lived in exile, mostly in Paris. This was the event I think Wladyslaw was referring to when he says ‘they failed thirty years ago.’ ‘They’ must be the members of the secret societies who tried to overthrow the Russian occupiers.

“And the ‘wretched man?’” I asked.

“Right, I think that’s the Russian Czar. In 1861, Czar Alexander II, autocratic ruler of Russia, declared martial law in Poland after a series public riots celebrating – in whatever way a riot can be said to celebrate – Polish nationhood and cultural identity. The Czar must have been worried and felt that the rigid military government would better stave off future insurrectionary activity. It was clear that many of the people who had fomented the 1830 uprising remained in Poland and revolutionary, anti-Russian sentiment, which had been festering for years, was threatening to boil over. This is what Wladyslaw is probably describing when he says ‘the conditions are now ripe for change’ and speaks of public disillusion with the government.”

“He probably means Polish discontent with the Russian government,” I said.

“Right, which brings me to the next letter. It’s another one written by Malachowski, although I think at least one letter – probably from Josef Horodice – came in between the first letter and this one.” He handed me another lined page from his notebook.

Minsk

November 29, 1861

Dear Josef,

I received your reply when I arrived in Minsk several weeks ago and I cannot but confess that my heart was aggrieved to be greeted with a letter instead of your familiar face. Still, I applaud your resolve to stay in Warsaw and carry on the struggle there. To know that you are fighting alongside me, even if hundreds of leagues away, warms my soul and makes me feel near to you, a brother in arms.

My heart does not waver in our noble cause, my mind cannot quell a certain disquietude. My father believes his preparations are magnificent. He and the other members of the Society who have remained here in secret all these years say they have been biding their time for just this hour. Yet I do not see enough arms or able bodied men to resist the enemy. There are reports of over 60,000 well trained men here and 90,000 around you in Warsaw. Please give me news of the army you are helping to assemble so that I may know that our defeat shall not be the work of one, swift blow from the General.

I remain always,

Your humble servant and friend,

Wladyslaw Malachowski

As I looked up to indicate I had finished reading, he continued before I could ask any questions.

“A bunch of the letters after this are fairly similar,” he said. “They seem to concern what I can only gather are battle plans and tactical maneuvers.”

“Battle plans?”

“I’ll give you my best guess, which seems to fit the facts. When the Czar declared martial law in 1861, he also instituted a program of forced conscription of Poles into the Russian army. Thousands of young Polish men, mostly laborers, fled to the forests and countryside surrounding the city. A group of Polish revolutionaries, composed mostly of elites and who, I think, included Wladyslaw Malachowski’s father—”

“Julian Simon Malachowski?” I interrupted.

“Yes, good memory,” he said with some surprise. “So, Wladyslaw’s father, Julian Simon Malachowski must have operated with the other revolutionary elite. I’m guessing that the ‘Society,’ which you’ll note is capitalized, was one of the secret associations that persisted even after the unsuccessful 1830 uprising. Julian Simon and the Society were probably one of the groups that helped organize the – well -- draft dodgers, I guess you could call them, into a real army. But there were only about 10,000 of them and, as Wladyslaw’s letter says, they were not well equipped to challenge an imposing Russian presence throughout the region. In January of 1863, over a year after martial law had been imposed, the revolutionaries began a full scale insurrection for control of Poland and the leaders of the insurgency even declared themselves the provisional government of Poland. Amazingly, the ragtag Polish army held out during several gruesome battles during the month of February and the revolutionaries garnered support from nations all over Europe. Even the Pope lobbied on behalf of the Polish insurgents and said a special prayer for them. The odds were still against the vastly outnumbered Poles, but the Russians made a tactical mistake. They arranged for assistance from the Prussians, who also controlled part of Poland and probably feared a revolution themselves. Bismarck, the Prussian Chancellor, even let Russian troops use his rail system in order to quell the insurrection. This outraged the majority of Poles as well as several other national governments who all promised to aid the Polish cause. What was a limited uprising turned to full scale war against the Russians. Every Pole working in the Russian government – and serving in the Russian army – resigned his commission and defected to the Polish side of the conflict. The army swelled to 30,000 as money poured in from the Polish social and economic elite. Fighting erupted across the Polish territories -- which, as I said before, were really quite vast, including Poland, Lithuania, Belorus and even parts of the Ukraine.”

“What happened?” I asked, now thoroughly engrossed in the story. Reading the letters and listening to Christian’s narration seemed to transport me back to that brutal Polish winter, when only the revolutionary fire kept the hopeful rebels alive in the cold.

“The same thing that always happens,” he sighed. “None of the nations that had pledged support actually followed through with any of it. Many liberal Russians who had actually been sympathetic to the Poles now reviled the distinctly nationalistic tone the conflict had adopted, with an actual Polish government challenging Russian rule. Having consolidated domestic opinion, the Russians moved quickly. The laid whole villages to wake, publicly hanged hundreds of collaborators, and imprisoned and deported thousands more to Siberia. They also caught some flies with honey, giving land to Polish peasants in order to undermine support for the revolution. The five members constituting the provisional government were eventually apprehended and executed. By the end of 1864, with 25,000 Poles dead after over six hundred battles, the January Uprising, as it would be called, had ended.

“After a half-century of minor uprisings culminating in this protracted conflict, the Russians decided not to risk any further instability. They made Russian the official language of Poland and ordered all schools to be taught in Russian. They carved the Polish territories into ten provinces, each ruled by a military governor who, in turn, reported to a governor-general in Warsaw. The best way to avoid another rebellion, the Russians thought, was just to turn Poles into Russians. History records the policy as the ‘Russification’ of Poland.”

As he finished, I detected a hint of sadness in Christian’s eyes rather than the neutral gaze of the casual historian, as if he had become a Polish revolutionary himself, hardened and jaded by the horrors of what he had seen and endured. Though, it was a story that would dampen anyone’s spirits, I supposed.

“So what happened to Wladyslaw Malachowski?” I asked.

“Read this,” he said and extended another sheet of paper, another translated letter.

Warsaw

May 25, 1865

Dear Wladyslaw,

My God, is it true what I have heard about your father? Did the Hangman really get hold of him? If so, you have my deepest condolences, dear friend. I weep for your loss. I know the Society weeps for him also as he kept our spirit alive and vigilant during this trying war.

I hesitate to interrupt your grief, but I must also write with a warning. The hunt is widening and I do not think we are any longer safe in our sacred homelands. How much it must trouble you, to have arrived under such strained circumstances and to now leave under even more dire ones, I can only imagine. Yet I must warn you that the hour grows late for you. You must leave your family behind, for now at least, and seek haven somewhere. I have decided to leave my family also and make for a safe island in calmer waters.

I hope to see you again my friend. Please write to let me know how you are and, if not well, at least that you are alive.

I remain,

Humbly yours in friendship,

Josef Horodice

As I read the letter, I noticed that both times he wrote the word “family,” Christian had underscored it. “Why did you do that?” I asked, gesturing to the underlined word.

“Oh, that,” he replied. “Because it was underlined in the original letter. It was actually underlined twice.”

“Why?” I wondered aloud, “Why would he want to emphasize that word so strongly?”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out myself,” he said with a frown. “Most of this letter confuses me, but let me show you the next one before I tell you what I think.”

Minsk

June 18, 1865

Dear Josef,

I received your letter this afternoon and was compelled to hastily compose a reply. Yes, the damned Hangman took my father only shortly before you wrote. The household servants managed to convince him that I was still away at school in St. Petersburg and I spent the better part of last month hidden in the cellar until the Russians left. I did not even have the opportunity to bid him farewell. Last week, we dug up the body from the cheap grave in which the Russians had cast him and gave him a proper burial, though even we could not provide the hero’s burial he deserved.

I promise you Josef that I will have my revenge on the Hangman and on every last one of them that has torn our beautiful nation to pieces. The Society will live on and see us through to victory. I do not know when I can safely write you next or from where, but I do know this will be the last time you hear from Wladyslaw Malachowski.

I remain always,

Your humble servant and friend,

Wladyslaw Malachowski

“I don’t get this last sentence,” I said and furrowed my brow, reading it again carefully. “He says he doesn’t know when he’ll write again, but that it will be the last time. Isn’t that a mistake in your translation? Wouldn’t he say that it is not the last time Josef will hear from him?” I looked searchingly at Christian, hoping he had answers.

“That’s what I thought, too,” answered Christian, “But the librarian insisted that his translation was accurate.”

“Could it be a mistake in the original letter? I mean surely typos existed before, well, typing.”

Christian laughed, “Yeah, I thought that might be the case also, but now I’m not so sure.” He took a deep breath, not in exasperation, but to ready himself for another explanation, “I can’t prove any of what I’m about to tell you and I’m relating what is basically a private history of a few people to major recorded events, an analytic fallacy I’m sure, but I can’t come up with any better so here goes. Even though the fighting ended in 1864, the Russians kept hunting down the insurgents into 1865, just to make sure they hadn’t missed anyone. It didn’t take me long to dig up a Russian nobleman named Mikhail Muravyov whose actions were anything but noble. Muravyov was a fierce Russian nationalist and spent much of his political career within the administration of Poland, most often in parts of Belarus. He was an early proponent of Russification and after the 1830 uprising, he was said to have boasted that ‘what the Russian rifle did not succeed in doing, will be finished off by Russian schools.’ During the January Uprising, Muravyov was Governor General of a region called the Northwestern Krai which included Minsk. When the Russians carried out their brutal reprisals against the Polish toward the end of the rebellion, Muravyov hanged over one hundred Poles by himself. He confiscated land, sacked or levied fines on whole towns even if only a handful of its citizens had joined with the revolutionaries, and compelled Catholics to convert to the Russian Orthodoxy. His ruthlessness earned him a bad reputation throughout Europe and even among many native Russians.” He produced another sheet of paper from his carryall, this one a kind of list.

“This is Julian Simon Malachowski’s will, dated April 26, 1865, not too long before Josef’s letter inquiring into rumors that he had been killed. It’s not interesting in itself, it just details a bunch of lands in parts of Poland.”

I examined the page. “What does this have to do with Muravyov or with the letters?”

“Oh right, sorry,” he apologized. “I’m still trying to sort all this out myself. Anyway, his penchant for public hangings earned Muravyov the affectionate nickname ‘The Hangman of Vilnius.’ Now look at the word ‘Hangman,’” he pointed to it in both Josef and Wladyslaw’s letters, “See how it’s capitalized? I think they’re referring to Mikhail Muravyov, aka Muravyov the Hangman. Muravyov was actually removed from his post on May 1, 1865, in part because of the uproar his actions generated, but by the date of the elder Malachowski’s will, I’m guessing that he was one of Muravyov’s last victims and may have even known Muravyov was one the way. It sounds like Wladyslaw was hidden away so that he could be spared. He had a decent alibi, having lived until recently in St. Petersburg. And in those days, it’s not as if the Russians could just call St. Petersburg up and see if he were around. So he managed to escape after his father was murdered.”

“What does the next letter say? Where did Wladyslaw go after he escaped?”

“That’s the funny thing,” Christian said with a bemused grin. “This is the last letter in the set. I’ve looked through all these letters twice and there are no other letters penned by either Wladyslaw Malachowski or Josef Horodice.”

I sat back in the booth and tried to assimilate the torrent of information. What was Arthur trying to tell us? Secret revolutionary societies, battles in obscure parts of 19th century Poland, evil Russian nobles – it was all giving me a headache. I started rubbing my temples as the waitress sauntered over to refill our coffee. I raised the plain, white mug to my lips and took a long sip, hoping the caffeine would bring clarity to the jumbled mass of facts galloping through my mind.

“I just have one question,” I ventured, before qualifying, “Actually, I have a hundred of them, but for the moment, just this one will do. If Leon Warnerke is somehow the key to all of this, why would Arthur leave us with two sets of letters, one concerning Leon Warnerke and the other a correspondence between Wladyslaw Malachowski and, what was his name, Josef Horodice? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“And don’t forget Franz Schulz and Franz Wolf,” he said to remind me of the other sets of correspondence Arthur had left us. “That’s a really good question, Ionia.” He shrugged and stared into the thin tendrils of steam rising from the coffee in front of him, intimating that he had no answer.

“Oh, there’s something I meant to tell you yesterday,” I said after a moment. The detail and excitement in how Christian told Wladyslaw Malachowski story felt familiar and I suddenly remembered how Arthur told me the story of William Wood and the Secret Service, how the same energy and intrigue danced behind his own eyes as he narrated. “After Agent Wood, whoever he really was, entered my office yesterday, I remembered a story Arthur told me, about the real William Wood, who was actually the first director of the Secret Service.” I saw Christian arch his eyebrows and pressed on, “By that point, I had learned that the man posing as Agent Wood was an imposter, as I told you then, but the name kept nagging at me and as soon as I did a little research online, I had a vivid memory of Arthur telling me about how William Wood came to run the Secret Service after its inception.” I told Christian what Arthur had told me, omitting some of the playful zest that had dotted Arthur’s version. “Anyway,” I continued, “I remembered that Arthur used to collect these stories about counterfeiters and their capturers, as a kind of hobby, I suppose.”

“So maybe that’s why he was interested in Leon Warnerke,” Christian said, sipping his coffee contemplatively.

“The weird thing, though, is that his stories were always about federal agents or pre-Secret Service private detectives hunting down counterfeiters, never about actual counterfeiters,” I said. “That doesn’t really help solve all the questions about the letters.” I leaned over the table and sighed, resting my chin on my folded hands. “It probably doesn’t mean anything, but I thought I’d tell you.”

“Maybe it does,” he whispered almost inaudibly and leaned back in his seat. He drank his coffee slowly and silently and let his gaze wander out the window, as though searching the streets of New York for answers.

Eighteen

After we sat in the diner for some time, Christian opened his mouth as if to speak, but was interrupted by my cell phone. It was my parents. I gestured apologetically with my hand and answered while I mouthed the word “parents” to soundlessly across to the table.

“Hello?” I answered, unsure whether it would be my mother or father.

“Ionia, it’s your mother,” came a soft voice, tinged with a Korean accent that faded more with each passing year. So often over the past few years had I guiltily dreaded phone calls from my parents, reluctant to continue feeding them a long series of lies and fibs in order to disguise where I worked and what I did. But on this morning I wanted to burst into tears and tell them unremittingly everything about the past week and the trouble I’d gotten myself into. It was one of those moments when I wanted my parents to be nothing but parents, abstracted from any other individual characteristics they bore, so that they could comfort me, the young woman who was their daughter and always would be no matter how often she lied or disobeyed them. Such a relationship between parents and child, boiled down to its core elements, I knew would never exist. We could not simply put aside the rest of what adorned us and made us people. If we could, perhaps it would have been possible for me to simply acquiesce to my father’s wishes and pursue whatever career he deemed fit. Yet even my filial love for him could not conquer that individual that resided within and throughout me, the one that could do no other than choose her own way.

“Hi mom,” I said tiredly into the phone. “It’s nice to hear from you. Really nice.”

“That’s good, I hope I’m not bothering you at work.”

Work. I had forgotten to call in sick. “No, ah, I just got out of a meeting, um, slow day, you know?” I stammered.

“Ok good. Well, you hadn’t called me back this weekend as you said you would.”

I had completely forgotten she had called Friday night, just before Christian showed up. What day was it? Wednesday? The five intervening days felt closer to five years. I could barely even remembering talking to her.

“Yeah, um, I’m sorry. Something came up at work and I forgot. I’m really sorry, mom.”

“No, no, don’t be,” she said reassuringly. “God knows I have so little to do and I know you’re so busy. I just wanted to make sure you were ok. You know how mothers worry. It’s like breathing for us.”

“No, I’m not ok,” I wanted to say. “I was shot at by two of our brethren and I’m trying to solve a riddle left as the last will and testament of my beloved mentor who, I think, was brutally murdered along with his wife.” I didn’t say any of that, of course.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I managed instead.

“Well, you sound tired. I won’t bother you about anything else.” As she finished, I detected what sounded like a note of deeper concern in her voice.

“Is there something else, mom?” Silence greeted me on the other end. “Mom? Is there? I want to know.” Christian, who had tried to look elsewhere and afford me the pretense of privacy now looked towards me with a concerned expression.

“Well, there’s this small matter,” she said nervously and I knew she would be wringing her hands if one weren’t firmly attached to the receiver. “A man called yesterday. He said he worked for the Secret Service. You know, the people who protect the president? Anyway, he was asking about you. What was his name? Oh, Wood, that’s right, Special Agent Wood. Do you know what this is about? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

Now I was in a new kind of trouble, I thought.

“Mom, look—” I began and then stopped. My mind was feverishly at work hatching some convoluted explanation when I decided – no, resolved – to stop lying. Now that Arthur was dead, I could no longer rely on a healthy division of labor between my real parents and the role that he had once played. It was too lonely. “Mom, I’ll explain everything--” Christian’s eyes widened fearfully, “Well, almost everything, but first I need you to tell me what he asked and what you said.”

“Well, he asked if we were your parents and I said yes, of course. Then he asked if you had said or done anything strange since the death of some fellow. Now what was his name?” She trailed off.

“Arthur Mantes,” I supplied.

“Yes, that was it. I said that I didn’t know who that was and that you hadn’t been acting especially strange.”

“And that was all?”

“Yes, I think so. He did seem surprised that I knew so little about this Mantes character. I don’t know why.”

“Did you tell dad about it?”

“No,” she replied, lowering her voice conspiratorially, “I wanted to wait until I’d talked to you first. I hope that was the right thing to do.”

“Yes,” I sighed with relief. I don’t even want to know how my father would have reacted. Now he could hear at least the partial explanation I was about to deliver to my mother. “Mom, I don’t work as a chemical engineer in Virginia.” I paused and swallowed. This was more difficult than I had anticipated. “I work for the United States Secret Service.”

“You protect the president?” she asked innocently.

“No,” I laughed, grateful for the comedic oasis in our conversation. “The Secret Service also has jurisdiction over counterfeit United States currency. I’m not an agent or anything. I do actually work as a chemist. More specifically, I’m a forensic analyst. I spend my days examining counterfeit banknotes to help our agents track down counterfeiters. My old boss, Arthur Mantes, died two weeks ago and that’s what Agent Wood was calling about. But mom,” my voice now became stern and serious, “The man who called, he’s not actually in the Secret Service. If he calls again, just say what you said before. Pretend you don’t understand what he is talking about. I don’t think he’ll call again, but just in case.”

She said nothing after a few minutes. I can only imagine that the dark curtains that had shrouded her mind were pulled back in one swift motion and her mind’s eye winced and blinked as it adjusted to the brilliant light. “Ionia,” she began, “I don’t understand why this man would be calling us if he didn’t work for the Secret Service with you. I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“You’re right,” I said. “There is something I’m not telling you and I can’t, not now. I promise I will explain everything when I can, but I just have to ask you to trust me.” How I could invoke that word, trust, after owning up to three years of lies I could not imagine, but I hoped she would.

“I will trust you,” she agreed, though her voice wavered, “But on one condition. I need to know if you are in any danger. Or if we are.”

“I don’t think you and dad are in any danger no,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

“And you?”

I didn’t know what to say. I had to tell her the truth, and yet it was precisely out of my love and concern for her that I didn’t want to tell her that yes, I was in grave danger with no way out that I could see. “I’m not sure,” I admitted finally. “But I may be. Fortunately, I have reliable people watching out for me.” I looked up at Christian and smiled and, as if on cue, he smiled back weakly. “I’ll be ok. I promise.” As I spoke the words, I hoped that I would not come to regret them.

We exchanged a goodbye and I hung up the phone and slipped it back into my purse. Christian looked at me inquiringly, clearly expecting me to fill out the half of the conversation to which he was not privy. Instead, I looked at the table with my fists clenched tightly on my coffee mug and emitted a long and creative string of imprecations. When I had finished, Christian looked nervously around the restaurant at the stunned waitstaff, frozen by my vulgar tired and then pulled a twenty dollar bill from his wallet and laid it carefully on the table.

“I think it’s time we go,” he said, barely suppressing a smile, fearful, perhaps, that he might provoke another litany of curses.

* * *

By the time we returned to Christian’s apartment, I had calmed enough to supply him with a detailed report of my conversation with my mother, though I could feel my blood pressure beginning to rise as I relived the taxing discussion. He listened quietly as I transmitted my mother’s description of her phone call with Agent Wood and received with equanimity my account of the reasoning as to why I decided to come clean to my mother then and there, although I wasn’t sure, in retrospect, that I fully accepted or understood why I took the plunge, so to speak, at that exact moment. I directed my uncertainty at Christian, but he continued to brood on what I had told him.

Eventually, I could no longer bear his silence and rose from the couch where I had again perched myself. “So? What do you think?” I asked gesturing wildly and stomping away from him towards the bed where I saw in the windows my reflection, blurry and incomplete in the midday glare.

“What?” said Christian with a start, as if he had slept through the whole episode only now jolting awake. “Oh right, your mom. Well, I don’t know really, I—” He ran his hand through his hair sheepishly and shrugged.

“Well you listened, didn’t you?” I said and could feel the anger rising in me. “I told about my job, you know, the big lie I’ve been living this past three years.” He nodded earnestly as a gesture of conciliation, I assumed, but I wasn’t finished. “And Agent Wood, he’s on to my family. Christ, this is getting, I don’t know, complicated?” I stared at him, my eyes aflame. I didn’t know exactly what I expected him to say – I was still getting my mind around this news myself. How did Agent Wood get my family’s address? Although, that would have been a walk in the park after forging Secret Services credentials and procuring an access card to the building. But I wasn’t ready to rationally diffuse my indignation just yet. “Well?” I said after meeting only timid silence, “You listened through the whole thing. You looked like you were thinking, anyway.”

“Ionia,” he said. “I was listening and I understand. I don’t mean to minimize any of this. It’s big, it’s huge, I get it. And I’m worried about your family, too, it’s just – I don’t know what to say, ok? I never do, not about this, about your family.” He looked past me to the window. “I was going to tell you,” he said quietly, “I have some ideas about the letters, but I need to get to the library and start working on the next batch.” By the time he finished he was practically mumbling.

I shook with rage. Christian was supposed to be my best friend, but whenever the topic of my parents – and my relationship with them – came up, he was always reticent to discuss it. He never told me what about the subject made him so uncomfortable and in other moments he spoke as he did on the porch after Arthur’s funeral, when he appeared profusely apologetic about this almost monkish silence. Sometimes I wanted to shake him and tell him to just get over it, that I needed him to be there for me. Yet I always decided that friendship can only be a request and not a demand. And the good always outweighed the bad. How could I be angry at Christian for what he had endured with me these past days? My cheeks tingled as I blush in shame, a sign Christian probably mistook for increased anger because he popped out of his chair and started gingerly packing his carryall.

“I’m going to the library,” he murmured. “I’m sorry, ok?”

“Don’t sweat it,” I replied. “Just do me one favor before you go.”

“Yeah?” he said eagerly, grateful for the chance to crawl back into my good graces.

“Take a shower.”

Nineteen

In the days that followed, contrary to my expectations, I did, in fact, feel a kind of freedom from the fifty dollar bill. Yes, I wanted it back and I continued to feel completely silly about the carelessness that brought about its loss. I berated myself so frequently that I soon suspected Christian wanted to recover the fifty dollar bill just that I would stop what he referred to as “needless self-effacement.” But underneath my seemingly constant self-reproach, I felt the kind of liberation I had desired but not achieved when the morning Bae stole the bill from my purse. Then I felt as if my problems had only compounded, that I was not free of the bill and the obligation to Arthur that it represented. Now I felt a lightening of that duty. It had not vanished, but was just distant enough that I could forget about it for a few isolated moments.

Christian spent his days and nights at the library, where he continued his research into the letters Arthur had left us and tried desperately to keep up with his work for school. He came home late at night, after I had usually passed out on the couch. I called work and told them I was desperately ill. When they asked when I would be back, I realized that I didn’t actually know and I replied that I hoped to be better by next week. It was quite sobering to think that I had no idea when it would be safe for me to return to Washington, DC. I really hadn’t a clue when this would all be over, especially because I didn’t know what “this” was. I had stored a lot of vacation, but to take it on this short of notice would not be well received by my superiors. Christian sarcastically offered to spend an afternoon in the biomedical library in order to dig up some obscure and highly contagious disease I could claim, an offer I graciously declined.

I wanted to dedicate myself to recovering the now stolen fifty dollar bill, but I had no idea how to begin tracking a mysterious stranger named Bae. I wondered where might have gone after he left the apartment that morning. Would he return to Washington or did he have associates here in New York slavering after the banknote and whatever secrets they knew it to contain. That was another conundrum. Though I remained profoundly certain that the bill was counterfeit, the most sophisticated forms of analysis all stated categorically that it was authentic. Did Bae have access to equipment or information that I did not? I worked in the most advanced laboratory in the world for analyzing counterfeits. I could only imagine that he would have to know exactly what to look for, some hidden sign that the bill was spurious, but even then had difficulty fathoming how, if such a sign were to exist, I might have missed it. I began drawing up detailed lists of the bill’s characteristics from what I could remember and wrote a mock report in longhand to keep me thinking about it. I even went to a local branch of my bank and asked for a crisp fifty dollar bill, a request that raised more than a few eyebrows. In Christian’s apartment, I handled the bill carefully and futilely tried to compare against my memory of the other one, which was probably lying folded or crumpled in Bae’s pocket as he transported it haphazardly to wherever he was going.

Each night, Christian would direct quizzical looks at me while he thumbed through the sheaves of paper that began to amass around the couch where I ate, slept, and worked. I don’t think he understood many of my notes and he certainly knew little about currency and its composition, but he dutifully looked through everything. I tried to do the same and asked for the current state of his research with the letters, but he warded me off with the excuse that the letters were in a certain order or that his notes weren’t complete. I was skeptical of his objections, but recognized that something else was motivating his obstinacy and soon dropped my request to see the material.

“Do you think you’re making any progress?” he asked on Friday evening, the third night since our arrival in New York. He was looking at some notes I made which described what I could remember of the stolen fifty dollar bill’s texture.

“Not really,” I said with a sigh.

“Why do you keep doing this then?”

“I’m not sure. I guess, well, I guess, first, it’s something to do. I mean, I’m going absolutely stir crazy around here. This—this, I dunno, thing that we’re involved in, it isn’t stopping. It’s continuing to move forward, whatever that means, right?” He nodded. “But when I sit around here, I just feel like it’s leaving me behind, that somehow I’m losing valuable time even though I know all these notes and sketches and charts I’m making aren’t really doing anything. But there’s something else, too. I told you I think that bill is a counterfeit, but that there’s nothing I observed, scientifically anyway, that proves as much. There must be something I saw, something I identified subconsciously. I’m hoping that looking at money, feeling it, examining it, just thinking about it even, will help me remember whatever it was that has that has my intuition so convinced that that fifty dollar bill is bogus.”

He looked back to pages covered in my scrawls and notes pensively and I could not tell what he was thinking. Did he understand what I was saying and agree or did he think I was crazy but didn’t want to dampen my spirits by telling me so? He put the papers down and turned away from me, his hands flat on the desk and his body hunched over it. “Even if you remember, you won’t be able to confirm it unless you can see the bill, right?” He craned his neck around to see me nod.

“We need to find Bae,” I said.

Christian lowered his head again, deep in thought. Suddenly, he wheeled around, a silly grin painted across his face. “I’m sure you’d like to see him again, wouldn’t you?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my head slightly recoiling in surprise. “Of course, I’d like to see him again. He has the fifty dollar bill.” Then I realized what he had meant. “Oh come on,” I snorted dismissively, “You’re just imagining things now.”

“I saw the way you looked at him.” The smile remained fixed on his face, but seemed to glow even more brightly. “He’s a handsome guy.”

“Look at him?” I gaped. “I held a bloody towel to his side all night – the night I was shot at, remember? I think you’re spending too much time at the library. You need some sleep. And some sense.” I stood up and coldly walked to the kitchen to pour my self a glass of water. I felt my cheeks begin to redden. Could have possibly been correct? No. It was just the mere insinuation that brought me to blush, I concluded. Who wouldn’t have blushed at the hands of such accusations?

“Speaking of the library,” said Christian from the other room, “I need to go do some actual schoolwork. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Late, probably.”

“Ok,” I called back and said with mock sweetness, “I’ll be here dreaming about Bae.” Christian chortled to himself as he closed the door behind him.

“What a fool,” I sighed and chuckled to myself as I returned to my base of operations on the couch. I considered pouring over my notes again, but the ringing of my cell phone diverted me. “Hello?” I answered, not first bothering to check who was calling.

“It’s your father,” greeted a stern voice.

“Oh, hi dad,” I replied unable to even feign enthusiasm. From his tone, I feared that my mother had not kept her silence regarding the call from Agent Wood and, worse, told him that I worked at the Secret Service. I wanted him to know, of course, and I had not instructed or intended that my mother keep anything to herself, but I also knew this conversation was coming and had wanted to delay it for as long as possible.

“I talked to your mother a couple of days ago, after she talked to you.” It surprised me that he had waited so long to call. It was unlike him to wait out anger, especially when it came to me. He certainly knew that he was more reasonable when calm, but that rarely prevented him from venting in the moment. I decided to let him continue rather than asking why he had held off. “I’m not happy, but you’re smart, I’m sure you guessed that would be the case.”

“Yeah, I had a feeling,” I mumbled back.

“I wanted to call right away, to order you home, to tell you to quit your job, but I can’t do that anymore, can I?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You’re twenty-five, Ionia. Your bad decisions are your own.” I should have been happy with that. It was a small victory, one battle in a larger war. Before this conversation, I was unable to envision such a statement in my wildest dreams. My father was, for the first time, acknowledging that I and I alone would be the author of my own life. But I could not help but feel his judgment – my “bad decisions” – grate against me.

“Bad decisions? I’m the youngest group manager in the Secret Service Forensic Services Division, I’m good at what I do and I love it,” I said indignantly.

“What does that mean? The Secret Service Forensic whatever it is – can you tell me there is any real future there? Are there any famous forensic scientists I don’t know about?”

“Oh please,” I moaned. “There are good jobs to have that don’t promise celebrity status or uncountable riches down the line. You have one of those jobs and you still find a way to look yourself in the mirror each morning.” My father was a gifted civil engineer and built water treatment plants. We struggled at times, especially when I was young and he just beginning to work in the United States, but I never wanted for anything. By the time I reached my adolescent years, we lived quite comfortably.

“I don’t have the talents and the opportunities you have. I came to this country with nothing. I don’t regret my life because I couldn’t have done any more with it. But you—” I could hear the anger seething through his voice, choking off the words.

“I have taken advantage of the opportunities you’ve given me,” I cried. “And I even abandoned some of them at your request. I’ve taken the opportunity to pursue the dreams of my choosing. And there will never be shame in my choice to serve my country.” I knew this would strike him at the core. My father knew that America would be a better place to raise me and promised him and my mother the chance to live safer, more fulfilling life, but he always considered himself a Korean. America would never be his home.

“What of this man who called us the other day? Is that also something you have chosen?”

“Did he call again?” I asked suddenly worried, ignoring my father’s attempt to chide me.

“No he did not. And I hope he doesn’t for your sake. It sounds to me like you have gotten yourself into quite a lot of trouble. I don’t know what kind of danger you have found. As you say, your life is now your choice. But make sure your choices do not bring danger to our doorstep.” It sounded like a threat. Now, perhaps when I needed my father the most, to support me, to want to protect me, he merely abandoned me. Salty tears of resentment burned in my throat.

“I understand,” I said in a low growl. “Goodbye.”

I sat on the couch in silence for what seemed like an hour. My phone again stirred and this time I checked it immediately, not wishing to hear my father’s further castigation or my mother’s awkward attempts to sooth me. It was Christian, the one person I should have been able to talk to about all of this and the one person who couldn’t find a way to listen to it.

“Hey Christian,” I said as I controlled my voice, trying not to sound too flustered or upset.

“Listen carefully,” came a gruff voice. It wasn’t Christian. “No more games. If you want to see your friend again, you will give us whatever Arthur Mantes left you.”

My heart surged and I was about to demand who it was when Christian’s strained voice came through the phone. “Ionia, they came to the library. I tried to run, but—” He was cut off.

“Now you know we have your friend. Give us what we want or we’ll kill him.” I recognized the menacing voice now. It was the Korean man who had broken into my apartment the other night, the one who escaped after Bae killed his silent, button-eyed companion. The blood thudded in my ears and I could hardly think, much less speak.

“I don’t have it anymore,” I blurted out suddenly.

“Then you have forty-eight hours to find it,” he uttered. “We’ll be in touch.”

Part Two

Twenty

I sat frozen on the couch what must have been an hour. In the silence, my senses soon heightened so that I could distinguish each sound from the street below, alive even now in the depths of the late evening. A car, a horn, two people chatting, a dog barking. The rest of the world continued along as it had an hour ago, three days ago, two weeks ago, and was at this moment oblivious to the hopelessness that now burrowed deep within me, secure now in its hold over my mind. What was I going to do? I had no way to find Bae, or the fifty dollar bill, or any reason why I could convince Christian’s captors that a fifty dollar bill was, in fact, all the Arthur had left me. In two days, Christian would die. I shuddered, cold and alone in the empty apartment.

Then, in the midst of my despair, I noticed something under the desk. A small strap of leather lay on the ground, leading back into the shadows cast by the desk chair, pushed back only halfway into the recess between the two columns of drawers. I flew from the couch and excitedly tugged on the strap, discovering Christian’s carryall on the other end. I flung open the main pocket and tucked inside were all of the letters Arthur had left us and pages upon pages of notes covered in Christian’s handwriting. My hands shaking, I slid all of the papers from the bag and noticed that the top page was addressed to me. “Ionia,” it said, “If somehow I cannot finish . . .” A knock at the door interrupted me almost immediately and I hastily but carefully placed the lined notebook paper and delicate, yellow letters back into the bag. I started toward the door, wondering who could be knocking, but then stopped, remembering for a moment the danger that now swirled around me, and I doubled back to the desk, where I slid open the top drawer and withdrew the gun we had taken from Bae. I awkwardly gripped the heavy weapon, testing its weight in my hands as if trying to become acquainted with it, and then slipped it into the waist of my pants, right at the small of my back, as I had seen so many times in movies. I padded softly to the door and looked through the spy hole right into the face of Special Agent William Wood. I recoiled and searched the room with my eyes. There was nowhere to run.

He knocked again and spoke through the door. “I know you’re in there Ionia. I’m not going to hurt you. I know what happened to Christian. I can help.”

“Who are you?” I suddenly called back through the door, surprising even myself.

“I work for the United States government. We’re on the same side.”

What side was that? I wondered and bit my lip. If he had wanted to hurt me, he could already have done so. With Christian’s life in danger, I had no other choice. I needed to take the chance that Agent Wood could help. I slowly opened the door, ready to slam it shut if necessary. What greeted me was not the sinister face I had met in Washington, but a friendly face, softened by age. The strong jaw line and commanding gaze was absent, as thought it were a mask he had taken off along with his false Secret Service badge. He was clad in a trench coat and stood almost hesitantly in the doorway.

“How do you know what happened to Christian?” I asked.

“I’ve been following him,” he said. “Both of you, actually. I saw the men take him from the library.”

“Following us?” I asked warily, my sense of caution returning.

“It’s a long story,” he sighed. “Let’s go get a cup of coffee and I’ll explain.”

I raised my eyebrows. “It’s almost eleven.”

“How long did they give you Ionia? Two days? Three? You won’t be sleeping tonight,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Two,” I replied quietly. I took a concerned sigh, my eyes toward the floor, and moved through the doorway, satchel in hand. I also had the gun, I remembered, just in case. I motioned him to lead the way. We left Christian’s building, a pale tower of stone, luminescent in the streetlights, and walked down the street toward the same diner where, only a few days before, Christian and I had adventured into the depths of Polish history. That day I had accompanied eagerly by his side, although it was probably my stomach that clung most closely to Christian’s path. Tonight, I trailed Agent Wood reluctantly, though his stride reassumed some of the confidence I recognized from his visit to my office earlier in the week. The restaurant was nearly deserted, but for a young woman sitting in the opposite corner from the booth we had chosen. She sipped some warm drink and read a magazine folded on the table in front of her. She was not old, perhaps only thirty, and the full briefcase next to her suggested she may have been a professional, stopping home for a moment of peace after a late night at the office. We ordered our coffee and waited in uncomfortable silence. Only when the waitress had deposited the two mugs on the table, did Agent Wood seem willing to speak.

“My name is John Harper,” he said. “I’m sorry I lied to you the other day and I’m sorry if my call to your parents worried either you or them. I got the impression they didn’t really know about your line of work.” At the mention of my parents, I winced and looked into my mug. I surely wasn’t going to open up about my dysfunctional family life to this man, so I said nothing and let him continue.

“I didn’t think you and your friend,” he must have been referring to Christian, “Would become as involved, shall we say, as you have. But, I must admit, you’ve both proven surprisingly resourceful and resilient.” His tone was so prosaic, as if he were evaluating or measuring Christian and I as things rather than people.

“Who are you?” I asked with narrowing eyes. “Who do you work for?”

“Intelligence,” he answered simply. He spoke again before I could inquire further into his employment, “What Arthur gave you is important, more important than you can understand, than even he understood.”

“How do you even know what it is?” I asked. In my office earlier this week, he had only asked if Arthur left me something, but did not specify what that thing could be.

“It’s a fifty dollar bill,” Harper replied to my amazement.

“How did you know?” I breathed.

“Because I gave it to him.”

“What? Why? What is it? When did you give it to him? Where did you get it?” I peppered him with questions, almost uncontrollably, my clouded mind giving way like a violent hailstorm. He raised a hand to silence me.

“Arthur has pulled you into a very dangerous game and he had no right to do so. To be honest, I myself do not know why he left you the fifty dollar bill. But he did and it’s natural that you would have this questions. Unfortunately, I cannot answer any of them.” He seemed to be almost lecturing me and I unconsciously curled my noise in disdain. I could not help but think that John Harper sounded like my father. “Anyway,” he continued. “We need to focus on getting your friend back. I assume the men who contacted you asked for the fifty dollar bill.”

I nodded. “But they don’t think that’s really what Arthur left me. In fact, I don’t think they really know.”

“Of course they don’t,” he sniffed imperiously. “And if you give them the fifty dollar bill, they’ll probably kill both you and Christian.” At this my stomach churned, yet he said it so matter-of-factly he could have been describing what he ate for breakfast. He reached into his pocket and tossed a small disc onto the table, gesturing for me to take it.

“What is it?” I picked it up and turned it over in my hands only to find no label or marking.

“Garbage,” he said. “But it’s specious garbage and they’ll think you’ve given them what they’re looking for. It will take them some time to realize that what they have is useless.” The corners of his lips crept upward ever so slightly and I would have to guess this passed for a smile on John Harper’s face.

“What happens when they figure it out? Will they come back for us?”

“No,” he declared, his voice leaving no room for argument. “It will not help them but they will never have reason to doubt its authenticity. You will remain safe. After you give it to them, you and Christian can continue on with your lives as before. I’d recommend forgetting any of this ever happened.”

It would be impossible to forget any of this, I wanted to tell him. How could I forget learning with horror that my friend and mentor had been murdered, waiting in the emergency room to find his wife had met the same fate, the secret journey into the office when I attacked another person for the first time, the gun pointed at my head and the bullets ricocheting across my living room, our flight to New York, the bloody towel pressed to Bae’s side, the Korean man telling me he would kill my best friend, or my newfound instinct to grab a gun when I heard a knock at the door. Now, I could assure him, I was doomed never to forget any of it.

“Thank you,” I said instead, a pale replacement for the rage, fear, and grief flowing through me.

“And now you had better give me that fifty dollar bill,” he demanded.

I stiffened. “I don’t have it,” I said. His face hardened suddenly and reverted to the imposing collection of features that I remembered so clearly from the other day. However sympathetic and helpful John Harper tried to appear, the same overpowering Agent Wood lurked somewhere not far beneath the surface.

“Did you lose it?” he asked. I felt his voice had taken on a new edge, tucked away in some frequency I could feel but not hear.

“It was taken – stolen,” I replied meekly. “By the man who saved Christian and I the other night in Washington.”

“I see,” he said with a glimmer of understanding creeping across his face. “I think I know the man. What did he say his name was?”

I considered lying, but realized that he might have information on where Bae was or how I could find him.

“His name was Bae. He never told me he last name.”

“Yes,” Harper said to himself slowly. “I know who this man is. He’s still in New York. You can find him in Korea Town. You know where it is?” I shook my head no. “It’s in mid-town, between . Go to a restaurant called the Taedong River and ask for him there.” He looked at me strangely then, as if he were appraising me, calculating some future value I might have for him. It nearly sent a shiver down the length of my spine.

“How do you know he’s there?” I asked as I recovered from that frightful gaze.

“I stay fairly well informed. I can’t promise he’ll be there, but the people he associates with probably will.”

“Assuming I find him, then, how do I convince him to give me back the fifty dollar bill?”

“That’s for you to figure out,” he smiled. “Although I don’t think it will be so hard as you think. But you’re clever. I’m sure you’ll find a way.” His smile and now relaxed demeanor surprised me. Only moments before he had seemed distraught to the point of anger that I had lost the fifty dollar bill, but now he appeared to have incorporated me into some kind plan. I shuddered again trying to imagine what schemes a man like this could craft. I needed to know more about him.

“Why have you been following us?” I asked.

“The fifty dollar bill.”

“And why didn’t you just ask me for it earlier this week, when you came into my office posing as a Secret Service agent?”

“A convincing costume, wasn’t it?” he said, his voice swelling with self-satisfaction, “I thought it would have been easier. I didn’t know your interest in the bill had become so—” he paused, “--advanced. Turning over the fifty dollar bill to Special Agent William Wood seemed easier than handing it over to the mysterious John Harper.” He gestured grandly as though well aware of all of the questions I had surrounding his identity and his motives. “I wanted you to be relieved that you could relinquish the bill, not full of questions over whether you had done the right thing.” He again took a fatherly tone, only this time it sounded sincere and not patronizing. The man’s ability to morph his personality with each sentence was remarkable and I felt as though I had to catch myself from falling under his spell.

“If you have been following us, why didn’t you do anything the other night, when those two men -- the ones who I think have kidnapped Christian – entered my apartment?” And then I continued without letting him answer, another question suddenly tugging more insistently at my mind. “Why don’t you just go get the fifty dollar bill yourself, if it’s so important to you?”

“The answer to those questions, Ms. Han, is the same. In my business, it helps to have a measure of, shall we say, deniability. I try not to get involved when I don’t have to. I had a feeling you’d be ok the other night in your apartment and I have the same feeling about Bae and the men holding Christian captive. The assurance of my instincts may seem a small comfort to you, but I’ve learned that they can be quite instructive and are not to be dismissed lightly.” He stood up and pulled his trench coat back on, covering an elegant black suit paired with a red tie speckled by some sort of gold pattern. “Good luck,” he said and walked toward the door after dropped a few crumpled bills on the table.

As he opened the door, I called out to him. “How will I let you know when I have it?”

“I’m never too far behind,” he said flashing that smile again, though now his eyes twinkled devilishly.

“And who are all these people, Bae and the rest?” I asked, realizing as I spoke that it was the most important question of all. But he just stood in the door a moment longer, those eyes sparkling, full of some fearful and grand design I could not hope to understand. Then he turned back around without a word and walked out into the night.

As I sat at the diner and finished my coffee, it occurred to me that I had no desire to give this man the fifty dollar bill, nor did I have any reason to trust him. So he knew that Arthur had given me a fifty dollar bill and even that it was of some importance. So what? Bae and the other men all knew whatever Arthur had given me was important, even if they didn’t know what it was. And what if the Korean men who had captured Christian didn’t accept the disk John Harper have given me? Would they kill both of us? What if John Harper was just leading me into a trap? The only person I could trust was Arthur. He may have spoken the most cryptically of all of them, but his note was the only thing I knew could speak to me truly and without agenda. And something about the way John Harper smiled at me brought an icy chill to my heart. What plan did he have for me?

No, I decided, I wasn’t going to give him the fifty dollar bill. But I was going to get it back. Tonight.

Twenty-One

I took one of the last trains downtown to . By the time I arrived it was close to midnight. Korea Town did not carry the allure or magnificence of Chinatown and, entering it, I did not feel as if I were exiting New York and the United States and walking into some other world, immune to the touch of the surrounding culture and people. It was not a colony unto itself. Yes, the brightly lit signs that greeted me as I stepped out of the subway station were in Korean, but they advertised only an impressive array of Korean restaurants. Aside from these few signs, much of the neighborhood lay dark and silent and seemed to have caught the rhythm of the rest of the city. The Korean community living here was sizeable, but hardly overwhelming. They did not desire self-sufficiency, just a taste of the familiar.

I walked down the street, slowly sounding out the names of restaurants and shops to myself. My parents had ensured that I could speak and even read Korean, but it had been many years and the characters felt distant to my tired memory. After about twenty minutes of wandering, I saw someone walking on the opposite side of the street. I approached him, a young man, probably in his early twenties. He wore a jean jacket over a tacky, orange shirt which hung untucked over a light colored pair of jeans. The bottom of his pants hung loosely over an equally gaudy pair of bright red Converse high tops. His hair was tousled, but with the precision that seemed to characterize the style I saw sported by many young Korean men. I was not confident in my Korean and asked him in English whether he knew the restaurant Harper had told me – the Taedong River. He pointed up the street and told me it was two blocks down, on this side. I thanked him and ambled down the road, my apprehension growing as I neared my destination.

After a block, I began to read the signs even more carefully. I must have been a strange sight, plodding along so slowly and I hoped I would not arouse any suspicions from those who might cast a passing glance out the window while getting ready for bed or driving back home from a night out. But the street was deserted and most of the apartments above the street were darkened, their inhabitants already asleep. I soon saw the sign for the restaurant, just where the young man had said it would be. A warm glow trickled through the windows out onto the sidewalk. I did not approach the door, but drew near to the wall of the building and crept to the edge of the window so that I could peer inside without being seen. My left shoulder hugged the stone and I tilted my head ever so slightly toward the window. The dining room was simple with maybe ten or so tables spread about. The walls were white with wood paneling crisscrossing, although not haphazardly, but as if they were outlining medium sized windows in the white wall. Small candles lit each table, the tops of which were grey colored, a faux marble panel that I had seen in many restaurants. Only one table was occupied. Three men sat around it without any food. Two of them smoked and they all had small glasses in front of them, filled with half filled ice and some brownish liquid. They laughed now and then, but their faces wore a pale coat of worry. One of the men had is back to me and another I could not recognize, but one of them – the one facing me -- I knew unmistakably. It was Bae.

His face was narrow and contained a modest nose that rested just above a thin set of lips. His skin was rather dark, a deeper color than my own, and his short, jet black hair swept lightly over his forehead. His eyes were his most striking feature. They had been dull and clouded with pain that night in my apartment, but now they had an alert and hawkish gleam to them. His body hung relaxed upon the chair, but those eyes remained alert. The table obscured his legs, but I could he wore a blue sweater and a white undershirt peeked out from beneath it just at the neck.

I fingered the gun at the back of my waistband to make sure it was still there. I had hesitated on the train, wondered if it was wise to confront a man like Bae armed, with his own gun no less. If anything happened, I would be the least well prepared to use it. Still, In the end, I decided I felt safer having it with me. I took a deep breath and moved past the window and into the door as swiftly as I could. It offered less resistance than expected and banged against the wall as it flew open, an exclamation mark on my entrance. The heads of the three men shot towards me and I saw one of them, a heavyset man with a thin layer of hair covering his scalp, reach with his hand under his jacket. He did not remove it and I assumed it was tensely gripping a gun. Bae stared at me for a moment with astonishment and then gently put his hand on the man’s arm, signaling him to release the gun. Seeing this, the other man, who had been turned away from me, subtly let his arm hang down and I had not noticed until then that it had been perched behind his back. He must also have reached for his gun. This man was slender and I could see that he was tall even though he was sitting. Both of the men were dressed more formally than Bae and they wore matching black suits without ties.

After a moment, Bae seemed to shake off his shock at seeing me and motioned to the other two men. The portly one turned to him sharply and glared. He whispered something I could not detect and Bae whispered back. Their discussion soon appeared heated until Bae seemed to end it with a cold stare that admitted of no further dissent. The man huffed and stormed off through a swinging door that gave me a brief glimpse of the kitchen as it swung back and forth on its hinges, still resonating from the angry push it had been given. The other man looked at me then back at Bae and shrugged before he gathered his tall frame and also walked into the kitchen. For the first time, I noticed the faint residues of the day’s food, the ghosts of the odors that some hours before had wafted throughout the restaurant in a busy network of highways. Onions, broccoli, beef, chicken, rice and traces of the spices that smelled like home before dinner.

Soundlessly, Bae extended his hand to the now empty chair across the table from him, inviting me to sit down. I nervously walked to the table and lowered myself slowly to the chair, but did not pull it up to the table. I felt I wanted to keep some distance, though I knew it would not protect me if he tried to harm me.

“How did you find me?” he asked, his voice soft, soothing as I remembered it from outside my apartment, even when he was a dark stranger and I feared for my life.

“I had – some help,” I said haltingly. He looked over my shoulder and past me then, perhaps to see if the help to which I referred watched from outside. “I’m alone,” I told him. “I promise.” This seemed to relax him slightly and he took a sip from the glass in front of him. When he pulled the glass away from his mouth he stopped and looked at it strangely.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t offer you anything. Would you like something to drink?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“So, how can I help you?” He leaned back in his chair and spread his arms over his haunches, the palms turned upward.

“I think you know,” I said. At this he cupped his hands around the side of the glass and just nodded to himself and stared into the brown drink in front of him. “They’re going to kill Christian,” I continued. “In two days, unless I give it to them.”

“They?”

“The only man I talked to was the one from my apartment. The one who escaped.”

He nodded again. Nothing I said so far prompted more than that unsurprised, calm nod of his head. It was as if everything was as it should be.

“I cannot let those men have the fifty dollar bill,” he said and as opened my mouth to speak, to plead for Christian’s life, he raised a hand to stop me. “But I cannot let you friend die, either. Go get your friend back.” He reached into the pocket of a leather jacket that lay across the back of his chair and pulled out a small manila envelope when he slid over the surface of the table to me. I opened it and found the plastic sheath containing the fifty dollar bill inside.

“Thank you,” I said as turned the banknote over in my hands to examine it.

He simply nodded and then gave me a polite grin, that gentle way I draw my lips tightly to the tips of my teeth and turn the corners of my mouth upward when I pass a coworker in the hall or someone picks something I have dropped up off the floor for me, a polite half smile. But I detected a sadness in his eyes and sensed his reluctance in giving the fifty dollar bill to me. He was making a sacrifice for me, for Christian. But why? I could have ignored the new questions, tucked the envelope into Christian’s satchel, serving for the moment as my purse, and walked out of that restaurant. The other Korean men would have taken the disk Robert Harper had given me and released Christian and then, together, we could have continued to unravel the mystery of Leon Warnerke. I don’t know why, perhaps it was that I distrusted Robert Harper or maybe I was afraid to confront the Korean men alone, but for some reason I did not take the banknote and leave. Instead, I inserted the fifty dollar bill back into its protective covering and enclosed it in the envelope which I placed at the center of the table.

“Who are you?” I asked and leaned towards him as though the answer would be a precious secret.

“I work for the South Korean government, in a capacity similar to your Central Intelligence Agency,” he said plainly.

“Why did you save us, the other night in my apartment?”

“The easy answer would be that I wanted the fifty dollar bill and I wanted to keep it from those other men, but--,” he stopped and averted his gaze, unwilling to make eye contact as he continued, “But those men have killed enough innocent people already. That is why I came to your aid and that is why I would give this up, even though I know I should not.” For a man who claimed to work in the same field as Robert Harper, they seemed to be total opposites. Harper talked about life mechanically, one more variable to be counted. Bae, on the other hand, seemed to carry each death with him and the look on his face at that moment seemed to suggest that he barely had the stomach for his work, that death made him physically ill.

“Bae,” I said and gestured to the envelope on the table. “Do you know what this is? Why it’s important?”

His eyes narrowed and he inclined his head slightly to the side, “Do you?” I shook my head. “I know only that it is of great importance to my government and—another one.”

“North Korea,” I interrupted and he nodded curtly.

“Arthur Mantes was involved in some kind of work with this – other government. I do not know what. I was only told to find out what it was and, by the time I arrived, he had been killed. His wife soon followed, before I could speak with her.”

“Then he was murdered,” I breathed.

“I cannot prove it,” he shrugged, “But it is likely enough. The number of people chasing after this thing indicate its great importance, though I do not know what that is. And I do not know why you are involved or what you know, only that you had it before I--” He did not need to finish the sentence.

I could not understand this man facing me across the table. He had saved my life and then stolen the fifty dollar bill. Christian and I had probably saved his life by spiriting him out of Washington and then he had given me back the banknote when I asked for it. No overriding purpose seemed to trump his decisions about right or wrong, good or bad from moment to moment. In that he seemed, for lack of a better word, human. Because I feared for Christian’s life, because I could not bring myself to trust Robert Harper, and because, most strongly of all, I could not do this alone, marooned in the middle of this lonely political tempest, afflicted with sudden doubts about the loyalty of my dear mentor to his country, I decided I needed Bae’s help.

“Let me tell you what I know,” I said and pulled my chair up to the table. I told him about the note signed by Leon Warnerke and what Christian had discovered about him. When I detailed our visit to the Mantes house that night, only a week ago now, he gave me a goofy smile and rubbed his forehead, now uncovered by a bandage and barely scathed by a bruise. He explained that he had been unsure what to look for, hoping only to find something Arthur might have left. I described the bunch of letters and the possibly story of Wladyslaw Malachowski and the January Uprising. I then related our encounter with Agent William Wood and how I met him again last night as Robert Harper. I even told him about the disk and Robert Harper’s plan to release Christian. With a great feeling of relief, I told Bae nearly everything. He listened to the entire story intently and, when I was finished, he just sat back in his chair contemplatively and brought the tip of his forefinger to his lower lip.

“Why are you entrusting me with all of this information?” he asked.

“You’ve shown me great trust, as well” I said. “And I don’t know where else to go. I need to trust someone.”

“Ok,” he said. “I will help you.”

I sighed with relief. It was more comforting that I expected to know I would not face tomorrow alone. I leaned back in the chair and felt his gun poke into my back. I had forgotten it was there.

“I think this belongs to you,” I said and placed the gun on the table with the handle aimed at Bae. “I imagine we might need it.”

“I wasn’t sure whether you had decided to keep it,” he said. He picked it up and looked at it almost disdainfully before he tucked it into some holster I presumed was wrapped around the back of his waist. “Let’s go get your friend back.”

Twenty-Two

I explained to Bae that we had to wait until the other Koreans called me and so we took a taxi back to my apartment to wait. We spent most of the ride in silence and there was something Bae had said that I couldn’t get out of my mind. He had told me that this, all of this mess, was related to something Arthur had been doing with the North Koreans. Was Arthur a traitor? I couldn’t believe that, not of him, a man who had devoted his entire life to the Secret Service. Robert Harper had told me that he gave the fifty dollar bill to Arthur, although he did not explain why. Was he lying or was Bae? Or did Bae not know the truth and only believed that the North Koreans had been working with Arthur. And still none of this made clear why the fifty dollar bill was important at all. Did anyone know? I looked across the seat toward Bae, his face a blank, inscrutable mask. He looked almost asleep and only his eyes, as bright and alert as ever, told me he was awake and ready. Was I wise to trust him? His face offered no answers.

Inside Christian’s apartment Bae sat down at the desk and assumed a more rigid posture than he had displayed at the restaurant. I excused myself to go and change, to which he simply nodded. Always that quiet nod. We had been together for only a couple of hours and already I was growing accustomed to that stoic inclination of his head, his catchall response. I lugged the suitcase Christian had used to transport his ex-girlfriends clothes and tossed through it for something I had not yet worn. A light pink turtleneck and gray slacks would have to do. These clothes were actually hideous, I thought, and they didn’t really fit me. Rather than holding to my slender frame, they drooped down toward the floor. Bae confirmed my anxieties when he greeted me with a confused look and then a slight grin as I exited the bathroom.

“They’re not mine,” I said coldly and gritted my teeth. “I didn’t have time to take anything the other night.”

“You look fine,” he replied and then added, “Did the police ever call you, after that night?”

The question caught me off guard and I realized I hadn’t even thought about that. The neighbors were sure to report the shots fired and we had left the body of the button-eyed man lying in the middle of the floor. “No,” I said. “And when I called in sick to work, no one mentioned anything.”

“They cleaned up in time then,” he said reflectively and shrugged. “I was just curious.”

“They?”

“The people who kidnapped Christian, the—” he trailed off.

“The North Koreans,” I finished and he simply nodded again. “Why didn’t they just leave the body? Why did they go back for it?”

“It would raise too many questions. They don’t want to get involved with your police. It makes it harder to keep assassinating people.” It was a joke and maybe if those men weren’t holding Christian captive at this very moment, I might have laughed, but neither of us did. I managed a meager smile, just to let him know I appreciated his attempt to lighten the mood.

I can’t remember how long we sat together in silence, he at the desk and me on the couch. I only remember waking up the next morning, the bright light streaming into the room. “What time is it?” I exclaimed and sat straight up on the couch. I looked over and saw that he was still sitting on the chair. He did not look tired, but appeared as if he had not moved all night.

“Ten,” he said calmly.

“My cell phone--” I blurted and as I grasped around for it, I noticed that Bae had covered me with a blanket, just as he had done the night we brought him to New York. Bae held it up with one hand, to show me that he had it.

“You’ll have to forgive me for taking it from the carryall,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure they did not call while you were sleeping. I promise I didn’t look at anything else.”

“It’s ok,” I said. “Thank you.”

He stood up to hand me the phone and as he rose, he clutched his side and grunted. The wound he had suffered the other night.

“Are you ok?” I asked with concern. “I completely forgot. Here sit down.” I stood up and took then phone, then tried to help him back down.

“No, no,” he brushed me off. “I’m ok. It is just stiff from sitting for so long. Please, I’m fine.”

I was about to question him and ask whether he had shown it to a doctor, but the phone rang. It was Christian’s phone. I looked at him and could feel the anxiety in my eyes. He gathered himself up, standing his full height, and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Go ahead,” he said. “It will be ok.”

“Hello?” I answered.

“Any luck finding that fifty dollar bill?” It was the same man, the one from my apartment. His voice had lost none of its cruel luster.

“Yes,” I said. “Wait,” I caught myself, “How did you know it was a fifty dollar bill?”

“Your friend Christian has been very helpful. Very, very helpful.”

“What have you done to him?” I said violently, perhaps more boldly than I ought to have, judging by the surprised frown on Bae’s face.

“Oh, we haven’t hurt him, don’t worry,” the man chuckled. “But our threats to you, he did not take those very lightly. He’s quite attached to you apparently and was very willing to tell us everything we wanted to know, more than we might have expected, really.” My throat constricted when I tried to imagine what they might have told him, how they threatened me.

“Well, I have the banknote,” I said. “When do you want it?”

“Oh, we don’t just want the fifty dollar bill anymore. We don’t even know what it means. We want everything.”

“Ok, ok,” I said. I started to panic and could not even pretend to any bluffing or posturing. I was willing to agree to anything. “I’ll give you the letters, the note, whatever you want.”

“I think you’ve misunderstood me,” he said. “I want you to finish what you and Christian have started. I want to know what secret Arthur left you.”

“What?” I cried. “But I can’t – I don’t even know where to start – Christian was working on all that – God, please don’t kill him.” I started to cry and Bae’s hand tightened on my shoulder. I forced the tears back.

“Just relax, Ionia. From what Christian tells us, you’re perfectly capable. No more time limits. Call his phone when you are ready to give us something. We look forward to what you find out.” He hung up and left me standing there. I began to shake and my body convulsed as I sobbed in the middle of the room. Bae softened his grip and released me with his hand so that he could bring his entire arm around my shoulders. There, in the arms of a stranger, I cried.

* * *

When I had collected myself, I pushed myself away from Bae ashamedly and mumbled some apology, then retreated to the bathroom to wash up. Looking at my haggard appearance, my tired eyes, tear soaked cheeks, and hair in disarray from another night on the couch, I decided to take a shower. When I emerged, Bae was in the kitchen cooking what smelled like scrambled eggs on the stove. He had left his jacket folded over the back of the desk chair and his sweater on top of it. The gun lay in plain view on top of the desk. He was cooking in just an undershirt and his pants, a pair of simple black trousers. I noticed that he had even slipped off his shoes by the door and stuffed his socks inside them. He looked up at me when I walked out into the living room and patted my damp hair with the towel.

“There wasn’t much in the fridge,” he said. “But you need to eat.”

I was stunned to silence at the attention he was giving me and just sat quietly on the couch until he handed me a plate of food. He had scrounged up a few slices of bread and sat two pieces of toast next to the eggs. I eyed the food hungrily and wolfed it down quickly once I began eating. Bae at much more slowly and was only half finished by the time I was tossing the last scraps of toast into my mouth. After I deposited my empty plate in the sink and sat back down on the couch, he placed his own plate next to the gun on the desk and faced me, his elbows propped on his knees so he could lean forward.

“What did they tell you on the phone?” he asked.

Just thinking about that phone call had me trembling, but I calmed myself and answered. “It was the same man, the one who shot you in my apartment. He said they had threatened me, to get Christian to talk. I don’t know what they told him, but the man said he told them everything, about the note, the letters-- everything. He said they didn’t want the fifty dollar bill anymore, that he wanted me to figure out what everything meant.”

“I see,” Bae said. “How long did he give you?”

“He said there was no time limit anymore, just that I should to call him on Christian’s cell phone when I had an answer.”

Bae just looked past me and tapped his lower lip with his forefinger as he had done the night before.

“Well?” My voice filled with despair. “What should we do?”

He just shrugged. “We should find them their answer. It’s what you were going to do with Christian anyway, right?”

“That’s it?” I cried. “It could take weeks and I don’t even know if we were on the right track.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have a better idea. We don’t know where to find them and, even if we did, I’m sure they’re keeping Christian closely guarded. They want this information. They’ve already killed two people and were close to killing two others.” His grave tone and the way he looked at me told me that Christian and I were the two others of whom he spoke. I couldn’t suppress a slight shudder at the thought of what they might have done to us had Bae not saved us and, I shuddered again, what they may yet do to Christian.

“You’re right,” I sighed. “But I don’t even know where to start.” I slumped back into the couch and pouted.

“You could start with the note Christian left you,” Bae said with a glance to the carryall next to the couch.

The note. I had started to read it when Robert Harper knocked at my door late the night before and had completely forgotten it since then. I bent over to pick up the satchel and placed it on my lap. The front flap opened to reveal the note. I started taking it out of the bag when I stopped. “Wait,” I said and narrowed my eyes at Bae, “I thought you said you didn’t look around in the bag.”

“I lied,” he said and rolled his eyes in a mock display of guilt. “I didn’t snoop around. Really, I just saw the piece of paper addressed to you. Are you mad I remembered?”

“No, no, I’m not mad.” I even laughed in spite of myself. “Well, let’s both take a look at it.” He came over to the couch and sat down next to me. He was slightly taller than I and he had to stoop down a bit to get a good look at the letter. I felt my hair brush his face.

Ionia,

If somehow I cannot finish this research, for any reason at all, I have prepared these notes to help guide you through what I have already done. As I write, I cannot help but feel a bit melodramatic, but after what happened in your apartment, I decided the utmost caution is necessary. You know me-- I’m pretty uptight about these sorts of things. If nothing else, it helps me to organize my own thoughts, so it’s a useful exercise in that regard.

First, the letters are in two separate groups: the originals and the translations. I have even copied out the English letters because his handwriting – like mine – requires a bit of “translation,” if you know what I mean. Within each group, I have divided the letters by main correspondent and, if there is a continued correspondence by two people, I’ve ordered the correspondence chronologically. Here’s a sort of catalog:

Wladyslaw Malachowski/Josef Horodice (correspondence)

Leon Warnerke/Walter Woodbury (correspondence)

Leon Warnerke to Nicolai Pogolski (two letters)

Franz Schulz to Josephine Dobrovolska (two letters)

Franz Wolf to unnamed person (two letters)

The Malachowski/Horodice correspondence lasts from 1861 – 1865, as I told you the other morning. The Warnerke/Woodbury correspondence is confined to the year 1876. The letters Leon Warnerke wrote to Nicolai Pogolski date from May 1872 and December 1897, respectively. The Franz Schulz letters to Josephine Dobrovolska are from March and August 1872. Unfortunately, the Franz Wolf letters bear no date.

There are also the two newspaper clippings I told you about, both of which I have also translated. The one from 1872 is about the arrest of Josephine Dobrovolska for trying to bring counterfeit notes into Russia, so the letters between Franz Schulz and her strengthen my suspicion that counterfeiting is at the heart of all of this. The other one is just about counterfeiting as some kind of anarchist strategy to bring down Europe. It’s from 1897, just before Leon Warnerke was himself arrested for attempting to pass counterfeit notes.

I couldn’t figure out how to piece everything together or why there are letters from so many different people, so I decided to take a different approach. Instead of trying to ascertain the connection between Wladyslaw Malachowski, Leon Warnerke, Franz Wolf, etc., I tried to figure out where Wladyslaw Malachowski or Josef Horodice might have gone when they fled Poland. I know this seems a bit silly, but at the end of the day today – just before I starting writing this – I came up with a hypothesis that fits the facts. I don’t know where this trail leads yet, but I think Wladyslaw Malachowski probably went to Paris.

Twenty-Three

There was another note just after that one labeled “Second Note” across the top. I chuckled to myself and Bae looked at me inquiringly.

“Oh nothing,” I said, “It’s just very much like Christian to write ‘Second Note’ rather than date them or something. He was probably doing this all fairly quickly.”

“That would probably explain the handwriting,” Bae said wryly and I realized that English had almost certainly not been his first language. As if this second note was even more messily scripted across the page he lowered his head even closer to the page.

Ionia,

My new theory is more tenuous that the last – I don’t have any letters to go on this time – but let’s see if it gets us anywhere. Another Polish history lesson. I’ve discovered that between 1830 and 1870 an ongoing stream of Polish elites and intellectuals fled the country for foreign lands and the whole period is called the Great Emigration. You might remember that I told you 6,000 revolutionaries fled for France after the November Uprising of 1830. This was the first big wave of exiles and they established a base in France that would be appealing to many of the future exiles.

In 1843, a family by the name of Czartoryski bought a house in Paris named the Hôtel Lambert. A hôtel particulier is not a hotel as we know them, but one of a series of baronial mansions mostly concentrated in the Third and Fourth districts of Paris. The Hôtel Lambert sits on the Ilê St. Louis, which is the small island in the Seine, right behind the Ilê de la Cité (where Notre-Dame Cathedral is). At that time, the head of the Czartoryski family, Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, was the son of Polish royalty before the 1895 Partition of Poland by Russia, Austria and Prussia. His family estates had been seized by Catherine II of Russia and Adam Czartoryski and his brother were drafted into the Russian army. They made a good impression on Catherine, though, and she elevated them to courtly positions and returned some of their lands. Adam eventually became an important minister in Russian foreign affairs . He had retired from public service before the 1830 uprising, but was moved to join the insurrectionists and even helped to lead the rebellion. After its failure, he moved to France and eventually purchased the house, as I described.

The Hôtel Lambert eventually became synonymous with a political association the Czartoryskis led within it. They actively promoted Poland’s cause abroad and sought to bring important exiles together in the pursuit of Polish national independence. At the outset of the January Uprising in 1863, the Hôtel Lambert opposed the revolution, worried it would fail (as Malachowski did in his own letters), but eventually Adam Czartoryski’s son, Wladyslaw (there’s a lot of Wladyslaw’s aren’t there?), who also was a member of the Hôtel Lambert faction actually undertook diplomatic duties for the revolutionary Polish government and lobbied several national governments. It was when these governments gave their support to the uprising that it kicked into a full scale conflict and, soon after they failed to back these pledges, the Poles were brutally crushed. But we’ve been over that. The Hôtel Lambert eventually closed up shop in 1870.

I think Wladyslaw Malachowski may have fled to Paris and even joined the Hôtel Lambert. If nothing else, it would have been an appealing possibility: we know he was politically active and he came from landed blood. He would have been able to at least associate with the Hôtel Lambert crowd.

But there’s something else, a connection that seems even more remote, yet one that kept nibbling at me and provoked a startling and amazing epiphany. In 1870, the French Second Empire collapsed after Napoleon III was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War. The Prussians eventually laid siege to Paris, but the republican government that inherited the nation from Napoleon organized a peace with the Prussians, led by Bismarck, that greatly angered a Parisian populace that had suffered horribly during the siege. Many Parisians were members of the Garde Nationale that had defended the city from the Germans and they soon started to behave as if they were running the city. Many of them were communists, socialists, all kind of political radicals. Adolphe Thiers, who ran the new French republican government, worried about the amount of power the Garde Nationale held and in late March he tried to seize some of the weapons they had cached away. This led to a full scale revolt in the city and for about two months, spanning the last days of March to the last days of May, the Paris Commune reigned in the city before it was brutally put down by the French government.

The Commune went on to have great historical importance for radicals all over the world. It was considered one of the great moments in grassroots political liberation and has been considered by many leading communists since to be one of the best examples of what a true class revolution should look like.

What does this all have to do with Leon Warnerke? Well, what I can’t get out of my mind is that newspaper clipping from around the time of Leon Warnerke’s arrest that refers to “une nouvelle maneouvre anarchiste” – a “new anarchist maneuver.” Let’s suppose that Leon Warnerke was a counterfeiter – not just someone who had been accidentally given counterfeit rubles as was originally alleged. The governments of Europe were worried about some anarchist plot to counterfeit currency. How does a Russian expatriate photographer fit into all of that? Why would he be in league with a group of anarchists trying to disrupt Europe?

That’s when I had my epiphany. I went back and looked at Josef Eder’s The History of Photography – the book in Arthur’s library that had the combination for the lock in his desk. That book has an account of the life of Leon Warnerke. In it, Eder writes the following of Warnerke’s controversial birth location, often cited as Moravia or Austria:

Joseph Plener convinced this author [Eder] that Warnerke was a Russian by Birth. Plener was a Pole in Czarist Russia and at that time involved in a Revolt against Russia. He fled to London as a Russian emigrant. He devoted himself to photography . . . In London, Plener had close personal contact with Warnerke, with whom he was able to converse in Russian, his mother tongue, and he always described Warnerke as a Russian.

What is interesting is that Plener was a Pole from Czarist Russia, which included its Polish territories, and escaped to London during a revolt. Unless he was extremely old when he associated with Warnerke, the revolt in question was most likely the January Uprising, which was the last major Polish upheaval in the 19th century. The passage says that he “had close personal contact” with Warnerke and that he – not anyone else, but he – claimed Warnerke was a Russian.

But what if Plener was lying to Eder? Remember in the letter from Josef Horodice to Wladyslaw Malachowski when he says to Malachowski “You must leave your family behind” and underlines the word “family?” What if he is trying to tell Malachowski to leave his family name behind, not the actual people in his family. Think about it. In the response, Malachowski implies that he will contact Horodice again, but says that “this will be the last time you hear from Wladyslaw Malachowski.” We couldn’t figure that out, unless he meant it would be the last time he would contact Horodice under the name “Wladyslaw Malachowski.” Maybe Plener told Josef Eder to write in his book that Warnerke was Russian in order to disguise his true identity. Perhaps Plener himself was a pseudonym for another, also compromised name.

This is my revelation: Wladyslaw Malachowski, a talented engineer, returns home to fight in the ill fated January Uprising. His father is brutally executed by a Russian nobleman and Malachowski flees Poland, but swears revenge against the nobleman for killing his father. He ends up in Paris, where a great number of Polish exiles have kept the struggle for independence alive. It is a home away from home. Several years later, the Commune grips the city and Malachowski, now under an assumed name, is swept up in the revolutionary gusto, suddenly finding within himself a great affinity for the communists, socialists, and, yes, the anarchists participating in the Commune government. The Commune is put down, as brutally as the January Uprising in Poland, and Malachowski is once again forced into exile, this time from his adopted home. He moves to London where his gift for photography earns him professional respect and a comfortable living. But underneath it all he seethes and continues to plot his revenge, at one time directed against only the Russian empire that killed his father and oppressed his people, but not at the bourgeoisie order that he saw stamp out the radical dream after the Paris commune. He joins an international conspiracy of anarchists, along with his good friend Josef Horodice who fled to London after the January Uprising and took the name Joseph Plener to disguise himself. Within this conspiracy, he puts his great knowledge of photography and printmaking to work, developing the finest counterfeits ever devised in order to destabilize the economies of Europe. Because of the delicate nature of his work and his public persona as a photographer, he uses several aliases, like Franz Wolf and Franz Schulz to conduct correspondence with his co-conspirators across the Continent.

What I’m suggesting is that the reason Arthur left us letters, not just from Leon Warnerke, but also Wladyslaw Malachowski, Franz Schulz, and Franz Wolf, is because Leon Warnerke, Wladyslaw Malachowski, Franz Schulz and Frans Wolf are all the same person.

I checked to see that Bae had finished reading and then carefully placed the pages back in the satchel. I felt wearied by the flood of information and speculation Christian had spouted, but I could see immediately what had so strongly attracted Christian to this hypothesis. It resolved the issue of why Arthur had left us so many sets of letters when our very first clue had implied that Leon Warnerke was the key to everything. It also gave Leon Warnerke, the photographer capable of counterfeiting, the motive to actually engage in it. But a good guess wasn’t proof. We would need to know more to feel sure that Leon Warnerke, Wladyslaw Malachowski and all the others were, in fact, the same person. And then there was the issue of where it all was supposed to get us. Correctly guessing who Leon Warnerke was had gotten us to the letters, but what next? This historical world of letters and intrigues had to connect to the present one in some way. What did Arthur want us to find?

Us. Just thinking the word brought on flashes of grief. This seemed so much more insurmountable without Christian here. Reading the energy and enthusiasm in the note only made me worry about him more. He should not even have been involved in this. Arthur had left the fifty dollar bill, his enigmatic legacy, for me. Now it was Christian whose life hung was at risk and whose work was our only hope of saving him. I felt responsible for letting him get involved. I should have stopped him that night he showed up at my apartment, fresh off a week spent in the library trying to hunt down Leon Warnerke. I should have played the bad host and just told him to go home and forget about it. Then maybe he’d be in this apartment, relaxing after a week of class and research, instead of Bae and me, sifting anxiously through his notes, hoping desperately to find a way to save his life.

Bae stood up and walked over to the window, his hands clasped behind his back. “I’m not historian,” he said, “But it doesn’t seem like much to go on, based on what you told me in the restaurant anyway.”

“No, it’s certainly not” I agreed. “But do we have a choice? We need to start somewhere.”

“So what are you going to do then?” he asked.

“I’m going to do what Christian would have done,” I said and took a deep breath. “I’m going to the library.”

Twenty-Four

It didn’t take me long at all to find what I was looking for. I knew I wouldn’t have access to Christian’s university library, so I went to the big New York Public Library, its palatial steps famously guarded by two giant sculpted lions. I had not used a library in years, not since college, and it took me a few moments to get my bearings. I took the subway down to the library and during the ride I had flipped through Christian’s translations of the letters and newspaper clippings to try and get my bearings. I decided to focus on Josephine Dobrovolska, the woman who had been arrested in 1872 for trying to smuggle 20,000 counterfeit rubles into Russia.

The article gave little information. She had been stopped over by Russian soldiers at the Wierzbolowo customs station on the border of Russia and the Polish territories and then asked to open her luggage. Inside, they found 20,000 in Russian rubles in denominations of 10 and 50 and they imprisoned her. An agent from the government came and determined the notes were counterfeit, a discovery that resulted in her formal arrest. Some of the customs officers reported that she had an accomplice who fled the scene, although this was not confirmed. The article contained additional information on how concerned citizens can spot the counterfeits in case others were in circulation, something about checking the size of the watermark on both sides of the banknote. A short passage at the end, however, caught my attention:

Russian authorities said that repeated questioning failed to elicit from Ms. Dobrovolska the parties responsible for producing the spurious banknotes or her motives for transporting the forgeries into Russia. She said only that arresting her would do nothing to stop the revolution from sweeping across Europe. Her language implies that she is part of the continued anarchist threat to the peace and stability of Europe. A large injection of counterfeit currency into the economies of any one of the major European powers could result in a massive collapse of economic functioning. One can only imagine the social chaos that would result.

If Christian’s theory was right, then maybe Josephine Dobrovolska, a suspected anarchist and radical, was the link that we needed between Leon Warnerke and a counterfeiting ring that really may have existed. The woman avowed some kind of revolutionary movement, one that was involved in counterfeiting. I was growing excited, but quickly tempered my enthusiasm and reminded myself that such sweeping language was probably characteristic of late 19th century social revolutionaries. Still, I thought hopefully, it was something and I hurriedly dug through the letters until I found the two that had been written by Franz Schulz to Josephine Dobrovolska.

London

March 7, 1872

Dear Ms. Doborvolska,

I hope you are enjoying the onset of spring. Here in London it remains cold and grey, although I still have fond memories of spring in my homeland in Austria. Our spring there came late but was green. I’m sure even here the sun shall soon make an appearance and bring with a warm summer for the benefit of all.

Be sure to write and tell me of your family. I do indeed hope they are well. Little Anna must be ten years old now and Johann fifteen. How does he progress with his studies? Does he have scholarly ambitions or does he yet harbor childhood dreams of glory and warfare? I am always curious to know how the young experience this new and changing world so differently than we who have already seen so much.

Please write soon.

I remain,

Yours Sincerely,

Franz Schulz

London

August 12, 1872

Dear Ms. Dobrovolska,

I was delighted to receive your last letter and have since read it many times. I confess that each time I pick it up, I feel as if I am transported to your home, as if by magic. To know that you are all doing well, that Anna and Johann are growing up to be such fine you people, warms my heart more than the summer sun ever could.

As for the sun, I will say that it has been a beastly summer and I almost wish I could recant my wishes in my last letter to you. We leave the windows open all day but it does no good. How soon will the winter return and give us respite from this assault? Alas, no season is as pleasant as one expects or as horrid as one remembers.

Please write again soon. I always want to know more of you and your family.

I remain,

Yours Sincerely,

Franz Schulz

The two letters left me utterly dumbfounded. They were about nothing. How could Franz Schulz be Leon Warnerke or Wladyslaw Malachowski? The criminal mastermind and vengeful exile would hardly resort to clichés and platitudes. This was not the vehement hand that wrote of revolution to his comrade Josef Horodice, nor was it the cultured pen of a student of photography. And why was Josephine Dobrovolska, an anarchist counterfeiter, wasting her time corresponding with such a sop? Christian surely could not have translated the letters so poorly. The excitement I had tried to check after reading the newspaper clipping now dampened of its own accord. Maybe there wasn’t anything to this Dobrovolska woman after all. Pessimism had so thoroughly gripped me by the time I arrived at the library that I practically had to crawl up the stairs. I dreaded the inevitable discovery that Josephine Dobrovolska was nothing but a mild housewife or, worse, did not exist in the historical record at all. I held the carryall close, worried that a gust of wind might carry Christian’s theory – and my hopes – away.

Inside the library, I first tried the usual stops, looking for Dobrovolska as a subject, author, title or keyword of some other work. I was not surprised or particularly disheartened when there was no result. Even someone as unfamiliar with research as I knew that finding, for example, an entire book or even book chapter about her would be hitting a home run. Besides, Christian probably checked all of the names in the letters this way when he first received them. I found a large table sandwiched between two large, dusty bookshelves that may have sat unused in my lifetime and I sat down to think. After a little while, I walked over to the reference desk and greeted the librarian, a very young woman, maybe still in high school. I wondered why she wasn’t in school, but then remembered it was the weekend. A library would have been an odd place for a drop out to work, I thought with some amusement. I must also have smiled to myself, because she gave me a strange look before asking if she could be of service.

“Yes,” I said, wiping the stupid grin from my face. “I was wondering if it’s possible to find reference to a particular name in foreign newspapers or historical correspondence.”

“What countries?”

“Mostly France and Russia, I think.”

“Well, we subscribe to some pretty large databases of international newspapers. You can do a full text search on the computer terminals over there,” she said and pointed over my shoulder to a long desk lined with antiquated computers.

“They’re pretty old articles,” I clarified.

“Like, how old?”

“I’m looking for something from, say, 1870 to 1872.” She recoiled lightly with modest surprise and then pursed her lips in thought.

“I can order you specific issues of Russian or French newspapers from other libraries and you can look at them here, but we can’t search them. The different volumes might have indexes of authors or subjects, but I’m not sure. It probably depends on the newspaper.”

“Right,” I said. “How about correspondence then? Do you have any collected correspondence from that time period for those countries?” I knew it was an extravagant request and she probably did not have recourse to anything more than the library catalog I could access from a number of different computers stationed throughout the library. But she was friendly and, rather than shooing me away, she began madly typing at the computer.

“There are some collections of Russian letters – literary ones, is that what you’re looking for?” I shook my head no. As she resumed typing, she spoke without averting her eyes from the screen, “You said France was the other country, right?”

“Right.”

“This is interesting,” she said after a moment. “We have a large collection of documents about France published by a communist press in the 1930s and it looks like it may contain some letters.”

“The 1930s? I was looking for the early 1870s.”

“Well, that’s when it was published, but it’s about some event in your timeframe.”

This caught my attention. “What is it?” I asked inquisitively.

“The full title is The Paris Commune: An Anthology, 1870-71.”

“Where is it?” I blurted out loudly, then blushed and brought my hand to my mouth, embarrassed at my sudden outburst.

She wrote out a call number on a scrap of paper and handed it to me. “Go down those stairs behind you to the main level. Follow the signs to subbasement B . You’ll see markers on each shelf arranging the stacks by call number.”

“Thanks,” I said hurriedly and dashed down to the stacks. I could barely contain my excitement and I once again had to remind myself that this could turn to nothing. Countless people wrote letters during and about the Paris Commune. The chances that one of them might be Josephine Dobrovolska were terrifyingly small. Still, for a few seconds, at least, I carried some small hope down to the stacks. The subbasement was almost pitch black and as the door closed behind me I groped around in the growing dark until I found a light switch. The long fluorescent bulbs that lit the long rows of shelves came to life with a pop and hiss in steady succession. The room was enormous and if the other shelves had seemed unused in a lifetime, this looked as if they had been collecting dust since the Paris Commune itself. I paced along the enormous rows until I found the call number range containing my book. The rows were narrow and, despite my slender figure, I felt the satchel tap against the books from time to time and I drew it closer to my hip.

My book was situated on a low shelf and I had to crouch down to see it. I found the white label at the bottom of the binding that matched the call number on the piece of paper I carried and carefully removed the large tome from the shelf. I dusted off the cover with the sleeve of Christian’s ex-girlfriends sweater. The Paris Commune: An Anthology, 1870-71. I wanted to open the book right there, but it was heavy and the space between the shelves too cramped to really pour over the volume. I walked back towards the entrance to the stacks and spotted a small carrel next to the door. As soon as I sat down, I eagerly flipped back to the index and found that, of a series of different indexes, there was one arranging documents by author. My heart was racing with excitement and I had to take a deep breath just to keep my hands from trembling. I found the list of last names beginning with “D” and ran my finger down the page in order to anchor my eyes as they scanned the microscopic print. I almost couldn’t believe it when I saw it. “Dobrovolska, J . . . . . 578.” I tore backwards through the book to page 578. The section was called The Commune: Foreign Retrospectives and there on the page sat a neatly typed letter. An introductory note indicated the letter had originally been written in Polish and “represented a fine example of international solidarity with the revolution.” The librarian did say a communist press published the book.

I was completely unprepared for the letter that followed. Christian had condensed the Paris Commune and its history into a single paragraph of terse, academic prose. But this letter was an achingly sad, firsthand account of an event no few sentences could ever hope to do justice. Though I did not recognize all the names or places, the prose nonetheless captivated me.

London

September 25, 1871

Dear Andre,

You asked to know where I have been all this months and if I am well. I say that I am alive and well after a manner of speaking, yet I have seen also in this year things that can barely be put into words, although I shall try for your benefit. After the Second Empire crumbled at Sedan, we – Nicolai and I -- followed the Prussian advance across the melting axis of old Europe and, as Moltke’s troops encircled the ville des lumieres, waited patiently for our moment to enter the city. We knew our friends and countrymen, the ones who had left after the uprising in 1863, would welcome us inside, but there was no way to get past the Prussian lines and into the city. Autumn soon turned to winter and winter then descended into something worse, an unspeakably cold season with no name to which one may appeal for mercy. Through the aborted sorties, the booming Krupp cannons, and the woeful hunger and cold, the Parisians would not give out. The rich ate dogs, cats, horses, rats; the poor, nothing. Did you know they even killed the animals at the zoo for food? It was a fitting scene: the Second Empire had been a sham, a brilliant, dazzling display, blinding us all to the miserable Parisian alleyways brimming with abject poverty; and, at the end of it all, the bourgeoisie hungrily filled their empty bellies with the spectacles that had once nourished their self-righteous boasts of French prosperity.

The balloons were the strangest sight. They floated out of the city with alarming frequency, drifting aimlessly with the wind. The pilots had no way to control the direction or altitude – some of the balloons would soar out of sight only to plummet out of the sky moments later, grazing the points of the Prussian bayonets. Those who faulted the inability to control the balloons confounded their purpose. They carried dispatches and letters of resistance, but they were really buoyed by the hope of a forlorn Athens, who saw her best day far behind. Weighted down by hunger, bitter cold, and the tectonic shifts of history, the Parisians invested the balloons with their national pride, gravely threatened by its newfound obsolescence. The Prussians might take Paris, but the soul of the city and her people would spirit away, over their cannons of modernity, to that place off the edges of the metamorphosing map. One of them even landed in Norway.

After Thiers and Favre surrendered the city at the end of January, we finally had our chance to get in, but wavered. We heard the stories about life in the city before the siege, but their validity was irrelevant as long as it had been closed. Now, able to enter, we anxiously began to wonder what life in the city would actually be like. ‘Well, old friend,’ I remember Nicolai reassuring me as we deliberated one evening in the cold candlelight, ‘We’ve come all the way across Europe, and now you’re going to miss your one opportunity to feast on rat soup?’ The next day we made for the city. We had to swim against a current of bourgeoisie fleeing with all possible haste. Their gaunt faces and weary eyes warned us to turn back. “You’ll catch the siege fever,” they would say, “Every tomorrow will face you with such blankness, you’ll go mad.” But we had made our decision and did our best to ignore the pleas of this ghostly army.

We arrived the very day that food from the British and Americans started pouring into the city. There should have been enough for everyone, but again it was distributed according to price instead of need. For the poor, nothing had changed, except that now their starvation, once an act of patriotism, stood for nothing. We were lucky and our friends on the Ilê St. Louis had managed to secure a goodly number of provisions. We ate well that first night and in the company of our friend the photographer, whom I am sure you remember fondly.

The Assemblé Nationale, safely ensconced in Bordeaux, acknowledged the struggling masses only through oppressive legislation. They ratified Thiers’s odious peace accord, which ceded much of France to the Prussians. But this paled in comparison to the Law of Maturities, requiring all debts – whose payment had been suspended during the war – to be settled within two days. The only concession the French managed to wrangle out of the peace was Belfort in the France-Comté, but the price, a Prussian victory march through the Arc de Triomphe, may have been too high. After the parade, the citizens of Paris descended on the Arc and cleansed the streets with broom and fire.

Then everything happened on March 18. The government tried to take back the artillery stolen by left-leaning members of the Garde Nationale, which had defended the city throughout the siege. The failed recapture sparked off violence between the Garde members still loyal to the government and the newly assertive insurgents. Two dead government generals later, Thiers fled the city and joined the Assemblé Nationale, which had relocated to Versailles, another sign of weakness to Paris’s toiling proletarian masses, who now controlled the city without challenge.

Before long, although not without some unfortunate bloodshed, the Commune was declared. After free elections on March 26, the Commune de Paris became the official government of the city, sitting in the Hôtel de Ville. Already they have been criticized for their motley character and inclusion of revolutionnaires of all kinds – Jacobins, Blanquists, Proudhonists, Internationalists, anarchists, intellectuals, Bohemians, we Polish exiles, and all those Reds -- but I can tell you that in this aimless confusion we saw a hope never before imagined. We had traversed a Europe whose tectonic activity, we thought, would render it more stable. Now we saw that the revolutionary legacy of this century was gaining opportunities heretofore unimaginable. The Prussian guns had not created a new order; they had pulverized and discredited an old one. Out of the rubble, the proletarian finally found room to breathe. When the dissident Garde took the French cannon, they did not intend to fire on their political rivals, but sought to give their people a night of quiet in which to peacefully dream up a better tomorrow. How could they have had a plan? The beauty of the Commune was that so many nameless figures could write their own story for the first time. What of the illiterate man who faces the blank page? Are his ideas worth anything less because he has never been allowed to write them down, to even learn how?

But you know how it all ended and for that we have already decided to grant them no reprieve for what we called their “inaction.” For those last few days of March, the Communards brought Paris back to something like normal and then, on April 2, Thier mercilessly roused them from their hard earned rest. The assaults on the city and the Communard regime began and the Commune haphazardly mobilized the city for its second defense, this time from the French national government. As they always do, the desperate become their own worst enemy. Suspected allies of the Versailles government were imprisoned and tried within days and held as hostages, executed by threes for every murder of a Commune war prisoner. Wounded were left untreated and no clear chain of command linked the volunteers trying vainly to defend the Commune.

On April 19, in the thick of this new siege, the Commune de Paris issued a strange and stirring manifesto, declaring, “The Communal Revolution, begun by popular initiative the 18 March, inaugurates a new political era, experimental, positive, scientific. It is the end of the old governmental and clerical world, of militarism, of monopolism, of privileges to which the proletariat owes its servitude, the Nation its miseries and disasters.” But by then the Commune’s administration was already rife with internal dissent and factionalism. In May, the surreal, dreamlike quality of the Communard fantasy became increasingly absurd. Much needed manpower was devoted to the destruction of the Vendôme column and public concerts – concerts! – were thrown in the Tuileries Palace while Thiers’s troops whittled the city’s ragged defenses. On May 21st, Their entered the city at Point du Jour and the blood letting began. French fought French in the streets and the Communards, in their final suicidal act, put the city to flame. Between the wholesale massacre of hostages and the indiscriminate Versailles muskets, at least 20,000 Parisians died that week before Thier took control of the city. Of the Communards who managed to live, many were imprisoned and some, including us, scattered across Europe and the globe.

Maybe it is worse to know fear in security, than to blissfully stand in harm’s way. Principles somehow seem less important, less grand when you understand the costs of defending them. We once grasped them as if they had the power to tear the world asunder, but we have seen that nothing inspires so much awe and respect as death. To protect immortal things once you have witnessed the ravages of mortality is a heavy burden, one many are anxious to avoid.

We have since come to London and already time has helped to fade the images I once thought burned in my mind forever. The revolutionary spirit stirs within me once again and I see that we are doomed to repeat such episodes until we can successful take up arms against the old order. I write to you in safety from London, but know I will not surrender my allegiance to our once hallowed cause. Even now I begin preparations for the first step in bringing a new and better world into being.

I remain,

Affectionately Yours,

Josephine Dobrovolska

When I first encountered the sentence in the middle of the letter, “We ate well that first night and in the company of our friend the photographer, whom I am sure you remember fondly,” my breath caught and I had to blink to be sure I had read it correctly. Here, buried amidst a stirring tale of blood and toil, was what I was looking for, the keystone that held together Christian’s extravagant and nearly insane theory. Josephine Dobrovolska, apparently a Polish exile, had indeed joined with the anarchists and other radicals who participated in the Paris Commune. Her continued commitment to an international cause was asserted almost without question in the closing of the letter. She even hinted at “preparations for the first step in bringing a new and better world into being” – could she be referring to her ill-fated attempt to smuggle counterfeit rubles into Russia. Most importantly of all, however, the letter specified that one of her friends, also a Polish refugee, who lived on the Ilê St. Louis – where, I remembered, the Hôtel Lambert was located -- was a photographer. Could it have been Wladyslaw Malachowski, the Polish revolutionary? Was he also an engineer and photographer who traveled to Paris after the January Uprising of 1863? Did he flee to London with his friend and fellow radical Josephine Dobrovolska? Maybe he wasn’t radical yet, but during those months in Paris, he saw what even Europe’s moderate republicans would do to those who fought to change their world. Perhaps late night conversations convinced this particular exile to take refuge in London and there, under the name Leon Warnerke, to continue with the struggle he left behind in Poland. Now, he saw, it had to be a fight that swept the whole continent. Only then would providence come for Poland and all the oppressed peoples of Europe.

It was still a lot of speculation, more than I would prefer, but it was something. I did not have a patron card for the New York library system, so hustled to the photocopier and made a copy of the letter. I checked to ensure that I had everything and then instinctively underlined that one sentence, my prize. Buoyed by a newfound hope, I floated weightlessly out the door of the library and down the steps, excited to show Bae my discovery. I felt sure now that we were on to something, that we would move forward and disentangle the threads Arthur had left behind. As I reached the bottom of the steps, a man stepped out in front of me and my momentum almost carried me right into him. I was about to apologize for the near miss, but when I caught a glimpse of the man’s face I froze.

It was Robert Harper.

Twenty-Five

“Your friend only has about a day to live,” he said, “So you can imagine my surprise when I saw you walk into the library.”

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

“I thought I just asked you the same question,” he sneered. “I told you I was never too far behind.”

“Things have—changed,” I said. “I’m trying to help Christian.”

“At the library?” he raised his eyebrows and frowned slightly. “Things must have changed a great deal. I thought we had an arrangement. I give you the disk to help free Christian, you give me the fifty dollar bill. But now I’m confused because I noticed that, instead of the fifty dollar bill, you’ve brought the man who stole it. An interesting strategy, to be sure.”

“The men don’t want the fifty dollar bill anymore,” I said, now growing angry. “Christian told them that there’s more to it than that. They want to know what the fifty dollar bill means.”

He staggered back a step suddenly, as though an invisible force had struck him in the chest. For the first time he appeared genuinely surprised and he his eyes widened as if something had happened that they had not foreseen, something that deviated from his master plan. His looked at me narrowly and with a dark intensity, his eyes aflame.

“And do you know what it means, Ms. Han?” he asked with a razor sharp growl.

“No,” I admitted, imprisoned by his powerful gaze. Then he gathered himself up, simultaneously growing both taller and nearer to me at the same time. His suit, impeccably cut from a dark grey bolt of cloth, seemed to stretch and accommodate his new larger frame.

“Arthur left you more than a fifty dollar bill, didn’t he?” he asked.

“Yes,” I stammered, unable to stop myself, “He left a note, too. I don’t know what it means. That’s what we’re—that’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“That sly dog,” Harper said, but to himself now. “I should have known he was more than I bargained for.” His eyes clouded slightly, the fire smoldering now deeply within his eyes, just as intense but less brilliant. I could see that he was adapting his plan once again, adjusting his moves to take into account this new, unexpected turn of events. He suddenly looked back at me, his eyes lighting anew and recapturing me with their incandescence. “Listen to me very carefully, Ionia Han. I will not stop you from trying to help your friend, but I warn you to be cautious about the man you believe is helping you. I do not know what he told you, but he may be more dangerous than he has led you to believe.” His face softened then and he transformed before my eyes back into that kind and gentle guise he had donned last night in the coffee shop. He stepped aside to let me pass and I started walking towards the stairs to the subway. My body felt as though it was slowly becoming unfrozen and my first steps were halting and stiff.

“Oh, Ionia,” I heard him call from behind me and I turned to look at him. “Do you still have that disk by any chance?” I nodded that I did and reached into the front pocket of the satchel where I had left it. “Thanks,” he said as I handed it to him and then he smiled and tossed it into a nearby garbage can. “Told you it was garbage,” he said over his shoulder and then sauntered away along the base of the library steps. Perhaps it was just an illusion, but as he walked away from me, but I could have sworn that his broad back and tall frame body slowly shrunk back to a normal size.

* * *

By the time I returned to the apartment, I had shaken off some of the dread Robert Harper always seemed to instill in me, but what he said about Bae still worried me. Though I did not trust Harper, he had known where to find Bae and might know things Bae had not told me himself. I always came back to the same thing, though, I needed someone to trust, to help me through this, and Bae had gotten me this far. I could be cautious, but after that, what else could I do? The man had saved my life and given me back the fifty dollar bill. That would have to be enough to earn my trust, for now at least. I was lost, cut adrift from any situation that felt the least bit familiar and the principles and instincts that now guided my action were, at best, provisional. My trust in Bae would have to be provisional as well. I just hoped he wouldn’t come to prove it misplaced.

When I opened the door, Bae stood up immediately and reached behind his waist. As soon as he saw me, though, his arm relaxed, but he stood standing, looking at me expectantly.

“Don’t shoot,” I quipped and smiled weakly, forcing back my doubts. I walked into the room and deposited the carryall next to the couch.

His gaze had followed me across the room and when I reached the couch he spoke. “Did you find anything?” he asked. I noticed an eagerness in his voice, but didn’t say anything now that thoughts of the Dobrovolska letters began to again take control of my mind, prompting a deep excitement to well up in me again. I sat down on the couch and motioned for him to sit down next to me. Once I had the copy of the letter before me, the thrill of my discovery overwhelmed the doubts that I had wrestled with on the train and I gave him the letter to read. I watched him move his head gently back and forth as he imbibed the pages, hoping he would show the same elation when he read the line about “our friend the photographer,” but to my disappointment, his face held the same dispassionate look throughout.

“Very interesting,” he said and handed me back the letter.

“Interesting?” I gaped incredulously. “That’s it? I think this shows Christian’s theory is right.”

“It may,” he assented. “It’s certainly more than we had this morning, but it’s not proof.”

“No, it’s not,” I said with resignation and a little bitterness. He was right and I had known it even in the library, but I was somewhat angry that he could not marshal anymore enthusiasm. “But it’s something.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be so dismissive. And as I thought about what you told me last night in the restaurant and what Christian wrote to you, I realized that we should be looking for striking coincidences.” I lifted my head to give him an inquiring look and he continued, “If Arthur Mantes signed the note Leon Warnerke as a clue to some kind of secret that he’s hidden in these letters and this history, then he knows the whole story, so to speak. There already is a connection between these letters, he’s discovered, and now he has left them as the breadcrumbs for us to follow. But there will be a definite answer, a correct path out of the maze.”

“But how will we know when we’ve found it?” I mused.

“We’ll know,” he said and moved back over to the chair by the desk, leaving me alone on the couch. “Do you mind if I turn on the radio?” he asked after a few moments. “I enjoy listening to the news in this country. I get more information than back home.”

“I don’t mind,” I said and pointed him to the clock radio sitting on a squat table next to Christian’s bed. “Don’t you generally know what’s going on? I mean, you work in intelligence. That’s the idea, right?”

“You’d be surprised,” he said and smiled at me as he spun the dial. When he found a news station he looked up and added, “Isn’t that the old joke? The people in intelligence know the least?”

“Probably,” I chuckled absently, once again lost in speculation over the life and times of Leon Warnerke. The sound of the radio floating behind my thoughts reminded me of that night in the car, when I sat in a frightened daze with Bae slumbering peacefully in my lap. The way I held him, his body sprawled across the seat and my hand pressed gently to his side made me imagine we were posed like the pieta. Of course, Christian’s comments afterward doubted my feelings toward Bae that night were anything but motherly. What a silly thought. Yet when I looked at him, his narrow but strong face intently focused on the radio, I had to concede that he really was quite handsome. And the way he held me this morning, when Christian’s kidnappers had called, how he cooked breakfast for us, even the way he talked to me last night – everything about him was so gentle. I must have been ogling him, I thought, and felt my cheeks redden. I buried myself in Christian’s notes the translated letters just in case he happened to glance over.

After a while, he leaned forward in his chair and appeared to listen even more carefully. I turned my attention to the radio and realized it was another story about the impending talks between North and South Korea and the United States.

“The war of words continues as prominent conservative South Korean Lee Chung Hee refuses to abandon accusations that North Korea is a quote ‘state of thieves and bandits unworthy of reasoned dialog with the South.’ Hee’s words come on the heels of North Korean statements dismissing the critical remarks he issued earlier in the week. According to a spokesman in Pyongyang, Hee is a quote ‘political dinosaur with no vision for the future of the Korean people.’

“To comment on the situation and its impact on the upcoming talks between the two nations, we’re joined in the studio by David Gardner from the American Center for East Asian Security, a Washington think tank, and, on the phone, we have Chan Ho Young, a specialist in North and South Korean relations at the University of California, Berkeley. Welcome gentlemen. My first question is to you, Mr. Gardner, what do you make of this hard line rhetoric on the eve of historic talks between the two nations?”

The man she introduced as David Gardner began to speak in a nasally monotone voice. “Not a lot really. There’s too much at stake for both nations. North Korea cannot exist in total isolation any longer – especially economically and they know this. I don’t think their on the brink of liberalizing, but they are ready to lower the amount of hostility between them and the United States and Japan. They also know that the potential for reunification will be a major economic boon to their nation, even before the two nations officially reunify. On the South Korean side, playing hardball with North Korea has become tremendously unpopular. Many of the citizens, especially the younger, age 18-24 demographic, want to see the two nations reunify in their lifetimes. There is tremendous political pressure for the South Koreans to put forward their best effort in these negotiations.”

“But what about Hee’s threat to disclose proof of illicit North Korean activities during the talks?” the broadcaster cut back in, “ Will this have a chance to derail them? What do you think, Dr. Young.”

The professor’s voice came through with a light echo and the metallic emptiness characteristic of a voice transmitted by telephone into the radio. “It’s hard to say. There have been suspicions that North Korea has been involved in the distribution of drugs and fake cigarettes in order to finance its regime, but those offenses pale in comparison to a nuclear program. Whatever Hee has up his sleeve, it would have to be of an order of magnitude greater than those activities in order to really pose much of a threat to the talks.”

“Time will tell,” concluded the newscaster. “Thank you Mr. Gardner, Dr. Young, for your time and insight. Moving on . . .”

“Do you know anything about this?” I asked Bae.

“Not really,” he said. “This is all happening at high levels. They don’t tell people like me about this stuff.”

“What do you think about all of it? I mean, it must be a big deal. Do you have an opinion?” I was surprised at this lack of emotion. He had clearly been interested when the story came on the news, but he didn’t seem to react in any particular way.

“Nothing will change,” he sighed.

“What do you mean?” I furrowed my brow. “North Korea might give up its nuclear weapons – your two nations might reunify. How could nothing change?”

“Reunification won’t happen,” he declared flatly. “Not with this government. Kim Jong Il will not give up power and will not adopt South Korean capitalism and democracy. As for the nuclear weapons, what do they really matter? I’m not sure there’s really any threat there. So they give up their nuclear weapons, Kim Jong Il and his cronies will keep up with their repression – the killings, the kidnappings. You haven’t seen the people who have been tortured. It’s sickening.” His face became pale and I could see anger and shock in his eyes, as though he was recalling some grisly memory.

“You’ve seen them? Even in South Korea?”

“What? Oh, yes. Some escape or come over the border. And we—hear things. I know what happens there, things you hear little about, even with this,” he said gesturing toward the radio. “Where are you from, originally?” he asked after a moment.

“The North,” I replied. “My parents fled here when I was two.”

“Do they ever talk about it?”

“Not really. I think my mother’s brother – my uncle – was killed when he was very young. I think my family was all dissidents or at least they were not supporters of the regime. I think that’s one of the reasons my parents tried to get out. They were worried about what might happen to them eventually. But I don’t know for sure.”

“They were lucky,” was all he said.

When he dismissed the upcoming talks, his voice was full of something like contempt and I could not help but contrast his disdain with my parents’ optimism. Perhaps their time away had effaced some the fears and dissatisfaction that drove them from North Korea so many years ago. It was a great risk, one they would not have undertaken lightly. Yet when my mother first called me up with the news that long week ago, she was ebullient. Why did Bae, someone from the South who might rightly feel threatened by a hostile North, so resistant? He was young, perhaps just on the cusp of the demographic the man on the radio cited as most strongly in favor of reunification. What had he seen that so embittered him toward North Korea and left him so bereft of any hope for a brighter future?

“How old are you?” I asked, suddenly curious.

“Twenty-five,” he said. “And you?”

“The same,” I sighed. “But I don’t feel old enough for any of this.”

“It is not a question of age. You are under a great stress and have nonetheless comported yourself with impressive courage and intelligence. What more could one expect?” Constrained by the textbook English he had been taught, his praise sounded excessively formal and I wanted to laugh out loud, but I was moved by his attempt to reassure me, moved and proud that I had made it this far. He may have been offering empty platitudes, just to puff me up or placate me, but voice sounded sincere and I suspected that he truly admired my conduct.

“Thanks,” I said. “But sometimes I still want to check into a hotel where no one can find me and hide there eating room service until this all just goes away.” Then I threw my torso onto the couch in mock defeat.

“Wait, what did you say?” he asked sharply.

“I said thanks,” I repeated, staring up at the ceiling.

“No, after that.”

“I said sometimes I want to check into a hotel and hide, why?” I lifted my head from the couch cushions and looked over to find Bae face scrunched in thought.

“Toss me your phone,” he said. I pushed myself up and reached into Christian’s satchel where I left it. I threw it lightly across the room and he caught it in one hand. “What’s the number for the operator?”

“You mean information? 411. Why?”

He didn’t answer but dialed the number and waited for directory assistance to answer. “I need a listing for Washington, DC, please—yes, could you connect me to the Hotel Lambert?” I sat up straight. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Wladyslaw Malachowski had fled persecution in Poland and, as Christian postulated, he might have sought out the Hotel Lambert. It was a safe place to hide. Bae’s eyes twinkled, confirming that there was a Hotel Lambert in Washington. “Hi,” he continued, ostensibly to the front desk of the Hotel Lambert, “I was wondering if you could connect me to one of your guests—The name? Warnerke. Leon Warnerke. Thanks.” After several seconds he hung up. “No answer. Just a generic voicemail.” He stood up and handed me my phone, then pulled his jacket off the back of the chair.

“Where are you going?” I asked, still shocked by Bae’s discovery.

“The same place you are,” he said. “The Hotel Lambert. Come on, grab your stuff. If we hurry we can get there tonight.”

Twenty-Six

Before we left the apartment, I had made sure we took everything. I had Christian’s carryall, my purse and changed into the clothes I had worn when we left Washington, leaving only the yellow, blood stained blouse that had rubbed against Bae’s wound when we first carried him down my apartment steps. To replace it temporarily, I “borrowed” another turtleneck from Christian’s ex-girlfriend, this one white. I asked Bae if he needed to get anything, but he said no, more clothes could be “arranged” in Washington. I decided not to inquire further into whatever textile abundant networks South Korean intelligence operated in the United States. Christian had left directions to where he parked my car on the desk. It was a long stay parking lot out by John F. Kennedy Airport and it took us an interminably long time to get there. We finally arrived in the early evening, but before we could leave, though, I learned that Christian had failed to advise me that I was required to pay an exorbitant fee to the person who owned the lot. He had either been tired to find a cheaper place or just thought, “Well, she has a job.” It was probably some combination of both.

Once we hit the road, I started thinking over all of the things I had forced from my mind when we left the apartment to keep from being distracted. Now all the questions I had left suspended in my brain were bouncing around with a fury. Had Arthur checked out a room in the Hotel Lambert before he died? Why would he need an empty hotel room? Did he leave something there for us? And once we got there, how were we going to get in? I looked nervously at Bae and imagined him kicking the door down. No, that would not do, I thought to myself. There was another question, one that I had wanted to ask Bae from the very beginning in the restaurant. I was reminded of it when we were listening to the radio, but the desolation on his face when he talked about North Korea dissuaded me from bringing it up at that moment.

“Bae?” I asked. “The fifty dollar bill, Arthur’s—murder,” I still had trouble saying it aloud, “All of this. Do you think it has anything to do with the upcoming talks?”

“Why would it?” he asked skeptically.

“I dunno, its just, I mean, you’re after it, the North Koreans are after it--.”

“It may surprise you to learn that the nuclear issue is only one of the many security problems between the two nations,” he said sarcastically. “I told you in the restaurant that I don’t know why this fifty dollar bill is so important to my government or why they want to keep the others from getting their hands on it, but I just follow orders.”

“Ok, I’m sorry I asked,” I said.

“No,” he sighed after we had driven in silence for several minutes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I snapped at you. You have to believe this is all as confusing for me as it is for you. I was told I only had to come to this country and take something from a man named Arthur Mantes. By the time I arrived he was dead. Even then, I thought I would just retrieve whatever he had left behind and that was that. Now I have discovered that whatever he left, it is much more than this banknote. My superiors are growing impatient with the all the delays.”

“At least you’re doing all this on the clock,” I joked.

“On the clock? What does that mean?”

“I’m sorry,” I laughed, “It’s an idiomatic phrase. When you punch into a time clock for work, then you are ‘on the clock.’ It’s just a way of saying this is your job. I was teasing you. Your English is almost perfect – I forgot for a moment that it’s not your native language.”

“I see. Yes, I’m on the clock,” he laughed. “And I see what you are saying also, that you are involved and perhaps you do not even know why. You serve no larger purpose.”

“Yes,” I said and added quietly to myself, “And it scares me.”

“Whatever secret Arthur Mantes carried to his death, it must be important. Otherwise, why would he have created such an elaborate scheme to protect it?” He placed a hand lightly on my shoulder. “I know you are scared, but remember that he chose you because he trusts you and because perhaps only you have the capacity to solve this mystery. It is not fair that it has chosen you and no one else, but that’s the way it is.”

I simply nodded thanks and even allowed myself to enjoy the weight of his strong hand, tenderly resting on my shoulder. It gave me a guilty feeling, to begin thinking about Bae like this, when I should have had my mind firmly on freeing Christian, but another kind of anxiety intermingled with the guilt, a bubbling nervousness that beings the ferment into attraction. I had dated very little since college and had become rather shy about meeting other men. Like everyone, dating was easy at school, where you could find yourself enmeshed with someone else almost by accident. But once I began working, I had little inclination to seek men at clubs or bars and did not have an active enough social life to meet friends of friends or pursue the other avenues people do to continue dating. Christian had made a lot of this in the beginning and bragged about how much easier it was to date in graduate school. Now, though, when I looked at Bae or received one of his kind gestures or statements, I felt the twinge of desire returning.

Before my mind could wander any further, Bae gripped my shoulder more tightly. “They need to know we’re going to Washington,” he said.

“What?” I asked, confused. “Who needs to know?”

“The men who have Christian. Call them. Let them know you’re on your way to Washington. You don’t want them to panic when they learn you’ve gone.” He took his hand from my shoulder and reached behind the driver’s seat where I had stowed the carryall. When he found the phone, he handed it to me. I saw that he had already selected Christian’s number from the contact list so I only had to hit the green “talk” button.

It rang a few times before someone answered. “Any news?” came that harsh but familiar voice.

“I’m going to Washington,” I said as evenly as possible. “That’s where the trail is leading.”

“That’s good news – we were starting to miss it. Maybe we’ll bump into you when we’re there,” he laughed.

“Is Christian ok?” I asked anxiously. “I want to speak—” But he hung up before I could finish. “Damn,” I said as I hung up. I only wanted to hear Christian’s voice, to let him know that we were getting closer.

“Don’t worry,” said Bae. “He’s fine.”

“How can you be so sure?” I sobbed.

“I know how these sorts of people operate,” he replied. “I’m one of them, remember?”

* * *

We arrived at the Hotel Lambert just before midnight. When I first guided the car onto the Capitol Beltway, I asked Bae to call the hotel again and get directions. It was actually located just outside of Washington, in Bethesda, Maryland, a posh suburb that sat on the northwest border of the city. In addition to a surprising concentration of Thai restaurants, Bethesda was home to the National Institutes of Health and the Naval Hospital. Unsure how long we would need, I parked the car in a sizable ramp adjacent to the hotel and we headed directly for the front desk.

“What do you think we should do?” I asked as we neared the desk.

“Just ask for his room number, say we’re supposed to meet him,” Bae answered.

“I know that part, but how are we going to get into the room once we have the number?” I asked impatiently. “It’s not like an actual Leon Warnerke is staying there, right?”

“Well, in an ironic coincidence, there could, in fact, be a man named Leon Warnerke asleep in his room,” he looked at me and smiled, but the glare I returned wiped the amusement from his face. “Just relax,” he said. “We shall – what’s the expression? -- cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“That’s the one,” I confirmed.

At the desk, a man who appeared a few years older than me greeted us with a fresh smile despite the late hour. He wore a cheap looking blue blazer that had a stain next to one of the buttons and a name tag that read “Bryan” was clipped to his lapel. His brown hair was cut quite short and some gel product held the front few hairs in place, curved upward from his forehead. He had an oval face and smallish blue eyes that sat an oddly large distance apart on his face, leaving ample space for his averaged size nose.

“Hi Bryan,” I began as sweetly as I could, in case I would have to convince him to bend some hotel policy, “We’re here to meet one of your guests, a Mr. Leon Warnerke.”

“Let me see,” he said and tapped something into a computer hidden away behind the desk. “It’s kind of late for a meeting,” he mumbled suspiciously to himself as he typed. I let the comment pass. “Leon Warnerke,” he announced. “He’s in room 1871.” I gave a sidelong glance to Bae. 1871 was the year of the Paris Commune. He nodded slightly as if to confirm he was thinking the same thing.

“Oh, ma’am?” I looked back to Bryan. Ma’am? I was younger than he was. “What’s your name?”

“Excuse me?” I asked. “Why does that matter?”

“Well, there’s a note here. Mr. Warnerke has left something with us to give to someone.”

“My name is Ionia Han,” I said and handed him my driver’s license before he even had to ask for it. Bae and I shared another look.

He made a satisfied sound and returned my license and then rooted around in the cupboard beneath his desk. When he emerged he handed me a small envelope. “There you go. Have a nice meeting.”

“Thanks.” I flashed the brightest smile I could muster. Just in case. When I looked at the envelope I gasped.

“What is it?” asked a concerned Bryan.

“What? Oh nothing,” I said and then motioned Bae to step away from the desk with me. When we were a safe distance from Bryan’s watchful eye, I showed Bae the envelope. “IONIA HAN” was written across the front. “It’s Arthur’s handwriting,” I said. Inside was a plastic key card, the kind commonly used in hotels. It was inside a small paper sheath stamped with the hotel insignia. On the printed line for the room number, a hotel employee had written 1871 in large, looping characters. We immediately moved toward the elevator and I remarked that even Bae’s normally stoic comportment allowed for a quickened step. Some bland symphony accompanied the elevator ride to the eighteenth floor, but my attention was completely diverted. I wanted to know what was in that room.

1871 was only a few doors from the elevator and when we reached the door I slid the card in, then stopped and looked at Bae. He already had his gun out and it hung limp at his side. He simply nodded. I turned the handle and pushed open the door and, in a flash, Bae rushed ahead of me into the room. I could see even from the doorway that the room was small, containing just a double bed, a bathroom, and a small TV. Bae popped briefly into the bathroom and then returned to the door.

“It’s empty,” he said and holstered his gun underneath his jacket. I followed him into the room. The walls were an ugly, pale green, chipping in a few places, and they were rivaled only by the neon green shades covering the room’s lone window. The quilt on the bed was faded and worn and the TV was smaller than the one we had when I was a child. The hotel did not live up to its palatial namesake nestled on the Ilê St. Louis in the heart of Paris. What was most striking about the room was that it was completely empty. I’m not sure what I expected find on the other side of the door, but I certainly thought there would be something.

“Start searching everything,” Bae commanded and then started looking under the bed. I looked in a small closet next to the door. There was an ironing board but no iron and a few lonely hangers. I then walked into the bathroom and flipped on the light, which flickered a few times before it settled into dim glow. I checked the mirror in case a medicine cabinet lay hidden beneath. There was, but it lay empty.

“Aha,” I heard Bae intone triumphantly from the other room. “It’s always the Bible.” I shot out of the bathroom.

“You found something?” I asked and felt my skin tingle with anticipation. He handed me what looked like two banknotes, both in encased in plastic like the fifty dollar bill. They were quite old and I didn’t recognize the writing on them.

“It’s Cyrillic,” Bae said. He was kneeling on the floor and reaching around in an open drawer next to the bed. “I think they’re rubles. Really old ones. They were inside the cover of the Bible. He got that out of a movie and—here it is.” He pulled something else from inside the drawer, what looked like several pieces of paper also protected with a plastic covering. “Taped to the top of the drawer. I’ve checked everywhere else. I think this is it.” He passed me the small bundle and I carefully removed the paper inside. It was two worn sheets of paper that were quite yellowed and old. They were covered in sketches and a numbers. They looked like diagrams, for what I couldn’t tell.

“I’m guessing none of this means anything to you,” Bae said as he sat down on the bed.

“No,” I answered, still examining the pages. “Not this anyway.” I put the pages down on the bed and looked again at the rubles. Even though the writing was in Cyrillic, I could see by the numbers that they were both identical fifty ruble notes. “But these,” I said and held out the banknotes for him to see, “Josephine Dobrovolska was arrested for trying to transport counterfeit ten and fifty ruble notes. Maybe these are some of the actual counterfeits, although I have no idea how Arthur got his hands on them.” I stared at the banknotes for a few more minutes, but there was nothing I could learn about them here. I didn’t even know what real 1870s rubles were supposed to look like, much less how one could spot a counterfeit.

“Let’s get going,” I suggested. “There’s nothing else we can do here.”

Bae got up without a word and scanned the room one last time. I collected the two pages of sketches and the rubles and added them to the letters and notes already in Christian’s carryall. Bae turned off all the lights as he followed me out and then checked to make sure the door was locked. We took the elevator back downstairs and waved politely to Bryan as we headed toward the parking lot when I stopped and turned around.

“What is it?” Bae asked.

“I remembered I wanted to ask Bryan something,” I replied and quickly walked back to the front desk. When I got there, he presented me with the same overeager smile.

“Can I be of further assistance,” he inquired.

“Yeah, I just have a question. Um, Mr. Warnerke wanted to verify how long this room was reserved.” I hoped he wouldn’t wonder why Mr. Warnerke didn’t just call himself and ask.

“Sure, just a sec,” Bryan said and I stifled a sigh of relief. “He arrived on November 3 and has the room booked until December 10. Oh my, that’s quite a long stay.”

“And what’s the date today?” I asked.

Bryan looked at the clock behind him. It was nearly one in the morning. “As of about an hour ago, it is Sunday, November 22.”

“Thanks,” I said, this time in too much of a hurry to smile. I jogged back to Bae who was waiting down the corridor and walked passed him towards the car.

“Where are you going?” he asked as he caught up to me.

“Home,” I replied and then turned to face him. “Unless you have a calendar, that is.”

Twenty-Seven

When I killed the engine outside my house, the street felt eerily quiet. Nothing was different or out of the ordinary, but my final memories of the street and my apartment were tinted with the trauma of what had transpired before our flight to New York. Despite what Bae had told me about the North Koreans removing any traces of the body from my apartment before the police arrived, I was still surprised to see no traces of yellow police tape or any sign that the house had been touched since I was gone.

When we reached the landing in front of my door, I hesitated for a moment before placing the key in the lock and turning it. Everything was pristine. It was cleaner than I had ever before left it. As we walked into the darkened living room, I felt like an intruder, as though I were sneaking into someone else’s apartment. Bae turned on the light switch behind me and the freshly cleaned floors beamed the light back at us. I ran my hands over the walls and even felt slightly even and discolored spots where they had applied wall patch in order to cover the bullet holes. Bae stepped behind me and brought his own hand to the dressed wounds on the wall.

“This is pretty roughshod,” he grumbled. “I expected a little better.”

“You expected all of this?” I asked.

“I told you, they don’t want to raise suspicions with the police. They’re professionals. They probably had a crew waiting and when the other man called -- the one who escaped -- they sent it right over.”

“Amazing,” I breathed and ran my hands over the drywall once more. “Do you think we’re safe here?”

“No one seems to want you dead.” I was still too useful, I thought to myself. A small comfort, but he was right. He went to the window and peered out before he spoke again. “You said something about a calendar before,” he reminded me.

“Oh right,” I said and entered the small kitchen nook. A lighthouse themed calendar, something I probably took from work, hung from the fridge. I took it off its magnetic hook and placed it on the small kitchen table. “The man at the desk said Leon Warnerke arrived on November 3.” I placed a small X on that date with a black pen I found in the drawer. “And he said the reservation ran through December 10.” I flipped over the page of the calendar to December and made a similar mark on the square reserved for the 10. “That’s thirty-seven days.”

“So?”

“Arthur died on November 4, Bae,” I said. “Is can’t be a coincidence that Arthur reserved a room under the fictional name Leon Warnerke the day before he died. This is part of whatever he was trying to tell me. He knew he was being pursued and this room was part of this trail he has left me. Like the note, the letters, and now the rubles, this is just one more clue.”

“Well, you have the order wrong,” said Bae dismissively. “The room led us to the rubles. That’s all. You’re right, he did know he was in danger and so he reserved the room to hide the rubles, knowing only you would be able to find it.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I feel like there’s more here. Why thirty-seven days? Why does the reservation end on December 10?”

“He just wanted to leave you ample time to find it, that’s all.” I didn’t reply, but some instinct kicked around restlessly inside me. Why not just a month? Or even a multiple of ten, like forty days? Arthur was too deliberate. Everything he had left so far was there to tell me something, to point me in the right direction. Where did this lead? I slid a chair out from under the table and sat down as I removed the new items from the carryall, the rubles and antiquated pages of notes and sketches that Arthur had left us in the hotel room. I arranged them neatly on the surface of the table next to the calendar and then reached back into the satchel and took out the copies of the letters Christian had made along with the notes he wrote in New York and my copy of the Dobrovolska letter. I left the authentic Warnerke letters and the envelope containing the fifty dollar bill along with Arthur’s original note in the carryall. The mass of paper staring up at me from the table made my head spin. How had Arthur found the time and focus before he died to create such a dizzyingly complicated game of connect the dots? Bae was right. Leon Warnerke’s story must already have been there or, at least, Arthur must have worked it out long ago. All he did was snip it apart at arbitrary places. But as long as it all fit into a once whole image, I knew I would be able to piece this puzzle back together. I felt a familiar and now welcome hand on my shoulder.

“You need to sleep,” Bae said softly.

“In a minute,” I said and then yawned in spite of myself. He removed his hand and I felt the prickle of regret. I would have enjoyed his gentle touch for just a bit longer. Did he think about me the same way now? I wondered. The man was a professional, I reproached myself, probably immune to such flights of fancy or weaknesses. That’s all it was, really, a weakness produced by the stress of it all. In fact, when I really think about it, I told my self, his demeanor is rather strange. That stilted English almost devoid of an accent yet replete with fulsome constructions and his intense quiet. Yes, he was just awkward and unused to this world and people like me, people who had led perfectly normal lives as recently as two weeks ago. I was sure that a small amount of research would yield a sterile clinical moniker for hopeless attraction to foreign secret agents suffered in the midst of involuntary involvement in espionage and related intrigues. Perhaps as soon as I cracked the multilayered code scattered across the table in front of me, I would take a look at a medical site online, just to confirm my suspicion that I was suffering from a dementia rather then infatuation. Then I fell asleep.

* * *

That night I dreamt of Christian. He was tied to a chair in a small dark room that held a reddish glow, much like a darkroom used for developing film. The Korean man, the one Bae said worked for the North Koreans and the one who had threatened to kill me in my apartment, was standing over him and laughing. There were other figures in the room I could not pick out and who just stood and swayed around the chair, faceless shadows. His enormous face erupted and convulsed in almost continuous laughter. When he saw that I had entered the room, he stopped laughing and walked over to me. Before I could turn away, he grabbed my shoulders and pushed me hard against the wall, just as he had done the other night in my apartment. I called to Christian, but he just stared at me helplessly from the chair. The room started to shift in and out of focus as the man shook me and yelled something I could not understand or even hear. In fact, all of the noise in the room was terribly muted, so that it was like a soundless whirling red storm of violence and despair. Just as my vision blackened, Bae flew into the room and I saw flashes of light burst in slow motion from the muzzle of his gun. He pulled the other man off of me and cast him into the wall, where he shattered into a million pieces like broken glass. He stood behind Christian, to untie him I thought with relief, when he raised his gun behind Christian’s head. He looked out at me, those piercing eyes fixed upon mine, but then his face blurred around them and when I blinked I saw not Bae, but the North Korean agent again. He smiled hideously and squeezed the trigger of the gun, still pressed to the back of Christian’s head.

“No,” I yelled and sat up with a start. I was in my bed and the late morning sun was already filtering into the room through the drawn shades. My breathing was heavy and labored and a cold sweat dripped down my spine. I started again when Bae burst into the room, his gun in hand.

“Are you ok?” he asked. His voice was tense and ready.

“Yeah,” I said wiping my forehead. “I just had a nightmare.” In a moment of modesty, I pulled the sheet up to my neck, though I realized sheepishly that Bae had carried me to bed in my clothes. “What time is it?” I asked. “When did I fall asleep?”

“Not long after I suggested it,” he said. His body relaxed visibly. “I hope you don’t mind that I brought you here. I saw no sense in leaving you to sleep sitting at the kitchen table.” He stared at me for a moment then, before casting his eyes away. I thought I even detected a hint of embarrassment on his face, as though he felt he had looked too long.

“No, I mean, thanks. That was nice of you. Did you sleep?”

He shook his head. “No, but after you are up and ready I might, if that is ok with you.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” I said. I don’t even know when he last slept. As far as I know, he hadn’t even caught a nap since we left the restaurant in Korea Town. He left the room and I searched around my closet for something to wear. I thankfully found a pair of not too dingy jeans and had longed to wear casual pants after a week of wearing either my work slacks or uncomfortably sized pants from Christian’s ex-girlfriend. I picked a black t-shirt out of my drawer and threw a light white cardigan around my shoulders. I felt sort of frumpy, but comfortable and relaxed nonetheless. I was too tired to exert much energy into looking my best, even though a part of me remained conscious of Bae’s presence. I went over to my desk to find a notebook that I could use as I took another look at the new documents Arthur had left us. When I opened one of the drawers, the things inside looked wrong. I couldn’t point to any one thing out of place and yet it all felt different somehow. I realized that the men who had come to “clean up” my apartment, as Bae had put it, probably searched my desk and the room. I shuddered at the thought of strangers running their hands over my possessions, but after a quick inspection of the desk I concluded that nothing was missing. Finding an unused notebook in one of the drawers, I walked out of my room and into the living room where I saw everything undisturbed on the table from the night before.

“You should go in my room to sleep,” I said to Bae, who had perched himself on the couch.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yeah, why not?” I shrugged. “That way I can work out here and watch TV or whatever.”

He left the couch and I as I sat down at the table in order to take a step at the pile of documents I heard the door close lightly down the hall. I stared at the rubles and the odd diagrams, which depicted hastily sketched circles. Next to the circles were lines and numbers. There were a few notes could have been mathematical equations of some kind, though none of them meant anything to me. After a few moments of staring blankly at the pages, my stomach grumbled loudly. I had not eaten since the previous afternoon, just before we left Christian’s apartment. A cursory glance at the fridge revealed spoiled milk and salsa, not exactly the breakfast of champions. I took my wallet from the satchel, now serving as a full time replacement for my purse, and walked out of the apartment and down the street to a corner market. It wouldn’t hurt to have a few things around the house to eat and I imagined Bae would also be hungry when he awoke.

When I returned, I poured myself a bowl of cereal and indulged in fifteen minutes of Sunday morning television before settling down to work again. It was almost noon and the airwaves were cluttered with pregame shows for football and broadcasts of religious services from massive churches scattered about the country. I flipped through the stations aimlessly until I found the cooking channel. I ate my cereal silently and watched a middle aged Italian woman advertise the secret to healthy Mediterranean cooking.

Once I finished eating and had rinsed my bowl out in the sink, I sat back at the table and tried once again to focus on putting everything together. I withdrew the fifty ruble notes from their protective covering and placed them side by side on the table. They looked identical. The original colors were now faded, though I could see tones of red, blue and bronze still lightly imprinted on the notes. In each corner stood a solidly printed “50” and, across the top, Cyrillic lettering I could not read. I held the notes up to the light and saw a watermark emerge. It was an ornately printed number “50,” ringed by a pattern, sort of like ribbons wrapped in a wreath around the number. I was holding the two notes, one in each hand, and my eyes began to flit from one watermark to the other. Something was odd between the two and moved them closer and then finally one right on top of the other, to see if I could align the two watermarks. They weren’t the same size. One of the watermarks was slightly larger than the other one, although I did not notice any further distortion or imperfection in either of them—but for the slight differentiation in size, they were completely identical.

Then I remembered the newspaper article about the arrest of Josephine Dobrovolska. It had said something about how to identify counterfeit notes of the type she had tried to smuggle into Russia, something about the size of the watermark. I flipped through the pile of papers sitting on the desk until I found Christian’s translation of the article. At the end of the piece, I found the paragraph I was looking for:

Concerned citizens who may worry that they have received counterfeit notes should take care to examine the watermark. The Imperial Russian Office for the Production of Government Papers reports that the forgers failed to correctly size the watermark and reports that the spurious notes contain an unusually small watermark. They also instruct any who believe they have identified counterfeits in this manner to report the discovery to the local police immediately.

So the two banknotes weren’t identical. One of them was a genuine fifty ruble note and the other was a counterfeit from the same series Josephine Dobrovolska carried at the time of her arrest. For a moment, I wondered how much the counterfeit banknote had cost Arthur. When it was produced, it was, by definition, worthless, but now an antique counterfeit was probably incredibly difficult to obtain. He really had been a collector of the history of counterfeit money, a kind of false history. As I looked at the old letters on the table and the banknotes in my hand, I realized that Arthur had not only left me some urgent secret about the present, but an amazing and hidden story from the past. Another side of the 19th century that had invisibly accompanied recorded history. It was a great gift that I was meant to cherish and preserve—if I made it through this.

Twenty-Eight

I turned my attention to back to the two pages of diagrams and notes and forced myself to look at them more closely. Perhaps the circles represented the watermarks. These could have been sketches produced by Warnerke as he tried to measure the watermarks. What were the equations, though? I didn’t know enough about printing techniques to make sense of what had been written on the page, not to mention that the handwriting was nearly impossible to decipher. These notes were written by Warnerke – or whoever wrote them – for himself and he clearly didn’t bother over whether they would be legible to anyone else.

I started paging through the rest of the copied out and translated letters, hoping to find some clue that hadn’t struck Christian as relevant when he first looked at them. I had already read the meaningless letters between Franz Schulz and Josephine Dobrovolska. A quick glance at the letters from Warnerke to Nicolai Pogolski and Wolf to an unnamed person showed no mention of watermarks, so I decided to put those letters off until later. That left only the Leon Warnerke correspondence with a man named Walter Woodbury. I saw immediately that the letters concerned some technically issue regarding photography and printing and I read eagerly:

March 13, 1876

Dear Mr. Woodbury,

It has come to my attention that we are, in fact, neighbors here in Camberwell. In the first years following my arrival in London, you can imagine that I felt somewhat isolated here south of the city, although the quiet has certainly done me some good. I soon found the company of Royal Photographic Society colleagues cured any lingering loneliness. Still, it was to my delight when the good Mr. Bolas, whom you know, recently informed me that you lived not five minutes walk across the Camberwell Green. You really must excuse all these years without an invitation to dine at my house, I was truly ignorant of your proximity.

I must admit, however, that my purpose in writing is not merely to apprise you of my status as your neighbor, but to ask a professional question for which you might be of some help. I have been toiling with the problem of how to craft precise impressions using a gelatine mold. My progress has been appalling and I have been afraid to report of my many failures to our colleagues lest they view me less favorably. However, I finally summoned the courage to confide in Mr. Bolas who informed me of your residence in Camberwell by way of explaining that you had been working with great success at this very problem.

If it is no large inconvenience, I was hoping that I might pay a visit to you in the near future to inspect your methods. Please regard my request as issued with the utmost humility and respect for your many achievements in our field.

Very respectfully yours,

Leon Warnerke

I had never heard the name Mr. Bolas and had no idea where Camberwell was, though I guessed it was somewhere near London. The next letter was a brief reply from Walter Woodbury in which indicated in similarly anachronistic prose that he would be happy to demonstrate his printing technique for Warnerke any time he wished and also expressing charmed surprise at the revelation they were neighbors. It wasn’t much of a correspondence as there was only one more letter, written by Warnerke many months after the first two.

October 5, 1876

Dear Mr. Woodbury,

I am happy to inform you that the hand press you loaned me is working beautifully and I see that you have added substantial improvements since you first patented the process over a decade ago. Your device allows me to produce the most subtle variations in tone and to wield absolute control over the respective light and darkness in the printed images. In my mind grows the hope that from the precision afforded by this great technology I may have the chance to produce equally great art.

You may be interested to learn that in the time since we last met, I have made great advances in producing a extremely pure gelatine compound. My technique involves causing the gelatine to precipitate by adding alum to a gelatine mixture that has been immersed in a bath of hot water. Once the water has been removed, I add a quantity of citric acid and then set the gelatine before washing it a final time in cold water. I recommend you try my process in the production of your next gelatine relief. I hope you will find the results as pleasing as I do.

I again offer you my heartfelt thanks for your assistance and support.

Yours in deepest gratitude,

Leon Warnerke

I rubbed my eyes with my hands in frustration. I knew nothing about historical photographic techniques and was way out of my depth in these letters. Arthur had certainly wanted me to notice the difference in the watermarks, but nothing aside from these letters was even remotely related to technology or knowledge that might be applied to the production of counterfeit banknotes. Christian’s knack for research and for seeing obscure connections would have been helpful now, though I imagined that he would probably have crossed his fingers as if to ward away evil spirits in the letters and then said that I was the scientist between the two of us. I went to a cupboard hidden behind the television and found my dusty old laptop which I rarely used anymore. Internet was included in my rent, however, so I hoped I might be able to shed a little light on the letters by jumping onto the information superhighway.

I wasn’t sure where to begin, so I just typed Walter Woodbury’s name into a generic search engine. To my delight, he was a far less obscure historical figure than Leon Warnerke. In fact, he was something of a photographic celebrity and adventurer in his own day. He was born in England in 1834, only a few years before the reported date of Leon Warnerke’s birth, I noted. Like Warnerke, Woodbury was trained as an engineer, but he became an amateur photographer by the middle of the century, when he still as a very young man. He found work as an engineer in Australia, but soon entered into a photography venture with another Englishman named James Page and moved to what was then the Dutch East Indies. He traveled back to England only intermittently over the next decade or so before poor health drove him back home permanently in the early 1860s. He spent at least part of the remainder of his life in Camberwell, which I learned was a suburb just south of London, and patented numerous photographic and printmaking processes and devices before his death in 1885.

“What are you doing?” I heard Bae ask from behind me.

“I didn’t hear you get up,” I said, a bit startled. “I’m just doing some research, or trying to anyway. One of the people Leon Warnerke wrote to, a guy named Walter Woodbury, is actually a pretty famous British photographer. They lived in the same town.” I checked the clock on the computer and saw that I had been reading about Woodbury and his various inventions for almost two hours, which also meant that Bae could not have slept much longer than three hours. “Did you get enough sleep?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said and stretched his arms over his head. “I don’t need too much sleep really.” He had once again shed his sweater and was clad only in his dark pants and an undershirt.

“Christian forgot to take his extra clothes back when we went to New York,” I said and motioned to the small suitcase in the corner of the room behind the couch. “He’s a little, um, bigger than you,” I described politely, “But I think they’ll fit.” Bae walked over and rummaged through the suitcase before giving a satisfied look to a clean white undershirt and a pair of jeans. “And there’s some food in the fridge,” I added, smiling.

“Excellent, I’m starving” he said, joy spreading across his face. I was glad to have gone shopping now, if only to see that it made him happy. He poured himself a titanic bowl of cereal and started wolfing it down from the couch. “So what have you found out about Woodbury?” he asked in between mouthfuls of cereal. “That’s what you said his name is, right?”

“Right,” I said and then proceeded to explain what I had discovered about the watermarks and the letters between Warnerke and Woodbury.

“I see,” he said, after I had finished. “So you wanted to make sense of what they were talking about in the letters, if perhaps Woodbury had loaned Warnerke some invention that would have helped him produce a counterfeit watermark.”

“That’s about it.”

“And?”

“Well, I’m not entirely sure, I mean I don’t understand most of how this stuff works, but I think I figured out what the letters are talking about. In 1864 , Walter Woodbury took out a patent on a photomechanical printing process known now by the unimaginative name Woodburytype. He went on to continue to hone the procedure, but one of its incarnations may have proved useful to Leon Warnerke, if he were trying to forge Russian rubles. Woodburytype produced extremely high quality, almost photographic prints. The way it works is that a thick film of gelatine forms a relief varying in density and thickness. The gelatine is then applied to the printmaking paper under an extremely high pressure. Where the gelatine is thicker, the image will be darker and, where it is thinner, the image will come out lighter. These letters date from 1876 and I think Warnerke may have been using a Woodburytype printing press to imitate a watermark on his counterfeit rubles.”

Bae quietly considered this theory and then walked over to the table and picked up the two rubles so he could examine the watermarks himself. Satisfied, he put them back down and then looked at the two pages of notes and diagrams. “What about these?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I sighed. “I’m not sure what they mean. It looks like a set of measurements and calculations, but for what I don’t know. My guess is that the circles represent watermarks, but I can’t fit that in with the other stuff I’ve found.”

He gazed at the two pages searchingly, his brow furrowed in concentration, and then began mouthing something to himself. “Come look at this,” he said and proffered one of the two pages. I drew close to him and he pointed to one of the circles. “The word over that circle is ‘Wet,’” then he pointed to another circle, directly below it, “And over this one he wrote ‘Dry.’” I nodded to show that I could make out the words “Wet” and “Dry.” He continued, “I don’t know what these equations mean either, but look at the numbers associated with the circles. In the first circle, the one under the word ‘Wet,’ there is a line spanning its diameter and the number ‘7.5’ and, in the second, the one under the word ‘Dry,’ there is a similar line along the diameter and the number ‘7.3.’ Now tell me, does paper shrink when it dries?”

He was right. Paper does shrink as it dries. I suddenly felt the thrill of discovery surge into me again. “So you think these calculations correspond to the sizing of the gelatine relief that may have been used to print the watermark?”

“Exactly. Because he knew the watermark would shrink before he printed it, he had to cut the gelatine watermark larger than the actual size of the watermark on the ruble. Warnerke either forgot this or got his measurements wrong for the fifty ruble note Arthur left us, the one that you think may have been recovered in the arrest of Dobrovolska—”

“—And so he spent the next several years trying to perfect the size and shape of his imitation watermarks using a Woodburytype press,” I finished. We shared a satisfied smile before a bemused frown retook Bae’s face.

“But where does this get us?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. I sat back down at the table and looked at the rubles and diagrams lying before me. “What are you trying to tell us?” I asked them, as if trying to summon Arthur’s spirit out of them. Then it hit me. “The fifty dollar bill,” I exclaimed. “Maybe he’s trying to tell us what to look for on the fifty dollar bill.” I lunged for the carryall and produced the envelope. My hands were shaking as I carefully pulled it from the casing. It had a watermark, of course—that had been one of the first things I checked, but maybe there was some small defect that I had missed. Before I held it up to the light, I remembered the authentic fifty dollar bill I had withdrawn from the bank in New York. It was one of the few things I left in my purse. Holding one bill in each hand, I let the sunlight filter through and render visible the two watermarks. At first glance, they looked the same. I aligned the two banknotes and held them together. They were indistinguishable, at least to the human eye. “There has to be some small difference. There just has to be,” I said in a strained voice and held the two notes even closer to my face. After a few more minutes I slowly put the bill Arthur had left us back in its envelope and left the other note out on the table. My face told Bae the whole story.

“So they’re the same,” he said.

“Yeah,” I grumbled dejectedly, “They’re identical.” I slammed my fist down on the table in frustration and then sat down and buried my head in my hands. Bae pulled a chair next to me and sat down. When I lifted my head I saw him looking at me, his eyes brimming with concern.

“We’re not going to figure it out in time,” I said. “Christian is going to die.”

“There is no deadline any longer. You will solve this and they will free him,” he said and maintained a placid expression. Was he truly unruffled, undeterred by this dead end or was he too practiced at staying calm to join others who were panicking, when even he wanted to panic?

“They’re going to get impatient,” I insisted. “They won’t wait forever. And just think about what they could be doing to him now. I can’t do this, Bae, I just can’t.” I began felt the tears welling in my eyes and tried to hold them back.

“They’re not going to hurt him. And if you cannot solve this alone, then we will solve it together.” A single tear then trickled from my eye and streamed down my face. Bae reached carefully across the gap between our chairs and wiped it from my face with his thumb. His touch was soft and warm.

“Why did you decide to help me the other night, in the restaurant?” I asked when I no longer worried I would burst into tears.

“I don’t know,” he said and looked away as if he were plumbing the depths of his memory, trying to recall the moment he agreed to help me. “At first, I thought that I truly did not want to see you friend die and also—” he paused as if it had become difficult for him to speak, “—I saw an opportunity to understand the importance of the fifty dollar bill. Like the men who have Christian, I did not know what the bill meant, but when you opened up to me in the restaurant and explained everything about the note and Leon Warnerke, I saw that it was only part of the story. I decided that by helping you, I would have the chance to find out the answer for myself and perhaps beat my adversaries to it.” He cast his eyes downward and I could tell that he was ashamed to have used me.

“And now?” I asked, almost whispered.

He again looked into my eyes. “And now I just want to help you and keep you safe,” he said as he drew near to me and pressed his lips softly to my forehead. He pulled back briefly and cupped my face in his hands before letting go. For what seemed like a wonderful eternity, I rested my head on his chest and let myself relax against his strong body. He put his arms around my shoulders and held me so tightly I could feel his lungs expand and contract with each breath. We must have looked so awkward, embracing each other across two straight-backed kitchen chairs, but to me it felt like the most natural and comfortable place in the world. For the first time since Arthur Mantes had died, I did not feel alone.

Twenty-Nine

Things could have gone further than afternoon in my apartment. I was no novice and, once Bae kissed me, the feelings I had tried so hard to brush off and chalk up to stress or fatigue felt suddenly very real and true. Yet for some reason we did not move any further. We sat there in each others’ arms for a long time and then he finally separated and, after affectionately smoothing my hair with his hand, he stood up and made us some tea. The rest of the afternoon and evening seemed to float away – I think I spent most of it thumbing through the notes and letters or taking a casual look at the rubles and fifty dollar bills – and soon fatigue laid its hand on me and coaxed me back to bed. I spent the night in my room alone and Bae slept on the couch. There had been no awkward discussion or longing glances at the other person, just a tacit concordance in our actions. Had we not been so unusually quiet through the waning hours of the day, one might even have thought I had completely forgotten his tender kiss and warm embrace. Even I wondered as I drifted off to sleep why he had not pushed things further. Did he harbor the same feelings as I or was his kiss to my forehead one only of amicable comfort? I could cull no answer from my tired mind before sleep overtook me.

In the morning, we agreed that I would go to work and try to carry on as normal. He told me that he needed to contact his superiors and mumbled something about getting some more clothes, though he did not expand any further on what that would entail, just that he would be unreachable for the morning, but would return to the apartment in the afternoon and probably take a look at the letters to see if he would make any headway. I took the fifty dollar bill to work and entertained thoughts that I might have a look at it and see something I had missed, but I obviously wasn’t optimistic. If nothing else, I felt committed to exposing the fifty dollar bill and I remembered the conviction I displayed in Christian’s apartment that first morning in New York, when I told him that I knew, absolutely, that it was a counterfeit. Even now, that voice was ringing inside my head, faint, yes, but there. That bill is not real, it kept saying, over and over.

My luck had not yet run out at work and the last three days of the previous week had been as slow as the first two and I was relieved to see there was no mountain of reports to edit and approve. Because of my extended absence, which had attributed to illness, the morning was a gauntlet of visits from concerned coworkers. I worried originally that the faint circles under my eyes from fatigue would not be convincing evidence that I had, in fact, been sick, but by the end of the morning I was so worn out from the visits and well wishes that I really did look under the weather. By lunch, I had engaged in so much idle chitchat and catch up with my department that I felt ready to take another week off. Wouldn’t a real vacation be nice, I savored and decided that I would have to use some of the many vacation days I had accrued, if I ever had the opportunity.

In the early afternoon I spent a leisurely lunch alone at a nearby coffee shop and thought about the next step in my pursuit of Leon Warnerke, my chase through time. Being at work and diverting myself with the routines that defined my life only a few weeks ago brought a light air of normalcy to my mood and I felt that I was beginning to think a little more clearly and a little less desperately, at least for a while. I knew our attempt to link the watermark and the Woodbury letters was not a dead end – too much fit together – but the way forward was cloudy. Was Warnerke’s attempt to perfect his watermark through printing innovation an arrow pointing at the watermark and some possible defect on my own bill, one that I still could not detect? Or was it a symbol, a placeholder for something else, a new direction for research, a stone left unturned? I resolved to take another look at the watermark in the afternoon with the microscope. Maybe there was something I just wasn’t seeing yet. Anyway, I couldn’t bear the thought of devoting too much of my day to real work, Secret Service work, not with Christian in captivity, I thought with a grimace. Tonight, I would look more carefully at the remaining letters as well, in case they could illuminate the watermark problem in a way that I didn’t see when I looked through them yesterday afternoon.

I was in good spirits again, but when I saw who was waiting in my office when I returned, my heart fell straight into my stomach.

“Hey there,” Robert Harper said with mock friendliness from my desk chair.

“Get out of my chair,” I said coldly.

“Oh I was just keeping it warm for you,” he said as he stood and gestured me chivalrously to the chair with his hand. I tried to maintain as much space as possible between us as I brushed past him. He noticed. “I guess you’re not too happy to see me.” I did not answer, but sat down and directed an expressionless stare at him. “You know, last time I checked, I tried to help you get your friend back. I’m sorry the situation changed, but I think you can hardly blame me.” He began pacing around the room, although there was nothing in the room to reasonably draw his gaze. He settled for staring at the blank wall, “I don’t know why you seem to hate me so much, really.”

“I don’t trust you,” I replied.

“No,” he said, now looking up at the ceiling, “You choose interesting people to trust, though, that’s for sure. Frankly, I can’t figure you out. I’ve almost stopped trying.” He lifted his arm high over his head, his fingertips extended as far as they would go. “You have really high ceilings,” he said. “I need an office like this. Maybe I’d spend more time there, wouldn’t feel so cloistered.”

The man was a complete enigma to me. Not only did I have little idea about what he did or who he was – intelligence was all he said – his ability to change character, demeanor, even appearance at the drop of a hat was both awe inspiring and extremely disconcerting. Every time his face would transform, flitting from expression to another, I felt as though a lizard had scurried out of the bushes and across my path. It wasn’t entirely frightening, just unnerving. The only thing that didn’t change was his obvious proclivity for high quality, well cut suits. I had never seen him without one, nor had I seen him in the same suit or even different suits of the same color. Today he was especially finely dressed in a three piece suit of a deep chocolate brown with a green patterned tie. If I hadn’t so loathed his appearance in my office, I might have found the outfit quite dashing.

“How did you get in here?” I asked.

He finally looked at me and smiled. “Special Agent William Wood is always welcome here, isn’t he?”

“No one would turn the first director away, despite his less than upright reputation,” I said recalling Arthur’s story of the real William Wood.

“Ah,” he exclaimed, an expression of pure delight sweeping across his face, “You didn’t tell me that you discovered my little joke, though I shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve got quite a facility with history, don’t you?”

The way he asked, I could tell the question was loaded. Did he know about Warnerke and the clues Arthur left? How? From what he said, I had the impression he had been trailing Christian and me, not looking over our shoulder. And why was he behaving so playfully? If I didn’t know better, I could have sworn he was being coy.

“I can tell from the expression on your face you’re wondering how I know about your little, how shall we say, hobby? Yes, well, it didn’t take long to put it all together. I’ll admit, I don’t know much about what kind of message Arthur left you, but I realized when I saw you walking out of the library the other day that it required some digging into books. That’s what Christian was doing at the Library of Congress last week when we had our little chat, eh?” I saw no reason to lie and nodded, satisfied. “Oh, I thought of something on the drive down from New York,” he said and grinned at me knowingly, “Something Arthur told me that might interest you.”

“When did you speak with Arthur?” I interrupted.

“I’ve spoken with him several times, in fact. I told you, I was the one who gave him the fifty dollar bill in the first place. We developed a sort of working relationship. As I was saying, some time after I gave Arthur the fifty dollar bill, he said that the thing about art – about great art, he said – is that time has rendered it imperfect.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “He didn’t explain it at the time and I didn’t ask. But I thought you might know what to do with it. He seems to be communicating with you much more than with me.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Why are you helping me?” I asked.

“Who said anything about helping you?” He looked at his watch. “Alas, I have to be off. It’s been a devil finding a place to stay in this town. Take the Hotel Lambert, for example. They say it’s all booked up, but I hear some of the rooms are just sitting empty.” Then he laughed and sauntered out the door, his step full of ease. I recognized now why he mentioned the Hotel Lambert – he clearly followed us there and had broken into the room Arthur reserved after we had gone -- and why he bothered to go to the time and expense to forge Secret Service credentials, rather than just stopping me on the street as he had done outside the New York library. He wanted to show me how powerful he was, his vast reach. It was working and that’s part of what made me distrust him so.

But that didn’t answer why he was helping me, unless, I thought uneasily, he felt I was helping him. I had no idea why the fifty dollar bill was so important, why whatever information Arthur carried to his death was so vital, yet it seemed that everywhere I turned, there was someone who did. Even Bae, who claimed he didn’t know anything about the fifty dollar bill was being directed by people with a clear interest in it and whatever secret it carried. Arthur wanted me to find something out – he wouldn’t have left me the note and all the clues that followed if he hadn’t – but did he know that every step I took towards a solution brought others, the North Koreans, the South Koreans, and whoever Robert Harper worked for, closer to that solution as well? Now especially with Christian gone, how could I thwart interests I couldn’t understand? Whose side was I even on? “No one’s,” I breathed and closed my eyes. “I’m on Christian’s side and no one else’s.” Not even Bae’s, my mind asked in response, but I did not answer it.

I turned Arthur’s phrase over in my mind as Harper had posthumously relayed it to me. The thing about great art is that time has rendered it imperfect. It sounded like cliché to me, but Arthur was not given to cliché. He searched zealously for pithy statements and witticisms, but he rarely fell into empty rhetorical flourishes. His manner of speaking was animated and lively, but it had purpose. He didn’t just speak to hear himself. No, whatever he had said aimed at something, as Harper himself could see. Why had Arthur not just come out with it, though? Did he distrust Harper as I did? If so, why had Harper given him the bill? Why were they working together? I tried again to focus just on Arthur’s words, to hold off the endless stream questions that always resulted from my interactions with Harper.

The thing about great art is that time has rendered it imperfect, I repeated it to myself until, like any word that one states and restates, it became meaningless, just a collection of empty syllables. What great art was Arthur referring to? He could have been talking about the fifty dollar bill Harper had given him and that I now possessed. Maybe it was a counterfeit, one so perfect that it was a work of art. But I couldn’t see how time fit in, what imperfections would have resulted from the passage of time. It occurred to me that the ink analysis I had performed with the mass spectrometer last week would tell me how old the impression was by dating the decay of the ink. I didn’t pay attention at the time because the note felt new, but it was worth a check. I swiveled my chair around so that I was facing the computer and browsed a log of recent results. Because it was the last ink analysis that I did, the results were at the top of the list. I clicked on them and waited for the report to appear on the screen. I wasn’t sure what the age of the note would tell me, but if it was old then it would make my association between “great art” and the counterfeit more plausible. No luck. The bill was recent, printed sometime in the last year. That made sense, I realized. The big head notes had only been in circulation for a few years. That was probably the reason I hadn’t really focused on the banknote’s age when I first analyzed it.

I sat back in my chair and ran the words through my head again, now fixing my mind firmly on the word “time.” What changed with time? Time wore things away. Objects decayed with time. . People grew old with time. No, don’t think about people, I told myself sternly, he was talking about art. Colors fade on paintings. The rubles. The colors had faded on them. It was one of the first things I had noted when I examined them, the clear sign of their age. Perhaps Warnreke’s forged rubles were the great art, their colorful luster lightened and dulled by time. Yet it wasn’t the colors that had helped me distinguish the forged fifty ruble note from the authentic one, it was the size of the watermark that had given the counterfeit away. Unsurprisingly, the colors had faded on both the real banknote and the forgery. They were over one hundred years old after all. Besides, I didn’t think it would make sense for Arthur to draw my attention to the colors because I still felt sure there was a clue lurking somewhere in the design of the watermark and the Woodbury letters, even though I didn’t know what.

As my mind momentarily drifted to the Woodbury letters, I seemed to remember vaguely that one of them had used the term great art. I tried to dismiss the fleeing notion and told myself I was in danger of linking anything to the letters, but the memory reasserted itself and I was suddenly quite sure that Warnerke had written something about “great art.” I shuffled the paper around on my desk instinctively, as if to reach for the letters, but I had left everything but the fifty dollar bill back at home. I checked the clock on the wall. It was only the mid afternoon. I let out a small groan and wriggled restively in my seat. After missing half a week of work, there was no way I could leave early. The letters would have to wait until evening.

Thirty

The apartment lay dark and dormant when I arrived. Bae had told me he would return in the afternoon and his absence sparked a brief moment of anxiety. I rushed to the kitchen where I saw the letters, Christian’s notes, the rubles, and the diagrams flung about the table in organized chaos, just as I had left in the night before. Even Christian’s carryall, which I finally relinquished in favor of my purse, leaned untouched against one of the chair legs. I exhaled with relief and felt guilty for even having suspected Bae might have taken everything. Anyway, I still had the fifty dollar bill safely in my purse, my rational self added. Once my momentary fear abated, I cast my jacket on the couch and eagerly dug through the copied out letters until I found the one I was looking for. It was the last of the three letters between Warnerke and Woodbury, the one in which Warnerke was thanking Woodbury for use of what I had guessed was some version of a Woodburytype. There it was, plain as day. The line leapt out at me from the undisciplined scrawl Christian used when he rapidly transcribed the letters:

In my mind grows the hope that from the precision afforded by this great technology I may have the chance to produce equally great art.

I then reread the entire letter to scrutinize it carefully for more clues.

October 5, 1876

Dear Mr. Woodbury,

I am happy to inform you that the hand press you loaned me is working beautifully and I see that you have added substantial improvements since you first patented the process over a decade ago. Your device allows me to produce the most subtle variations in tone and to wield absolute control over the respective light and darkness in the printed images. In my mind grows the hope that from the precision afforded by this great technology I may have the chance to produce equally great art.

You may be interested to learn that in the time since we last met, I have made great advances in producing a extremely pure gelatine compound. My technique involves causing the gelatine to precipitate by adding alum to a gelatine mixture that has been immersed in a bath of hot water. Once the water has been removed, I add a quantity of citric acid and then set the gelatine before washing it a final time in cold water. I recommend you try my process in the production of your next gelatine relief. I hope you will find the results as pleasing as I do.

I again offer you my heartfelt thanks for your assistance and support.

Yours in deepest gratitude,

Leon Warnerke

Nothing further grabbed me, but my victory was not to be tarnished. I read that one line aloud, almost yelled it, and filled the room with my triumphal tones, “In my mind grows the hope that from the precision afforded by this great technology I may have the chance to produce equally great art.”

“What?” I heard Bae ask from behind me. In my fervor, I had not heard him come in. I whipped my head around with a start and then blushed at my public declamation.

“Oh hi,” was all I said at first as I wore an embarrassed grin.

“What were you saying?” he asked again, his eyebrow bemusedly knit over a half smile. I told him about my encounter with Robert Harper and, though his expression turned sour at first, I saw intrigue soon take hold as I explained Arthur’s cryptic phrase and my attempts to decode it.

“And then I remembered this line from one of the Woodbury letters,” I said as I gave it to him.

“Are you sure Arthur really meant to invoke this?” he asked skeptically.

“Of course I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m not really sure about anything, but I’m learning to pursue every coincidence.” Sometimes this strange journey was marked by too many such coincides and, other times, far too few.

“I think that is a good strategy,” he assented. “So what do you think this one means?”

“I’m not sure,” I replied and took up the two rubles, one in each hand. “Leon Warnerke thought some invention of Woodbury’s, like the Woodburytype press, was going to help him to make great art. Last night we guessed that he was using the machine to perfect his watermarks, because of the subtle variations in light and dark the gelatine relief was capable of producing. So maybe he was alluding, coyly even dangerously, to the counterfeit rubles he was producing.”

“If he was producing counterfeit rubles at all,” Bae corrected.

“Right, if everything hangs together and Leon Warnerke was really producing counterfeit rubles beginning at least in the early 1870s, then maybe he thought his new rubles, the ones he could forge with the Woodburytype press would truly be great art.” It was egotistical, to be sure, but I could appreciate the artistry behind a convincing counterfeit. Not only did the task demand the utmost technical skill and expertise, which Warnerke as a photographer would have had, but it also required nearly the same artistic skill as the original designs. A good Monet forger might not be an artist equal to Monet himself, but he would have to be a pretty good one, nonetheless. “Still,” I continued, “Thinking about what Arthur said, what about time has rendered the watermark imperfect?”

I sat down still holding the two banknotes and tapped my foot against the floor impatiently. Bae remained standing and brought a hand to his chin. If he started pacing, the he really would replace Christian, I mused, and then thought that I didn’t want him to replace Christian at all. I noticed as I gazed at him for probably far too long that he had changed his clothes to a pair of light khakis and a colored shirt with thin blue lines running its length. I also saw a small suitcase lying next to the door and guessed that he had brought more clothes with him. The South Korean intelligence really did have a surplus of clothes placed in strategic locations for its agents. He must not have noticed me staring at him because he remained locked in thought.

“You told me earlier in the day you came up with a list of things time might do to art,” he said and rotated his head slightly to look at me. “What was it again?”

“I don’t remember exactly,” I answered. “Let’s see, it can wear colors away, materials can begin to degrade. Things like that.”

“Those are all destructive effects,” he said.

“So?”

“Over time, things can grow and develop,” he suggested.

“I guess, but we need to think about art, probably printed art. A painting or a photograph or a banknote can’t grow or develop,” I countered.”

“No, you’re right,” and he returned his hand to his chin. “What about accumulation? Things can accumulate on a painting, like dust. And we don’t know anything about duration, about the length of time Arthur had in mind. For example, painters often change their mind in the middle of a composition.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Many paintings show ghosts or shadows of aborted designs or images under infrared analysis. Sometimes, they even show subtle changes or alterations to the figures that end up in the final painting. But how does that fit with our example? What did Leon Warnerke hope his notes would accumulate over time?”

“Maybe Arthur wants us to look for changes or additions that Warnerke made later to his notes, ways that he improved them.”

“But what Arthur said is that in the case of great art, time has rendered it imperfect, not more perfect. In fact, that throws everything about the Warnerke letter into doubt. If we were right that Woodburytype would help Warnerke perfect his counterfeits, and that’s what he meant by great art, then that can’t be the same thing Arthur is calling great art.” I began to feel as though we had lost the speculative threats and had become lost in semantic tangles that wouldn’t get us anywhere.

“What if he is rebutting Leon Warnerke?” Bae asked.

“I don’t understand, what do you mean, ‘rebutting?’”

“We know Arthur has read this letter and would have known of this sentence, if had paid enough attention to notice it and remember it.”

“And given the elaborate maze he has constructed around even the smallest or most innocuous words and phrases in these letters, it’s safe to bet that he did, in fact remember it,” I added.

“Right,” Bae said, “And even we have deduced from the letters and the diagrams that Warnerke saw the flaws in his early counterfeits and was working to improve them. In fact he seems to have been obsessed with precision, so driven to perfect his notes that he may have risked unmasking the whole counterfeiting exercise in seeking outside help from Walter Woodbury.” I didn’t see where Bae was headed with this, but he showed no signs of slowing so I let him continue and tried to follow as best I could. “Maybe he got so caught up in improving the counterfeits that he soon wanted to improve them for their own sakes and not just in the interest of successfully counterfeiting currency.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean, maybe he wanted to make flawless counterfeits just to show he could it, that he was the master of his craft, even if Josephine Dobrovolska and his other associates could have passed lower quality counterfeits.” He checked to saw that I understood and then continued. “He was no longer forging currency or rolling out bogus notes, he was, in his own words, producing great art. But this must have been his own project and ambition. The anarchists didn’t want to bring great art to the world, they wanted to bring down the economies of Europe, as quickly and efficiently as possible. Perhaps Warnerke fell in love with the challenge.”

“I see what you’re saying,” I told him, “But I still don’t see the connection to what Arthur had said about great art.”

“Warnerke correlates great art with his capacity to hone and perfect his product, Maybe Arthur meant to disagree with this theory. For him, part of what makes great art so great is a special kind of imperfection, one that you cannot just make or copy, one that happens over time.”

“But what does that mean?” I said in exasperation. He did not respond, but slumped his shoulders, as if he had exhausted whatever reservoir of energy had been feeding his train of thought. Then he raised his head and blinked.

“I don’t know,” he said. He sounded removed as if his whole theory had been the product of a narcoleptic dream from which he now awoken, unable to recall saying or thinking any of it.

* * *

We made no further progress that night on Arthur’s new riddle and I tried to read the other letters, but could not focus on them. Instead, I spent much of the evening sullen, fretting over Christian. I worried about how he was being treated and, in my worst moments, if he were still alive. And while this concern bordering on despair should have driven me into frantic action, I found it left me paralyzed and unable to think clearly and analytically through the winding path Arthur had woven into the life of Leon Warnerke. To make matters worse, Bae said nothing of his affectionate display the night before and I hesitated to bring it up, in case I had somehow misinterpreted his actions. After sharing a simple dinner with Bae, I went to bed confused, unsure how he felt about me and afraid of how I knew I was beginning to feel about him. The buffer that his embrace had provided against a pervading loneliness now began to erode and it must have been hours before I could quell my inner turmoil and finally fall asleep.

The next day at work, I found myself in an idle moment and slipped the fifty dollar bill out of its envelope and turned it over in my hands. On what I could only call a whim, I decided to head down the laboratory and have one more look at the bill under a microscope. I even brought an authentic fifty dollar bill along with me for good measure, even though I knew a comparison would only confirm that the two bills -- the genuine one and Arthur’s – were identical. I no longer had any theory or guess as to what kept feeding my instinct that the banknote Arthur had left me was counterfeit and, if anything, I hope my visit would give me the resolve to fight that intuition down and prevent it from distracting me any further. I just needed to come to grips with the fact that the note was genuine and concede that it fit into this mystery in a way I did not yet understand. Intuition had its place and I did not wish to ignore Arthur’s lesson, but if listening to my raw instinct meant flouting observable evidence, then I ran the risk of clouding good judgment.

In the laboratory, I the fifty dollar bill out of its plastic sheath and placed it neatly on top of the envelope, careful to put the plastic sheath to which Arthur’s note was still affixed back inside the envelope. I then put the fifty dollar bill I knew was legal tender -- the same one I had withdrawn from the bank in New York – in the stage of the microscope and switched on the backlight. I wanted to look at the genuine note first, to calibrate my senses and to be sure that any comparison I made between the two notes was informed by a fresh image of what a real fifty dollar bill should look like. Despite this fastidious approach, I knew so well the minute details of even the older series of United States currency that I had trouble forcing myself to go over all the features of the bill. It felt like memorizing the spelling of one’s own name. Boredom soon overcame my desire to be thorough and I was satisfied that Arthur’s fifty dollar bill would not lead me astray. I would not trick myself into falsely spotting any deviation or flaw that was not really there.

I emptied the authentic fifty dollar bill from the microscope, took a deep breath, and set Arthur’s fifty dollar bill onto the slide. I lowered my eyes to the ocular lenses, the word “imperfection” branded into my mind. But in my mind it stayed, because raised ink lines spanning the bill were nothing other than perfect, even more pristine, I would have sworn, than the authentic fifty dollar bill I had just removed from the microscope. With growing wonder, I noticed the banknote was startlingly clean and uniform and shone with a kind of freshness that made the designs look as thought they had been etched directly onto the soft paper, rather than printed from a steel plate.

I knew this wasn’t possible, of course. United States currency is made carefully with somewhat outdated printing procedures and the process from initial engraving to final printed note is long, more than long enough to remove any hint of what I now experienced as “freshness.” Engravers at the Bureau of Printing and Engraving hand etch the designs into soft steel plates. The process is laborious, and the artists spend their days hunched over desks with a magnifying glass in one hand a hard and thin steel rod called a burin in the other. Cutting steel is not like writing on a page, where the ink flows readily and the pen glides without resistance; instead, the engravers must chip away at the steel to achieve even the smallest flourish. The various pictures, called dies, are engraved onto different plates and must be integrated together into one single printing plates in order to produce paper notes.

This process, by which the engravers are brought together into one plate which may then made into several intaglio printing plates, is called siderography. The dies are placed, one at a time, on top of a large metal frame that resembles a cabinet. Extending over this frame are two metal supports, not unlike the tall beams and towers that rise from a suspension bridge to hold up the metal cables that flow across it. Another bulky metal piece, flat like the cover of an ancient sarcophagus, is affixed to these two supports in the middle. A large wheel, its diameter greater than even a tall person’s height, controls an arm in the middle of the entire machine. A small cylinder of soft steel can be affixed to this arm. The master dies slide into the machine under this cylinder which is then rolled back and forth under immense pressure. The wheel is operated by hand and, as it moves the cylinder over the die, the image is impressed into the cylinder. In this way, the various designs are progressively added to the cylinder so that the final design of the currency comes together, wrapped around the steel cylinder like the label on a soup can. Because the images, portraits and borders facing a paper currency are cut into the original master-dies, they protrude from the imprinted cylinder. Using the same process, the cylinder is rolled over a blank steel plate to cast another metal die, one containing the final image of the fifty dollar bill, one in which all the designs and been brought together and properly arranged. This master-die is the template for the printing plates that will be inserted into the intaglio press when it is time to print the new currency.

If the master-die passes a rigorous inspection, it is heated and an impression is taken in plastic. Because the plastic was forced into the grooves of the heated master-die, it is a relief and is called an alto. Thirty-two altos are cast and then welded together into one single alto, a four by eight matrix. The alto is plated in copper through an electrolytic process that was first used for printing in 1838 by the German H.M. von Jacobi. Electroplating, as it is called, is like running a battery in reverse. The object to be plated and the plating metal -- in this case, plastic and copper, respectively -- are placed together in a chemical bath. This apparatus is an electrolytic tank. The copper is connected to the positive terminal of some electrical power source and the plastic is connected to the negative terminal. When electrical current begins to run through the electrolytic tank, a chemical change occurs to the copper and forces positively charged bits of it, called cations to float out into the chemical bath and then settle on the negatively charged plastic, coating it in copper. The original electrolytic process designed by von Jacobi and others would not have been able to coat plastic with copper because both materials had to be capable of conducting electricity and therefore had to either themselves be metal or be lightly coated in lead. It was not until a century later that scientists, including the young future Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynmann, would perfect techniques for electroplating plastic.

After the alto has been electroplated with copper, it is wrenched away, leaving behind a sheet of copper in which the thirty-two impressions of the bill’s design are now impressed. Because the images are now cut into the sheet rather than in relief, it is called a basso. The basso is thoroughly cleaned and inspected. Once it passes muster, it is again plated chromium and can be fit into the intaglio press and begin churning out sheets of currency at a rate of approximately 8,000 sheets of thirty-two bills per hour, equivalent to 256,000 uncut notes per hour.

So no, I told myself sternly, there was nothing fresh or unique about the fifty dollar bill at the other end of the microscope lens. The engraver’s hand was as distant as the long and complex series of impressions that had been taken of his original work. It was a masterpiece, no doubt, but no more so than the equally precise series of dots and dashes that made up the designs on any banknote of any denomination. There was little question that it was art, but it was a special kind of art, one whose supreme beauty was manifest only in mass production. It was an aggregate beauty as well, an artistry resulting from the many different hands that crafted the individual designs. Every hand etched die is actually stored, so that no currency design, no matter how obsolete, is every completely lost. Some of them even persist through many generations of bills. The original 1869 Lincoln engraving is still used for current five dollar bills.

That was what made American currency so hard to counterfeit, that aggregate artistry that resulted from many hands over a vast stretch of time. No photomechanical process could possibly capture the sublime chaos that was United States Legal Tender and no individual graver, no matter how talented, could possibly emulate the mixture of styles sprinkled across the different elements of a bill. It would be difficult enough to copy the style of a single painting in a single style, a Da Vinci or a Rembrandt. But imagine copying a painting in which Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Monet, Picasso, and Pollock had all contributed one image.

That was it, I suddenly realized. I brought my head excitedly back down to the microscope and the fifty dollar bill had completely changed before my eyes. It was as if before I had been looking down at a landscape at night, a total blackness punctured by the strings and clusters of light that marked habitation. Now I saw it in the bright daylight sun, a bursting panorama of color, movement and relief. A United States banknote was a complex pastiche of various styles, the result of various images contributed by countless different engravers over time. It would be impossible to mimic this perfectly. The perfection, freshness, and, most of all, the uniformity I thought I had seen in Arthur’s fifty dollar bill was no illusion, but exactly what was wrong with it. It was too perfect. The designs had been rendered immaculately, but they had clearly been done by one hand perhaps over a very short amount of time. There was no mix of styles, but one magnificently precise style.

I understood then exactly what Arthur had meant. The thing about great art is that time had rendered it imperfect. Bae had been right. Things accumulate with time. The great art that was a single United States bill slowly accrued its beauty through time, picking up a Lincoln portrait here, a number “5” there, maybe some scrollwork on the border along the way. But the final product of this sedimentation was completely imperfect, one in which dissonant styles were forcibly welded together and imprisoned within the copper plating. But this monstrosity was great art nonetheless. Over time, as it became less perfect and less harmonious, as the temporal gap between the various engravings grew, it also achieved its sole purpose: it could not be copied.

The fifty dollar bill Arthur had left me looked like a masterpiece, but, through its perfection, I now saw clearly that it was as worthless as the paper it was printed on. It was a counterfeit.

Thirty-One

This time I didn’t care about what people would think if I left work early, I just packed my things up in a rush and bolted out the door. I walked a block before growing too impatient even for that and hailed a cab. I wanted to tell Bae about my discovery as soon as possible, partly to see him agree with me, to reassure me that I was right. I wanted to tell him yes, I finally had it, my instincts had been right all along and I had been a fool to ignore him. My desire was irrational. After all, how could he know better than I the subtle stylistic flaws in the bill? He probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, not even after I explained to him how the bill was too uniform and had clearly been the work of one hand, not even if I put a magnifying glass to the banknote and pointed it all out, line by line. Yet I felt that just his excitement, just seeing the hope that I was onto something leap into his face would help convince me that I was, in fact, really onto something. But this time I was right. Everything Arthur had taught me had prepared me for this moment. He had shown me how to identify any counterfeit, even a counterfeit so perfect that I knew it was a forgery before I even knew why, the counterfeit that was fake because it was too perfect.

I ran up the stairs and flung the door open. Startled by my sudden entrance, Bae jumped from the couch and reached reflexively behind his back before he saw that it was me. “Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you back.” He let his arm hang slack at his side. I saw some of the letters lying on the coffee table. He must have been taking a look at them while I was at work. I tried to speak, but was breathless from the run up the stairs and the excitement.

“Are you ok?” he asked, his face concerned.

“Yes,” I said, finally regaining my breath. “Yes, I’m fine. Bae, I’ve got it. I figured out what Arthur meant. This fifty dollar bill he gave me. It’s a counterfeit, I know it now. I was right all along.” I began to sputter and was again engulfed in the rush of adrenaline that accompanied my initial realization that it was a forgery. Somehow saying out loud that it was a counterfeit made it more real and true than it had been as a mere epiphany popping into my head, as if the words “It’s a counterfeit” transformed an idea into physical being.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure.” I told him about how the myriad engravings are made by several people and often reused. I took out the two bills, the real one and the one I now knew was a counterfeit, and showed him with a small magnifying glass the overwhelming consistency of the counterfeit versus the subtle differences populating the genuine bill. It was all right there, as clear under the comparatively low magnification offered by the glass as it had been through the powerful microscope lens. What had eluded me these past weeks now jumped out at me from the banknote and even Bae nodded his head as he followed along, noting the minute discrepancies between the two banknotes.

“Well?” I asked after his eyes skipped between the two notes as if confirming for himself what I had just explained.

“I think you’re right,” he said, emotionless.

“This is it, right? This is what we’ve been looking for, all this time. We’ve figured it all out, haven’t we? Haven’t we?” I was becoming irate as Bae sat perfectly still, apparently locked in thought and refusing to share in my excitement.

“I think you are right,” he said finally, “That this explains what Arthur told Robert Harper about art, especially because his relationship with Harper obviously had something to do with this bill.”

“Exactly,” I said, satisfied for the moment.

“But this raises new questions as well, doesn’t it?”

“Like what?”

“Well, who made this counterfeit and why would the North Koreans have been willing to kill for it?” He looked up at me and his face seemed contrite, as if he were truly sorry he could not join me in the glory of my conquest over the fifty dollar bill. Just this look wiped away some of my anger, but my frustration mounted in its place.

“But they didn’t know it was a counterfeit,” I protested, walking over to the couch and throwing myself upon it. “No one knows it’s a counterfeit.” Except me.

“That makes it even stranger. Why would they know this was so important if they didn’t even know what it was – if they still don’t. What is so important about a counterfeit fifty dollar bill?” He looked back at the table to ponder the two, almost twin banknotes sitting in front of him.

The last vestiges of my indignation at Bae’s lack of response now gave way to questions that I had nervously put aside for the last week. Christian had asked why Arthur had not shown the bill to the Secret Service and I felt a pang of longing for his presence as his words now rattled in my head: “Why would he leave you with a fifty dollar bill that he didn’t even show to the Secret Service?” he had asked shortly after I first encountered Bae on the steps of my apartment. “He even forbade you from showing it to them or anyone. Why wouldn’t he trust the agency to which he gave his life?” Now that I knew the bill was a counterfeit, Christian’s questions seemed even more significant. Why wouldn’t Arthur tell the Secret Service about a counterfeit bill? And where he couldn’t trust them, why would he trust me? Bae was right, that this fifty dollar bill was a counterfeit raised new questions, but finally they were the right ones. Where before I had asked what secret was worth Arthur’s life, now I could ask what about this counterfeit banknote was worth Arthur’s life and why did the North and South Korean governments willing to do anything to get their hands on it?

“You’re right,” I said, my voice brimming with all the doubts now tossing about my troubled mind. “So what do we do now?”

Bae sat for a long while without answering. He occasionally moved his head, as if mulling over various courses of action. Finally he spoke.

“I think we get your friend back,” he said.

“Christian? Is this enough?” I asked. I was confident the bill was a counterfeit, but was less sure I could convince the men holding Christian that this was the totality of the secret Arthur had been guarding, particularly because I wasn’t so sure of that myself.

“Whatever Arthur was involved in,” he said and gestured toward the banknote, “It doesn’t stop at this fifty dollar bill, even if it is a counterfeit. But whether there is more we could ever find out, I do not know. The men who are holding Christian captive should have no reason to doubt us.”

“Isn’t that too much of a risk?” I asked. “What if they think that we’re bluffing?” Worry tugged at the corners of his eyes and I saw that he shared my concern.

“I need to leave,” he said and stood up suddenly. “I will talk to some people who will not talk over the phone, but may have information that will help us decide how to best proceed. I will not be gone for long, but can you think about how to explain to these men what you have shown me in the fifty dollar bill?”

“I think so,” I said and started to ask who he was going to see, but checked myself knowing he would uncomfortably brush the question off, unwilling to say anything. This is what it meant to be caught between people like Bae and the North Koreans, I told myself regretfully. He must have read the consternation painted on my face, because he walked over and gripped my arm gently as he crouched down in front of me, brining his eyes level with mine.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I know it is hard to trust me when you know so little about me, but I promise you that I am doing this because it is the only way I know how to help you and your friend. You are right. What I have suggested may be dangerous. The people I know may know what the risks are better than you or I.” He then squeezed my shoulder tightly and I realized how much I had yearned for his firm and affectionate touch since we embraced the other night. I felt my throat thicken as the feelings I had tried so hard to push from my mind once again trickled through my synapses and carried me momentarily away from my fears over Christian’s wellbeing. Without thinking I leaned forward and brought my lips to his. He recoiled slightly in surprise, but then I felt him return my kiss and grip my shoulder more tightly. I suddenly tugged myself free, not because my desire lessened, but because it was oddly satisfied, at least temporarily. I had done what I needed to do, what I wanted to do, and now my body released my mind, letting it again focus on the task at hand: we had to free Christian.

“Go,” I commanded softly. “I trust you. Go help me get my friend back.”

* * *

I did not at first move from the couch after Bae left, but sat there, the memory of his kiss still imprinted on my lips. I told him that I trusted him and I had meant it, yet the questions swirling around my head about the counterfeit and about Arthur seemed to permeate my every thought and emotion, leaving nothing untainted. Even the trust I had given willingly now, only moments later, appeared unsound, as if it had developed hairline cracks. I remembered something Robert Harper had said on the steps of the New York Public Library. He told me to be cautious about Bae, that he might be more dangerous than I thought. At the time, I had no choice but to trust Bae and had happily ignored Harper, whom I found more than a little suspicious. Now, though, I had openly pledged my trust to Bae and I wondered if I had been right to do so. When I wanted nothing more than to savor the lingering taste of his lips, I instead found myself worried that my now undeniable attraction to him was robbing me of my better judgment. Even if my feelings were genuine, more than a mere infatuation produced by trying circumstances, I could not allow them to put Christian’s life in jeopardy.

There were other personal feelings I had to worry about as well. The suspicion I had handily dismissed in New York about Arthur’s loyalties poked at me once again and, as disconcerting as the thought seemed, I could not help but ask myself if I were aiding and abetting a traitor to the government that I had vowed to serve. In the Korean restaurant that night, when I first asked Bae to help me, he said that Arthur had been doing some unknown “work” with the North Koreans. Could he have been helping the North Koreans to produce near foolproof counterfeits of United States currency? The fifty dollar bill he had left me bore every marker of a real note, including the color changing ink which should have been impossible to attain. A forgery of this quality required someone with inside access to the highly restricted materials and techniques used for real legal tender. Arthur could have been that person.

The only thing keeping this theory from sounding plausible was the fact that Robert Harper said that he had given Arthur the fifty dollar bill, but was he lying? The words he conveyed from Arthur helped me to see that the bill was, in fact, a counterfeit, so he must have talked to Arthur about the counterfeit at some point, even if he didn’t give it to him. But who was Robert Harper really? Should I have believed that he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency or some other shadowy United States intelligence entity just because he said so? I certainly doubted his intentions, if not the veracity of almost everything he said. He, too, could be the arm of some foreign government or organization after this counterfeit of counterfeits that I now possessed. It was quite a prize.

There was something else, I admitted guiltily, that kept me from entertaining the thought that Arthur really had betrayed his government: my personal affection for Arthur. I could not bring myself to believe that Arthur would abandon the office he had served so dutifully almost his whole life. But these too were personal feelings that, if I clung to them too strongly, might endanger Christian’s life—and my own.

Thirty-Two

Bae did not return until the evening and when he did I could tell that he was barely able to contain some great agitation. His movements and speech were as controlled as ever, but something in those ever active eyes flashed more brightly that usual. When he walked in the room, he shed his dark leather coat to reveal a button down maroon shirt tucked into a pair of black pants. I didn’t recognize the outfit as anything Christian would wear, so these must have been the clothes that Bae procured from his mysterious Washington associates. I had changed out of my work clothes and was now clad in my familiar casual uniform of jeans and a loose sweater.

“I’ve talked to my friends,” he said cryptically as he took a seat on the couch next to me. “We need to try and get Christian back now.”

“Why?” I asked, “Why is it necessary now.”

“The people I know, their job is to hear things that perhaps they should not. It was my job for a time.” This, I assumed, was a drawn out euphemism for spying. “They say that the men who have Christian may be moving soon—leaving the country, perhaps.”

“Leaving the country? Where” I asked with astonishment. “What are they going to do with Christian? Kill him? Don’t they need the information that we have?”

“I do not know where they will go, but they will not kill him,” he said and rested a hand lightly on my knee as if to reassure me. “They may take him with them. You are right. They still need more information. I am not sure why they are leaving now, but I have been told that it may happen soon.”

“How soon?”

“In the coming days. Perhaps tomorrow, although that would surprise me.”

“How do your friends know all this?” I asked sullenly.

“They cannot be certain. As I said, they only hear things. But it is possible.”

“So what should we do?” I asked. It was the only thing I could think to say.

“We call them and tell them what we know about the fifty dollar bill. Have you thought of a way to explain it clearly to them, to show them?” I nodded. “Good, then that will have to be enough.”

“And if it’s not?” I did not need to ask rest of the question.

“Your friend will be ok,” he said and smiled weakly. “You are the only way they will discover the information they are seeking, information that my friends have assured me they still desperately want. Christian is the only bargaining chip they have to draw it from you. Remember that. Now,” he said, his face abandoning its gentle expression, becoming quickly resolute and focused, “We need to talk over what you will say to them and then I think we should call.”

Bae predicted that they would ask to see the fifty dollar bill before agreeing to hand over Christian and would pick a meeting place, somewhere public and unenclosed. They would want to be sure that I wasn’t being covered or watched by someone hiding nearby or around a corner. He told me to try and keep my voice level and calm, even though he knew it would be difficult for me, especially if they threatened Christian. If I could stay keeled on the phone, Bae said, they would be less likely to suspect that I was lying. He also reassured me that because we ourselves did not yet know whether Arthur’s clues led any further, I probably wouldn’t sound as if I were bluffing anyway. Above all, he told me, I was not to let them know that he was with me or had been helping me.

When I was ready, I took a deep breath and dialed Christian’s phone. As it rang, I ran over all of Bae’s warnings in my head and tried to review how I would explain that the fifty dollar bill was a counterfeit over the phone. When Bae asked me whether I could do it, I was sure I had a clear description of the differences between the two bills, but in the dreadful moment before they answered, my self-confidence was flagging. Before my anxiety could spiral downward any further, the same cruel sounding man who had threatened my life answered.

“We were starting to worry about you,” he said and chuckled gleefully. I thought I could detect a suppressed uneasiness beneath his usual cavalier tone, but I wasn’t sure.

“I know everything,” I said boldly. “I know what secret the fifty dollar bill is protecting.”

“Really? That’s excellent. Please, enlighten me.”

“The bill is the secret,” I told him. “It’s a counterfeit, the finest counterfeit I’ve ever seen.”

“How can you be sure?” he barked. I told him as briefly as possible about the production process for real United States currency, how multiple engravings are brought together into one banknote, and that Arthur’s bill had clearly come from one original engraving.

“Interesting,” he replied when I had finished and then paused, as if contemplating his next move. “I want to see it. If we’re satisfied, I’ll let your friend go. Meet us at Dupont circle in exactly one hour—” I quickly looked at the clock. It was 7:46. “—and I don’t think I need to tell you to come alone.”

The hour passed in maddeningly uneven intervals, as if minutes stretched and bent out of shape at will. When I first hung up the phone, time seemed to fly by as I related to Bae everything the man had said and then paced about my bedroom wondering if I needed to change my clothes. What did one wear to a prisoner exchange? Bae tried to calm me and said that an hour was more than enough time. Dupont circle was only ten minutes away by foot, even though we decided that it would be safer to drive. He then talked through how everything would work. I was to leave the apartment alone, get in the car and drive over, parking about one block away. I should time my walk, he said, so that I arrived at no more than two or three minutes before the scheduled meeting. He would sneak out a window in the back of the apartment before I left and run over by foot to a concealed position safely away from the meeting point.

“What if they see you?” I asked. “They said that I should come alone.”

“They won’t see me,” he replied laconically and that was that.

He then described how the exchange would work. Christian would be with them and that I should try not to panic if he looked hurt. I was to instruct Christian’s captors to bring him close before I handed over the counterfeit, a demand they expected and to which they would readily acquiesce. He then warned that, although I would have to get close to them to show them the two banknotes, I should avoid turning my back to them at any time. Once they were satisfied, I was to hand over the counterfeit with one hand while grasping Christian with the other. It all felt hopelessly formalized to me, like some complicated dance, and I worried I would forget the steps. Anyway, what if things didn’t happen the way Bae predicted? If Christian wasn’t close enough to touch, would they still hand him over? Bae reassured me that they had no desire to either keep Christian longer than they had to or do “anything else” to him. I only half listened to him and nervously tapped my foot as I watched the second hand of the clock swing around the face at what seemed like the speed of a centrifuge.

At 9:16, with thirty minutes left before the meeting and Bae finished walking me through it, time came to a standstill. The hands of the clock nearly froze and the seconds ticked by like the slow drip of faucet. I was now so close to finally getting Christian back and the wait was unbearable. I tried to take deep breaths and relax but after every deep inhalation, I found myself exhaling raggedly as though my lungs were silently sobbing. For all my meticulousness, I was never one to time my life precisely, but now I found myself living by each minute on the clock. At 9:20, I noted, Bae put on his jacket and said that it was time for him to leave. He walked over and tenderly placed his right hand on my left cheek.

“This will be fine,” he said. “It will all be over soon.” The normal gleam in his eyes seemed filtered and dulled by a thin film, as if he had intentionally dimmed them to sooth my frenetic nerves.

“I’m ready,” I said more convincingly that I expected. I even forced a grin. “I’ll be ok.”

“I know you will.” He removed his hand from my face and wheeled around and down the corridor into the kitchen. I heard the window over the sink creak as it resisted him and then a light clanging on the fire escape before the window moaned once more as it slid shut. At 9:25, I was alone in my apartment, accompanied only by the nervous energy reverberating around the room, sizzling across the tables, couch, and television, with the wild crackling of an electrical discharge. By 9:30, I could no longer stand the tormenting, unstable quiet of the apartment and I went to my car, but not before I grabbed from a drawer in the kitchen a small digital watch that I occasionally used as an alarm clock for travel and synchronized it with the clock on my wall. I was in the car at 9:34 and arrived a block away from Dupont Circle at 9:40. It felt as if someone else was driving; all of my attention was on the clock. I left the watch on the seat and readied myself for the meeting. I had only the two fifty dollar bills – Arthur’s and the authentic one. The original envelope and note were both in the carryall, which I had tucked behind my bed before I left. At 9: 43 I got out of the car and the cool fall breeze caressed my face, lifting away the awful tyranny of each passing minute. Time no longer mattered to me now, only Christian.

I walked down P Street where I had parked the car and approached Dupont Circle from the east. There was no traffic late at night and I did not bother to walk down to the crosswalk. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire Avenues and 19th and P Streets intersect and flow out of Dupont Circle like perfectly aligned spokes from a bicycle tire. The circle itself is about two hundred feet in diameter and ringed almost continuously along its circumference with benches. The line of benches is broken only by hedge lined foot paths that penetrate the center of the circle from every street but P Street. A lawn covers the area between the benches and a large center circle in which stands a tall fountain. The top of the fountain is a shallow basin, hoisted by three nude figures representing the sea, the stars, and the wind. The circle is named for Civil War Rear Admiral Samuel Francis du Pont and a bronze statue of him once stood in place of the fountain until du Pont’s family, the DuPont chemical barons, moved it in 1920. They paid Daniel Chester French and Henry Bacon, who had together also crafted the Lincoln Memorial, to replace the statue the following year.

As I walked along the pavement into the interior of the circle, I saw that it was deserted. I might have expected a few people loitering on the benches as I passed, but the cold weather must have warded them away. I soon reached the fountain in the center and decided to wait there and paced slowly around it, both to keep warm and to expend some of my nervous energy. After about a minute, I saw a black sedan pull up to one of the paths near where New Hampshire Avenue meets the circle. Four men exited the car and, as they drew closer, my heart leaped into my throat when I recognized one of them as Christian. The other three men were clad in dark suits and overcoats, though I couldn’t discern the colors under the dim streetlamps. Christian still wore the jeans and white colored shirt he had on the last night I saw him. Their faces remained indistinct until they actually reached the fountain and leading the small entourage was the man I now knew only too well, the one who had been at my apartment last week and the one with whom I had bargained for Christian’s life. I recognized his oval face, now no longer twisted in anger, but curled into a disdainful sneer. He thought he had won already, I told myself with surprising awareness, this could be to my advantage. I did not recognize the other men, but they also looked Korean and had broad, round faces with light shadows running along the lines of their cheekbones.

When I saw Christian, I wanted to run out and grab him and it took every ounce of my control to stand firmly in place. He looked haggard but otherwise untouched. Once he was close enough, I caught a bright eagerness in his eyes that must have mirrored mine. He must have been told – threatened – not to say or do anything, because he did not even smile at me. Yet he didn’t need to. Everything he could have possible said was shining forth from his happy and relieved eyes. The familiar growl I recognized from the phone cut short our silent reunion.

“Do you have it?” the man asked.

“Yes, it’s right here.” I held out the fifty dollar bill. He didn’t move.

“And how do you know it’s a counterfeit?”

“I have to show you. I brought a real fifty dollar bill with. If you look at them side by side, you’ll see it clearly.” I didn’t ask them to bring Christian closer as Bae had instructed me, instead just silently praying they would. The man I recognized turned back and conferred to the other two in hushed tones. I could tell it was Korean although I couldn’t make out more than a word or two of their whispers. I soon began to tense up. Why was it taking so long? I was close to the edge of panic when their conference finally ended and the man stepped forward. A light flick of his hand – some kind of signal – brought the other two men forward. One was holding Christian by the arm. When they reached me, we stood there configured just as Bae had predicted. The man stood next to me on one side and the other two curled around in an arc so that Christian was came within arm’s reach of me on the other. Maybe there was a method to all of this.

I held Arthur’s bill in my left hand, closest to Christian, and the other in my right.

“Look,” I said and moved the two bills closer to the man. It was difficult in the dark, where our bodies cast shadows over the banknotes in the streetlights, but I managed to show him the major differences between the two notes. Earlier, I had selected the variations that I felt were most visible with the naked eye and it was those I showed him now. I pointed out how the shading on the upper windows of the Capitol building on Arthur’s note did not bear the same shape or character as the authentic note and how the hedges in front of the building were minutely different in size and darkness. He nodded along, his sneer finally abandoned as he focused on what I was showing him. I felt almost foolish now, able to make someone completely unfamiliar with currency see differences I had been unable to catch for so many weeks and after such careful scrutiny. But they truly were the kinds of subtle variation that were nearly impossible to spot until I knew what to look for. That was the true mastery behind this counterfeit. Everything I had been trained to check, every high-tech security measure, the ink, the coloration, the texture, they had all been present. On a bill so flawless, who would have thought to look at the fine details of the design?

When I was done, I looked up from the banknotes to see if he was satisfied. He kept staring at them for a moment longer and then grunted to himself.

“And this is all?” he demanded.

“Everything,” I said. “I swear. It all led to this.”

“Fine then. Give them to me.”

I passed Arthur’s note from my left hand over to my right, which now held both fifty dollar bills. I then slid one foot lightly toward Christian and reached out with my left arm to grasp him as I handed the two banknotes over to the man. I hoped my arm wasn’t shaking and that these men expected everything I was doing. If they got nervous, who knows what might happen. The man took the two fifty dollar bills with surprising care and tenderness, as if they were precious to him. He then looked up and gave another signal with his hand to the two men. My heart stopped. What had he commanded them to do? But then they receded cautiously away from us and I realized he must have indicated to them that everything was in order. I held Christian close to me, arm in arm, and a passerby might have thought we were two lovers huddling together on a cold evening.

“You’ve done all that I asked,” the man said, almost politely. “I’m a man of my word. I hope you’ll never see us again – for your sake.” He reassumed that awful grin as he began turning around to rejoin his henchmen who were already halfway back to the car. Just then one of his associates yelled out to him.

“Boss,” I heard him cry in Korean, “They have betrayed us.”

Confusion rushed into the man’s face and he stopped there, still facing us, with the lower part of his trunk halfway turned toward his companion, as if his whole body was unsure whether to stare at us or to look at what had prompted the outburst. A rustling in the bushes captured my attention and I saw several dark figures swarm into the circle. They crept across the ground quickly and hunched over, like some ghoulish monsters from a fairytale. They had grotesquely large heads and long black objects that jutted out sharply from their shoulders.

The other two Koreans now stood about halfway to the car and were both screaming, though I could not translate the Korean over the whooshing of blood in my ears. The circle seemed to start spinning and whirling like a merry-go-round as the shadowed creatures continued to pour from all corners and the Korean men kept yelling. Before I could regain my senses, I felt a sharp push, so hard that it knocked me off my feet. Prostrate on the pavement, another great force landed on me, knocking the wind out of me and holding me tight to the ground. My right arm lay caught under my stomach and my left arm was twisted around behind my back, caught fast by something I could not detect. I tried to incline my head and see what was happening, but I was unable to lift it and could only see a thin sliver of the night sky cut in half by the steps of the fountain.

Pinned to the ground and paralyzed, I was in a vacuum. I couldn’t hear or feel anything but the unknown weight on top of me and even my vision started to coat over in a black film that shimmered and sparkled in front of my eyes. Then I sensed a light pop in my ear, then another – this one a little louder – and then suddenly all of my senses were overwhelmed by a terrifying flurry of light and sound and acrid sulfuric odor. It was like a cloudburst forewarned by only a few light drops of rain. From all sides I heard gunfire like Morse code, always a few staccato notes from semiautomatic rifles answered by the isolated blasts of a handgun. Colorful flashes of light tinted my small patch of sky with each call and response. Soon the blazing gunfire petered out and the roaring and screeching of a car peeling away gave way to the sound of my own frantic breathing. The effervescent black film returned to my eyes, now more thickly, and then everything was gone.

Thirty-Three

I could tell that I was on my back and my left arm throbbed with pain.

I opened my eyes and saw Christian leaning above me, his brow furrowed in concern and the worry lines deep and distinct in his forehead. Above him stood several other people, but they were only shapes floating in the background of my blurry vision. I saw his mouth moving.

“What?” I asked and winced as the air rasped out of my parched throat.

“I asked if you were alright,” I now heard Christian say.

“Yeah,” I said and pushed myself up with a grimace. I remained sitting on the pavement and clutched my left arm. If felt like a cold fire simmered where my arm slotted into the shoulder socket. I cast my eyes around Dupont circle, trying to make sense of the scene. We were still near the fountain in the middle of the circle, not far from where I last remembered standing next to Christian after the exchange. Bright red police lights flashed all around the perimeter and silhouetted what I now saw were not chthonic beasts sprung from the earth, but police officers in SWAT uniforms, heavily padded and armored with black metal helmets. The black semiautomatic rifles that had been affixed to their shoulders now hung loose at their sides. Scattered among them were regular uniformed officers from the DC Metropolitan Police.

“What happened?” I asked Christian groggily.

“I barely know,” he said. “These guys showed up and Do Hyun-Su pulled out his gun.”

“Do Hyon-Su?”

“Oh, that’s the guy who was in your apartment last week, the one you always talked to on the phone. He looked like he was going to shoot us and so I threw you to the ground and fell on top of you. Then there was this big firefight as these guys ran in” he said as he motioned around to the small army of police. “Did you call them?”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t call anyone.”

A crew cut man in black SWAT fatigues approached us and Christian whispered in my ear, “This is the guy in charge,” and stood up to meet him. The man carried his helmet buy his side and his gun slung over one shoulder.

“Is your friend ok?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said before Christian could speak and slowly picked myself up off the ground as if to prove it. Christian moved to help me but I waved him off. “I think I just banged my arm, that’s all.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get that looked at. Right now, there’s a man who would like to talk to you.” He looked at Christian and added, “Both of you.”

“Who?” I asked.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” he said. I responded with a look of complete bewilderment and he leaned in closer, so that only Christian and I could hear him. “This guy has orders from up on high, like, really high. Chief called me personally when we were gearing up back at the station, told me that I had to do anything this guy said. I mean, anything. Soon as the last shot was fired, this guy told me to find you. Seemed to know exactly who you were. I gotta admit,” he said, his voice now descending almost to a whisper, “This guy kinda gives me the creeps. Never met anyone like him.” He looked over his shoulder then as if he feared this mysterious official were right behind him and then motioned us to follow him toward a large van labeled SWAT. It resembled an RV, but was painted all black and had satellites and other antennae protruding from the roof.

“My God, Christian,” I said as we approached the van, “You’ve been here caring for me and I haven’t asked how you are. Are you ok? Did they hurt you?”

“I’m fine, really,” he said. “They never touched me. It was just kind of lonely. They locked me in a smallish room, but kept me fed and let me keep the books I had at the library.” He chuckled. “I’ve come up with some novel ideas on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. I read it three times – that’s how bored I was.”

“I’m just happy to see you.” I grabbed his hand and smiled.

“Same here. When I came out of the car and saw your face, I knew I would make it. By the way,” he lowered his voice. “How did you figure that all out about the counterfeit? Is it really a counterfeit?”

We had reached the van and the SWAT officer leading us swung the door open, so I simply gave Christian and curt nod and motioned with my hand for him to keep quiet. His eyes acknowledged the signal and he returned the nod. I stepped into the van, but stopped in my tracks when I saw who was waiting inside.

“Well, if it isn’t the happy little reunion we were hoping for,” Robert Harper said from behind a table. His tone was smug and yet there something about it. It sounded stretched, thinned even. For once, he was not wearing a suit, but was instead clad in a police issue windbreaker. The front had a DC Metropolitan Police insignia where a breast pocket would have been.

“What are you doing here?” I asked as Christian followed me into the small control room. Once inside, it was clear that it was less a transport vehicle than a headquarters on wheels. Around the table stood large banks of computers and television screens and, along the wall behind us, sat a gun rack filled with guns of the same type the SWAT officers outside were carrying.

“Thank you captain,” Harper said and dismissed the police officer with a wave of his hand before looking back at me. “You ask me that question an awful lot don’t you? I told you I’m never far behind. Anyway, did you really think I’d just let them have the fifty dollar bill?”

“You made this happen?” I asked. “Did you get it back?”

“No,” he replied bitterly. “No I did not. Christian’s new friend escaped and the other two died before we could question them.” He sighed. “You can’t trust police to do anything right. Look at these things,” he said and motioned to the impressive array of arms behind us. “You’d think they were going into battle or something, not taking down three lightly armed men.”

“Can’t you follow him? He can’t have just disappeared.”

“Disappearing is the one thing these men are good at, I’m afraid. I think you’ll discover that when you get home tonight.” He must have been talking about Bae. Would Bae really leave now? I knew the fifty dollar bill was his mission, but—. I didn’t let myself finish the thought. No, I told myself, he would be there waiting for me. Right now, there were other more important questions to ask. I was about to speak, but someone knocked, rapping sharply against the metal door.

“Come in,” Robert Harper barked. It was an EMT carrying a rather large kit of medical supplies.

“I was told to come have a look at someone’s arm,” he said and peeked his head in the door tentatively.

“Do you have an ice pack?” Harper asked. He didn’t answer but rooted around in the small box he carried and held one up for Harper to see. Harper then pointed at me and the EMT walked further into the van and handed it to me.

“Which arm is it?” he asked as he got closer.

“She’s fine,” Harper said. “You can go.” The EMT looked at me as if begging leave, bound by the Hippocratic Oath to defy even intimidating men like Harper. I just smiled, said I was fine and thanked him for the ice pack. He looked at my shoulder skeptically and then retreated from the van, closing the door behind him.

“Who are you?” I asked as I fitted the pack to my shoulder. “Who are you really?”

“I told you, I work in intelligence,” he said gruffly and then, softening his tone, “I operate in East Asia, but have been involved with that fifty dollar bill for some time now. If my allegiance was ever in doubt for you – and I’m guessing by the way you react to me that it was – this—” he gestured around the interior of the van, “—ought to be proof enough that we work for same government.”

He did work for our government, I thought with embarrassment. Why hadn’t I trusted him? Was it just because I didn’t like him? Yet even now, something about him made me hesitate.

“It was a counterfeit,” I blurted out, overcoming whatever traces of distrust I still harbored. “I didn’t know before, not for sure. Maybe I wouldn’t have told you, anyway, but I’m telling you now.”

“Yes, that I knew,” he said. “Or at least suspected. I assume Arthur’s little trail of breadcrumbs didn’t lead you any further?”

“No,” I told him and then asked, “Did you really give Arthur the fifty dollar bill, like you said that night in New York?”

“Not directly, no.”

“You just made that up?” I recoiled slightly, “Just to get me to hand the bill over?”

“Made up, simplified, same thing, right?” he grinned. “I facilitated a transfer between two mutually interested parties, ones that might not have found each other otherwise. Arthur knew me, but not in this capacity.”

“Capacity? You mean as someone who worked for the CIA.”

“That’s it. As you both know well, I wear many hats. It comes in handy in my line of work.” That calculating look that I recognized returned to his face. It made me almost shiver. That’s why I still doubted him, I told myself. It’s that look. “Well,” he said. “Thanks for your help, both of you. Take care. I don’t think we’ll be seeing each other again.”

“That’s it?” I said, shocked. “But what has this all been about? What was Arthur doing with that counterfeit bill? Why did he leave it to me?”

“I won’t answer your first two questions and I can’t answer that last one, I’m afraid. Frankly, you’d know better than I. Some secrets are worth taking to your grave. I would have thought this was one of them, to be honest. I guess Arthur disagreed. Run along now.” He turned around abruptly and started paging through a small folder sitting on an instrument panel behind him.

I started to leave, but something inside me broke free. Why had we risked our lives? Why was Arthur dead? Why any of this?

“No,” I began coldly. “Tell me what this is all about. Now.”

He put the folder down and laid his hands flat on the control panel and hung his head.

“You really want to know?” he asked without turning to face us. “You don’t want to know.”

“Tell me,” I said venomously. I felt Christian take my arm gently, but I violently shook him off. “Tell me why Arthur Mantes is dead.”

Then he started chuckling, still hunched over the instrument panel.

“I feel sorry for you, Ionia, I really do,” he said.

“What is this all about?” I yelled.

“Arthur Mantes was a traitor,” he shouted back and slammed his fist down on the control panel as he wheeled around to meet my glare. His words hit me with nearly the same force as Christian’s body earlier and I felt myself stumble back a step. “That’s right,” he said, snarling, “The truth isn’t as satisfying as you thought. Oh you poor, poor girl. You thought you were on some kind of divine quest to vindicate your Arthur’s death. You want to know why he died? He died because he got involved with the wrong kind of people.”

“What are you talking about?” I stammered.

“There was a leak at the Secret Service. Someone was smuggling out highly sensitive information on the manufacture of United States currency – how to synthesize the ink, the paper formula, everything. It was all going to Asia and that’s why they called me in. I spent months penetrating the complex manufacture and distribution network to identify were the leak was coming from. Well, guess where my trail led? Straight back to Arthur Mantes, respected forensic scientist, the most senior member of the Forensic Services Division at the Secret Service. But apparently professional respect wasn’t enough for Mr. Mantes. He wanted a financial reward for his years of dedicated service.”

“I—I don’t understand,” I said. “Why didn’t you just arrest him? You told me it was you who gave the counterfeit to him.”

“You’re good at looking at things under a microscope and analyzing details, Ionia Han, but you need to see the big picture. Arthur was small fries. I wanted to use him to take down the whole counterfeiting operation. I managed to get a hold of one of the counterfeit notes, so I approached him, asked if he could take a look at it for me. Told him I was FBI and we had run across it in a big time international racketeering case. Said we didn’t want to involve the Secret Service yet, but I’d really like him to take a look. It was one of the bills he had helped design through the information he passed on. I wanted to scare him, Ionia. I had cased him out and thought I could get him to talk. He got into crime because he wanted the money, but you and I both know he was a harmless guy. I could have gotten everything out of him. And I was about to make my move when he died. Now the bill is gone and my whole damn investigation is gone with it.”

“But who killed him?” I was nearly sobbing now.

“His handlers probably – the people who paid him and relayed the information the ones actually producing the counterfeits. Someone must have got wind of my investigation and decided to nip the problem at the bud. Word trickled down, the operation was compromised, make it look like an accident, et cetera. And then someone good at that kind of thing made it happen.”

He made it sound so routine, so simple. I felt sick to my stomach. All of it, it was too much.

“You look a little pale, Ionia,” Harper said, his voice now level and quiet, drained of rage. “You’d better go get some rest.” And then he turned his back to us once again and picked up the folder he had been reading.

“Come on,” Christian said softly and put his arm around my waist. “Let’s go home.”

I said nothing and lowered my head as we shuffled out of the van. I tried not to look as we walked past the rows of police officers standing idly by with their guns, the two stretchers bearing the bodies of the dead Koreans wrapped in body bags, and the newly laid bands of police tape warding off the growing crowd of gawkers. As we were about to leave the circle, the captain who had led us to the van ran over and intercepted us.

“Hey, wait,” he said, catching up to us. “I need to ask you both some questions, to fill out a report.”

Christian jerked my thumb back at the van. “Ask him your questions,” he said as we walked away. The captain started to make a move to stop us, but when he saw my ashen complexion, he reconsidered and motioned a regular uniformed police officer to lift the yellow tape and let us pass. Although it was only divided from the rest of world by that synthetic yellow barrier, the rush of cool air that greeted my face as we stepped under the tape and out from the circle made me feel as though I had been trapped in some stale and depressurized airlock, only now breathing real, unadulterated air. The bustling sounds emanating from the police scene behind us faded as we approached my car and I wondered if we had left everything behind that layer of police tape, which protected not a crime scene, but another terrible universe, where no one was who I had thought or imagined. Perhaps leaving it, we trod once more on the firm ground of that normal world we had known so well only two weeks ago.

Thirty-Four

By the time I guided the car to the curb outside my apartment, the sickening truth about Arthur dwindled from my thoughts and my sense of revulsion and betrayal was replaced by a deep contentment at finally seeing Christian again. Christian had never betrayed me. He had only made countless sacrifices in order to help me and to protect. He was my mission, not Arthur’s fifty dollar bill. I felt a great lightening, no longer felt burdened by any obligation Arthur had imposed upon me. Whatever reason he left me the counterfeit was his own and now it was gone, along with any responsibility I bore. Christian and I had felt we were part of some great and desperate purpose that day we fled Washington for our lives. But once he had been kidnapped, solving Arthur’s mystery was merely a means for a sole end: getting Christian back safely. Now that was done. I told myself all this and probably believed it. Still, I knew that it would take time to forget the searing pain I experienced the moment Robert Harper exposed Arthur as a traitor. Even now my eyes clouded briefly, welling with tears just to think about it.

But when we walked through the door of my apartment and I flipped on the lights, I saw that I had forgotten another, last chapter of our ordeal, the one that I perhaps did not want to end. Lying folded so that it stood up like a tent on the kitchen table, propped up amidst the mass of Leon Warnerke letters and documents, was a small note with my name was written neatly on the front. I picked it up and unfolded it carefully.

Dear Ionia,

I waited near Dupont Circle to see that you were safe and then returned here so that I could write you this note. I would not want you to think that I would leave without saying goodbye, but I admit that I did not have the courage to say it to you in person. I was worried that you would not understand when I said that I cared deeply for you, but that I had to go. That counterfeit is my mission, one that is more clear now thanks to you. If I could change things, I would have stayed with you, but I cannot abandon my duty. I will not forget you and will cherish for a lifetime the few days I was able to spend with you. I exhort you not to forget where you come from. Goodbye.

Sincerely Yours,

Bae Chang-Su

“What’s that?” Christian asked.

“Nothing,” I replied absently before placing the letter in my pocket. “It’s nothing.” I bit my lower lip and sighed wistfully. This had to happen, I said to myself. Bae was inextricably linked to the fifty dollar bill. He had to follow it, go with it wherever it went. I knew that, just as I knew this moment would come, even before Robert Harper alluded to it in the police van. Bae had helped me when he did not have to and when I needed him most. I couldn’t expect any more of him. It was just a crush, anyway. I wanted my normal life back more than anything – he couldn’t have been a part of it.

I turned to Christian and smiled. “You want something to eat?” I asked. “You’ve got to be hungry.”

“Thanks, but I’m really tired,” he replied with a convincing yawn. “I’d just like to shower and go to bed if it’s ok.”

“Of course. Take my bed.”

“You sure? Don’t you want to sleep to?”

“After all this excitement, I think I’ll just watch some TV. Maybe we’ll be on the news,” I joked.

“Yeah, maybe,” he laughed. “Well, goodnight then. And Ionia--”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for saving me.”

I walked over and hugged him.

“You’re my best friend Christian,” I said as we held each other tightly. “I would have done anything to get you back. Anything.”

“Thanks,” he whispered. After a few moments we parted and he walked down the corridor to the bathroom, a relieved and tired grin spread across his face.

I fixed myself a sandwich and then turned on the television and sat down to mindlessly watch some television before I went to bed myself. Curled up under a blanket, I started to drift off. Just as I started to fall asleep, a thought I had tried to ignore briefly flickered in my consciousness. I wish he had said goodbye. Maybe I would have understood. Or maybe it could have been different. Then, as fast as it appeared, it flickered out.

Part Three

Thirty-Five

For two days after what Christian and I dubbed the “Shootout at Dupont Circle Corral” –each time said with an uneasy chuckle – I stayed home from work, claiming that I had suffered a relapse of the “illness” that had sidelined me the previous week. Christian stayed in my apartment to rest and recover, he said, although I knew a part of him was trying to overcome the residual paranoia that must result from captivity. On the afternoon of the second day, he stood at the door and took a deep breath, like a small child building up the courage to step on the bus before his first day of school. We gave each other a warm hug and then I watched him leave. The next morning I returned to work and assured my coworkers I had regained my full health.

In those first few days, life really did seem to return to normal. Occasionally, when I would walk past Arthur’s office, I would not feel the rage of indignation at his betrayal of my trust, or that of his employer and country. Instead, a small wisp of grief would flow through me like a passing cloud. I was sorry for him, that he had been so unfulfilled in his life and his accomplishments as to abandon his duty for a few dollars. He had represented what was to me an unsurpassed talent and dedication and he had deserved better than a life of bitter dissatisfaction, one that was ultimately brought to a sad, anonymous end. Murder was not his just desert, no matter how terrible his crimes.

I felt sorry for myself, too. From Arthur I derived a sense of self-worth that no one else could offer. Knowing what he had done negated these feelings and they seemed like false reflections of real emotions. It was as if I had packed away each moment of fatherly approval he had ever displayed, except that now when I went to retrieve them, they turned to dust in my hands. And I chastised myself for having so willingly put myself in Arthur’s hands. My life was consumed by the tireless quest to discerning the real from the false, to avoid the tricks and traps littered about that surface of life that distract the senses from the reality underneath. I more than anyone else should have tread more lightly, been more careful about the father figures I chose to adopt. I started to feel that it was not Arthur who failed me, but that I had failed myself.

I fell into a mild depression. Not the sort that incapacitated me or made me question my life prospects, my relationships or my direction. I didn’t have trouble getting up in the morning or conducting myself with confidence in my work. It was more like the low that comes after a crushing sports defeat, a game in which my team led until the final minutes and then choked the win away. Those are the losses that linger, that leave one asking questions about what could have been done better, what had gone wrong, even though there was no answer, no single mistake that might have been avoided. It was just one of those tragedies without cause or principle.

One evening, about three days after Christian left, I received a phone call from my father. His voice was uncomfortable and he cleared his throat awkwardly several times. I could tell that he was behaving out of character.

“How are you?” he began.

“I’m fine, dad, thanks,” replied. “How are you and mom?”

“We’re good, we’re good,” he said and let the line go silent for a few moments. “Look, Ionia, I was calling about our conversation a couple weeks ago. I said a lot of things in anger that day, maybe because I was surprised and maybe because I never gave myself a chance to give up on silly, rooted beliefs I had about who you were or who I wanted you to be.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“What you said about having the opportunity to do what you want with you life. I think you are right about that – I think that’s why we left North Korea and came here. When you were just a baby, to think of you as an adult was just an idea, an abstraction, a fantasy we entertained as you napped or played with your toys in front of us. I wanted that idea to have the world of opportunities it could never have in North Korea. But as you got older--,” he stopped and I heard him take a deep breath that whistled through the phone. “As you got older, then the grown up you wasn’t just a daydream anymore, but a real person, standing right in front of me. When I confronted you as that person, all I could think about was keeping you safe and ensuring I helped you find a good, successful life.”

“Dad, I know--,” I interrupted.

“No, no,” he said, cutting me off. “Let me finish. What I see now is that the most successful life is the one that you’ve chosen for yourself. And I also,” he paused again, and this time I could hear his voice cracking with emotion, “I also want you to know that I’m very proud of what you are doing with your life. Very proud.”

“Thanks dad,” I said, now holding back my own wave of emotion. “Thank you very much.”

“Don’t thank me,” he replied. “This was my duty and I’ve failed at it for a long time, maybe too long.”

“No,” I said. “It’s ok.”

“There’s something else, too,” he said with a sense of purpose, his composure partially regained. “You were in some kind of danger when we talked last. I condemned you for it, but I want to know if you are safe and if you need my help. Any help.”

“I’m fine now,” I responded. “But thank you. It’s nice to know that you would help.”

“That’s what I want you to know, Ionia. Even if sometimes I don’t say it or my actions don’t show it, I would never abandon you to some kind of danger. Your mother and I are always here to help.”

His words completely broadsided me, rendering me speechless. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and wondered what could have wrought such a profound change in my father. For years he had drawn clear lines circumscribing who I was and could ever hope to be. Now, in the span of one conversation, he was throwing it all out the window. If I didn’t know the voice on the other end so well, I would have said it wasn’t my even father.

“I don’t know what to say, dad,” I said after a few moments. “It means so much to hear those things, I—” My own reservoir of feeling now overflowed and I felt the warm tears stream down my face.

“Thank your mother,” he answered warmly. “She nudged me in the right direction, reminded me of the father I once was.” In his voice, I heard him yearning to be near me, to hold his crying daughter in his arms. “She had not challenged me before in the way I treated you, aside from a disapproving look or two. You know how she is,” he chuckled. “But after I talked to you last week, she told me it was time I mended my ways. At first I was angry with her, too, but I see that she was right, that you have been right. I am not too old to be wrong, never will be, I guess.”

“I miss you, dad,” was all I could say.

“I miss you, too, Ionia. Your mother and I would like you to come home for Christmas. If you can, anyway. It would be nice to see you and to hear about what you’ve been doing, you know, these past years. I’m ready to learn who my beautiful daughter has become.” He cleared his throat again, choking back the emotion creeping into him once more.

“I’d like that.”

He spent the rest of the conversation updating me on home life, the weather, and other trivial topics. I told him about Christian and his graduate studies. He did not allude to the “trouble” I had been in and, despite this sudden breakthrough in our relationship, I was not quite ready to divulge what had happened. One part of me wanted to forget any of it ever happened, that Arthur died of a heart attack and life went on as usual, and another part still couldn’t believe it really did happen. It was unlike my other memories and I remembered it more like a movie I had seen then a story I had lived. Until that changed and I could walk by Arthur’s office without a feeling of regret or sadness, it would remain my secret history.

But though I didn’t tell my father about what had happened, the conversation reaffirmed my faith in myself and made me feel that my parents were now learning to support me in all of the ways I needed. It also had the effect of assuaging some of my regrets about Arthur. Whoever he was, perhaps the things he saw in me were genuine. In the days after I talked to my father, I came to absolve Arthur of his crimes – in my own mind, at least. I cast him as a good but troubled man, one who unwillingly and with great regret betrayed everything he held dear. This fantasy of mine grew and soon I anointed myself the heiress of the last vestiges of his goodness. In me, the Arthur that spent years foiling dastardly counterfeiting rings carried on, even as the real Arthur was too straightened to adhere to his once noble guiding principles. I had constructed a myth and I knew it, but it was a myth that helped relieve the desolation that had overcome me and it gave me a way to cloak myself in a happiness I had not felt for more than a few brief moments since Arthur had died.

It was in this elevated state, which perhaps gave me a sense of almost immunity from the recent past, that exactly one week after Christian left, I decided to take another look at the letters of Leon Warnerke.

Thirty-Six

I hadn’t intended to look at them, but I was searching around one of the drawers of my desk for some loose leaf paper to write a note and my fingers noticed the smooth facing of the manila envelope into which I had stuffed the letters just after Christian left. When my hand first touched the large envelope, I paused and decided just to leave it when something inside me stayed my hand and then urged me to retrieve the envelope from the drawer. I placed it on my desk and just stared at it for a few moments. It bore no markings because I had just left the envelope blank and shoved it into the bottom of the drawer. I didn’t want to throw all the letters away and yet, at the time, I felt sure I’d never want to see it any of it again, either.

Now I was unable to resist and I withdrew the contents of the envelope. It was divided into two sections. On top, I had paperclipped everything Christian had done: the notes he wrote before he was abducted, the translations and the copies he made of the English letters. I added to that the photocopy I had made in the New York Public Library of Josephine Dobrovolska’s letter. Underneath that, I had tied together all of the original Warnerke correspondence, along with the diagrams and rubles Bae and I found in the Hotel Lambert. The small bundle was held fast by a thick red ribbon I had found with old gift wrapping paper.

I didn’t want to read any of it when I first put it all away, so nothing was in order and the first thing I did was spread both stacks of paper across my desk and arrange everything in chronological order. As I took note of the letters Christian, Bae and I had pored over, small images flitted in and out of my mind, like single frames of action. My apartment, the diner near Christian’s place, the young librarian at the New York Public Library, the dingy interior of the Hotel Lambert, Bae standing over my shoulder. It was an acute sensation, though not painful, and I winced slightly at each of the fractional memories as though they coursed through my whole body before appearing in front of my mind’s eye.

On Christian’s list of letters there were only three that I had not read carefully, all from a man named Franz Wolf, whom we had postulated was one of the several aliases for Leon Warkerne, to an unnamed person. I now read those two letters with a distant curiosity, as opposed to the urgency that had ruled my examination of the other correspondence.

London

February 15, 1875

Dear Sir,

I hope this letter finds you well. I am writing concerning our pending business transaction, viz., the transfer of certain precious materials. I remain anxious to know if you have chosen a route. Please write me as soon as you depart and then again when you arrive so that I may know my shipments safely reached their destination.

I remain,

Yours in thanks,

Franz Wolf

This letter struck me as almost ridiculously vague and uninteresting, much like the Dobrovolska letters that had been concerned solely with the weather and family life. The next letter, however, was much more interesting.

London

March 26, 1875

Dear Sir,

I was pleased to receive your last letter and to learn that my goods are safely on their way east. I was, however, sorry to hear that you had difficultly with the silver nitrate solution I recommended. I urge you to redouble your efforts and exercise extreme care and diligence with the application of the solution. I eagerly await your next letter.

I remain,

Your humble associate,

Franz Wolf

Maybe it was just the reference to silver nitrate and the fact that Wolf had underscored the word “extreme,” but I suspected there was more to this letter. Unfortunately, it was more than I could grasp and I sat for several minutes grappling for the relevance of silver nitrate. The person to whom Wolf was writing was supposed to be shipping some kind of goods or materials, why would they be corresponding about silver nitrate? I couldn’t imagine the need to mix and then ship silver nitrate, not when the ingredients should have been readily available in any European country in the mid-nineteenth century. All the other letters had been essential to the story Christian, Bae and I had constructed about Leon Warnerke, a story which had helped us discover the secret meaning of the fifty dollar bill, yet we had not needed recourse to these two letters. Perhaps there was more, some unexplored avenue that we had missed or neglected.

Nothing came to me and my curiosity abated, so I pushed myself away from the desk and left the letters there while I went to watch some television for the remainder of the evening. I had been so engrossed in the letters and clues when it was a matter of life and death, virtually willing a solution or clue out of them with all my might. But now I was uninterested in pursuing these potential tidbits if they exceeded the limits of my powers of reasoning or imagination. A week ago, I might have considered investing hours of researching into silver nitrate until it meant something to me. Now, it just didn’t feel worth it. I enjoyed that freedom, the liberty to see the letters as a way to pass time, an object of idle interest, rather than a compulsion or mission.

I planted myself on the couch and flipped on the television. A sitcom from my adolescent years running in syndication captured my attention for half an hour and then I switched to the news in order to convince myself I was doing more than just vegetating. After an analysis piece on illegal immigration that featured one of the news networks main hosts visiting the Texas-Mexico border and clad in a ridiculous tan cargo vest, the host announced a breaking story on the upcoming nuclear talks between South and North Korea and the United States.

“In a surprise announcement today, delegates from all three negotiating parties – North Korea, South Korea, and the United States – confirmed that the peace talks will commence on December 10, only one week from today. Previously, the three nations had agreed to meet sometime this month, although no date was initially specified. A spokesperson for the State Department indicated during an afternoon press conference that the actual date for the summit was kept secret so as to prevent any potential disruptions in the talks. When asked why even a week’s advance notice was provided, the spokesperson said only that all three nations agreed they wanted the press to have adequate time to prepare for this milestone event.

“We are also receiving word that the office of right wing South Korean politician Lee Chung Hee has issued a statement reiterating his condemnation of the talks and his pledge to prove that North Korea is dishonest and corrupt. He has scheduled a press conference tomorrow where, our sources tell us, he will again state his plans to expose North Korea’s illicit activities to the world on December 10. An aide, under the condition of anonymity, reported to our South Korean desk that Lee Chung Hee is now in full possession of damning evidence that the North Korean regime continues to engage in numerous criminal activities, some of which are directed against South Korea and the United States.

“We promise to bring you a full report of that press conference after it happens. Again, the main revelation coming out of all three camps today is that the potentially historic peace talks, which could result in North Korea renouncing its nuclear program and which are aimed at laying the groundwork for North and South reunification and at normalizing relations with the United States, will begin on December 10.”

The broadcaster moved on to some boring report on contentious tax reform legislation, which I took as an opportunity to pour myself a glass of water. I checked the time and saw that it was only nine o’clock, still early on the west coast where my parents lived, so I decided I might give them a call and see if they had heard this recent news and what they were thinking about possible reunification. Until now, I had only really talked with my mother about it and at the time it was such a complete shock to her that she was not yet sure how to react. I also wanted to know what my father in particular had to say. I knew that he continued to think of himself as Korean and I had always wondered if he didn’t yearn for home and hope that he could go back someday. If the borders opened again, even before reunification, would he go back now that I had made a life for myself here in the United States?

I had to admit, although it sounded funny to me, that I was not at all sure I would approve of him going back, even if he wanted to. It was a funny thing to think, yet I couldn’t escape my distaste at the idea of my father being a willing citizen under that regime – especially not after what had happened to Christian and me. Operatives of the North Korean government tried to kill me and kidnapped Christian. It was that simple. American politicians might decide for strategic reasons that normalizing relations would make the United States a safer place, but I didn’t have to normalize relations with anyone if I didn’t want to.

I recalled Bae’s embittered words, not just how he skeptically dismissed the possibility of reunification, but his conviction that nothing would ever change in North Korea. Sure, he worked for the South Korean government and clearly that North Koreans were, at times, his direct adversaries. But I could not shake from my mind the fiery hollowness in his eyes when he mentioned the torture victims he had encountered. Somehow I trusted his bias was not professionally influenced. And if he were right, how could – as a matter of safety even – let my father go back? No, I told myself, not while Kim Jong Il and his cronies still ruled. They were Bae’s enemy and my own, no matter what the United States decided was in its best interest.

Yet I had no right to think of Bae as my ally, any more than I had a right to chastise my father for wanting to return to North Korea, if that was even what he wanted to do. In fact, I recalled standing right here, in my living room, after talking with my mother as the news about the peace talks first broke. My response then was not one of hostility towards North Korea, but a deep curiosity about my own origins, to know if North Korea held some secret to who I really was. It all suddenly felt very confusing, how to feel about my father and Bae – how to feel about myself, even. The things Bae had said about North Korea, the revulsion oozing from his voice, and the harsh commands of Christian’s captors had all colored my view of North Korea and deprived me of the brief fascination that surrounded my birthplace. That’s what it was, after all, the place I came from. Perhaps there was something there for me, despite whatever inhibitions I had inherited from my experiences with Bae or the North Koreans who kidnapped Christian.

I needed to get it all out of my head. I reached for the phone, my water glass still in hand, and dialed my parents.

“Hello?” my father answered after a few rings.

“Hey dad, it’s me,” I said.

“Ionia, hi, how are you?”

“I’m good dad, thanks. Say, have you heard the news about the talks?”

“The North Korea talks?”

“Yeah.”

“No,” he replied. “Was it from today?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “They just announced the date they’re going to start. I saw it on the news. What are you and mom thinking about this whole thing, anyway?”

“I don’t know, really. To be honest, it still pretty hard to believe.” He sighed. “This will sound funny, but North Korea doesn’t seem real to me at all since we left. It was like leaving a dream or something. Things here were – crisper somehow, I don’t know how to explain it.”

“But it always seemed like you considered yourself a North Korean first, you know?” I was confused. He expressed an ambivalence I had never heard on this subject before.

“I know, I know, It’s just—” he said and paused, as if considering his words before continuing. “It was easier to think of myself that way when I knew I could never return. With no choice but to stay, who could challenge me? If I said I was a North Korean, then that’s what I was. But now, when I ask myself if I want to go back, I’m not sure I do, not sure that’s the life I want. And if that’s the case, if I were to have the choice to return sometime in the near future and I didn’t take it, wouldn’t that mean I were giving up something about what it mean to be North Korean of my own choice?” He sighed again. “It’s interesting, when I lived there with your mother and even as a child, we knew what was going on, especially after your mother’s brother died. But I still thought of North Korea -- of home -- as the four walls of my house, the place where I worked, my family – those kinds of things. Now when I think of North Korea, I only see those other, terrible things, too, and I’m not sure how to separate them.”

“But you’re still North Korean aren’t you?” I asked. “Aren’t I?”

“I suppose we both are, but maybe that means something different for us than for other people. I was always worried that you would think of yourself as American instead of Korean, but now I see that the way you regard yourself as an American is one of the admirable things about you, the kind of thing a father should be proud of, that I am proud of. And it doesn’t mean that you aren’t as much a Korean as anyone.”

A surge of heat swept through my cheeks and I could tell I was blushing. Arthur’s approval was so welcome when he gave it, but I saw now that it could not supplant the same approbation from a parent.

“So,” my father said, his voice returning from its contemplative heights. “What news did you hear tonight?”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Not that much, just that they announced that the talks wll start on December 10.”

And as I said it I dropped the phone and my glass. The shards sprayed across the wood with a loud clatter. The water from the glass pooled at my feet and my cotton socks gulped the liquid up from the small clear, puddle on the floor.

Arthur had booked out the room in the Hotel Lambert until December 10.

Thirty-Seven

I overcame my shock and picked the phone up off the floor, careful to shuffle away from the water and broken glass spread about the floor. My father’s confused voice buzzed incoherently through the receiver and then condensed into a discernable tone as I brought the phone to my ear.

“—was that? Ionia? Are you ok?” I heard him ask.

“Yeah, I’m fine, dad,” I said breathlessly, desperate to let my excited mind return to its sudden and violent epiphany. “I just dropped the phone. Look, I just remembered that there was an errand I need to run. I’m sorry – can I call later this week?”

“Of course,” he replied, then added, “You’re sure you’re ok?”

“I’m sure, dad.”

As we said our goodbyes I was already walking to the lighthouse themed calendar still hanging on the fridge. It was turned to December and on the 10 was the large black “X” I drew after returning from the Hotel Lambert. I took the calendar off its magnetic hook so that I could flip it back to November where another “X” marked November 3. Just before Bae and I left the Hotel Lambert over a week ago, the desk attendant told us that Arthur – under the name Leon Warnerke – had reserved a room from November 3 to December 10. Arthur had died November 4, the day after making the reservation. Whatever was threatening him must not have been too far behind. In his final and desperate days, he assembled a puzzle I thought I had already solved, but now I suspected there were a few pieces I had failed to fit into the whole. A hotel room reserved for 37 days. At the time I knew there was something to that number, even though Bae dismissed my intuition. But it wasn’t the number 37 that was supposed to tell me something, it was the date. December 10. The date the peace talks between North and South Korea and the United States were set to begin.

I wiped the soaked phone on my pant leg and called Christian. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet and he was a student, I was sure he’d still be awake.

“Hello?” he answered.

“Hey, Christian, it’s Ionia,” I said hurriedly.

“Ionia, hey, what’s going—”

“Did you hear the North Korea news?” I asked, interrupting him. “About the date of the talks?”

“Not yet,” he replied. “I haven’t watched any news today.”

“They’re scheduled for December 10.”

“Wow, that’s soon,” he said. “So, that’s why you called?”

“Does that date mean anything to you? December 10?”

“No, not really. Ionia, are you ok? You sound kind of anxious.”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” I said and then realized that I had not told Christian about the dates of the reservation at the Hotel Lambert. In the two days he stayed with me before returning to New York, I briefly related about how we had followed Arthur’s clues and identified the fifty dollar bill as a counterfeit, but I hadn’t told him everything. In some ways, recapitulating it all was a just matter of form, a way of filling in each other’s gaps. He told me a few details about his captivity and I told him just enough about how we freed him. Beyond that, both of us had wanted to forget everything.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you about the Hotel Lambert,” I continued, “A clue I didn’t realize Arthur had left us.”

“Oh God, Ionia,” he moaned, “Don’t tell me you’re still working on this. Look, it’s over, we’re safe, the fifty dollar bill is gone. Just leave it alone.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “I promise I didn’t think of it until now. I thought it was all over, too. But—” I didn’t know what to say, how to convince Christian to listen. Part of me felt like it was wrong to confide in him at all. He had risked his life once already and, if I wanted to continue with this insane quest, it would have to be alone. “I’m sorry,” I relented. “I have no right involve you against your will. You’ve already given me enough.”

The other end of the line remained silent for several long minutes before Christian sighed loudly into the phone.

“If you’ve found something else out, of course I want to hear about it,” he said with resignation, before adding wryly, “But I know I’m going to regret it. All right, out with it then. Tell me something about December 10. It’s definitely not one of the Twelve Days of Christmas, so why is it so special?”

A gleeful smile spread over my face. I was overjoyed that Christian had acquiesced and guiltily admitted to myself that I really could not have imagined pressing on without his aid and company. I explained all of the details about the Hotel Lambert to him, repeating some of what I had told him last week. I finished by telling him about the length of the reservation and how Bae and I had been unable to deduce its significance, if there was one.

“And so today when you heard the news about the talks starting on December 10, it occurred to you that that is what the length of the reservation was all about?” Christian asked.

“Exactly. Why else would he book a room for 37 days?”

“It’s a startling coincidence, that’s for sure,” Christian agreed. “But how could Arthur have known the talks were going to begin on the December 10? You said the date had been kept secret in order to prevent any kind of disruption. And when did they even settle on that date? Maybe they only decided a couple of weeks ago, after Arthur was already dead.”

Christian was right. Even if the date of the summit had been decided before Arthur died, it seemed unlikely that Arthur would have had access to information that I could only guess was confined to the highest level of decision makers in each government. On top of that, there was the fact that news about the upcoming talks didn’t even break until over a week after Arthur died. The thread connecting the hotel reservation to the peace talks was being stretched thinner and thinner.

“I know it sounds unlikely,” I said, “And I don’t have ready answers for your objections, but I just think they’re something to this. When we were trying to piece together Leon Warnerke’s life, Bae said that everything had to fit together.”

“How do you mean?” asked Christian.

“Well, it’s not like we decided to research the life of a Polish exile turned photographer on a whim, right? Even if Leon Warnerke and Wladyslaw Malachowski existed, Arthur is the one who assembled the chain of clues. He knows how the story ends.”

“Ok, but I don’t see how this is relevant to the peace talks or proves that Arthur could have known the about the date in advance.”

“I don’t either,” I conceded, “But my point is that we have to refuse to believe in coincidences. Everything Arthur did was deliberate. There are two letters that we never fit into the rest of the story and a hotel booking that ends on a date that bears significance for two of the nations that were in pursuit of the fifty dollar bill, the counterfeit. It has to mean something.”

“There’s just one thing that worries me, Ionia,” Christian said. He was about to speak and then hesitated. Finally he spoke. “Can we trust Arthur anymore?”

Because he’s a traitor, was the unspoken end to the sentence. I didn’t know the answer. We had found nothing but trouble since Helen Mantes gave us the envelope containing the fifty dollar bill and he knew what dark legacy Arthur had us fulfilling. And yet, I now heard some small voice in me that remained unconvinced that Arthur had truly betrayed his country and sold his knowledge to counterfeiters.

“What if Robert Harper was lying?” I said. “What if there’s a chance that Arthur wasn’t a traitor?”

“Do you really believe that?” Christian asked incredulously. “Or do you just want it to be true?”

Maybe he was right, but I was undeterred.

“Everyone was after the fifty dollar bill,” I said. “Now it’s out of our hands and we’re safe. It can’t hurt to look at the remaining letters, see if there’s something we missed. Christian, if there’s any chance—” I stopped, suppressed grief welling through my words. The recent rapprochement with my father had eased the pain of Arthur’s deception, but I realized now that it had not erased it. I squeezed my eyes shut to hold back the tears.

“You’re right,” Christian said. I’m sure he could hear my sudden emotion through the phone. “We’re probably not in danger anymore.”

“So you’ll help?” I said hopefully.

“Sure, why not?” he tried to put on a playful tone. “Although it probably won’t be as fun as before.”

“No, probably not,” I laughed. “Do you want me to go read you the letters?”

“No, I can read them myself,” he replied. My confused silence prompted him to clarify. “Term ends tomorrow and I only have one paper to finish. I can probably be down by the evening.”

“Didn’t you miss work, you know, when the North Koreans had you?” I winced.

“I’m a grad student. It’s almost impossible to fall behind. My parents weren’t really expecting me until Christmas anyway. I’ll call and tell them I’m going to visit you for awhile.”

“You’re sure?” I said, now uncertain of what I was demanding of him.

“No, I’m not sure,” he said. “But I can’t remember the last time I sure of anything. Can you?”

I smiled with relief. This was the Christian I knew and loved.

“No,” I replied. “I can’t either.”

Thirty-Eight

Rather than a sense of eager anticipation, Christian’s impending arrival engendered a deep ease within me and I slept undisturbed that night, content in the knowledge that the next day we would get right down to work on the remaining letters. I also felt a strange kind of empowerment, as if this time I was choosing Arthur’s puzzle rather than the other way around. I had never consented to my participation in this whole affair. Helen Mantes had just given me the envelope and Christian had sought out Leon Warnerke against my wishes. Even then my increasing involvement became a matter of desperation, a mad quest to solve Arthur’s murder and then to save the life of my best friend. Now, however, with danger nowhere near, I was finally diving into the mystery headfirst and of my own volition and navigating its tentacles was a liberating prospect, rather than an oppressive one. The only urgency I felt came from that small voice convinced of Arthur’s innocence, but to clear Arthur’s name in my conscience, to feel right about him again, was a project that belonged to me, not an obligation imposed by someone else. Now I was the one in control.

Christian arrived at Union Station just as I finished work and was waiting in the main lobby by the time I exited the underground Metro station. Beneath the vaulted ceiling and broad white arches is a gigantic mall, movie theater, and food court with the main train platform tucked behind the station and the Metro rails several escalator rides beneath. I found him next to a chocolate shop clad in a green and blue windowpane shirt tucked into corduroy pants. We embraced warmly before exiting the neoclassical structure and descending once more into Metro. A short ride brought us a few blocks from my apartment and we braved the cold December air back to my apartment. It was now well into the evening and we cooked a small dinner before pondering once more the correspondence of Leon Warnerke and his many aliases.

After we finished eating, we cleared the table of dirty dishes and replaced them with the neat stacks of Leon Warnerke letters and notes. I felt the small pinch of longing as I remembered how the sheaf of papers occupied that table constantly during the days Bae spent in my apartment. But I ignored it and told myself that Christian’s presence was just as welcome, if not in quite the same way.

“Here they are,” Christian said as he removed the copies he had transposed of the two letters from Franz Wolf. “Sure, I remember these. They are weird, aren’t they?” He arranged them side by side and I saw his eyes move back and forth, from one to the other, over his own rushed script.

“Having trouble reading your own handwriting?” I joked after a few minutes.

“Shut up,” he said smiling. “You should have seen the originals. It took me a lot longer than this to read through those. The flourishes of nineteenth century writing are hard on the eyes – that’s why I transcribed the letters in the first place.”

“Well, what do you think then?” I asked.

“I’m as lost as you are,” he replied, his eyes still on the letters. He looked at me. “How about you?”

“I’ve tried to figure out what kind of shipments Franz Wolf – who I’m guessing is Leon Warnerke if your theory holds – is talking about, but I can’t think of too much. Maybe counterfeits?”

“Could be,” he shrugged. “Although it would be bold to write openly about shipping counterfeits in a letter.”

“Well, if there really was some kind of conspiracy to distribute counterfeit rubles, they had to communicate about it somehow, right? Do you think there’s a code here? I suppose that would explain why these letters, not to mention the ones to Josephine Dobrovolska from Franz Schulz are so mundane.”

“I forgot about those,” Christian said as he reached into the stack and removed them as well. “A code is not a bad theory, but how would we go about cracking it? We need some kind of key to get started.” He bent back over the letters and tapped his teeth in thought with one hand while nervously fidgeting with the sleeve of his brown sweater in the other. “So let’s review,” he said, half to himself. “We have Franz Schulz writing to Josephine Dobrovolska about the weather shortly before she was arrested for trying to smuggle counterfeit rubles into Russia and we have Franz Wolf writing about a mysterious shipment a few years later.” He turned towards me again. “Assuming I am right, as you suggest, that Franz Wolf and Franz Schulz are both aliases adopted by Leon Warnerke, then he must be hiding something beneath these vague and trivial letters.”

“But what?” I asked for both of us. Christian nodded in silent agreement and we both stared over the letters with puzzled looks across our faces.

“Silver nitrate,” Christian mumbled after a few minutes.

“What?” I asked.

“Silver nitrate,” he repeated, more loudly. “It sounds familiar. Where have I read about silver nitrate before?” He scrunched his face as if trying to push some distant recollection out of his brain and into his mouth. Suddenly, his face popped back into shape. “Aha,” he said, “There was something about Leon Warnerke and a silver nitrate process in the Josef Eder book.”

“What book is that?”

“You remember, don’t you? Josef Maria Eder’s Geschichte der Photographie or History of Photography, in English. It was where I found the biography of Leon Warnerke the photographer. Arthur had scrawled the code to his desk lock in the margins of his own copy.” I nodded slowly to indicate that I remembered. “There was something in there about a silver nitrate collodion process Leon Warnerke had developed. That must be it.” I saw an eager glow take hold of Christian’s face as his mind began to make rapid fire connections between latent memories and concepts.

“What’s a collodion process?” I asked. I was excited that Christian had found some meaning for a reference to silver nitrate, one relevant to Leon Warkerke at that, but I was completely lost as to what he was talking about. His synapses were churning through information at full speed, while I was frantically trying just to keep up. Christian must have been aware that he was miles ahead of me, because he stopped pressing ahead and started from the beginning.

“I wrote some notes about this in my other notebook,” he said. “The one I usually reserve for class or lecture notes.” He reached into his carryall and retrieved a notebook I had not seen before along with a thick volume labeled History of Photography across the binding. Seeing it again, I remembered the Christian holding same book in slightly less battered shape in Arthur’s office.

“Is that the book?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he replied without looking up, “It’s the copy I’ve had checked out from the university library all semester.” He leafed through the notebook until he came to a page near the end. “Here it is,” he said. “When I was reading through the references to Warnerke and his various contributions to photography, I was as lost as you seem – no offense,” he looked up and I gestured to show that none was taken. “So I did a little research on photographic processes. Really basic stuff – encyclopedia, photography enthusiast web sites, that kind of thing. I just wanted to get a handle on how this all worked. These are the notes I took.

“Although digital cameras are probably rendering this process obsolete, we take pictures on a thin, chemical material that we call film, right? You place the film in the camera, expose it to the light, drop it off at the photoprocessing lab and, in an hour or less, you’ve got prints. Well, the reason it’s called film is because in the mid-nineteenth century, a man named Frederick Scott Archer developed a process to cover a glass plate with a chemical film to make a glass negative. This glass negative was basically the precursor to the thumb sized negative that come out of a camera today and the same fundamental principles still apply. The procedure Archer invented is called the wet collodion process.

“First, you take a glass plate and evenly coat one side with a substance called collodion, which is a mixture of guncotton, ether and bromide, probably made several days in advance. Then you immerse the plate in silver nitrate.” At this I sat up straighter. Christian motioned for me to be patient and then continued. “The silver nitrate mingles with the bromide in the collodion and forms a light sensitive film on the surface of the glass. Because it’s light sensitive, you have to do all this in the dark or you could expose the photograph prematurely. Because this all had to be done at once, photographers would often have to erect portable darkrooms in a tent or a covered wagon in order to take outdoor photographs. Again, that should make sense – if you rip unused film out of a roll, you’ve exposed it to the light and ruined it.

“Once you remove the plate the silver nitrate, you have to wipe off the side of the glass that had not been covered in collodion. Then you lock the plate into a small container, just large enough to hold it and open on one side with a removable panel on the other, kind of like a picture frame. You slide this container – called a plate holder – into the camera. The collodion film should be on the open side of the container which, in turn, faces outward to the lens. Then, you remove the back panel of the plate holder and open the camera by withdrawing the lens cap. Taking pictures this way is not instantaneous and requires up to five minutes of exposure. Once the plate has been sufficiently exposed, you cover the camera with the lens cap and slide the removable panel back into the plate holder, which you can then take out of the camera.

“You use another chemical solution to develop the plate so that it is no longer light sensitive, although you do have to ‘fix’ the image onto the plate by applying a special compound to it – often sodium thiosulfate, according to what I read. Now you can make a print from the plate by covering a piece of paper in egg white and silver nitrate and then affixing it to the plate and leaving it out in the sunlight.”

“I think I get it,” I said slowly, “But what does this have to do with Warnerke?”

“There was something Eder wrote is his book about a contribution Warnerke made to the collodion process, some kind of innovation.” He paged through the massive tome until he arrived at a small scrap of paper torn he used to mark some paragraph or section. “Here it is,” he said and read aloud.

“Ok, let’s take a step back.” I said and placed my forehead in my hands, so that they pushed the hair away from my face and ears. “Leon Warnerke spent at least part of his career working on the wet collodion process for taking photographs?”

“Right,” Christian nodded.

“And one of his specific contributions had to do with the concentration of silver nitrate used to make a photographic plate sensitive to the light?”

Christian nodded again.

“So perhaps,” I theorized, “Under the name Franz Wolf, he was counseling someone on the appropriate mixture of silver nitrate to make photographic plates.”

“I guess that seems plausible,” Christian said as he scratched his chin.

“But how does that connect with counterfeiting?” I asked.

“Well, you told me about the Woodburytype press that Warnerke might have used to make his counterfeits. The idea was to make prints almost indistinguishable from the original photographs. Maybe Warnerke was instructing some associate on how to take a photograph of a ruble, which was then replicated over and over in a Woodburytype press or some similar device.”

“And the materials to which Wolf alludes are the finished counterfeits,” I finished. Christian nodded to indicate that was what he had been thinking. But the theory, while plausible, failed to capture either of us in the wave of excitement that had attended our previous discoveries. Our successful deduction of some new clue had usually been attended by a violent seizure, an “Aha!” moment where a conclusion not only seemed possible, but indisputably logical. This time we both slumped in our chairs halfheartedly, as if our proposed solution was the product of minimal effort, a required high school assignment that displayed the bare minimum to pass.

After a while I suggested we give up for the night. There was no deadline we had to meet and there was no reason to let this rob us of the chance to just enjoy each other’s company, as it had before. I moved to the couch and turned on the television. We settled on an extremely campy action film that had been popular during our adolescence. The movie featured young space cadets staving off an intergalactic invasion and we spent the evening bursting into laughter at the now dated green goo that signified the aliens’ blood. By the end, we were breathless and teary eyed from humorously absurd combination of cheesy special effects and tooth wrenchingly bad dialogue. The film provided an escape from the disappointment I knew we were both feeling. Even without a sense of desperation, it was vexing to be stymied by Arthur’s puzzle. But as the evening wore on, I forgot my frustration and had little trouble easing into a tired malaise I knew was a precursor to a night of restful sleep.

“I’ll have another look at those letters tomorrow,” Christian said with a yawn as I lifted myself tiredly off the couch. “I’m sure there’s something we’re just overlooking.”

“You’re probably right. Good night, Christian,” I replied and started back towards my bedroom before turning around briefly and smiling. “It’s nice to have you back on the case.”

* * *

I slept well but the next morning I awoke earlier than usual and got ready for work, careful not to disturb Christian who was slumbering away on the couch. I awoke once in the night and still heard the faint sounds of the television. Christian must have reverted to his university schedule and would probably now sleep until noon. I was jealous of the lazy morning he could enjoy, but decided I was happy enough not to be a student, living on a shoestring between stipend checks. Once I was showered and had donned the light pink blouse and pair of grey slacks I picked out for work, I quietly crept into the kitchen to eat some breakfast.

Because I had woken up so early, I found myself with some extra time before I had to leave and decided to take a quick look at the letters again. The letters from Franz Wolf and Franz Schulz sat neatly arranged on the table just as Christian and I had left them the night before. I read over each letter a couple times, but still nothing leaped out at me from the lined, loose leaf pages Christian had used for his transcriptions. I realized that I had never taken a look at the originals and, with nothing else to go on, decided I was curious to see what Leon Warnerke’s handwriting actually looked like. It appeared that Christian had stuffed the bundle of originals back into the manila envelope and I withdrew them gently. He had been right about the illegibility of the archaic script looping about the weathered pages and it took me several moments to correctly identify the Franz Schulz’s letters to Josephine Dobrovolska and Franz Wolf’s letters to his unnamed correspondent. But, once I had them in front of me, I noticed with a mixture of delight and surprise that the handwriting was remarkably similar, lending credence to our assumption that both Schulz and Wolf were aliases for Warnerke himself.

Both letters were written in English, although I waded through them at such a pace that they may as well have been written in Greek, despite the fact that Christian and I had read over the transcriptions so many times that I probably had them all nearly memorized at this point. As I plodded through, I grew very appreciative of Christian’s efforts to transcribe the letters into his own, slightly less demanding handwriting. I read the Dobrovolska letters first and when I reached the letters from Franz Wolf, something suddenly caught my eye. There strange breaks in some of the letters, as if the ink had run out of the pen for the briefest second before returning almost immediately. Each gap was almost impossible to perceive and the letters continued to flow seamlessly. There was no way Warnerke could have actually taken his pen from the page. It was as if something had erased minute bits of ink from several letters. I craned my neck to look close and noticed that, coursing through each gap were extremely light and faded grey lines. I tried to tune my eyes to the shadowy figures and more of them came into focus, like a fog rising amid the inked words on the page. As I brought my face still closer to the fuzzy, grey lines, the fog condensed into thin wisps of smoke, varying in distinct shapes and sizes. It was hand writing. There was something written on the page behind the letters.

I bounded over to the couch and excitedly nudged Christian awake.

“Huh, yeah?” he groaned softly. “What is it?”

“I know what you need to research today,” I said, a smile of eager anticipation etched across my face. His eyes popped open, their sleepy glaze fading quickly.

“What?” he asked with sudden alertness.

“Well, silver nitrate,” of course, I replied coyly, “And whether or not it can be used for invisible ink.”

Thirty-Nine

Throughout the morning I would occasionally stop my work and ask myself how I was managing to get anything done at all. The surge of energy from the discovery of the just visible writing behind the letters should provided constant distraction. Why, I wondered, did I not call in sick and do the research myself? Why was I not absolutely desperate to know what conspiracies and intrigues lay hidden away, tucked underneath the visible letters from Franz Wolf and Franz Schulz? I was desperate to know these things, but a sense of deep self-satisfaction kept me focused on my daily responsibilities at the Secret Service. I rested easy – well, sort of – knowing that I would have all the answers I wanted in good time. Surety of success could have a relaxing effect as much as an energizing one.

It all made perfect sense now, why the letters to Josephine Dobrovolska had been so appallingly boring and why the ones from Franz Wolf had been so vague: they were both fences erected to disguise the hidden messages that must have contained more sensitive and, hopefully, more interesting information. And it made sense in another way, too. Arthur had never meant for Christian to be the one examining the letters and doing all the research. The clues had been left for me and me alone. It was my eye he had been sure would catch subtle tones lurking behind the text of the letters. I was almost tempted to reproach myself for failing to look at the letters sooner, but there was no going back. And I couldn’t have gotten this far without Christian anyway. Arthur may have been confident in my abilities to plumb the depths of history in order to construct the secret life of Leon Warnerke, but I doubted whether I could truly have reproduced the speed and comprehensiveness of Christian’s research. The dots he connected across continents and decades boggled my mind. Arthur may just have gotten lucky that I had the right friends.

The morning wore on and my anticipation to hear some news from Christian soon did become a distraction. I found myself tapping the desk incessantly and my mind wandering off while trying to read and edit a report from one of my team members. At about eleven o’clock, in order to appease my restive disposition, I resolved to call Christian at lunch and would remain focused on the work in front of me until then. Though my internal monologue had commanded this with extreme volume and severity, its enforcement grew lax and by eleven thirty I had only halfheartedly waded through five more pages of the report and wasn’t sure I would make it. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, swearing to myself that they would not budge from the report after I opened them. Fortunately, the phone rang and granted me a reprieve from my fulfilling oath.

“Ionia Han, forensics,” I answered.

“Hey Ionia, it’s Andrew at the front desk.”

“Oh hi, Andrew,” I replied warmly. “How are you?”

“I’m good, thanks for asking. There’s someone here to see you, name is—” he trailed off and I heard a muffled voice repeat a few syllables through the phone. “—Pender, Christian Pender. Can I send him up?”

“Yes,” I exclaimed. “Yes please. He knows how to find the office. Thanks Andrew.”

“Sure thing.”

Within a few minutes, Christian appeared in the doorway of my office, panting and out of breath.

“I’ve never worked so fast,” he said as he gulped for air. “I ran over from the Library of Congress as soon as I was done.”

“Have you made a breakthrough?” I asked, my eyebrows raised.

“No,” he said and, when he saw my disappointment, he held up a finger to indicate he needed a moment to compose himself and then sat down. “Not exactly, anyway. You were right, though, silver nitrate can be used as an invisible ink. In fact, the same property light sensitive property that made it useful for photography also lends it the properties necessary for an invisible ink.” He pulled a notebook from his carryall and turned to a page that I could see was covered in a tornado of hastily jotted down notes, some enclosed in boxes and circles connected by slashing lines that dug deeply into the page. He really had spent the morning working furiously. I wished I could have said the same, I thought guiltily.

“Invisible inks, as you probably know, are also called sympathetic inks,” he said. “I found an old article from 1930 in the American Journal of Police Science that you might find amusing given your line of work.” He took a few photocopied pages from his bag and read aloud. “‘Crime detection by ultraviolet light is the outgrowth of a secret unearthed in a snail’s shell in the ancient city of Tyre. Snails pursuing their proverbial slow pace across the grounds of this maritime city of Phoenicia were found to secret a whitish fluid which turned a rich violet color under exposure to a few hours of sunlight. A Phoenician with a business eye made the first royal purple and based the original dye industry upon his observation of this phenomenon.

“‘The principle involved was the fluorescence and the changing of certain substances under exposure to ultraviolet light which, in the case of the snail, came from the sun. Today the identification of materials by their flourescences under the ultraviolet rays offers an entirely new method of attack to the criminologist. Some of its possibilities in crime detection have already proved useful.’” He looked up at me. “I’m guessing you didn’t do much reading into the history of forensics when training for this job?” I shook my head, although I was obviously familiar with the myriad uses of ultraviolet light in crime fighting and the detection of forgeries, particularly in the Secret Service divisions that assisted with other financial crimes. Some currencies also utilized the effects of sympathetic inks as securities features – Canadian money, for example, had images and number printed on it that could only be viewed under ultraviolet light. Still, it was certainly interesting to consider these technologies as emergent as recently as 70 years ago and the principles behind them thousands of years old.

“In some ways,” Christian continued, “Tracing the history of silver nitrate as a possible invisible ink is like delving into the history of chemistry itself. In the eighth century, Arab alchemist Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan supposedly experimented with silver nitrate, which is created by dissolving silver in nitric acid, and found that it became dark in the sunlight. In 1614, Italian religious refugee named Angelo Sala also observed that silver nitrate darkened with exposure to sun, although his work in inconclusive about whether it was the light or heat of the sun that had this effect. Robert Boyle, one of the first real chemists attributed the change to the air. It was Johann Heinrich Schulz who, in the early eighteenth century, finally subjected silver nitrate to isolated experiments involving heat and light and ascertained that it was the sunlight that was responsible for darkening the compound. In fact, he created a liquid solution of silver nitrate which he used for writing and displayed that the invisible letters became visible after being exposed to sunlight. Jean Hellot, a French chemist who was much for famous for his work in the production of Sèvres porcelain, actually suggested a little over a decade later that spies use silver nitrate for secret correspondence.

“Finally, I found another 1930s article from the American Journal of Police Science detailing 48 kinds of invisible ink used by ‘Spies, Forgers, and Criminals in General’ – number nine on the list? Silver nitrate, made visible by sunlight.” He sat back, a smile of triumph beaming from his face.

“So what’s the problem?” I asked. “That sounds like a breakthrough to me. Silver nitrate, the light sensitive compound essential for the wet collodion prints Warnerke experimented with, can be used as an invisible ink.”

His smile didn’t waver. “Well, I didn’t have a source of ultraviolet light handy, but I figured you might, so I came right over.”

“Do you have the letters?” I asked and stood up immediately without waiting for him to answer.

He jumped up from his seat. “Do you even have to ask?” he said just as eagerly and stood aside from the door to leave space for me to lead the way.

We went down the subbasement that housed several laboratories. The one I was looking for was adjacent to the lab containing the mass spectrometer. Once inside, I pointed Christian to a small desk. Affixed to the surface of the desk was a moveable desk lamp, except, instead of a standard, clear light bulb, the lamp held a large dark bulb, which had a blue and purple hue, like a deep bruise.

“This is a standard black light,” I explained to Christian. “It will emit very little visible light, instead focusing almost exclusively ultraviolet light on the letters. Place them under the lamp and turn it on.” Christian did as I instructed and then rustled around in his carryall. I dimmed the lights slightly because I was unsure how strong the invisible ink would show through after being exposed. By the time I had walked from the wall switch controlling the lights, I saw that he was already copying down the first of the letters into his notebook.

“You don’t need to do that,” I said, the chemist in me taking over. “Ultraviolet light will expose the silver nitrate permanently. The chemical reaction used in photography that you described yesterday is one in which the silver nitrate reverts back to silver after an interaction between photons and the light sensitive silver nitrate.”

He looked at me with utter mystification, but trusted that I was right and put the notebook back into the carryall. I drew next to him, excited to watch the secret missives, appear out of the in that dense cursive script. Soon, the original writing seemed to fade ever so lightly and was replaced by writing from a similar hand. The new letters and characters grew darker, but remained only a shadowy imprint upon the page, perhaps the result of degradation the silver nitrate had endured during the near century and a half it lay hidden within the letters. Once it the writing stopped growing any more distinct, I reached over Christian and turned off the ultraviolet light. We both gazed at the new letters, our eyes dazzling with intense fascination. It was like breaking into a lost crypt, hidden away from time and the prying eyes of history.

London

March 7, 1872

Dearest Josephine,

I have prepared the counterfeit rubles for your dangerous mission. They are of exceedingly high quality and I believe that you should have no trouble transporting them. They are being sent through one of our associates. He knows the standard passwords and codes and should have no trouble finding you. Please be sure to test this knowledge when he arrives as we can never be sure what sort of imposters may attempt to infiltrate our plans. Also bear in mind that, like many of our current associates, he knows me only under my common alias Leon Warnerke. Please do not give any indication that this is other than my true name.

As soon as you receive the rubles and everything appears in good order, please write me and await further instructions.

Yours in arms,

Wladyslaw

London

August 12, 1872

Dearest Josephine,

I have just received your letter. As soon as this reply reaches you, please attempt to enter the Russian territory at the Wierzbolowo crossing. Our agents indicate this is the safest route.

I cannot express my overwhelming admiration for your courage in the face of great danger. You are a service to our cause in every way. You carry with you my prayers and those of a grateful Polish people. We will rise again out of the ashes of the Old Europe that you and these notes will help burn to the ground.

I eagerly await news of your success.

Yours in arms,

Wladyslaw

London

February 15, 1875

Dear Johan,

I am working on new designs for the counterfeits as we speak. Josephine’s arrest was a great defeat for our cause and threw me into the deepest depression, but we cannot be deterred.

I have learned through the death of my father the pain of loss and I know well the sacrifices our eventual victory demands. It is a struggle that promises to claim more blood before all is through, but we shall triumph.

An associate from my one of my photographic circles, a certain Walter Woodbury, instructed me in a printing technique that I am now learning to improve in secret and I hope it will be of help to us. I will keep you informed of the results.

Yours in arms,

Leon

London

March 26, 1875

Dear Johan,

I have abandoned the printing technique about which I wrote to you previously. The results are far too imprecise for our needs. I know that you grow anxious waiting for the new counterfeits, but I humbly beg your continued patience. I will begin cutting the moulds for the watermark by hand. This will assure that our new rubles are perfectly undetectable by even the most well trained eye.

I have noticed also that your letters have not been written as securely as they should. Please exercise care in the creation of the silver nitrate solution as I have shown you in the past. The authorities gaining wind of one of these letters could be the undoing of us all.

Yours in arms,

Leon

I turned the lights back up and could still see the new writing burned into the page with astounding clarity. Christian’s transcription of the letters had provided another blessing, that the original letters, ruses though they were, could be preserved now that the secret messages that had been brought to the surface obscured them. I looked at Christian as if to ask “Well?” but his eyes met mine without really looking at me, as if his vision stopped somewhere short of his eyes and reflected back into this brain.

“Arthur never saw this,” he said, maintaining his distant gaze.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Of course he did. It’s the next clue.”

“No,” he replied and looked at me alertly now, as though he had finally snapped out of whatever thought or mental image had absorbed his attention. “You said yourself that this chemical reaction only works one way. The secret writing was kept in sufficient darkness that, until now, it had not been exposed. No one has ever seen any of this.”

“So it doesn’t mean anything,” I said, crestfallen. “We’ve just followed the wrong track.”

“It means a lot,” Christian said and turned back to the letters. His voice, even his body, was filled with a nervous awe. “It means that Leon Warnerke really was a respected photographer by day and a brilliant counterfeiter by night. It means that Wladyslaw Malachowski, some otherwise nameless lower noble from the ranks of the shattered Polish aristocracy, really did escape to France and successfully assumed a secret identity – several of them, in fact – in order to lead the double life that would allow him to continue his struggle against the Russian empire. It means that some vast conspiracy of exiles from the Paris commune really did stretch across Europe and plotted the downfall of the modern world by counterfeiting currency. All of this – revenge, revolution, sacrifice, secrecy, fake identities, invisible ink -- events too fantastic and exciting to even believe, all of it really happened. And, until now, no one had definitive proof. Here, right in front of us, is the evidence confirming a theory that, in some ways, I couldn’t take seriously even as I asserted it in my note to you. Did you? Could anyone really?”

As I listening to Christian’s impassioned words, something stirred within me, eclipsing for a few moments, at least, the frustration attending our new obstacle. We did sit in the presence of some small miracle of time, an epic life and struggle that had been sheltered from even the most dedicated historian and investigator. Not even Arthur had seen the secrets these letters contained, the elusive proof. It was a past that, until now, had not been part of the past, instead neglected from the historical record altogether. But like the ink, it was a true story that lay buried between the lines of history, waiting for its moment to be brought to light.

I indulged in these histrionics for a few more moments until my amazement ebbed and my initial frustration returned. To hell with Leon Warnerke. I wanted my clue.

Forty

I tried to consider the possible alternatives. Because it had partially exposed, Arthur may have been able to make some of the writing out with a magnifying glass or a low powered microscope. Yet this morning I found the grey words were so indistinct and so well hidden by the false messages overlaying them in ink that I couldn’t imagine he would have had much success discerning the hidden characters. I was barely able to even tell there were there and Christian hadn’t seen anything in all of the time that he spent reading through the originals and then carefully copying them all out. But Arthur would have known that there was secret handwriting. I knew he would have seen the ghostly figures dancing behind the surface text of the letters and I couldn’t shake the sense that this was a clue, that he did want me to see the invisible ink. I just had to figure out where it led, if not to the hidden messages we had just revealed.

This time I noticed Christian offering me the “Well?” look, which involved slightly raised eyebrows and a twitchy, tense kind of eagerness from his eyes. I shared my thinking with him.

“Yes,” he agreed, “That seems like a good suspicion. Arthur would have seen the evidence of invisible ink. But would he have made it a piece to the puzzle and, if so, where does it fit?”

I took a seat next to Christian and put an elbow on the desk so I could prop my head up on my hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the letters sprawled across the desk and covered in the now dark black lines of exposed silver nitrate. I wracked my brain to no avail and the only intuition I entertained was the grumble of my stomach that predicted hunger.

“Let’s go get lunch,” I suggested.

Christian agreed with a sigh. “Ah well, no mystery was ever solved on an empty stomach, right?” A smiled a response and we made our way out of the Secret Service building. Christian tucked all the letters stored away in his satchel and I saw that he carried the manila envelope with him so that he could at least nominally protect everything. Outside, I welcomed the warmth of the sun on a clear but bitterly cold winter day. The wind whipped down the avenues of Washington and seemed to bend and drag the rays of the sun away with it. The omnipresent flags, many American, but some the municipal colors of the District of Columbia, cracked and fluttered violently in the breeze, at times extended straight out from their poles and completely motionless, as if starched in place.

I brought Christian to a small deli I had not visited in several months. There were a few tables and, because the time we spent down in the laboratory had pushed us sufficiently back into the lunch hour, they sat unoccupied. I ordered a cold pasta salad and some kind of mixed fruit juice and Christian needed only a few minutes to ascertain the largest combination of meat and cheese available on the menu.

“I didn’t have breakfast,” he said defensively as if sensed my mock disapproval, communicated by a sidelong glance. He was not lying and dug in with a vengeance as soon as our food arrived. During lunch, I asked him how his work was going and whether he turned everything in on time. He answered in between voluminous bites that his papers weren’t really up to snuff, but the impact of being kidnapped may still have been negligible. A mischievous grin followed on the heels of his comments and only slightly assuaged a brief pang of sympathy and guilt. I desperately hoped his ordeal had not derailed his schoolwork, but could not imagine that it was entirely innocuous. Something would have been wrong if he hadn’t suffered at least mild adverse effects. But then, Christian was proving to be more resilient by the day. We both were, I supposed.

“How you are you doing?” he asked, needing a break about halfway through the stuffed, calzone resembling concoction steaming tantalizingly in front of him. “Is work going ok?”

“I’m doing well,” I replied honestly. “What Robert Harper said about Arthur was – hard on me, but I’m moving on. I’ll admit that part of why I want to solve this is–” But I didn’t finish the thought. Christian just nodded sympathetically, to indicate that I didn’t need to. He knew I would do anything to prove that Arthur was innocent and loyal to his country, even if it were only in the court of my own conscience.

“And how are things with you parents? Are the ok with everything?”

I had trouble containing my shock. “You really want to know?” I asked skeptically. “I appreciate you asking, but we don’t have to talk about that, Christian. I know it makes you uncomfortable.

“I want to know,” he said and stared me right in the eye. “I had a lot of time to think when, you know, I was locked in that room. I haven’t been a great friend in every way. Look, I can’t admit I’ll be the perfect listener on this topic, but I’ll try anyway.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That means a lot to me. And, in short, they’re going well. My dad has—amended his previous position. It’s been a sea change, really. I don’t know what exactly what happened, but he seems to support me now and to be genuinely proud of my work at the Secret Service.”

“Wow,” Christian replied, now diving back into his lunch. “That’s really great, Ionia. I know that must mean a lot to you. But I bet I’m still public enemy number one around the Han household.”

“You were never public enemy number one,” I dismissed playfully. He looked up from his food with mock incredulity. “Ok, fine, you were,” I conceded and burst out laughing. “But you brought it on yourself, you know. You didn’t have to proudly claim credit for tempting me toward philosophy that time my parents visited. And you can’t say I didn’t warn you before they arrived.”

“Socrates was executed for corrupting the youth of Athens, you know. It’s the fate of all great philosophers. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“You wish,” I said and we both chuckled before sinking into the quiet malaise that follows a good meal. It was nice to have Christian around, I thought, and imagined it would be pleasant to again live in the same city someday if it were possible.

Christian brought his hands together as if praying and placed the flat of his index fingers on his pursed lips. His eyes drifted upward and I could see that he had wandered into some complex thought.

“We’re not seeing the big picture here,” he said, his brow tightly knit.

“What do you mean?” I asked, but met no response. Instead, he remained distant, his eyes drifting across the interior of the deli, bedecked with large bottles of olive oil, Pandoro boxes and chains of sausages of varying color and size strung about the room, like grotesque and morbid Christmas lights. He then reached into his satchel and extracted one of his transcriptions, although I could not see what letter it was. He read to himself and silently nodded along.

“The letters from Franz Wolf were about the shipment of goods and also made reference to silver nitrate for use as an invisible ink,” he said, still staring at the letter. “The true messages, which were written in silver nitrate, urged patience to the anonymous correspondent who was presumably waiting for a shipment of new counterfeit rubles from Warnerke. Most of that is readily evident.” He met my eyes now to see that I followed and I nodded that I did. “And you believe that we can safely assume that Arthur would have seen the evidence of invisible ink on the letters, even if he didn’t read what it said?” I indicated that I did. “So what can we be sure Arthur would have known? He would have known the letters from Franz Wolf made a reference to invisible ink and used such ink to disguise some secret message. He could read clearly that the letters referred to a mysterious shipment. He obviously suspected – or perhaps knew for reasons we have yet to discover – that the letters concerned the transport of counterfeits that Leon Warnerke produced. And he obviously suspected or knew that Franz Wolf was an alias for Leon Warkerne.”

“Alright,” I said. “I’m following you so far, I think, but where are you going with this?”

“The final piece in our puzzle, the one thing left unaccounted for, is a set of two letters about the transportation of counterfeit money, both of which contain messages in invisible ink. The thing is, this isn’t a physical key to some next challenge or historical puzzle. It’s a metaphor for something I think we already possess.”

I shrugged at Christian, too thoroughly confused to foresee where this was going with any excitement.

“Think about the first thing Arthur gave you,” he said. “He didn’t just give you a fifty dollar bill. He gave you an envelope, a letter. Inside there was counterfeit currency and a message written to you on a post-it note.” He began counting of his fingers. “So we have the transportation of counterfeit currency, we have a seemingly innocuous letter to an accomplice, namely, you, but we’re missing one thing, one final piece of the triad.” He wiggled a third finger in the air to emphasize that fact that it designated only a question mark.

“I see it now,” I exclaimed and then reddened when I drew startled looks from the deli’s staff. I lowered my voice to an urgent whisper. “The note. There’s a message written on the note in invisible ink.”

“Exactly,” Christian smiled.

Forty-One

“So where’s the letter?” he asked. “I didn’t see it in the large manila envelope with the other things.”

“No,” I replied mutedly. “I put it somewhere else.” When I had filed everything away, I reserved a special revulsion for the white envelope and note. It was what had drawn us into this mess. I treated it like an extension of Arthur and heaped all of the blame upon it. And it was also the locus of all of my doubts about Arthur. Did it contain his legacy of treachery, bequeathed to me? Or was it his last gasp of hope, a chance to posthumously clear his name? I wouldn’t have thrown it away, but I wanted it out of my sight – away from view, I planned, even if I ever had occasion to look at the letters again. So when I did take them up just two days ago, I barely devoted a passing thought to the original envelope, as though it was no longer a part of the very quest that it instigated.

“Well, you just go to work then,” Christian suggested, “And I’ll go get the envelope.”

“Ok,” I said. “It’s in a cupboard behind the couch. On the bottom shelf in a manila folder like this one. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding it, but call me if you do.”

He looked at me as if to ask why I had kept it separate from the rest of the letters and documents, but my expression must have warned him that I had good reason, even if he couldn’t guess at it. Without saying anything more, we got up and left the restaurant. Our silence was occasioned by two different causes: Christian was beside himself with anticipation, eager to test his new breakthrough, and I relived the painful moment when I last confronted that small, white envelope that had caused us so much trouble. But once we separated with a quick goodbye and I stepped quickly through the cold, refreshing air, I found that it whisked away the painful memories and sent a chill of true excitement running through my body. This was it, I realized. If Christian was right, all of the letters would be accounted for. If there was to be any answer to this puzzle, any true prize beyond the counterfeit bill, we were about to discover it.

When I returned to my office, I returned to the report I spent most of the morning futilely trying to edit. I could not read more the a sentence or two at a time without checking the clock and this pattern continued until the phone rang about forty minutes after my return. I whipped the receiver up before the first ring stopped.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Ionia, it’s Andrew. Your friend is here again.”

“Yeah, yeah, send him up,” I commanded impatiently.

Within a few minutes Christian was standing in my doorway as before, only this time, though he was not out of breath, a volatile mixture of energy and anxiety lit his entire figure. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was shaking with excitement. When I stood up to walk with him down to the laboratory, I felt an odd sort of tremor in my right hand and realized I might be shaking, too. We exchanged a wordless smile and then proceeded to the elevator.

“It was right where you said it was,” Christian said during the ride down to the subbasement containing the laboratories. He didn’t look as if he expected a response and perhaps was just talking to talk, a small measure to discharge some of the nervous energy beaming out of us and off the walls of the elevator. I could only muster a guttural and strained “good” in response, although the word was barely distinguishable even to my own ears.

Inside the lab, I instructed Christian to place each item separately beneath the ultraviolet light: the white envelope, the post-it note reading “FOR IONIA” and the post-it note that had been affixed to the counterfeit. Once he had everything set up, I dimmed the lights and he turned on the ultraviolet light.

“Do you see anything?” I asked from across the room.

“No,” he said glumly. “No, there’s—wait. Ok, I see something sort of pale and bluish on the note to you, the one signed ‘LEON WARNERKE’ that had been inside the envelope.” He looked over his shoulder at me. “Why can’t I make out the words?”

I thought about it for a moment and then answered, “He must be using a different sympathetic ink. It’s probably the kind of ultraviolet sensitive mark that is printed on certain currencies, passports and driver’s licenses. Just keep looking at it.” Then I turned off all of the lights, immersing the room in pitch blackness. Now, from the other end of the room, I could see a sea blue glow floating in the darkness.

“What does it say?” I asked as I carefully padded across the lab, reaching out blindly with my hand to make sure I didn’t run into anything. I stopped when it found Christian’s shoulder and I felt him recoil slightly with a start. “Sorry,” I apologized, then repeated more insistently, “What does it say?”

“‘A dash 15067 VERDI,” Christian read questioningly.

“What?” I stepped closer. But there it was.

A-15067

VERDI

I sighed. What was that supposed to mean?

“Can you write that down,” I asked Christian despondently.

“Already done,” he replied, clearly as disappointed as I that there wasn’t more to the note. Could there have been more, though? Arthur could only have fit so much into a three inch by three inch post-it note, I told myself. I should have expected there would be at least a little more detective work left to do. I felt my way back to the light switch and brought the lights up halfway so as not to overwhelm our eyes, which had adjusted to the dark. As the light spread over the room, I saw Christian looking at his copy of Arthur’s secret note and tapping his chin lightly with his forefinger.

“At least my theory was right,” he said and forced a smile as he looked over at me.

“But do you have another one?” I asked impatiently, immediately struck by a wave of guilt. His theory had been right and the fact that we hadn’t found our way out of Arthur’s labyrinth was not fault of his. “Sorry,” I muttered.

“It’s ok,” he said, although he sounded unconvinced. “Ionia, we’re on the right track. Two hours ago we didn’t know what to do next. That’s not bad for one lunch break’s worth of work. We must be close.”

“Close,” I said to myself and felt an idea glimmering somewhere back in my mind, about to lurch into my consciousness.

“Yeah, that’s what I said, close. Are you ok?”

I must have had a distant look to my eyes as I tried to see in my mind where Arthur was leading us. Something about that word – close.

“We are close,” I said definitively. Christian looked at my questioningly. “That number, it should have meant something to me right away. Arthur would have guessed that I’d resort to the ultraviolet light here in the laboratory.”

“And?” Christian asked and glanced searchingly around the room as if I meant whatever we were looking for would be here.

“And,” I answered, “One floor below us is the Secret Service counterfeit library, which holds a sample from every counterfeit investigation. Each note is placed in its own flat file drawer and is catalogued by a unique alphanumeric identifier consisting of a letter and a five digit number. So A-15067 refers to a specific counterfeit.”

“And Verdi?” Christian asked.

“I’m tempted to say the Italian composer, but no, I don’t know how it fits in.”

“Then let’s go find out,” Christian said and hurriedly reassembled the envelope and post-it notes before shoving them back into his carryall.

We left the laboratory and returned to the elevator, this time descending to a still deeper subbasement in the Secret Service complex. The doors parted and immediately before us stood uniform rows of large filing cabinets, about six feet tall and two feet deep. They were long, but no much longer than an average book shelf in a major library. Single banknotes obviously did not require much space and the entire room was not breathtakingly large. Yet there was something cavernous about the counterfeit library, even if it wasn’t very big, perhaps because of its depth under the ground, the sterile controlled air, or the dim lighting. It just felt different, disconcerting even. It was more than a mere room. It was a tomb, really. Value gives a life force to currency, allows it to move through the world with purpose and direction. The counterfeit banknotes stored in this room tasted that life briefly, but once we captured and identified them, they became empty, lifeless husks. The rows of drawers were like coffins and this room their sepulcher.

The rows spanned the room in ascending alphabetical order from left to right and small placards on each row listed the alphanumeric range it contained. I guided Christian all the way to the far left wall where “A” began and then we doubled back one row to A-14000 – B-10000.

“It’s down here,” I said as I thumbed a light switch on a broad metal panel positioned at the entry to the long filing cabinet. A fluorescent light flickered and hummed to life on the ceiling. One of the phosphorescent tubes was dying and gave off and uneven and shifting light accompanied by a mild buzz. Each long row of filing cabinets was sectioned into a series of columns, each one eight individual filing drawers high. We past several of these until, about a third of the way down the row, I stopped in front of the drawer marked A-15067. It was stationed at head level and I wondered if this had been intentional on Arthur’s part, so that I wouldn’t miss it.

I looked at Christian and then slid the drawer open. Inside was a five dollar bill.

“It’s a counterfeit of the original five dollar Federal Reserve Note,” I said.

“How can you tell?” Christian asked.

I looked at him quizzically. “Everything in here is a counterfeit,” I replied.

“No,” he said. “How can you tell it’s a counterfeit of an original Federal Reserve Note?”

“Oh,” I laughed. “See the frame that separates the main portion of the bill from the scrollwork? On the right and left side, where the frame bows out in a sort of arc it says ‘Series of 1914.’ The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 created the Federal Reserve banking system and replaced the greenback with a new paper currency – the Federal Reserve Notes.”

“So what does this mean?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it’s another clue.” I reached into the drawer to take the banknote, which was encased in a plastic sheath and labeled with a small sticker indicating a few details about when it was acquired and a reference number for the report on the Secret Service investigation into whatever counterfeiting ring was responsible for its production. I held the note in both hands and examined the front and back to see if Arthur had left a note or any other message for us. Nothing.

“Ionia,” Christian said. I looked over at him and saw that his eyes were locked on the open drawer. I followed their gaze and gasped lightly when I saw that there was a small, green object lying on the bottom of the now empty drawer. Arthur had placed something beneath this bill.

“What is it?” I asked aloud as I gently plucked it from the drawer. Once in my hands, I realized it was a small digital playback device, the kind usually used for listening to music.

“Turn it on,” Christian urged. I was unfamiliar with this particular device and groped around for a moment before I found the power button. A small display lit up and I clicked on the file directory to reveal a list of musical artists in alphabetical order. I furrowed my brow as I skipped through the list of bands and songwriters until Christian and I exclaimed simultaneously: “Verdi.”

I scrolled rapidly now until I came to Verdi, the last name on the list. I selected the folder and it revealed several files:

Don Carlos

La traviata

La forza del destino

Macbeth

Rigoletto

“Which one should I click on?” I asked. “Or should I just go through all of them?”

Christian mulled this over for a moment. “So we’re assuming he hid something in one of the tracks, right? Each one of these will have a lot of different tracks. I guess we should just try them all, but we need headphones or something.”

“My computer has speakers,” I said. “I can connect this using an auxiliary cable.”

I carefully slid the five dollar bill back into its drawer, deciding that we could come back and retrieve it if we felt it held any further significance beyond hiding the portable media player. We scurried back to the elevator and rose out of the depths of the Secret Service Headquarters back to the above ground levels. It must have only been a psychological effect, but within the elevator, I always felt lighter as I returned above ground. Once in my office, I took a seat my swivel chair next and rooted around behind the computer until I found the loose end of an auxiliary cable. Before it broke, I used to bring my own music player to work and run it through the computer speakers and I had never removed the cable that attached it to the computer. While I plugged the device into the computer, Christian pulled the other chair close to me so that he was positioned right next to me and could hunch over the display to the media player.

“What first?” I asked as I toggled over the five folders, each containing a different Verdi opera.

“I dunno,” Christian shrugged. “How about Rigoletto? That’s certainly one of the famous ones and I’ve always liked it.”

“Always?” I asked, giving him a sidelong glance. This was the first I had heard about Christian the opera-phile.

“I got into opera for awhile last year,” he said and then blushed slightly. “I didn’t really have the discipline to learn about it, though. I still listen occasionally.”

I suppressed a light chuckle and then acquiesced and selected Rigoletto. Twenty-nine tracks confronted us. I sighed. This could be a long day. Christian motioned as if to say “Oh well” and I hit the play button for the first track, the Preludio. A solitary horn softly intoned two notes, then repeated them twice before the symphony joined it. The rest of the instruments gave way to leave the horn again alone, this time a different two notes sadly flowing forth into the air. The pattern continued several times, the lonely horn weeping its steady refrain, joined at the end of each sob by the sympathetic orchestra. The grief slowly built until the strings rose to meet not sobs of pain, but wails of despair and rage from now several horns before they exploded in sound and then faded, surrendering the narration over to the strings. Whatever we were looking for, it obviously wasn’t here, but for some reason I did not stop the song.

“It’s about a tragic deception,” Christian spoke over the music. “Rigoletto is a jester for the Duke of Mantua. He mocks the court nobles openly and they conspire to play a trick him in order to exact their revenge. They believe he has a lover whom he visits in secret and they kidnap her. In truth, however, the young woman they kidnap is actually Rigoletto’s daughter, Gilda. The nobles tell Rigoletto that they have kidnapped a rival noble and he helps them only to learn that he has been deceived. He rescues his daughter, who did not know until now that he had been a court jester. She says that she is ashamed of her father and confesses that she and the duke have fallen in love. Rigoletto swears his own revenge against his master, the duke, and shows his daughter the duke lying with the sister of a bandit named Sparafucile. The duke is drunk, partly from the pain of losing Gilda. Rigoletto sends Gilda away to Verona and tries to hire Sparafucile to kill the duke, whom he does not know is actually a noble. Sparafucile agrees and Rigoletto leaves, but Sparafucile’s sister begs for the life of the duke. Sparafucile then declares that the duke will be spared only if another will take his place. Gilda has returned in secret because she still loves the duke despite his indiscretions and exchanges her life for the duke’s. Rigoletto soon arrives and pays Sparafucile for his deed, receiving a sack with the corpse in return. As he goes to dispose the corpse, he takes a quick look only to discover that it is his daughter and not the duke the bandit has killed.”

As Christian finished, the strings abandoned their terrifying march and the sad horn returned, now joined by a few compatriots, and they sang one final, teary phrase before the entire symphony quietly joined in again. The sound built, quietly padding in subtle footsteps, before the orchestra struck a powerful succession of chords, a loud admonition to open the opera. The instruments held their final resounding note and the timpani banged away in the background.

Was it warning to me as well? I wondered if I were Arthur’s Gilda, his secret daughter, now thrust into intrigues for his sins. Bae, whom I had so willingly trusted, was he worthy of my trust or was he the lying, cheating, philandering duke of Mantua? Perhaps my feelings had blinded me to his true and scurrilous character. The North Korean who kidnapped Christian must have been Sparafucile. Or Robert Harper. Perhaps that role was more difficult to assign than I thought. And whether Arthur intended me to be his beloved Gilda or not, I identified with her, shamed to learn the truth about Rigoletto, about who he really was. The way I saw it, that was the real deception: that Rigoletto had been unwilling to tell his daughter who he really was. Perhaps she would have accepted the truth and perhaps he then would not have been so careless in his courtly behavior, mindful of the consequences that might be visited upon her. He became the victim of his obsessive drive to protect from everything, including her own identity.

“I have an idea,” Christian said as the orchestra now pranced into the court of the Duke of Mantua to open the first act of the opera. I pressed the pause button, quickly immersing the room in silence, and looked at him attentively. “Can I use your computer?”

“Sure,” I said and rolled my chair aside so that he could pull his up to the computer stand. Instead, he left his chair completely, knelt in front of the computer and started banging away the keys.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Just playing a hunch,” he said cryptically and continued typing. I could see an internet search engine over his shoulder, but could not make out any of the text. After what seemed like less than a minute, he turned around in his chair to face me. “Try La forza del destino,” he suggested.

“Sure, but why?” I questioned.

“I checked the dates the operas were written or debuted performed,” he replied. “La forza del destino was first performed on November 10, 1862, but it was commissioned over a year earlier, in 1861 by the Imperial Theatre of St. Petersburg.”

“So?”

“Think about it. An opera commissioned by Russians the same year martial law was declared in Poland. That was the move that ultimately spurred the January Uprising of 1863, remember?”

I smiled, marveling at Christian’s mental acuity, and selected the folder for La forza del destino. This time an even more voluminous track list appeared on the display.

“It’s just another opera, Christian,” I said. His shoulders slumped and turned back toward the computer.

“Just scan through them,” he said, almost apologetically. “I’ll try and think of something else, but take one quick look at all the names.

I did as he asked, as sorry as he that we had hit another dead end, and paid scant attention as the Italian titles flooded the screen: Scena: Buono notte, mia figlia, Canzone: Al suon del tamburro, Romaza: Oh, tu che in sena agli angela. Just as I hit the end of the opera, right after the Finale, I saw a word that had no place in any Verdi opera. I saw my own name.

“Christian,” I exclaimed. “Here it is. There’s a track named ‘Ionia.’”

“Play it,” he said excitedly, now completely turned around in the chair, his body tense with anticipation.

I hesitated, my thumb shaking, and then brought it softly down on the play button. The computer speakers came to life, filled with the soothing tones of Arthur’s age worn voice. My breath caught in my throat as I listened to my mentor. He had barely been gone a month, yet it was like hearing someone speak from across the void, some previous life. I could detect the strain and worry in his voice and before I began listening to the individual words, my throat thickened with emotion just to hear him again. As he spoke, I closed my eyes and ignored the device in my hand, instead choosing to imagine him standing right next to me one last time.

Forty-Two

Ionia, if you’re listening to this it means that I’m dead. I’m not sure if the clues I left you paint a straight enough line to this, my final message, my will and testament of sorts, but I don’t have the time to make things any clearer without risking that certain information will fall into the wrong hands. But if you are listening, then you succeeded and navigated the trail, however winding it was. To be honest, I truly believe as I record this message that it will reach your hands. I know you too well, Ionia, to have any doubts about your abilities. What I’m about to tell you is information that you must use at your own discretion. I cannot tell you what to do with it, in part because I don’t know myself. You will have to decide for yourself and I’m sorry to leave you with that burden. You are the only person to whom I can now turn.

I may as well start from the beginning. A little over a year ago, a man named Robert Harper approached me at my home. He was from the Central Intelligence Agency and had the requisite identification and authorization papers. He asked me to meet him at Langley, told me that he had need of my expertise. He also instructed me to keep quiet, that it was a top-secret matter of national security. I went to Langley on the appointed day, half believing that I would arrive to discover there was no Robert Harper, but to my surprise he not only worked at the CIA, but had a corner office to boot. I met with him in his office along with another high ranking CIA official named Jonathan Attleton. They told me that they had discovered a fifty dollar bill during a clandestine operation and wanted me to examine it. I told them I would have a look at it and give them a full report. At that time, they asked no more of me.

At first, I thought there was some sort of mistake or that perhaps this was a kind of interagency audit because I was convinced that the fifty dollar bill was real. As you know, it bears all of the standard security marks and has been made with the correct components, all the way down to the color changing ink. I performed a detailed analysis – just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything – and was prepared to hand the banknote back to them with nothing more to say other than that it was, in fact, fifty bucks. Something about its flawlessness had bothered me from the start, however, and just before I was going to contact Robert Harper I noticed slight perfections, so to speak, places where this fifty dollar bill exhibited a stylistic unity that is not present on real American currency. If you’re listening to this, then you’ve figured all this out, so I won’t linger on any of it. I was confident that eventually you’d see the same thing in the fifty dollar bill – your eyes were always more perceptive than mine, anyway.

I called Robert Harper and told him my suspicion. He asked if I had hard evidence and I replied that no, I did not, and that while I could probably show anyone why I felt this was a counterfeit, it was the kind of demonstration that one easily forgets or second guesses in the face of contradictor evidence. I told him that this fifty dollar bill as a perfect facsimile as opposed tot great art, which is so great because time has rendered it imperfect. He instructed me to begin an investigation into the counterfeit, but to do so in secret. If I had any questions that would require the assistance of one of our Secret Service field offices or an actual Special Agent, I was to notify him and he would procure the answer for me in due time. I, of course, demanded why I had to practically skulk around behind the backs of my colleagues and raised the obvious jurisdictional concerns that national law enforcement agencies covet so dearly – though I don’t really care about them given the nature of my work, it seemed like a reasonable objection in my arsenal. He assured me that this was a matter of grave importance to national security and that the possibility that information could leak out to the wrong people was simply too high if the entire Secret Service became involved in or, at least, aware of the issue. He then offered me the chance to walk away if the dilemma was too much to bear.

I actually considered the offer for several days. The thought of working on this without the help and consent of my friends and superiors was unbearable. The Secret Service was my life. My loyalty to our work and mission was superseded only by that to my wife. How could I possibly keep something like this – a counterfeit investigation – a secret from the people I considered my comrades in arms? Especially you, Ionia. You have always been like a daughter to me, but not the kind of daughter that a father shields and keeps altogether innocent about the darker side of life. No, you are my heir, the daughter I wanted ready to face the challenges I could not myself surmount. To work on this without your knowledge – and your help! – seemed unreasonable to me.

Yet something about that fifty dollar bill stewed inside me. I had not returned it to Robert Harper and I would find myself taking it out of my desk in the middle of the day, examining its perfection. It festered in my mind to the point of obsession. I wanted to know who had accomplished such a feat. This was the ultimate counterfeit, a banknote whose falsity was disclosed not by some flaw, but by the very fact of its overwhelming perfection. It was too perfect. It was as if I had met my match and wanted now to know who he or she was. Nothing preys on the mind like the thought of an unknown, unchallengeable adversary. Not even those as old and infirm as myself are immune to such ambitions. I admit, ashamedly now, that part of me craved the glory of exposing this villainous maestro.

Unable to resist the odd pull of the counterfeit, I acceded to Robert Harper’s request and accepted his offer of help. And help I needed. Because the ink matched the color-changing security ink adorning United States legal tender and the intaglio printing effect appeared genuine, I began to investigate ink and printing sales from the companies that the United States contracts to provide the requisite supplies. Most of the information I needed – production information, purchase orders, and shipping receipts – was hard to come by, even if requested by a Secret Service special agent, I was doubtful that I would make any real progress. But I conveyed my requests to Harper and he provided the materials I required with stunning speed. I managed to trace a series of illicit shipments, both of mechanical intaglio printing components and the ingredients for our special security ink from the very companies that supposedly produce these materials exclusively for the United States. I found evidence that indicated not that these organizations were actively and illegally selling these materials, but that people inside of them were doctoring internal documents in order to secretly transfer the necessary items out of the organizations. I tracked the movement of these materials – coming from both the ink company, based in the United States, and a European printing supply company – to the same warehouse in Singapore, but that’s where the trail first hit a dead end.

But, thanks again to Robert Harper’s efforts, I learned that the warehouse in question was leased by a bank from Macau, a bank that, according to Harper, had extensive ties to the North Korean government.

The circumstantial evidence was now in place: the North Korean government had, through a series of opaque fences, managed to infiltrate the suppliers for the Bureau of Printing and Engraving in order to obtain the equipment necessary to counterfeit United States paper currency. The rub was that the engravers their hired were unable to duplicate the stylistic disjunction between the designs used on the money, which resulted from the passage of time between the crafting of the various dies used to assemble a banknote. I filed a report with Robert Harper detailing the points of dissonance between the counterfeit and an authentic fifty dollar bill and included the ostensibly stolen or leaked documents he had given me, which all helped to construct the pathway the different printing materials followed out of the industrial suppliers and into the hands of the Macau bank.

Harper thanked me for my work and I did not hear from him for about a month. In January of this year, he contacted me again and asked that I visit him in his Langley office. When I arrived, he presented me with a large number of sample banknotes, some fifty dollar bills, some one-hundred dollar bills, and a few smaller denominations as well—five and ten dollar bills. He said that he believed these might be from the same source—namely, North Korea—and he wanted me to thoroughly examine them as I had done with the original fifty dollar bill. I asked if the new fifty dollar bills he gave me were the same and he answered that he did not know, but that there was reason to suspect North Korea was working to tinker with and improve its counterfeiting technique. I then asked if he had definitively established a link between North Korea, the original counterfeit and the illicit printing equipment transfers I had found. He said that no, but that detailed analysis of these samples would go a long way toward doing that. I agreed to help, but asked for the original fifty dollar bill for the purposes of comparison and he readily handed it over with these new banknotes.

Before I left, I again demanded to know why other members of the Secret Service were not being involved in this investigation and why he had singled me out to help him. He did not view this question as unreasonable and explained that the possibility that a government – particularly a state like North Korea – might sponsor counterfeiting raises specific diplomatic problems that do not arise in the case of an illicit criminal organization. The CIA has apparently suspected for several years that North Korea engages in counterfeiting United States currency in order to finance its trade deficit. In fact, it is North Korea that has most likely been responsible for the production of ‘supernotes’ that, as you know, were erroneously attributed to Iran by policymakers. The reason that Secret Service objections to that assessment were never fully pursued had to do with the delicacy of accusing a government – whether friend or foe – of counterfeiting United States currency. For that reason, Harper said, the CIA felt that it could most effectively navigate the complex diplomatic issues at stake by keeping any investigation into North Korean counterfeiting top-secret until a green light was given from appropriately high level decision makers to act on the results.

If the Secret Service seized shipments of counterfeit currency or made arrests of individuals on a suspicion of producing or trafficking forged money, such a move would be likely to have resounding international consequences. In addition, Harper continued, should the Secret Service arrest individuals involved with the North Korean government, especially without an airtight case, it could be an international incident. Given the volatile nature of relations on the Korean Peninsula and throughout the entire East Asian region, this was a risk not to be taken. The samples that he was giving me had been very carefully extracted from low level functionaries in a complex counterfeit laundering scheme designed to create as much distance as possible between the North Korean government and its bogus United States currency. Hopefully, the North Koreans did not have wind of the ongoing investigation.

He said that he picked me for this assignment quite simply in part because of my reputation as a forensic currency analyst and in part because of my age. These notes required someone who wouldn’t rely on assumptions about what security features were or were not vulnerable to forgery. He needed someone who would take each bill on it merits. My long tenure at the Secret Service extends to a time before many of the technologies were developed that are used both to produce currency and to investigate counterfeits. It’s not just that I was an expert, but that I was an expert with the right perspective, an untainted point of view.

He was forthcoming in his answers to my questions, but I could not help a sense of unease. I was concerned about what I was getting myself into. Nonetheless, I reluctantly agreed to keep helping and went to work on these new banknotes and found the craftsmanship was steadily increasing. Some of the new notes, the one hundreds for example, exhibited the stylistic schizophrenia normally present in a United States banknote. The North Koreans had clearly identified the flaw I had seen in the fifty dollar bill and taken steps to assess it. At the microscopic level, I was still able to discern slight deviations between these notes and real ones, but it was getting harder and harder. Before, I felt like an art expert comparing two paintings from my favorite epoch, now it was as if I had to compare two fingerprints without any knowledge of how to do so. The counterfeits were so precise that I simply lacked the tools to quickly hone in on their flaws. Still, I labored ceaselessly and slowly but surely catalogued the subtle evidence that these were, in fact, counterfeits.

When I had finished, I tried repeatedly to get in touch with Robert Harper but was unable to reach him. After several days, I decided to drive out to Langley myself to see him, but was rebuffed by someone at the front who said that Harper was away on business and would be unavailable for an indefinite period of time. I found this odd, but then, he was a CIA agent, so I just stored my report away and carried on as if I had never met him.

In late February, he showed up at my doorstep. He seemed agitated and pulled me up into my office so that we could speak privately, away from Helen. Robert Harper told me that the situation had changed and that he needed all of the counterfeit samples along with any reports I had prepared. I readily acquiesced to his request and, as I was handing everything over, I started to explain what I had learned about the new banknotes he had given me. He angrily cut me off and said that he didn’t care, that it was no longer important. I tried to ask what had changed, but he told me that it was none of my business and gruffly thanked me for my time.

I was perplexed, but also partly relieved that this bizarre episode in my life had come to a close. But then two strange things happened. First, I discovered the original counterfeit Robert Harper had given me – the fifty dollar bill – sitting in the top drawer of my desk one morning. I must have neglected to give it to him, which was a strange thing for me to do. You know me, I say not with arrogance but as fact, that I never forget any such details. Yet that was less out of character than what was to come. The proper thing would have been to apologetically phone Robert Harper about the oversight and then return the fifty dollar bill as soon as possible. For some reason, however, I did neither of those two things and instead chose to keep the fifty dollar bill.

It continued to exert an odd pull on me. I felt that, no matter how good the reason, it was unjust that whoever was producing such immaculate counterfeits was able to persist unhindered. And not unjust because he was violating the law, but the opposite – unjust because the world was not aware of the quality of his work. Yes, I saw him as my adversary, but any worthy adversary deserves only the highest respect. I wanted to keep this bill as a reminder of this counterfeiter’s accomplishments, so that, if he were never apprehended or the case was never pursued for political reasons, someone would know the secret behind the greatest counterfeit ever produced.

You know by now about my private hobby, Leon Warnerke. I discovered him amid my casual study of the history of counterfeit. The first lead I had were the newspaper articles detailing his arrest in 1898 for passing counterfeits and refusing to disclose where he had received them. Out of curiosity, I began to study his background and became curious about his work as a photographer. Certain discrepancies about his birthplace and the talents he would have cultivated in his profession led me to theorize about what might lie beneath the surface of an otherwise upstanding life. I then tried, with the modest means available to me, to acquire some of his personal papers and correspondence from private collections and museums – none of which understood the import of the documents other than as nineteenth century artifacts. For this I was grateful as it substantially reduced the purchase price. I soon developed a working theory of Leon Warnerke’s true life, as Wladyslaw Malachowski, the Polish revolutionary, and then Leon Warnerke, the photographer who was secretly part of some obscure organization attempting to bring down the economies of Europe by counterfeiting currency. Everything I discovered is in your hands. If you found this tape by way of the path I intended, then you have all the details and connections I ever found. Much of this Europe-wide conspiracy may never be known, unless other documents or members come to light.

I apologize for the digression, but I hope that it explains in small measure my selfish decision to keep the fifty dollar bill. It was my Leon Warnerke, a ghost, the counterfeit that could never be caught. Like Warnerke, I was a part of some secret history that might remain obscured for eternity. The fifty dollar bill was my only sign that it was a real history and not the delusional fantasy of an old man who had lost the zest for life.

But I wasn’t that old man, of course. I still loved my life and the people in it and soon I forgot about the fifty dollar bill, North Korea, Robert Harper and all of that strange business. Life really did return to normal and, when I thought from time to time about the entire affair, it felt unreal and I was not tempted to look at the fifty dollar bill to prove that it had happened. Instead, I was surprisingly happy to leave the truth of all of the events in doubt. I left it in the back of my mind like a strange and pleasant dream. Perhaps I had returned to my senses and the bizarre impulses that had driven me to keep the banknote now faded as the events drifted into the remote past.

One week ago, I received a phone call from Robert Harper in the evening when I returned home from work. He sounded desperate and even a little flustered. If you knew this man, you would have been shocked to find him so. He usually exercised immaculate, almost uncanny control over his emotions. He said that he needed the fifty dollar bill and whether it had been left behind by accident. Though I no longer harbored a selfish desire to keep the banknote, I now feel victim to still more base emotions. I was ashamed and embarrassed that I had kept it, so I looked for a way to save face. I replied that I thought I had given everything back, but assured him that I would search my office thoroughly in case it turned up. He thanked me for my assistance and said goodbye.

I was about to hang up the phone and retrieve the fifty dollar bill from my desk when he told me to wait, that there was something else. His voice was now thoroughly suffused with anxiety and he described something I cannot verify for you, although depending on how far in the future this recording finds you, these events may already be public. According to Robert Harper, the governments of North Korea and South Korea, along with the United States, have brokered a major agreement. North Korea has agreed to relinquish its nuclear program and both North and South Korea are planning to negotiate a possible reunification. In return for its willingness to give up its aggressive weapons programs and, seemingly, to cease its hostile stance toward South Korea, the United States is planning to normalize relations with North Korea until the eventual reunification. At the time of this recording, the talks have not yet been announced, but Harper informed me that they were scheduled to begin December 10 in Seoul.

What Harper said, though, is that United States policy makers had no idea that North Korea was widely counterfeiting our currency. The CIA had been building the case using the reports and expertise I had lent them, but had yet to present it. Since he took the other counterfeit samples back from me, Harper continued, the CIA had generated a rough estimate of the North Korean counterfeiting operation at almost fifty million dollars over the last ten years. The government officials brokering the nuclear talks had no idea that North Korea engaged in such aggressive activities, nor did they realize the economic threat this posed. If fears arose that hard to detect counterfeits of United States currency were in wide circulation, they could erode confidence in the dollar. Thanks to my help, the CIA had the information they needed to apprise top-level United States diplomats of the situation so that it could be addressed and considered discretely.

I found this all simultaneously terrifying and fascinating, but had yet to understand how or why it concerned me. Fortunately – or, rather, unfortunately – Robert Harper answered this question before I could even ask it. The CIA’s counterfeit investigation was being headquartered out of the Empire Peninsula Hotel in Seoul. Harper traveled there from time to time to supervise and, in fact, just returned from a visit there last week. While he was there, North Korean clandestine agents cornered him in the hotel elevator and spirited him to a room in some distant corridor of the hotel. They had become aware that the CIA was investigating their counterfeit industry and threatened to kill him unless he ended the investigation. After letting him go, he returned to the rooms the CIA had rented only to find them completely ransacked and the four agents who had been working on the case brutally and efficiently murdered.

Harper realized that the North Korean government –and perhaps Kim Jong-Il himself – had too much at stake in the nuclear negotiations to risk their derailment as a result of counterfeiting activities. Once they discovered that the CIA had detailed knowledge of these activities, they took swift action. All of the samples the CIA had recovered were destroyed, along with all of my reports and analysis. What little was left hardly sufficed to form a convincing case to United States diplomats and policy makers with a vested interest in normalizing relations with North Korea and curbing its nuclear ambitions. Harper’s claims would never be taken seriously. The fifty dollar bill, he said, now formed the last link in the chain connecting North Korea to counterfeiting and that was why he needed it so desperately.

But there was more. He also warned me that the North Koreans had stolen all of the case files and reports stashed at the Empire Peninsula Hotel. In those files were references to my own involvement. The North Koreans had killed CIA agents and were surely willing to kill anyone else with knowledge of the counterfeiting investigation. Harper warned me to be careful, that I was potentially in grave danger. He said that he would alert me if the North Koreans arrived in Washington, DC, and that I should be ready to travel to Langley at any time, if necessary, in order to protect my life.

At this point, I confessed that I did indeed have the fifty dollar bill, but was so embarrassed that I had not returned it before and wanted to save face. Rather than the wave of anger I expected, Harper’s tone became almost relieved and the frantic undulations that had opened the conversation disappeared, as if the mere knowledge that the fifty dollar bill was in safe hands assuaged his own worst fears. He did not reproach me for my mistake, but said that he would arrive later that evening to retrieve the fifty dollar bill.

That was two nights ago and, as of this evening, he still has not come to my house or established any kind of contact with me. Yesterday and this morning I called Langley, but the operator said that he was unavailable. After much forceful urging on my part, the operator reluctantly disclosed that Harper had not been in the office for weeks. I have now grown increasingly worried that some ill fate has befallen Harper. Perhaps the North Koreans have already gotten to him and decided to kill him instead of leaving him alive as they did in Seoul. Or perhaps some other urgent business regarding the peace talks has diverted his attention. I do not know. But I have taken his warnings seriously and I now fear for my safety. Paranoia may be exercising an unnatural hold over me, but I have developed the feeling since he called that I am being followed and watched at various times throughout the day.

Yesterday afternoon, I resolved to leave the counterfeit fifty dollar bill to you in the event that something should happen to me. If you are listening to this, then you followed the clues I assembled hastily to deliver the fifty dollar bill and its secret safely to you. I expected that you know the fifty dollar bill is counterfeit, otherwise I doubt you would have gotten this far. What you don’t have is the extensive proof that it is a counterfeit and the complex network I discovered linking the printing supplies to North Korea. All of the data is stored on a memory stick in drawer B-014697, in the same row where you found this recording. You will find the memory stick contains full copies of the reports I created along with the various production reports and shipping receipts with which Robert Harper supplied me during our investigation a year ago.

I cannot instruct you to take this information to Robert Harper – you have to make your own choice. If you have gotten this far then I am dead and can only imagine that my cursed bequest has exposed you to more danger than I could ever in my right mind intend. Please believe that I never wished anything but the best for you, Ionia. I felt it my duty to pass this secret on, to do whatever I could from preventing it from falling into the wrong hands. It is my own fault that I did not immediately return the fifty dollar bill when I found it in my desk. I apologize deeply if the sins of the father are now being visited upon you. And you are like a daughter to me. It is for that reason that I had faith in your ability, not only follow my clues where no one else could, but also to make the right decisions where I could not.

Now I leave you with the terrible choice of what to do with this information. Please forgive an old man who loves you very much. You deserve better.

Forty-Three

I wiped my tear stained cheeks with my shirtsleeve and sat completely motionless, my eyes still firmly shut. A small rustling told me Christian had left his seat by the computer and I felt his hand rest gently on my shoulder. I snuffled loudly, then took a deep breath and opened my eyes to see Christian positioned in front of me with a look of deep concern and sympathy painted across his face. I smiled weakly and patted his hand, signaling him that it was ok to withdraw. He understood and returned to his chair, now rotated around so that he could face me.

“We need to figure out what to do next,” I said, my voice still fragile and thin.

“Are you sure you’re up to thinking about this right now?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we just go home? We can talk through this all tomorrow.”

“No,” I declared flatly. “I appreciate your sensitivity, but do you really think we should wait on any of this?”

He twisted around to check something on the computer before answering.

“You’re right,” he sighed, turning back to me, “It’s December third today. That means the peace talks start in one week exactly. If we’re going to do something, we had better do it now.” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with his left index finger and thumb. “Let’s think about what we know and what we don’t know.”

“Assuming that there’s a memory stick downstairs with all of the information Arthur claims,” I began, “Then we know the fifty dollar bill was a counterfeit produced by the government of North Korea, not some Asian mafia, like Robert Harper said. And even though he clearly lied to us, we know that Robert Harper works for the CIA – I mean, he even has an office in Langley, so he can’t have duped Arthur by merely masquerading around under the guise a CIA agent.”

“And what about Bae and the men who kidnapped me?” Christian asked. “Who are they?”

“Bae said he was South Korean and I believe him,” I replied. “And he said they were North Korean. That makes sense, doesn’t it? They were the North Korean agents that Robert Harper told Arthur about, the ones who would do anything to prevent word about North Korea’s counterfeit activities from getting out and derailing the talks. They must have tracked him down after ransacking that hotel room in Seoul – where was it?”

“The Empire Peninsula Hotel,” Christian said.

“Right, they must have found out about Arthur there and then come to the United States to kill him.”

“But why would they kill him? Didn’t they want the fifty dollar bill?”

“Maybe they did want it, but he wouldn’t give it to them. And anyway, Arthur knew too much – maybe they just couldn’t risk leaving him alive.”

“Then why did they leave us alive two weeks ago at Dupont Circle?”

“I don’t know,” I said and looked down retrospectively before suggesting, “Maybe because the police arrived?”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Christian said, shaking his head. “They seemed satisfied at just receiving the fifty dollar bill. Anyway, the North Koreans who ransacked the hotel room in Seoul would have known the fifty dollar bill was a counterfeit. The only reason they left me alive was because they had no idea what the fifty dollar bill meant. They were waiting for you to figure it all out. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“But I trust Bae,” I insisted. “Maybe this was a different group of North Koreans, ones who didn’t know about what happened in Seoul.”

Christian looked at me skeptically, but refrained from comment. He didn’t need to say anything. I barely believed any of what I had said myself. Two independent groups of North Koreans, both after the fifty dollar bill, neither aware of what the other one knew – it didn’t sound especially plausible. Even if what Arthur revealed on the recording was accurate, it still didn’t explain everything.

“At least we know Robert Harper lied,” I said bitterly. “It wasn’t some Asian mafia that hired Arthur. It was Harper himself who sought Arthur out. Arthur was no traitor.” As sad and frightening as it was to listen to that recording, to hear Arthur’s frightened voice recount his last, uncertain days, I could not help but feel a wave of relief pass over me to know with finality that I had not given my trust and affection to a traitor. Perhaps it had been selfish of him to leave me in this mess after his death, but at least he had never lied to me about who he really was or where his allegiances lay and had been motivated only to do what was right before it was too late. Ever since Robert Harper told us Arthur’s awful secret in the police van, I had not wanted to believe it, to think that I had been taken in by a common and opportunistic traitor. Perhaps that, more than anything else, drove my renewed pursuit of the letters. I looked at Christian, sure I would see the same relief in his eyes, happy to see me at peace again. But instead, I found him looking at me anxiously.

“Are we sure?” he asked uncomfortably.

“And what does that mean?” I shot back icily and narrowed my eyes.

“Well, if Arthur really cared about you, maybe he didn’t want you to know the truth.” I opened my mouth to object, but he stifled me with a gentle wave of his hand. “I know that doesn’t explain the men who kidnapped me -- or anything really. But we can’t just assume that what he’s telling us is the truth.”

“What about the memory stick he hid down in the counterfeit library?” I said, standing up from my chair as if to make directly for the elevator. “What if all the documents linking the counterfeits to North Korea are there?”

“Couldn’t he have just concocted all of that? Maybe this whole elaborate game was just an attempt to clear his name, at least with you.” I rolled my eyes dismissively, but he continued undeterred. “Look Ionia, he clearly cared about you a lot, loved you even. Perhaps he couldn’t bear the shame of what he had done. Maybe, when he knew the end was coming, he didn’t want you to ever know the truth. So he didn’t just keep it all a secret, he left a trail that led to this secret. Only the secret is a lie, the way he wished things could have been. Maybe the truth isn’t buried away in a maze of letters, mysterious hotel rooms and invisible ink. Maybe it’s out in the open and you just don’t want to believe it.”

By the time Christian finished speaking, his voice had risen from a hesitant whisper to a righteous shout. He realized this with some embarrassment and mumbled an apology, his cheeks red with anger. I almost met his frustration with my own fire, but checked myself. Even if that memory stick had everything Arthur said, we still wouldn’t know if he had been telling the whole truth. Christian was right. Robert Harper may not have been lying. Maybe the truth was in Leon Warnerke, the man who lived a double life that became more real that his own, true life, that of Wladyslaw Malachowski. In the end, when he sat in a Paris jail after he was apprehended for passing counterfeits, maybe he wished he could choose which life were his own. If he could put aside Wladyslaw Malachowski for good and invent a new past, one without a Polish revolution, a Paris Commune, an executed father, or fallen comrades. In some desolate moment, he may have prayed to be the man everyone thought he was. Did Arthur face the same fate in his final days? Did he suddenly face with fear and worry, not the death that awaited him, but the possibility that we – that I – would discover the man he really was?

“Just wait here,” I ordered Christian and then proceeded to walk out the door and down the corridor to the elevator. I descended to the library subbasement and retraced our steps to the second to last row of drawers before the far wall. The serial number Arthur had indicated on his recording, B-014697, was burned into my memory and I found it just past the drawer where we had found the digital playback device. I ripped open the drawer and paid little attention to the aged counterfeit inside, instead lifting it up immediately to reveal the small, grey memory stick beneath. I picked it up and slid it into my pocket before slamming the drawer shut and returning to the elevator. For the second time today, I exited the library, only this time without nervousness, but rather a sense of grim determination. I no longer cared what the ending of this whole sad story was – I just wanted to get there.

When I stepped back into my office, I saw Christian had not moved, but sat in his chair sullenly staring at the floor. He looked up as I entered and was about to speak when his eyes caught sight of the memory stick. Whatever sound was about to exit his through sublimed into the air noiselessly. I walked around him to the back of the computer and shoved the device into the correct port. A small bell rang from the speakers to signal a successful connection. I moved to the front of the computer and Christian pushed his chair back deferentially to allow me access to the keyboard.

A small window appeared on the screen and listed the contents of the memory stick. It was mostly images along with a few text documents. I clicked on one of the icons at random and a digital scan of a shipping report popped onto the screen. It was for security color changing ink. I selected another icon, this time for a document, and read a typed report on the movement of a tarlatan cloth, which is a kind of open-weave fabric used to clean the ink of an intaglio press plate. Because I was opening the files at random, I absorbed the information in a jumble, so that each document was cut adrift from the context and sequence that gave it meaning. But as I continued digging through the files, the mass of documents, reports, and receipts began to sort itself out, as though my mind shifted and clicked each item into place like the colored panels on a Rubik’s Cube.

“I don’t think he could have doctored all of this,” I said as I closed the last of the computer files. I had been hunching over the keyboard the entire time and now I stepped backwards feeling for the swiveling office chair. I grimace and exhaled lightly as I sat down, my back shocked to stretch back into shape so suddenly after contorting over the computer so awkwardly.

Christian did not at first respond and maintained his disconsolate gaze at the floor. Finally he looked up.

“Are you sure?” he asked quietly.

“No,” I sighed, “I’m not sure. But it just doesn’t look fake. Christian, you should see this stuff. The picture of North Korea’s counterfeiting operations – it’s complete. I mean everything is here. To forge all of this would take months.”

“That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have—” Christian before but I cut him off.

“Yes, I know it doesn’t mean he couldn’t have forged it all. And it certainly doesn’t mean everything he said in that recording is accurate, but we can find out if this information is correct. Look, if what he said is true, then American policymakers are walking into these talks blind. They’re going to normalize relations with a country that has counterfeited millions of dollars. CIA agents died trying to investigate this and if we don’t do something, their sacrifice will be in vain. Look, I don’t know who to trust any better than you and I wish none of this had ever happened, but we can’t just run away, can we?”

“No, we can’t,” he agreed reluctantly. “So what do we do?”

“I’m just going to call Robert Harper and tell him what we know,” I replied. At this Christian recoiled, his brow furrowed skeptically.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked.

“What else can we do? You’re right – maybe he was telling us the truth or maybe Arthur was. Either way, we know he wanted that fifty dollar bill. These files are better proof than that single banknote of the North Korean counterfeiting scheme.”

Christian brought his index finger to his upper lip and considered my words. After a moment, he nodded his agreement and I rolled my chair over to the desk. I picked up the phone and dialed the operator.

“Yes, could you connect me to Langley please?” I asked, certain the operator would know I was referring to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, northwest of downtown.

I heard a few clicks and then, “Central Intelligence Agency, how may I help you?”

“Yes, could you please connect me to Robert Harper?”

“Could you please identify yourself?”

“Ionia Han, United States Secret Service.” I gave my employee number and waited while she checked the information against a database of federal law enforcement personnel.

“I’m sorry,” she replied a moment later, “Robert Harper is not in his office today. Would you like to leave a message?”

“No,” I said and pursed my lips glumly. “Do you know when he will be back?”

“No ma’am, I don’t.”

“Ok then, well—” I was about to say goodbye and hang up, but I felt Christian tug on my sleeve and extend a small scrap of paper in front of my face. On it, he had hastily written “Ask for Jonathan Attleton.” Of course, I thought, and directed a smile of thanks to Christian. Jonathan Attleton had been the other CIA employee Arthur mentioned, the one who had met with him and Robert Harper at the very beginning.

“Wait,” I said hastily. “Could you put me through to Jonathan Attleton instead?”

“Yes, just a moment,” the operator replied and I gave Christian a thumbs-up. After several more clicks on the line, a deep voice answered sharply on the other end.

“Attleton,” was all he said.

“Jonathan Attleton?” I clarified.

“Yes, who is this?”

“Oh, sorry,” I stammered. “This is Ionia Han at the Secret Service. I’m calling because I have been unable to reach Robert Harper and I have some very important information for him.”

“I’m sorry to hear that Miss Han,” he said impatiently. “Please feel welcome to leave him a message.”

“No, look, this can’t wait. I need you to help me get in touch with him. This is very urgent.”

“I have no doubt that it is, miss, but I can’t help you. I’m not sure who gave you my name or told you to call me, but I’m afraid that I have urgent business of my own and—”

“I got your name from Arthur Mantes,” I replied. This silenced Attleton completely.

“What did you say?” he whispered, the self-importance drained from his voice.

“I said I got your name from Arthur Mantes. I worked for Mantes in the Forensic Services Division of the Secret Service. He left me important information concerning a counterfeit investigation, information that I need to convey to Robert Harper. Is there anyway that you can put us in touch or send him a message?”

“Are you calling from a secure line?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And this is concerning North Korea, I assume?”

“It is.”

“Well Ms. Han, I’m truly sorry, but I can’t help you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Robert Harper left for Seoul several weeks ago. Unfortunately, he hasn’t checked in for over a week. Repeated attempts to contact him have failed.”

“And you have no idea where he is?” I asked, my voice cracked with despair.

“None.”

“I just need to know about Arthur Mantes and his, his—involvement with all of this.”

“I can’t tell you about that. You don’t have the appropriate clearance.”

I hung my head and rubbed my forehead in frustration.

“Can you tell me anything?” I asked angrily. “Anything at all?”

“Look Miss Han,” he began harshly before softening his tone in apparent sympathy. “I’m sorry, this is all highly classified information. I can’t answer any of your questions.”

“Ok,” I said with resignation. “But what about all of this information?”

“What kind of information?”

“It’s a bunch of reports and documents from the investigation. Mantes left it all for me on a memory stick.”

“I’d suggest that you drop it all off at Langley. I’ll make sure Harper gets it when he reestablishes contact.”

“But what if you don’t hear from him? Doesn’t someone need to look at this now?”

“Leave that judgment to us,” he replied. “Is that all?”

“Yes,” I mumbled.

“Thank you for your assistance then. Just drive the memory stick over later tonight and leave them at the front desk. Someone will be there all evening” he said, before adding, “I’m sorry I can’t answer questions you might have about Arthur Mantes, but I assure you that you’ve done the right thing in calling me.”

I surrendered a weak goodbye and hung up the phone. Christian could see the disappointment on my face, but could not suppress his curiosity.

“Well?” he asked. “What did he say? I’m guessing he wasn’t very helpful, but—” He trailed off and waited for me to respond.

“Robert Harper has gone missing,” I said. “Attleton said he traveled to Seoul a few weeks ago—probably right after Dupont Circle.”

“Missing?” Christian raised his eyebrows. “Does this have to do with the counterfeit?”

“I don’t know, I mean, I’m not sure. Arthur’s name meant something to Attleton. It was the only thing that kept him on the line, really. But he wouldn’t tell me anything else and he didn’t seem to be too excited about all these documents Arthur left behind. He just asked me to drop the memory stick off sometime tonight, like it was no big deal.”

“That is strange,” Christian agreed, his face scrunched tightly as if he were trying to puzzle something out. “The way Arthur described it, the fifty dollar bill was the linchpin for any attempt to warn United States diplomatic officials before engaging in the peace talks. With only a week to go, you’d think Attleton would be desperate with any information that might influence the outcome of the talks and future United States policy toward North Korea. Unless—”

“Unless what?” I asked.

“Unless Robert Harper was telling the truth the whole time. I know you said it would be almost impossible, but if he just invented all those documents to exculpate himself – if he really was just working for some criminal group – then maybe he just made all that up about the importance of the bill to the peace talks and these files would be useless to the CIA in their attempts to take down the real counterfeiting ring.”

I put my head in my hands, my eyes hot with tears of frustration.

“It can’t be,” I said. It had come out instinctively, but as soon as I spoke the words, I knew they were true.

“Ionia,” Christian said comfortingly, “I know you don’t want to believe it, but—”

“No,” I said, lifting my head as my growing excitement dried the tears. “It can’t be true. Just now—on the phone—” my mouth couldn’t keep up with my brain, “I mentioned the counterfeit investigation, but it was Attleton who mentioned North Korea.”

“Wait, what?” Christian asked.

“Attleton was going to hang up and then I told him about Arthur and the counterfeiting investigation. Then he asked if we were on a secure line. When I said we were, he said that he assumed I was talking about North Korea.” I stopped for a moment to catch my breath and collect my wits.

“Ok, then it is North Korea that was responsible for counterfeiting,” Christian said and rose from his chair in order to pace my small office. “But that still doesn’t prove that everything Arthur told us was true and it makes Attleton’s lack of urgency about the memory stick and the data it contains all the more mysterious.”

“You’re right,” I declared. “It doesn’t prove anything, which is why I’m going to ask the one person who knows the answers.”

Christian stopped in mid stride and stared at me questioningly, his head cocked to one side.

“Well, Robert Harper, of course,” I said.

“Harper?” he recoiled. “Didn’t Attleton say he had gone missing? How are you going to find him?”

“I don’t know, but I know where to start, at least.”

“Where?” he asked, now thoroughly confused.

“The Empire Peninsula Hotel in Seoul.”

Part Four

Forty-Four

“This is insane,” Christian said beneath a yawn as the plane taxied down the runway at Incheon National Airport. Out the window I could see the giant terminal arc away from us as the two long concourses which protruded out of it like antennae loomed closer. A chill of excitement ran through me. Through this port of entry, I felt that I would not cross into another country, but would become inverted, a negative exposure of myself. The facial features, name, and lineage that had set me apart from other Americans would now allow me to blend with the native population and that which had made me American, my voice and language, cultural values and beliefs, would mark me as foreign. My whole life, I had regarded my Korean attributes as constitutive of my being, the things that gave me a unique place in the world. I was about to be born again, set adrift to find new moorings from which to anchor my identity.

“This is insane,” Christian grumbled again, reminding me that I wasn’t here on a voyage of self-discovery, a vacation to recover the lost memory of where I came from. We were here to discover the truth about the fifty dollar bill and about Arthur. I had not been blessed with the luxury of convincing Christian through a long battle of attrition, holding out until he capitulated. With less than a week until the peace talks, I had been forced to proffer an urgent justification for the adventure. If Arthur was right, I had said, then I could not in good conscience, as an agent of the United States government, allow the information to lay fallow. Christian wasn’t stupid and countered that I had a ready option to ensure the contents of the memory stick made their way to the right hands: I could simply drop them off at the CIA as I had been instructed by another agent of the United States government, one conceivably more proximate to the situation than I.

At that point, I was forced to come clean to both myself and Christian, although I have a feeling he knew my real motivations better than I did. I wanted the truth about Arthur. I had to know whether he was a traitor or not, if our entire quest had been an elaborate lie devised by a man headed toward his just demise. And I felt I owed that to Arthur, too. Before we listened to the recording, I wasn’t so sure I owed him anything, but now, after everything he had done for me while he was alive, I had to give him – or his legacy at least – a chance. He had given me reason to try and discover with certainty who he really was.

Still, I refused to surrender the practical validity of my plan to travel to Seoul in search of these answers. If Arthur had been telling the truth and if this information was crucial to policy makers, I argued, then we could bring it directly to the United States embassy if our attempt to find Robert Harper did not meet with immediate success. Moreover, I said, our knowledge of the Empire Peninsula Hotel gave us an advantage in the search. All Jonathan Attleton said was that Harper hadn’t checked in with Langley in over a week, but maybe they didn’t send anyone out to look for him because there wasn’t anyone to spare. We knew exactly where to start looking, if what Arthur said was true, of course. I didn’t think this was a particularly strong argument, but by then Christian saw there was no way to sway me from my course of action. His only choice was to join in or be left behind.

Nonetheless, “You’re insane” remained his constant refrain throughout the entire process. He said it as I dug deep into my savings in order to book two last minute tickets from Washington to Seoul, as I filed for two weeks of vacation despite all the days I had taken off a month ago, as we took a shuttle out to Dulles, and at each of the two stops – in the Midwest and in Tokyo – during our twenty hours of travel. I had to admit that it was insane, but now it was what I had to do. Too many lives had been lost and, I thought to myself as I looked over at Christian, sound asleep over the Pacific, one too many had been risked. I told him that he didn’t need to accompany me, that I couldn’t ask him to do so, but that never seemed to be up for discussion. Either we were both going or neither of us was. I think he held out hope that I would change my mind, come to my senses and call it all off. That’s probably why he kept reminding me “You’re insane.” That he had now moderated his attitude, replacing “You’re insane” with “This is insane,” gave me reason to think I had won some small measure of acceptance from him. If the whole situation itself was insane, then maybe we were doing the only thing that could restore a modicum of sanity to a world that had collapsed around our heads. I hoped so anyway.

“I had a crazy dream last night,” Christian said, rolling his head along the seatback to face me. His brown hair was completely disheveled and the dark rings under his eyes told me he had achieved less sleep than he might have liked. I probably looked the same.

“Yeah?” I asked, trying to sound interested through my own travel induced fatigue.

“In the dream, I was on my winter break and planning to go home to visit my family. I took the red-eye from New York – because I’m a poor student obviously.”

“Obviously,” I playfully agreed.

“And I feel asleep, completely exhausted after a semester of grinding through the extremely large workload I’m notorious for taking on,” he grinned. “I woke up to the sound of the flight attendant announcing our impending arrival, but realized – to my horror – that I wasn’t about to land in some regional Midwest airport a short drive from my home. Instead I was moments away from winding up in the middle of Seoul on an ill-advised and insane mission to save the world from a Communist plot to counterfeit American currency.” He wiped a hand across his brow in mock relief. “What a nightmare, huh?”

“Oh shut up already,” I laughed. “It might be crazy, but it’s not that bad. You’re on an all expense paid trip to a country you’ve never seen and you’re in the middle of a long break anyway. I had to use all my vacation to do this.”

It was his turn to laugh. “‘It might be crazy, but it’s not that bad’? There are some words to live by. And I do feel bad about you paying for all this. I mean, it was my decision to come along. I could probably pay you back, you know. Maybe not all at once, but--”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “At least not know, anyway. It’s no big deal.”

“Alright. But if we find more where that fifty dollar bill came from, I could probably pay you back right away.”

I laughed again. Christian wasn’t usually so silly. I wasn’t sure it was his way of dealing with his unease or if he was just slaphappy from the jetlag. Maybe both, I supposed. Either way, I was glad he was with me, I thought to myself as the plane ground to a halt in front of the gate. When the fasten seatbelt sign flicked off, we stiffly rose from our seats and stretched before removing our carryon luggage from the overhead bin and joining the line of people in the aisle. Once outside the plane, we made our way easily through customs. We had each only brought a single carryon suitcase and had no need to wait at baggage claim for any additional luggage. Finally, after nearly a day spent in the sterile confines of either airplanes or airports, we stepped out of the terminal into the cold Korean winter. I felt momentarily enlivened from the mere intake of real, polluted, unadulterated air. My relief was short lived, however, because a biting wind sheered right through my weary bones. The forecast had called for temperatures in the high 20s, but in my bizarre mix of exhaustion and anxiety it felt even colder.

Incheon International Airport is located on an island in the Yellow Sea, just west of Seoul. The express train connecting the airport to the city had not yet been completed, so we waited about ten minutes for an express bus that would take us downtown in just under an hour. Seoul straddles the Han River in a basin surrounded by hills. As the bus intersected with the river and dove into the city, skyscrapers sprouted up around us and immersed us in an urban cocoon of steel and glass above and pavement beneath. Soon we reached Itaewon, a district north of the Han River that was extremely popular with tourists and thousands of United States soldiers stationed in nearby Yongsan Garrison. In addition to many of the major international hotel chains, it was home to the Empire Peninsula Hotel. While I couldn’t convince Christian it was a good idea to stay at the hotel itself, he had little objection to staying somewhere nearby.

As we stepped off the bus, the crush of the city’s population was palpable. Over ten million people reside within the city limits. That’s two million more people than New York crammed into over two hundred fewer square kilometers, making Seoul not only one of the world’s most populous cities, but also one of the most dense. It was the middle of the afternoon and a steady traffic of cars and people whirled around us as if all ten million Seoulites were determined to prove that density was more than just a statistic. We took our bearings and navigated the crowded streets to our hotel, located only a few blocks away. The American patronage of the neighborhood was immediately evident as we passed numerous American sports bars and English style pubs as well as a fleet of international restaurants ranging from Middle Eastern to French mingled with more than one steakhouse.

The hotel itself was modest, not more than five stories high, and the façade was dingy and grey. It was privately run and I had chosen it mainly on the basis of cost and location, rather than comfort. Once inside, we saw that the worn exterior belied a well kept and clean lobby. It was bereft of ostentatious decoration, but nicely manicured plants adorned a small corridor leading to the front desk. A young Korean woman greeted us with a warm smile from the behind the desk.

“Good afternoon, how may I help you?” she asked in Korean, looking straight at me. I did not reply, slightly taken aback. I had deliberately avoided using any Korean since our arrival. Having never spoken it outside of home, I remained unsure of myself as if it were a skill I had in some previous life, knowing it rationally without any feel for it. Of course, the attendant couldn’t have guessed this and, based on my appearance, she made the reasonable assumption I was fluent.

“A reservation for Han,” I said slowly.

“Just a moment,” she replied and went to work on a keyboard behind the desk. “Here it is. Twin room, correct?” I nodded. “Your room is 415. Here are your keys. I see you’ll be checking out in two weeks?” I nodded again, pleased that I could answer each question thus far without speaking. “Very good, Ms. Han. There is a small booklet in the room containing information on amenities, breakfast, and checkout procedures. Please consult it when you have a spare moment and don’t hesitate to ask us any questions you might have.”

“Thank you,” I said and took the two keys from her hand. I gave a final nod of thanks and handed Christian one of the keys before walking to the nearby elevator. We arrived on the fourth floor and needed little time to locate our room as each level of the hotel only held about ten rooms. Christian pushed the door open and held it for me as he stepped inside. It was quite small, but very clean and surprisingly well furnished. There were two small twin beds with new looking linens and a writing desk shoved into one corner. Next to the writing desk was a red easy chair. Facing the beds was a medium sized flat screen television, not the small, decades old televisions that gasp for life in American budget hotels. Because the flat screen television was hung on the wall, rather than stuffed in some large stand, the room had an expansive feel and gave me hope that Christian and I wouldn’t go stir crazy during our two weeks there. Next to the door was a bathroom with standup shower, sink and toilet. Aside from the basics, the room was painted an odd, mint green color which was interrupted only by a window that opened out to the alley behind the hotel.

“Oh man I need a nap,” Christian said as he flopped down onto the bed.

“I’m going to take a quick shower and then maybe grab a bite to eat,” I replied. “The room’s all yours after that.”

“Deal,” he assented and sat up just enough to rip his dark sweater off and toss it into a corner of the small room.

I exercised slightly more modest restraint and waited until I was in the bathroom before I removed my clothes, wrinkled and stale from a day of travel. The warm water felt heavenly to my dry skin and I washed my hair twice with the exotically scented hotel shampoo, vigorously tearing the tangles out of my long hair. I luxuriated in the shower for a long while and started to lose track of myself before I realized that Christian might be waiting for me to finish so he could sleep. I hastily shut off the water and stepped out in the steamy bathroom. I wrapped myself in a towel and peeked out into the room to see that Christian was sound asleep, half tucked under the covers to his bed. Relieved that I had not kept him awake and happy to see him peacefully at rest, I dug out a pair of jeans, a yellow sweater and, of course, fresh underwear from my suitcase and ducked back into the bathroom to pull everything on. I brushed my teeth and lightly applied some makeup before I deemed myself presentable to the greater Seoul public.

Once I was ready, I threw my coat around my shoulders and crept quietly out of the room. When the elevator doors opened on the main lobby, I discovered that the young Korean woman who had checked us in had been replaced by a slightly older man, although he sported the same welcoming smile. Perhaps it was hotel policy.

“How may I help you?” he asked in Korean as I approached the desk. The shower had reinvigorated my spirits and I answered back in Korean, this time with more confidence than I had when we first arrived.

“I was just looking for something to quick to eat,” I replied, “Is there anything particularly good around here?”

“Quick and easy,” he pondered. “Is gimbap ok?”

I nodded. Gimbap, the Korean variant of sushi, sometimes with egg and ham or beef rolled into the rice, sounded perfect. He produced a small map of the Itaewon area and circled a corner just off Sobangseo-gil, just between our hotel and the Itaewon Metro stop. I thanked him for the tip and started toward the door. As I slipped the map into my pocket, I caught myself and returned to the desk.

“Just one more question,” I said apologetically. “Could you also point me to the Empire Peninsula Hotel? I am supposed to meet a friend there tonight.”

“Of course,” he replied, “It’s just across the street from the restaurant I recommended, actually.”

At this I raised my eyebrows. Just across the street? Christian probably wouldn’t like me snooping around the hotel by myself. Still, just a peek couldn’t hurt. “I went to get something to eat and there it was,” I could tell him, “So I thought I’d get a look at the lay of the land.” Satisfied with my plan, I thanked the desk attendant again and made for the door as a small grumble of my stomach reminded me that any detective work would have to wait until after a meal.

Now the late afternoon, pedestrian and vehicular traffic filled the streets at an ever increasing pace. Signs in English and Korean spun around me and I saw that, in addition to the large complement of bars and clubs catering to the expat and military community, there was also a profusion of tailors hawking custom suits alongside stores of all kinds filled with souvenirs, designer handbags, furniture, music, traditional Korean crafts, and other bric-a-bracs. My other senses came alive to the city and I heard as much English as Korean vaulting over the incessant hum of car engines, punctured only by the blast of frustrated horns. The plurality of ethnic restaurants – a kind of culinary United Nations – also reasserted its presence, only this time through the complex mélange of scents that wafted through the air. I fought to divide my attention between the map and the storm of people, sound and smell that whirled through this new and exciting city. After a while, I wondered if I had become too distracted and strayed from the map. I turned it around in my hands and scanned the streets for some indication of where I was. About to give up and ask someone for directions, I aimlessly walked one more block when suddenly I found myself directly in front of the Empire Peninsula Hotel.

It was an imposing structure and it towered over me as I craned my neck to see all the way to the top. It had a grand, terra-cotta façade and the lower story windows were ringed with ornate scrollwork. About twenty stories high, an intricate cornice sat austerely atop the building. Yet for all its pomposity, some cracks in the walls and discoloration in the corbels that supported the cornice suggested this once magnificent hotel had seen better days. I suspected that it no longer stood proudly alongside Seoul’s fine luxury hotels but instead struggled for life, a forgotten gem in a neighborhood more cosmopolitan than Korean.

I eventually managed to tear my gaze away from the massive building and look across the street where I found the restaurant the hotel attendant had suggested. I walked towards it, but kept glancing over my shoulder as if it would disappear unless I held it firmly in my field of vision. Out of nowhere, the loud buzz of an engine flooded my ears and I froze as a motorcycle dodged past me. The driver turned around and angrily yelled some curse in Korean I could not make out as he sped away. I chastised my lack of awareness and resolved to keep my eyes firmly on the road until I reached the other side. The Empire Peninsula Hotel wasn’t going anywhere.

The gimbap restaurant was small and almost oppressively lit by long banks of uncovered fluorescent bulbs. The furnishings were simple, with tables and chairs neatly lined along two walls. At the far end, a counter divided the kitchen from the dining room. I approached the counter and ordered a single roll of beef gimbap which took only a small bite out of the Korean won I had withdrawn at the airport. On a busy day, I would probably have had to collect my food at the counter, but the restaurant was completely empty and the middle aged man who worked the cash register told me to sit down and he would bring my food directly to my table. My empty stomach soon took complete control and I hungrily gobbled up the roll in a matter of minutes. I leaned back and wiped the corners of my mouth as I indulged in a brief postprandial dip.

A few minutes after my physical left me, an insatiable curiosity to poke around the Empire Peninsula Hotel filled the void and I left the restaurant to venture back across the street. In all likelihood, I knew, I wouldn’t find anything at the hotel. In fact, the chances were slim to none that this entire crazy trip to South Korea would yield any of the answers I sought about Arthur. Still, as stepped through the grand revolving door leading into the hotel, I could not help the electric and conspiratorial feeling that I was walking back into the heart of some intrigue. I hoped the sensation was clairvoyance, but it was probably just wishful thinking.

Forty-Five

The inside of the hotel lobby was sumptuous and elegant but, like the exterior, it too showed signs of wear. Columns lined a marble floor to a large, wood paneled front desk. Two perfectly symmetrical clusters of sofas, loveseats and arm chairs sat on either side of the columns, each grouping arranged around a coffee table and facing a fireplace. The fireplaces looked authentic, although they now sat dormant. Chandeliers hung from a vaulted ceiling. But everything was old. The finish on the chandeliers was tarnished, the sofas showed small holes and the marble floor had lost its luster.

I shuffled past the front desk and attempted to exude a sense of purpose so as to deflect any attention from the hotel staff. The main lobby was large and I first looked to the left to find an elevator bay, a small telephone nook and the entrance to the hotel restaurant. I self-consciously walked back past the front desk to the other side of the lobby and found a large corridor that lead to several conference and convention rooms. I wasn’t sure what to do next and worried that I might start to draw unwanted attention from the hotel staff. It would probably be wise to leave as discretely as possible, I thought to myself, to limit the chance I would be recognized by the concierge or desk attendants should Christian and I return later. As I passed once more into the spacious lobby, I adjusted my route so that I walked through the small reception area on one side of the columns, rather than down the main walkway connecting the front door and the reception desk. The grouping of chairs and couches were clearly not designed to accommodate traffic and I found myself treading awkwardly around the once plush furniture and fretted that I might be attracting just the kind of attention I wanted to avoid.

I finally reached the door, but as I was about to exit the lobby, a gust of cold air rushed through the revolving door and it spun out a stampede of people. The sudden onslaught caught me off guard and I retreated back among the columns as the revolving door spat people out in groups of two or three. I soon saw that the first people to flow into the lobby were all photographers who immediately wheeled back around to face the entrance and they aimed and focused their cameras. Behind them, a huge contingent of hotel staff materialized, all aflutter and chattering frantically among themselves. I saw hotel managers and supervisors whispering hurried frustrated instructions that sent the rest of the staff scurrying down the hallways. As soon as they issued their orders, however, looks of fear and consternation morphed into pristine smiles and they filtered into the lobby expectantly. Once everyone had filled the great space, it no longer felt expansive but cramped and small. There was a long pause and everyone, photographers and hotel employees alike, fixed their eyes upon the door and held their bodies coiled into tight, statuesque poses, ready to leap at the first sign of movement. An unnerving silence hung in the air and, even though I had no idea whom we were waiting for, I felt my own stomach lurch in anticipation, as eager as everyone else for whatever was about to happen.

The door slowly started to turn and as soon as a black shoed foot appeared the crowd exhaled in a burst of camera flashes and cheers. The foot belonged to an elderly man of less than average height who nonetheless stood before the legions of photographers and hotel staff with commanding presence. His hair was cropped short and dark sunglasses hid his eyes, so that the only sign of his mood were his slightly upturned of his lips in an almost condescending smile. It was as if this hubbub was all part of his plan. Where most people would have been overwhelmed by the radiant bursts of light, he soaked it all in as though it were his sustenance, a source of limitless energy. He was flanked by two men, both dressed in black suits and also wearing sunglasses, though theirs were more thinly framed than his and they were both much younger in appearance. Behind him, an entourage of men and women of various ages slowly filled the small space between their leader and the door as if he formed an impenetrable barrier they could not cross, so that soon their large number was crammed completely against the door, while a wide space still separated him from the pack of photographers.

I thought I recognized the man standing before the crowd and as I stood transfixed by the scene taking place, I tried to recall where I had seen him before. After a few minutes of photographs, a short elderly man in a grey suit emerged out of the front rank of photographers and held a hand in the air to request silence. Flashbulbs and conversation slowly petered out until the lobby was once more in silence and the man spoke.

“On behalf of the entire Empire Peninsula Hotel,” he began in Korean, “I am pleased to welcome as a most honored guest Lee Chung Hee this afternoon for a meeting with the press. Our staff has prepared the banquet room just down that hallway. If you will all please move there, we can begin within the hour.”

So that’s why he looked familiar. Lee Chung Hee was the leader of the conservative South Korean Freedom Party who had denounced the upcoming talks and been threatening to disrupt them by bringing some sort of illicit activities to light the day the talks started. Perhaps today’s press conference would yield some clue to whatever cards Chung Hee had up his sleeve. I silently praised my luck, glad that I had decided to check out the hotel alone. The choice to hold the conference at the Empire Peninsula Hotel was probably coincidental and I hadn’t even considered there might be a connection between Chung Hee and Robert Harper’s whereabouts, but with nothing else to go on, I was interested in anything connected to the peace talks.

I was about to join the mass of reporters and photographers moving toward the succession of conference halls at the back of the ground floor when I recognized someone else among Lee Chung Hee’s entourage. It was the man who had kidnapped Christian, who had tried to kill me in my own apartment. What had Christian called him? Do Hyun-Su. That was his name. But he was a North Korean agent – what was he doing here? Was Lee Chung Hee in league with the North Koreans? That didn’t make any sense – he was trying to thwart the peace talks, after all. Something was wrong. As new questions and theories sped through my mind, a quiet worry struggled to become audible: I couldn’t let him see me. I tried to pick up my feet and move away, but they felt nailed to the ground. My heart quickened to a breakneck pace and my eyes, seemingly the only part of my petrified body that was still mobile, searched the room for an escape. It was too late. I saw him look at me, a glimmer of recognition that quickly gave way to surprise. He peeled away from the rest of Lee Chung Hee’s escort and started walking towards me.

I tore my feet from the ground and forced myself to move forward. I considered trying to hide myself in the crowd, but in a panic I opted for the elevator bay. I wove a path across the dense stream of people and stopped briefly in a small clearing that had formed next the front desk. I risked a look over my shoulder and saw him in hot pursuit, determination written all over his face. Where I had pushed and jostled my way through the reporters, they seemed to open their ranks for him, as though his mere presence repelled them from his path. I ducked back into the crowd and shot straight for the elevator. When I reached the elevator bay, small light indicators over the three elevators signaled their floor location. I saw the one on the right was stationed on the ground floor, so I smacked the up-arrow and ran over to the door. As it opened, I looked behind me and didn’t see Do Hyun-Su anywhere. I turned back to the elevator and, from the corner of my eye, spied a door to the stairs. That gave me an idea. Instead of stepping into the open elevator, I reached inside and hit the button for the 15th floor. Then I ran into the stairwell and sprinted up the steps. By the time I reached the fifth floor, I was panting heavily and stopped for a break. I didn’t hear anyone behind me, so I decided to leave the stairwell and look for a service elevator or some other route out of the hotel.

I walked through the door into a deserted hallway. Dark brown doors ran evenly along the beige walls and green carpeted floors. I walked past the elevators and down the hall, which came to a T-intersection. I couldn’t see clearly down either hall, so I chose right and lightly jogged past the hotel room doors until I reached a dead end. I turned around and jogged back to explore the other branch of the T-intersection, this time accelerating my pace. Just after I passed the hallway from which I came, something or someone grabbed hold of me. I felt a warm hand clasp over my mouth and an arm slide around the front of my waist and cinch both my arms to my body. I tried to wriggle free, but my captor only held me tighter, wheeled me around and started pulling me down the corridor.

Forty-Six

Our passage down the hall was disorienting because I was facing opposite to the direction we were moving. I barely noticed the hotel corridor slide past as I kicked and flailed, all the while trying to scream through the hand firmly planted over my mouth. I caught a glimpse of the elevators from the corner of my eye then heard a heavy door click open as we backed into the stairwell. Just inside the door we stopped and I felt my feet lower down to the ground, although my arms and mouth were still held fast. Suddenly, everything came free and I instinctively lunged for the stairs. I could only race forward one step, however, because a hand took hold my wrist and spun me around. As my body contorted around, a scream welled up in my throat and I opened my now uncovered throat to release. But when I saw who was grabbing hold of me, I found myself rendered mute and incapable of channeling anything out my taught vocal chords, as if sound itself had vanished from within me. I was looking at Bae.

I just stared at him for a long while, unable to speak and breathing heavily from my short but intense struggle a few moments before. He said nothing and soon let go of my wrist so that he could kneel down to the floor. I saw that he was not wearing any shoes and he reached next to the door to the stairwell where a pair of black loafers was placed neatly next to the base of the hinge. He silently slipped the shoes back on and then stood up to again face me.

“Why weren’t you wearing any shoes?” was all I could think to say. He smiled at this and I realized with some embarrassment the absurdity of making that my first question.

“I did not want you to hear me following you up the stairs,” he replied simply.

“What are you doing here?” I asked more logically.

“I was hoping to ask the same question of you,” he said. “But I came to see Lee Chung Hee.”

“When did you see me? I mean—why did you grab me back there, I—” I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say or ask and it was as if my mind’s frantic attempts to piece together what had just happened spilled over into an incoherent ramble.

“Just relax,” he said calmly and placed a hand on my shoulder. “I’m not trying to hurt you. I did not see you in the hotel lobby until you started moving through the crowd. From your expression, I could tell that you were afraid of something and then I saw—him. I followed you up the stairs, but did not want you to think I was him. I wasn’t sure how you would react if I surprised you in the hallway.” He squeezed my shoulder gently. “I just want to make sure you get out of here safely.”

All of my senses seemed to focus on the weight of his hand on my shoulder and as I stared into those bright eyes, my panic faded into the background and I felt my heart stir contentedly. Somehow, all the questions Bae’s presence could have raised felt distant and irrelevant. All that mattered was that we were standing here together. Nothing in his tantalizing eyes betrayed his thoughts and I could only wonder if he felt the same way. I brought my own hand up to my shoulder and placed it over his. It didn’t feel like the hand that had brusquely held me fast and covered my mouth in the hallway. In this moment, everything about him was softer, more tender. He had never held me as close as he did then, spiriting me down the corridor, and now I guiltily wished he would do so again.

Before I could fall any further under this spell, a door clattered below us and the sound of shoes striking the steps popped and snapped up the stairwell like gunshots. I pulled away and moved toward the door, but Bae stopped me.

“No,” he said. “There’s no way out there – follow me.” He took off up the stairs and I raced behind as fast as I could. The footsteps below us showed no sign of stopping. After a few flights, my energy flagged and I risked a look down the stairwell. It was Do Hyun-Su. Despite the distance between us, I could see the glint of perspiration across his brow and hoped he was as tired as I felt.

“Come on,” Bae called, now a full flight ahead of me. I turned back to see him beckoning to me with an anxious look across his face. I bowed my head and tried to move faster when a loud bang followed by the sound of a bullet ricocheting through the grey cement staircase arrested my step. Thoughtlessly, I peaked back over the railing to see Do Hyun-Su aiming his gun as he continued to run up the steps. I should have ducked back away from the railing immediately but something, fear maybe, paralyzed me. The muzzle flashed again and this time I felt myself jerked out of the way as the gun blast echoed off the walls. Bae had pulled me out of the way and now held me with both hands, an eerie calm suddenly spread across his face.

“Let’s go,” he said soothingly. I suddenly came to life, as though, counter intuitively, his mild command awakened some controlled panic within me. I now moved swiftly up the stairs, matching him stride for stride. After two more flights he motioned to the door and threw it open so that we could exit the stairs. Do Hyun-Su’s footsteps faded and then stopped as it slammed shut, but I could still hear – or feel – his pursuit in the back of my head. We were in another residential corridor, one identical to the floor below where Bae had accosted me.

“There’s a service elevator down this way,” he said as jogged to the left. “It doesn’t stop on every floor.”

I followed closely behind and at the end of the hall he took a right. After we passed about five hotel room doors we came to one labeled “STAFF ONLY” in English and Korean.

“In here,” he said.

The door opened to a drab nook with concrete walls on two sides and a small elevator door facing us. Bae tapped the down arrow and we waited for the elevator to arrive. I was thankful for a chance just to catch my breath and I bent over in fatigue, my hands planted firmly on my haunches. Almost too frazzled and winded to think, I noticed how nonplussed Bae seemed. His body was poised but not tense and he stood as if he were waiting for a bus, not an elevator to escape someone intent on killing both of us.

“Do you think we lost him?” I asked raggedly. He opened his mouth as if to answer, but the elevator door started to slide open and stepped aside to let me walk in ahead of him. I looked back as he followed and glimpsed a movement over his shoulder. Before I could react, the door to the elevator room swung open violently. Bae looked right at my eyes which must have widened in surprise and then followed them over his shoulder to the door. His body partially obscured my view but I could see Do Hyun-Su’s face and heaving shoulders in the doorframe.

Bae moved quickly and lunged right at him. He caught Do Hyun-Su off guard and they both fell to the floor from the force of the impact. Frozen, I watched them wrestle across the floor, each trying to vainly break out of the other’s grasp. Bae freed his right arm and reached behind his back where I saw his gun tucked away in a small holster. He tried to bring it around and aim it, but Do Hyun-Su knocked it out of his hand and it clattered across the floor towards me. As they kept fighting, I tried to watch intently, but felt as though I were looking at them from some hazy distance, like it was all happening in some other, far removed place, not right in front of my eyes.

I need to help Bae, I told myself and then tried to will my paralysis away. I looked down at the gun and forced myself to walk over to it and pick it up. At first my feet felt heavy as I dragged them against the floor and they resisted my internal commands. But with each step I gained further control over my body and my senses. By the time I reached the gun, I was back within the moment. I picked it up and aimed it at Hyun-Su, desperately attempting to control the shaking of my hands.

“Stop,” I said. My voice was raspy and terrified and for a split second I wondered if either of them had heard me. But they both stopped, Bae now pinned underneath Hyun-Su, who held him by the shirt collar with both hands and pinned him down with one knee pushed into his abdomen and the other on his right arm. I saw now that Bae’s nose was bloody and swollen and both men had bruises and cuts on their faces. Their forms had been clear to me, even in my momentary shock, but I had not see the bright blood until now. How badly had I been incapacitated by fear, I wondered, to have stood only a few feet away and yet registered next nothing of the violence in front of my eyes? Do Hyun-Su looked at my quivering hands and then stared right into my face as his lips curled into that awful and familiar smile, a small trickle of blood running from the corner of his mouth. In this state, there was no way I could reliably hit him -- much less pull the trigger -- and he must have known it.

Suddenly, before he or I had time to do anything else, Bae swept his left arm into holster slung around Hyun-Su’s torso and released the gun. Hyun-Su whipped his head back down in shock, but it was too late. Bae squeezed the trigger and sent a round into Hyun-Su’s stomach. His body lurched upward and then straight down so that he fell onto Bae. He clawed at limply while he moaning in agony. His right hand now free, Bae pushed Hyun-Su off, then knelt and aimed the gun at his chest with both hands. He pulled the trigger again. Blood soaked into Hyun-Su’s blue shirt and formed a black patch that grew and spread through the fabric like a dye until it met a similar patch near his stomach. His body shook and jerked a few times and then he was still.

I remained frozen, the gun still in my shaking hands and aimed at the now vacant spot Do Hyun-Su had occupied just moments before. I had never seen anyone killed in front of me and the scene pushed me to the edge of despair. That day in New York after Christian and I had narrowly escaped from Do Hyun-Su and his accomplice and fled Washington was one of the hardest in my life. I had found it impossible to shake the icy fear that surged into my veins when I thought about how close to death Christian and I had been. Now I realized that there was a world of difference between seeing near death and actual death. There had been no choice. Do Hyun-Su had tried to kill me more than once. Yet the way life flickered and faded out of his body was one of the most awful scenes I had ever witnessed. Oddly, I was almost relieved that it was Bae and not I who pulled the trigger and robbed him of tomorrow.

Bae was still looking down at Hyun-Su’s body. After a moment, he sighed and rose from his crouch. He tucked Hyun-Su’s small gun into his pocket, although the handle stuck out indiscreetly. Turning to me, his face appeared to adopt a look of concern, but I was barely paying attention, my eyes still fixed on the empty space in front of the gun I held with both hands. He walked over slowly, put his hands gently over mine and massaged the gun from grasp. My knuckles were white and he had to almost pry the gun out of them.

“It’s ok,” he said as he replaced the gun in its holster. “You’re ok.” He brought a finger to my chin and tenderly guided it so that I looked him in the eyes. “Let’s get you home.” I nodded meekly and followed him into the elevator which had held open during the melee.

The elevator descended for several slow minutes before opening onto what looked like a laundry floor. Large carts full of sheets and towels sat in rows across the floor and middle-aged women in white uniforms scampered back and forth, some pulling the carts from one place to another, others heaving large sacks across the concrete floor. Bae took my hand and pulled me swiftly through the work space as we both drew perplexed stares. The sounds of heavy machinery and steam mostly overpowered the women’s voice, but occasionally I heard the word for “blood” as they eyed the Bae’s nose. We angled around the various carts and pieces of equipment and I barely paid attention to what direction we were going until we came to a large green door. Bae pushed it open and a rush of cold air and city sounds greeted us as we stepped back into the streets of Seoul. I didn’t recognize any of the storefronts and guessed that we had exited somewhere behind the hotel.

Bae lifted his hand to hail a taxi and one shifted immediately out of the traffic and over to the curb. He helped me inside and then sat down behind me.

“Where are you staying?” he asked.

“What?” I replied, still too shell shocked to comprehend what was going on.

“Your hotel? Where is it?”

“Oh, sorry,” I said and told him the name, although it felt odd and unfamiliar on my tongue. I must have barely whispered my response, because Bae repeated the name to the cab driver.

“Are you ok?” I heard the cab driver ask in Korean.

“What?” Bae returned cautiously.

“Your nose,” he said and motioned around his own face. “I mean, I don’t want to pry, but doesn’t look to good.” His nose was broken. In my daze I had somehow completely ignored it.

“Oh Bae,” I said in English. “Let me see it.” He mumbled something to the cab driver about a fall and then turned to me, his body tense as I brought my hand to his face. It had looked gruesome at first, back in the service room where he had fought with Do Hyun-Su, but now there were just two dark blue lines radiating out from the bridge. Small bloodstains ringed his nostrils and his face was swollen between his eyes and mouth.

“It’s not too bad,” he said. “This has happened before. Really, I’ll be fine.” He managed a weak smile and took my hand from his face. He didn’t let go of it for the remainder of the ride and I didn’t pull away, but left my hand tightly interlocked with his.

When we arrived at the hotel, he stepped out and held the door for me. I expected him to pay the cab driver and follow me, but instead he told him to wait and took my hand again.

“Stay here,” he said. “In your room. I’ll come back later this evening.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, distressed. “What—what happened back there? I need to know—”

“Don’t worry,” he interrupted. “I’ll explain everything I can tonight. Just stay inside.”

He gave my hand a final squeeze and moved back into the cab, but I held him fast.

“Wait,” I said. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“Sorry I couldn’t help you today. I don’t know what happened. I was just so scared. Even afterward. I mean—that’s why I didn’t say anything about your nose or see how you were doing. I was barely awake.” I cast my eyes downward in shame. “I don’t know what to say. It was—hard.”

He cupped my chin in his hand and raised it so that our eyes met.

“There is something inside us that hates what happened today, that never wants to take part in it. Do not be sorry that part of you is still alive. Some of us were deprived of that sense long ago, but I promise you we would trade anything to have it back. I think it’s what makes a person good.”

He then leaned forward and kissed me. I felt him wince slightly as his nose pressed my face and our lips met gently, as if barely connected. As he pulled away, I followed slightly before finally letting go. He took my hand again and smiled crookedly through his bruised face and then ducked back in to the cab. I stood there in the cold and watched the taxi pick its way through traffic until it was out of sight completely. When it had finally disappeared, I sighed and turned around to go back into the hotel.

As soon as the doorway came into view, I recoiled slightly in surprise. Christian stood directly in front of me, his face frozen in shock and confusion.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked.

Forty-Seven

Before he could say anything else, I ran to him and embraced him tightly as I burst into tears. I felt his body, stiff from anger and bewilderment, loosen and relax as he brought his arms around me.

“Are you ok?” he asked softly.

I didn’t answer, but just buried my head in his chest and cried. He did not speak further and remained in the entryway to the hotel, holding me until my I stopped crying and my sobs gave way to normal though weary breaths. Wordlessly, he put an arm around my shoulder and led me to the elevator as I averted my eyes from the concerned and alarmed faces of the hotel staff. Once we reached the room, Christian set me down on the edge of the bed and went to the bathroom. He returned with a handful of toilet paper.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “I don’t think there are any tissues in here.”

I smiled and mumbled my thanks as gratefully used the wadded toilet paper to dab my eyes and blow my nose. Christian retreated again to the bathroom and came back with a glass of water. I drank thirstily and as soon as I finished he refilled it and then sat opposite me on his own bed.

“Are you ok?” he asked again.

“Yeah,” I sighed, my composure nearly regained, “I’m fine.” I took another large gulp of water. “Let me tell you what happened.”

I explained how I had only intended to find some food, but that I had been unable to quell my curiosity when I learned that the restaurant was right next to the Empire Peninsula Hotel. Christian’s face darkened at this confession, but he said nothing. I then told him about Lee Chung Hee’s unexpected appearance the hotel and how I had spotted Do Hyun-Su in Hee’s entourage. I mentioned that Bae had intercepted me as I ran from Do Hyun-Su, but left out the small details of our escape through the hotel. Do Hyun-Su had caught up with us, I said, and that Bae killed him. I didn’t say anything else about the incident or describe my crippling fear during their fight. I didn’t need to, either. It was clear that just witnessing death up close had left me shaken. After I was finished, Christian sat silently on the edge of his bed for a long while, staring blankly at the floor.

“What was Do Hyun-Su doing with Lee Chung Hee?” he asked finally.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” I replied. “Do you think Lee Chung Hee is somehow allied with the North Koreans?”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said and twisted his mouth skeptically. “Chung Hee is trying to undermine the peace talks. And from what I’ve been reading in the newspapers, he comes from a fringe right party that is almost militantly anti-North Korean. But let’s say there is something fishy going on between Lee Chung Hee and North Korea – can that explain Do Hyun-Su’s presence in his public entourage? Didn’t Bae tell you that Do Hyun-Su and the men who kidnapped me were from North Korean version of the CIA?”

“Intelligence,” I said. “At least, that’s what I think he told me.”

“So why would a North Korean secret agent expose himself in public like that? Even more perplexing, why would a high profile politician – especially one whose career is defined by his anti-North Korean stance – risk being seen with an enemy agent? Something doesn’t add up here.”

“Maybe no one knows he’s an agent,” I offered halfheartedly, although I didn’t really believe it myself. Christian was right. Something didn’t fit into what we knew about Do Hyun-Su and Lee Chung Hee.

Christian then spoke as though he could read my thoughts. “Ionia,” he said. “Lee Chung Hee’s affiliations are public. Everyone knows them. But who is Do Hyun-Su? We think he’s North Korean, but only because Bae told you. Look, I—” he stopped and took a deep breath before continuing, “I saw you kiss him today outside the hotel. I don’t know what, um, happened between you two before. It’s none of my business. But the things he has told us aren’t adding up. I’m not going to second guess you, but I need to know: can we trust him?”

I looked away in embarrassment. I hadn’t told Christian about Bae and me and now he was probably wondering how far things had gone. The truth, of course, was that they hadn’t gone very far at all and, even now, I didn’t know how to disentangle my feelings for Bae from the situation we were in. Was I genuinely attracted to him or was he just something safe and stable in the middle of terrifying and seemingly unending saga? Yet neither possibility furnished an answer to Christian’s question. Whether my emotions were in some sense real or were just the almost inevitable product of circumstance, they couldn’t tell me whether I should trust him.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But what choice do we have?”

Christian didn’t answer, but instead lifted himself from the edge of the bed and walked over to his suitcase.

“I’m really hungry,” he said as he delved into one of his bag’s outer pockets. “I’d like to get something to eat. Are you going to be ok alone here? If not, I can stay.”

“I think I’ll be fine,” I replied. “I think I’m just going to take a nap.”

Christian pulled on his coat and then sat down next to me.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “I’m really feeling better now.”

“Ok,” he said quietly as he wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close so that my head came to rest on his shoulder. I hugged him back, slipping my arms around his waist so that we embraced awkwardly, side by side on the edge of my bed. Constantly throughout this saga, Christian had proved himself invaluable. At first it was his mental acuity that had been essential to solving Arthur’s puzzle, but now I saw that it was just the mere fact of his being here, his constant care and support, that I needed most. I simply was not strong enough to do this all alone. Perhaps no one was.

Christian said goodbye and then left the room. It was evening now and the room fell into a kind of soft darkness, lit only by a small desk lamp and a streetlamp that filtered in through the window. I clicked off the desk lamp and stretched out on the bed so that I lay on top of the covers, fully clothed. I was deeply tired, yet my eyes remained open and I had an odd kind of unease, as though I would never again fall asleep. Other city lights pulsated through the window and made shifting patterns on the wall, like a metropolitan aurora borealis, the backwash of the urban energy discharging as it struck the boundaries of the room. Though it was small, the hotel room felt comfortable. Perhaps it was so plain and basic that it felt like I wasn’t in South Korea at all, but in some anonymous place where no one could reach me. The lights continued to dance and shift across the walls and I followed them lazily with my eyes until everything started to blur. Soon I found myself in some other room, one much darker and where everything was indistinct. I couldn’t see the walls or any entryway. In fact, I was unable to see where I was laying, if it was even a bed. I tried to focus my vision on something, any kind of tangible form, but I only found the fleeting contours of surfaces and shapes.

Rather than yielding to panic, I found myself struck by the almost oddly rational awareness that I was caught in a dream. Only moments before – or, at least, what I perceived as moments – I felt my fatigue had been unwilling to lull me into sleep, but apparently it had crept over me with ease. I sat up and thought about walking around this strange, blank place when three forms suddenly appeared out of the void. Unlike the rest of my surroundings, these new figures quickly snapped into exceptional focus. Arthur, Robert Harper, Do Hyun-Su. At first they did not seem aware of my presence. Arthur and Robert Harper were running away from Do Hyun-Su, who was dressed exactly as he had been earlier, in a dark suit with sunglasses. Arthur wore a white lab coat and Harper had on the same police windbreaker he had been wearing when I saw him last. Harper was yelling something at Arthur, but at first I couldn’t hear them. I took a step closer and it was as if some kind of mute button had been switched off.

“Keep running, Arthur,” Harper yelled.

“Who is this man?” Arthur cried as he looked back at Harper over his shoulder. “What have you gotten me into?”

“It’s the North Koreans,” Harper replied, his voice uneven as he jogged quickly behind Arthur. “The same ones who killed my men in Seoul. You know too much. That can’t risk that you’ll tell the world about their counterfeiting operation.”

“But I won’t tell anyone, I prom—” And then Arthur tripped and skidded across the dark ground. I tried to move towards him, to help, but I was somehow immobilized. Harper soon caught him up.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said and tried to pick Arthur off the ground. “They’re not going to take any risks. Let’s go.”

He took Arthur’s right arm in both hands and started to heave him up, but it was too late. The sharp metal snap of a gun cocking into place froze them both. Arthur’s eyes filled with fear and I could see Harper follow their gaze over his shoulder.

“Stop right there,” Do Hyun-Su said, his sharp voice slicing through the odd darkness to them both.

All three of them stood in the shadows as if a spotlight cut them out of impenetrable darkness, only there was no spotlight. For some reason I could see them clearly, though I had no idea how.

“Why are you doing this?” Arthur almost sobbed.

“He already told you,” Hyun-Su spat impatiently, motioning to Harper. “No one can afford for these talks to fall through.”

Arthur opened his mouth to speak but was silenced by the loud bang of the gun. Harper stumbled backwards and then looked confusedly down at the stain growing across his jacket before he tumbled to the floor. An awful silence hung in the air as Arthur gaped in horror at Harper’s lifeless body. Then he looked back at Hyun-Su who fired again. Arthur had been propped up on one arm but now he too collapsed to the floor. But he was not dead. He rolled over onto this side and tried impotently to pull himself away across the ground. Do Hyun-Su fired again. Arthur made one last attempt at movement and then his shoulders sank slowly to the floor. The gun discharged one last time so that Arthur’s body, lying prostrate and still, just hiccupped from the repercussion. He was dead.

“No,” I cried, finally finding my voice. “What have you done?”

Do Hyun-Su looked at me with surprise, as though he had not known I was there watching. To my horror, it wasn’t Do Hyun-Su’s face that stared at me bemusedly, but Bae’s. I could have sworn that it had been Do Hyun-Su. I was able to see his face the whole time. My feet suddenly free, I stepped backwards as quickly as I could.

Bae’s face changed from confusion to worry.

“Ionia,” he said as he moved toward me. “Ionia, it’s me. It’s Bae.”

Forty-Eight

I half opened my eyes, but everything was hazy as they adjusted them to the dim room. The desk lamp had been turned back on and someone was seated on the bed.

“Ionia, it’s me,” the figure said softly as he gently prodded my arm. “It’s Bae.”

My eyes snapped wide open now and I shot up from the bed. Bae put his arms tenderly on my shoulders and steadied me.

“Everything’s fine,” he said. “You’re fine. You were just having a bad dream.”

“What time is it?” I asked groggily.

“Eight in the evening,” Bae replied.

“Are you ok?” I heard Christian ask. I followed his voice to the edge of the other bed.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I don’t know what—” I didn’t finish the sentence. Though I wanted to forget, I remembered the dream exactly and shuddered. “It was nothing,” I mumbled.

Bae got up from the bed and went to the bathroom to fetch a glass of water. I took a long draught after he handed it to me and then noticed the deep blue lines that still ran from the bridge of his nose.

“How is it?” I asked and touched my one nose to clarify the question.

“Not bad,” he smiled. “I broke it once before – maybe this popped it back into place. Doesn’t hurt anymore, though.”

I wanted to touch him, to comfort him in some way, but Christian’s presence stayed my hand and I did nothing.

“When did you get here?” I asked, changing the subject more for my benefit that anyone else’s.

“Christian let me in a few minutes ago,” he said.

I looked over Bae’s shoulder to Christian who just eyed us both nervously. As though he were my conscience, his uncomfortable look reminded me of our earlier conversation and I grew uneasy. It was an odd moment, as I was caught between an urge to throw myself at Bae and smother him with affection and a foreboding sense that he could not be trusted. Which instinct was correct? Or were they both true, each in its own way?

“Ionia,” Bae said as he stood again, “And Christian. Why did you come to Seoul?”

Christian and I looked at each other and I could tell that he was trying as desperately as I to communicate through some sixth sense. After a few moments, Christian just shrugged.

“We wanted to find Robert Harper,” he said matter-of-factly. “Someone at the CIA told us he was here, that he had gone missing, in fact.”

At this Bae’s eyes widened in surprise and he faced away from both of us, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Who told you this?” he asked.

My eyes met Christian’s again and he raised his hands, palms upward, as if to say “I don’t know how to reply.” This time, I took over.

“His name was Jonathan Attleton,” I said. “We’ve never met him.”

Bae said nothing but silently nodded his head and then bent his neck forward slightly, as though he were trying to put things together for himself.

“Bae,” I began. “You said that you were investigating Arthur Mantes, that you believed he may have been working with the North Koreans. What made you think that?”

“I take it that you think he was involved in something else,” he said as he rotated to face me.

I sighed, unsure what to do. Bae had saved my life more than once and had never given me any reason not to trust him. He had helped me when no one else had. I owed him something, that was certain, but was it my complete trust?

“Just tell him,” Christian said. “Tell him everything.”

I gave Christian a thankful smile. Yes, I was ready to give Bae my trust, to give it entirely, and Christian’s approval wiped away the last remnants of hesitation.

“There was more to Arthur’s mystery,” I began. “More than the counterfeit bill. He also left a recording.”

“How did you find this out?” Bae interrupted.

“The other letters,” I answered. “They were further clues and they led us to a digital recording that Arthur had hidden at the Secret Service headquarters. On it, Arthur said that he had been recruited by Robert Harper and this man, Jonathan Attleton, to investigate a very fine counterfeit note. With Arthur’s help, they discovered that it had been manufactured by the North Korean government itself. Just before Arthur died, the CIA was attempting to present proof of North Korean counterfeiting to officials in the United States government. But before they could act, North Korean agents broke into the Empire Peninsula Hotel, where Robert Harper and the other agents were basing their operation. They killed the other agents and destroyed all the materials in order to prevent evidence that could jeopardize the negotiations from coming to light.

“Apparently, Harper warned Arthur that his name had been in some of the files that were stolen and that he may be in danger. On the recording, he said that he feared he was being followed and that was why he constructed the elaborate game around the counterfeit fifty dollar bill. It was the last remaining piece of evidence of North Korea’s counterfeiting activities. Well, almost the last piece of evidence, anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Bae asked, his head cocked to the side quizzically. I walked over to my suitcase and removed the memory stick from an inner compartment.

“This memory stick contains all of the reports Arthur produced for the investigation,” I said. “It shows how North Korea managed to obtain all of the equipment necessary to illegally reproduce United States currency.”

I held the memory stick out to him and he grasped it for a moment, turning it over in his fingers, before handing it back to me.

“But why are you in Seoul?” he asked again. “Why have you come to find Robert Harper?”

“We – well, I –” I looked at Christian for help but he sat silently on the bed, his eyes strangely absent. “That night at Dupont Circle, when exchanged the fifty dollar bill for Christian—Robert Harper was there, with the police. He told us that Arthur was a traitor, that he had been working with some criminal organization in Asia to produce high quality counterfeits of United States currency. At first, I didn’t want to believe it, but how could I argue? If Robert Harper didn’t know the truth, who did? But now I—I want to know if what said on the recording was true. And I want to know who killed Arthur Mantes.”

Bae stared at me for a long while, though his eyes did not meet mine, but instead twinkled into some remote place, as if their gaze was directed back into his own busy mind.

“You’ve already met the man who killed him,” he said finally.

“What?” I gasped. I saw Christian’s head whip to attention with equal shock.

“The man who chased us today—”

“Do Hyun-Su?” Christian interjected.

“That is one name he uses,” Bae confirmed. “He killed Arthur Mantes.”

“But I thought you said Arthur was working with the North Koreans, not against them,” I objected. “Does this mean you were wrong? Is what Arthur said on the recording true?”

“I don’t know,” Bae replied. Before I could ask any further questions, he continued. “But let me tell you what I do know. In New York that night I told you that I had information that Arthur was working with North Koreans on something, though I did not know what. After you and I discovered that the fifty dollar bill was a counterfeit, I suspected that is what he had been working on and then followed the man you call Do Hyun-Su out of the United States and back here to South Korea.

“When I arrived in Seoul, however, the trail quickly vanished. He appeared here and there in the city, but he often eluded my pursuit and my picture of what he was doing here and who he knew was sketchy. I wanted to track the fifty dollar bill and needed to know whether he had passed it on or was holding it for some reason, but I could not consistently keep tabs on him. Only occasionally, by luck mostly, did I catch a glimpse of him at the right bars or clubs, often the kinds of places known as hangouts for criminals. But each time I tried to follow him or establish where he was living, I lost him. It was as if he knew I was pursuing him, but was content to let me fumble around, preferring to slip through my grasp rather than take care of me outright.

“Then, about a week ago, I finally enjoyed some good luck. I went to one of the nightclubs where I had seen him before and, about an hour before close, he showed up. He went to one of the reserved rooms in the back for forty-five minutes or so and then left through the back. I went out the front of the club and then dashed to the back alley. I just caught him getting into a limousine. I ran back to the main street and hailed a taxi just in time to see the limousine pull out into the road. I followed him to the Empire Peninsula Hotel.

“I hung around outside all night, not daring to go inside and risk being spotted. Even though I feared he had known I was following him – or trying to – all this time, I did not want to take any chances. The next morning he left the hotel late and took another limousine, this time to the 63 Building, a large skyscraper on Yeouido island in the Han River. Inside, I tracked him as discretely as I could. He went into a large office, one that belonged to none other than Lee Chung Hee.” He looked up to make sure our faces registered the coincidence and the continued, “I couldn’t follow him any further, so I waited around two hours until he emerged again. I was about to hail another cab when I ran into Robert Harper.”

This time, he didn’t need to look at our faces to detect the excitement.

“You know him?” I gasped with astonishment.

“No, not then,” Bae said, though he shifted visibly. “I only knew what you told me about him that night in New York. I was initially apprehensive when this strange American approached me and I was obviously anxious to follow Do Hyun-Su, but he introduced himself immediately and told me to wait. He guessed that I was trailing the fifty dollar bill, but told me that he knew where it was and what Do Hyun-Su was doing in Seoul. He wouldn’t say anything in public but we agreed to meet at a restaurant the next night in the Gangnam neighborhood.”

“What did he tell you?” I asked eagerly.

“Nothing,” Bae replied. “I waited at the restaurant until it closed but he never arrived.”

“Never arrived? Then when did you talk to him next?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “I haven’t seen him since that morning.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why would he agree to meet you and then not show up?”

“I wasn’t sure. Not until today, anyway.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“A few minutes ago, you told me that someone at the CIA informed you that Robert Harper had gone missing. I think that’s why he never met me. I think that he was kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?” Christian asked before I could blurt out the same thing.

Bae nodded and sat down on the bed next to me.

“I was nervous after Robert Harper failed to show that night and upset that I had missed a chance to follow Do Hyun-Su. But I didn’t give up and decided to keep tabs on the Empire Peninsula Hotel. I didn’t see him all week and began to wonder if he would ever return to the hotel. Then, this morning, I received a tip that Lee Chung Hee would hold a surprise press conference there today. I went over and that’s where I spotted him and you.” A kind of contentment radiated out of his eyes as he looked at me, as though my appearance had been a pleasant surprise, despite the unpleasant circumstances that brought him to the hotel in the first place.

“I was going to follow Do Hyun-Su from the hotel,” he continued, “But then, well, you know the rest.”

I said nothing but looked away, trying to shift my mind’s eye away from the events of the afternoon.

“Wait,” Christian said, unburdened by the memories of what had happened in the Empire Peninsula Hotel. “You said you weren’t sure why Robert Harper hadn’t shown up until today and now you say you believed he was kidnapped. What made you change your mind? Is it what Jonathan Attleton told us?”

“No,” Bae replied. “You just confirmed what I already knew – or discovered, anyway.” He reached into his pocket. “This is what changed my mind.”

It was a small, grey cell phone.

“What is it?” I asked, although I really meant “whose” is it?

“It’s Do Hyun-Su’s cell phone,” Bae replied. “I took if from him earlier at the hotel.”

I couldn’t remember Bae rifling through Do Hyun-Su’s pockets, but then I had hardly felt present to the moment. I must not have been paying close enough attention.

“It fell out when we were fighting,” Bae said as though he could read the uncertainty of his face. “I picked it up off the floor before we got on the elevator. After I dropped you off here, I went to get this looked at,” he touched his nose gingerly and winced a bit. “But I also downloaded all of the data from the cell phone. There are lots of text messages – some to Lee Chung Hee, some to people I’ve never heard of. In particular, I was interested in this one.”

He clicked a few buttons and then held the phone out so I could see it. Christian leaned from the other side of the bed in order to get a view of the small display.

Keep Harper at 63 office. Await Chung Hee’s orders. Do not harm him.

Forty-Nine

“So you think Lee Chung Hee is holding him captive?” I asked.

“That’s the best explanation I can think of,” Bae replied.

“But why?” Christian interjected.

“I don’t know,” Bae said. He brought a hand to the back of his head and ran his fingers through his dark hair. “But I think I need to find him and free him.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “You’re going to, what, break into Lee Chung Hee’s office and rescue Harper?”

“I need to know what he knows,” Bae shrugged. “I am -- how would you say it -- grasping at straws. My job is to find that fifty dollar bill and, more importantly, to figure out what Lee Chung Hee plans to do with it.”

“How do you plan to get in there?” Christian asked.

“Because I had followed Do Hyun-Su back to that office, I spent part of this week snooping around, in case anything interesting happened there. Perhaps it is just a habit of my trade, but I snuck into one of the service elevators and noticed that it didn’t have any security cameras. I went up to the floor where Lee Chung Hee’s office is located and picked the lock. The elevator leads into a into service supply room. That room is locked from the outside, but I think I can crawl through the ventilation shaft into the office.”

“You think?” Christian challenged.

“It’s worth a try.”

“In movies maybe,” Christian grumbled. He clearly wasn’t enamored of Bae’s plan.

“Something has to inspire movies,” Bae mused quietly, then spoke up again. “I’m going tonight. There’s no reason to waste any time and I don’t want to risk them moving Harper now that I’ve—taken care of Do Hyun-Su.” He looked away uncomfortably as he finished the last sentence.

“Then we’re going, too,” I declared before I even realized I said it.

“What?” Bae and Christian objected simultaneously.

“I don’t think--” Bae started.

“Ionia, are you crazy?” Christian said over him. “There’s no way—”

Their vehement protests crossed and ran over each other and I was unable to separate them in my head. Their voices rose and fell together like a symphony of resistance.

“Just stop,” I yelled and stood up. I turned first to Christian. “Look,” I said. “We came all this way because we believed – I believed – that Robert Harper could tell me the truth about Arthur. Now we have a chance to find him and talk to him and I’m not going to pass it up.” I then looked at Bae. “I know this is your trade and not mine, but you can’t tell me that you’ll be safer alone. A month ago I couldn’t say this, but you know that I can handle this. After what I’ve been through, what we’ve been through,” I motioned to Christian, “You know we’re up to the task. You need us with you.”

I walked over to Bae and put my hand on his shoulder.

“I know that I couldn’t act before, but that won’t happen again,” I assured him quietly, speaking as though Christian weren’t there.

“I don’t want you to be in a position where you would have to do that,” he said and spoke with the same sense of privacy, as though he were equally aware of the strange bubble I had created around us.

“Guys?” Christian said. Bae and I shook ourselves dreamily from the hold we exerted on each other and looked absently toward Christian. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m guessing I don’t want to do ‘that’ either.”

Bae sighed and pushed himself off the bed. My arm slipped off him as he crossed over towards Christian.

“Christian,” he said calmly as he stood over Christian’s perch on the other bed. “You’ve been through worse than this. Ionia is right. I cannot do this alone. Can you help me?”

“Can you promise me everything will be ok?” Christian asked as fear tugged subtly at the corners of his eyes.

“No,” Bae shook his head and then looked at me sadly. “No, I cannot.”

It was Christian turn to sigh and he did so slowly, so that the room seemed to fill with the hesitant breeze that issued forth from his lungs. He left the bed and walked over to his suitcase which was casually flung on the other side of the room. He unzipped the inner compartment and started digging through his clothes.

“What are you doing?” I asked after a moment.

He stopped and looked up at me.

“We’re breaking into an office building in downtown Seoul through a ventilation shaft in order to free a CIA agent from a crooked South Korean politician who is – or was – working with a North Korean agent, right?”

I nodded reluctantly, acutely aware of how silly it sounded.

“Well,” he said. “What am I supposed to wear to for something like that? Bae, do you know?”

The three of us -- Bae, Christian, and I – exchanged wry grins before bursting into uncontrollable laughter.

* * *

Streetlights and flashing neon signs replaced the sun as we drove through the streets of Seoul, shining and brilliant even in the darkness. We did not speak as we sat crammed together in the backseat of the taxi. I was in the middle, with Bae on my left and Christian on my right. I could feel both of their legs touching mine, but it was if I were caught between two different worlds, rather than just two people. Christian was visibly nervous and uncomfortable and his leg quivered light, just perceptible enough for me to notice the anxiety he effused. From Bae I sensed almost nothing. His leg might have belonged to a corpse for all I could tell. I glanced over to him from time to time, but the rise and fall of his breath was as steady as the clicking of seams in the pavement as we zoomed into downtown Seoul.

I found I could deeply influence my own state by choosing which of my legs to focus on. When I thought about my right leg, Christian’s restive body galvanized my own worst nightmares about what I had seen earlier in the day and what, I feared, I would see later this night. But when I put my attention on my left leg, my unease dissipated and I imagined I was sharing this taxi with Bae under innocent and unburdened circumstances – that I was just alone with him, in some world where none of what was happening to me could have ever come to pass. I tried to stay in this world, if only because I knew the other one – the real world – would reassert its existence soon enough.

As I sank into Bae’s calm and wrapped into around myself, like a blanket to keep out the cold, I wondered why he had agreed to let us accompany him. Though I had insisted that Christian and I go along with determination and really did want to find and talk to Robert Harper, I’m not sure I had convinced even myself that Bae really needed us. Christian and I were more than out of our depth here. Just hours ago I had proven myself incapable of handling the kind of situation we were about to enter. Bae had to know this. So why were we all in the taxi together now? I told myself that he had done it for me, that he really cared about me. In a childish moment, I imagined that he was so taken with me that he was unable to refuse my request, no matter how crazy it may have sounded. But, I thought as I again looked over at his composed yet poised face, I was probably just projecting my own feelings onto him or vainly hoping he felt about me the same way that I was now sure I felt about him.

The streetlights whizzed by and formed incandescent lines at the edge of my vision. I slid myself closer to Bae and imagined this cab would just take us somewhere else. Bae placed his hand gently on my leg.

“It’s going to be ok,” he whispered. Before I could look into his eyes and search them for sincerity, he leaned forward and spoke to the cab driver in Korean.

“Can you stop here?” he asked and pointed to a small building on the left side of the street. It was grey, with small rectangular windows and stood about four stories. I couldn’t tell what kind of building it was and the non-descript front entrance offered no additional clues as it came into view.

“Just wait here,” Bae told the driver and started to get out of the cab.

“What’s going on?” Christian asked.

“I’ll be right back,” Bae said as he slid out of his seat and made his way into the building.

Christian sat back in his seat, but I could tell this stop only heightened his anxiety.

“I’m sure Bae was planning to make this stop,” I said in my best attempt to calm him.

“That’s what I’m worried about,” Christian mumbled, his face oriented toward the window.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Did you see Bae pick that cell phone up at the hotel this afternoon?” Christian asked suddenly.

I recoiled slightly, unprepared for the question.

“No,” I said. “But I was kind of out of it, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Christian said, unsatisfied. “I guess I do.”

“Why?”

“What? Oh, nothing, I suppose.”

“Christian, what is it?” I pressed.

“It’s just—” he sighed and trailed off. “Why would Robert Harper approach Bae and offer to help him? Does that make any sense to you?”

“No, I mean, well—” I stuttered. I wasn’t sure what to say exactly so I just fell silent as a worried frown took hold of my face.

“Ionia,” Christian said as he glanced at the cab driver suspiciously and then lowered his voice. “I’ve been thinking about this since we left. Bae’s story, it—it—holds together, but it doesn’t make sense. Do you know what I mean?” I shook my head no and he moved even closer. “Two things are bothering me. First, I can’t understand why Harper contacted Bae in broad daylight. From what you told me about Harper – from what I saw myself in that police van – he’s not a man who leaves himself vulnerable and he knows how to use people to get what he wants. What possible use could he have for Bae? But the thing that really doesn’t add up for me is this: why is Bae operating in Seoul without any discernable help? He told us that he had trouble tracking Do Hyun-Su, but this is his city and government. He’s supposed to be in the South Korean CIA, right? Shouldn’t he have some whole team of people who could have tracked Do Hyun-Su? I feel like he doesn’t belong here—even less than we do.”

Christian’s doubts left me reeling. I found myself trying to come up with a reason – any reason – that Robert Harper may have wanted to talk to Bae. But I knew I was ignoring Christian’s larger concern. It was strange how Bae moved through this city like an island, somehow separate and disconnected from everything. There had been no other South Korean agents to help us earlier today at the hotel, or to meet us after we had escaped. There were no paramedics to look at Bae’s nose or a debriefing session with some superior officer. Even more disturbingly, there was no one else with us now, as we were about to break into the office of an influential Korean politician in order to save an American CIA operative. The very thought of what were about to do sounded ridiculous as it buzzed through my head. But Christian was right. Some team of trained operatives should have been here tonight, not us. We didn’t belong here.

“So what should we do?” was all I asked, my mind empty of all content other than the sensation that something was all wrong about this.

Christian looked back at me, his eyes shining with fear, and I now understood clearly the origins of his nervousness. He had not been afraid to jump into the fray and save Harper. Or that was not his primary fear, anyway. Instead, he had no idea exactly what fray he was jumping into at all, and the giant blackness he faced with his mind’s eye left him terrified. As I peered into his eyes, I began to see that void, that uncertainty about the future and it scared me, too. Where was Bae leading us? Was there anyone left to trust? But as I stared at him, teetering on the edge that dark oblivion as though I might fall right in, his eyes flicked up and over my shoulder. I shifted in my seat and saw that Bae was getting back in the car.

“63 Building, please,” he told the cab driver and slid into the seat next to me.

He moved his hand as though he was going to replace it back on my leg, but I saw that in it, he held a small leather case. He extended it to me and I grasped it, my hands falling slightly from its surprising weight. It was not rectangular, but more of an imperfect right triangle, with the hypotenuse slightly bent out of shape.

“What is it?” I asked, but before I even finished the question, I knew the answer. It was a gun.

Fifty

The 63 Building, Seoul’s tallest skyscraper, loomed over us as we stepped out of the taxi. Only a few offices remained lit and the disconnected points of light that followed the structure up into the night looked more like stars than anything else. It was difficult to get a sense of the building’s shape in the depths of the evening, but I could tell it was a rectangular structure that narrowed slightly from the base to the pinnacle so that it rose like a giant metronome from the Yeouido Island in the Han River.

As soon as the taxi lurched from the curb and back into the flow of traffic, Bae drew close to Christian and whispered something in his ear. At first Christian recoiled, his eyes widening with surprise. But after a momentary frown, he moved closer and nodded as Bae spoke. I moved in closer to try and hear what Bae was saying, as if somehow my exclusion from this discourse was unjust, but as I came near, they separated. Before I could ask them what they had discussed, Bae took my gently by the arm and led me about twenty feet away from Christian. I glanced back over my shoulder to see if Christian would make any move to follow, but he remained in place and, when our eyes met, he turned away with a nearly embarrassed look on his face, as if merely gazing at us was some kind of violation.

“What did you tell him?” I asked Bae when he stopped and faced me.

“I said that I wanted to show you how to use the gun and that I thought it would be easier if we were alone,” Bae replied with measured nonchalance. I could tell that there was something else, but I didn’t know exactly what to say. I handed him the small case he had given me and he unsnapped a small button so he that could remove the gun.

“This is the safety,” he said and pointed to a small switch. “If there’s some sign of danger, make sure you flip that off.” He then slid the top of the gun back in order to load the first bullet into the chamber. “Now it’s ready to go.”

“Why did you really want to talk to me?” I asked as he pressed the loaded gun back into my hands. “It can’t have been to show me this.”

He looked away for a moment as if there was an answer somewhere out in the night better than the one he was about to give me.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen up there,” he said. “If something happens to me, just get out as fast as you can.”

“What is it? Do you think someone will be up there guarding him?”

He turned back to me, his eyes alight with worry.

“What do you think will happen to you?” I demanded.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But if something goes wrong, I’m going to give you and Christian the best chance to escape that I can.”

This wasn’t right, I thought to myself. His eyes told me that there was something else, something more than he would tell me. I wanted to ask what, but he spoke first.

“Today at the hotel—I—” he paused and swallowed hard before he could continue “—I was so happy to see you, but scared, too. Scared to death.”

I allowed myself a brief burst of joy when I heard him say that he had been happy to see me.

“Scared about what?” I asked, concern returning to my voice and mind.

“That it would come to something like this,” he said gravely. “After I left Washington, I hoped I would see you again, but not here, not in the middle of this mess. But—”

“But what?”

“But I’m glad you’re here,” he said and aimed his bright eyes directly into mine. They sparkled with sincerity and it was as if he tried to tell me everything about how he felt with one look. Through those eyes, I could peer into him and see all the way down. He was not lying, I decided, as I edged forward and brought my lips up to his. He returned the kiss and wrapped me in a tight embrace. I don’t know how long we held that kiss, but all of my worries and doubts seemed outside of me, as though we had created a kind of force field that could hold them off. When we finally separated, the warmth in my cheeks ebbed in the cold and my anxiety arose anew. The kiss had been a welcome affirmation of my feelings and a respite from the night’s danger, but nothing more. We still had to walk into that building and a future that I could not make out with any certainty. Would we walk out together?

Without a word we walked back to Christian, who turned around as he heard our shoes softly tap along the sidewalk.

“Are you ready?” Bae asked him. Christian nodded his head nervously in response. “And you?” Bae turned to me.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Then let’s go.”

We started toward the entrance and I tucked the gun into the interior pocket of my dark winter coat. I tried to shove it between my arm and torso so that it was less conspicuous, but the butt of the handle dug into my side and made me even more self-conscious of the weapon I concealed. I attempted to ignore the gun as it chafed my side and walked just behind Bae as casually as I could manage. We entered the building in a small triangle with Bae leading the way and Christian and I a few feet in back of him. Once inside, we were greeted not by the austere lobby of a major office building, but instead by a large hallway flanked and girded by columns of fluorescent neon lights. We walked down the glowing passageway and passed a dizzying array of shops, restaurants, shops, a movie theater, and even an aquarium. It was close to midnight and by now the place was largely deserted, save for a few stragglers leaving the cinema or returning to the ground floor from an observation deck located at the top of the building. The strange lighting and eerie quiet made me feel more like I was in an abandoned suburban mall than Seoul’s tallest skyscraper.

At the end of the hallway we came to a bank of elevators that took tourists directly to the observation deck. The elevators to the office floors must have been situated in some other part of the building. Bae led us past this cluster of elevators to a small, unmarked door. He looked around to make sure we were alone and then slid a small pin from his pocket and worked it into the door lock. The lock rattled and clicked a few times before popping open.

“I’ve always wanted to learn how to do that,” Christian said as we entered the door.

“I could teach you sometime,” Bae smiled. “It’s not that hard.”

We entered an empty room, barely wider than the door itself. A few buckets and mops lay heaped against the wall. It was only about five feet deep and in the back there was another door. It was too dark to see, but I could tell from the light scraping sound that Bae was picking the lock on that door as well. He negotiated this lock as quickly as the previous one and opened the door to reveal a small elevator landing.

“This is it,” he said as he stepped forward and pressed “UP” button. The elevator stuttered to life and whisked us up through the 63 Building.

“What floor is Lee Chung Hee’s office?” I asked Bae.

“54, near the top,” he replied.

The elevator seemed like it was moving rather quickly, but it was a long ride nonetheless and it took us well over a minute to reach the 54th floor. The doors slid open and we were greeted immediately by another door. Bae moved forward, his lock pick already in hand, and went to work. This lock took considerably more time than the other two and I thought I even heard Bae grunt once or twice in frustration. I realized that we were now breaking into an actual office and shifted uneasily, concerned that someone might hear us. Finally, the door clicked open and Christian and I exhaled audibly in relief. Bae looked back and flashed us both a self-assured grin.

He so rarely joked or did anything that could be called whimsical that I did not at first grasp how odd it was that he had done so twice in the last few minutes—both the remark that he could teach Christian to pick locks and now this playful smile. It occurred to me, though, that he had been trained to withstand the pressure of these situations, to not expose himself to agitation or fear. Perhaps this was his mechanism of self-control, a kind of relaxation technique. Maybe he wasn’t so much joking as simply getting by. I wasn’t entirely convinced of my theory, but I found it comforting. It made me feel less out of depth to think that he might have been just as scared as Christian and I. All I needed to do was find a place of my own in which to retreat, a place my fears could not reach or at least would appear only as dull shadows, unable to grasp me. A place like the kiss we shared outside.

Bae shuffled quietly into the dark room that lay open before us. As a maintenance supply space it was unremarkable. The walls were lined with shelves on which cans of paint, cleaning agents, and boxes of mechanical supplies were stacked. In one corner several old mops stood neatly placed against the wall and several buckets and extra waste paper bins lay underneath the shelves. Bae moved into the center of the small room and my attention quickly followed his eyes up to the ceiling. There was a small vent in the ceiling. A very small vent.

“You’re never going to fit into that,” I whispered, then gestured towards Christian and myself. “We’ll never fit into that.”

“Just hold me up for a moment,” Bae replied simply.

Christian and I moved to either side of him and put our hands out with our fingers interlocked so that Bae could step onto our hands. He did so deftly and I was surprised at how light he seemed in my hands. The ceiling was low and so we had no need of raising him especially far off the ground. I didn’t look up to see what he was doing, but a low grating sound came from over my head. Suddenly, his feet seemed to leap out of our hands and I looked up to see him pull his body easily into the aperture. His feet followed his torso into the vent and then he vanished. A moment later, his face ducked back into view and he extended a hand down to us. Christian looked at me and nodded so I reached up first and let Bae yank me into the ventilation shaft. The inside was larger than the vent opening lead one to believe and it was wide enough for Bae and I to lay next to each other as he helped me up. He put a finger to his lips to indicate silence and then retreated past me to lend his hand to Christian. I tried to pierce the darkness with my eyes, but I could barely see a foot in front of me. The sides of the ventilation shaft were metallic, tin or aluminum perhaps, and were coated in a fine layer of dust which ground lightly against my hands.

A grunt drew my attention back to the small shaft of light that beamed up from the hole where the vent had been. Christian was struggling to grip the sides of the opening and pull himself into the duct. After a moment’s exertion and some additional help from Bae, he finally made it up and onto his hands and knees.

“I’m no athlete,” he said, chest heaving, “And I need to lose some weight.”

I smiled sympathetically and shifted so that Bae could move in front of us. He slid easily on his haunches and slid alongside me and into the blackness. I heard the rustle of clothing and then a light snap as a light appeared in front of me and pierced the darkness. When my eyes adjusted to the new mixture of light and dark, I saw that Bae carried a small, pen sized flashlight which he now wedged into this mouth. He lifted a hand to motion us forward and then turned around and skulked soundlessly through the shaft. Christian and I were not so well practiced and we clunked along more slowly and – I worried – loudly. Each dull thud on the metal rang like a church bell in my paranoid ears, even though the sounds of our movements probably barely audible in the hallways and rooms below.

Despite the ease with which Bae could navigate the ventilation shaft, he tempered his quickness so that Christian and I could keep up. This made the going quite slow and I felt as if it were taking us hours to traverse even ten feet of that metallic labyrinth. Eventually, after a few blind twists and turns, Bae suddenly stopped and clicked off his flashlight. My heart leapt momentarily as the duct plunged into such immediate and all encompassing darkness. The telltale grating sound told me Bae was removing a vent and I focused on that sound and tried to imagine his actions in order to quell my unexpected fear of the darkness enveloping us. I closed my eyes – what difference did it make? – and rehearsed intentionally deep breaths. I had no idea why the blackness left me in such a panic as I had never before been afraid of the dark. Perhaps it was the thought of the invisible walls closing in all around us. It was like being trapped in a force field, motionless and unable to escape these unseen boundaries.

I felt Bae shuffle around in the ventilation shaft and the quietly approach me. When he was right next to me, he began to whisper so softly that it seemed like his voice was coming from inside my head. It was only by the light caress of warm air on my ear that I could tell he was talking.

“Move forward very slowly,” he said, “And feel the floor of the vent constantly with your hands. In about three feet you will find an opening. Turn around, so that your feet face the opening and I will lower you down.”

I did as he said and slid forward, tapping lightly with my hands. After a few moments, one of my hands encountered no resistance where the floor of the shaft should have been and I gasped lightly as my body lurched down toward the opening. I would not have fallen through, of course, but the mere sensation of the ground evaporating, especially in the dark, was enough to speed my already thudding heart. I clumsily rotated my body around as Bae asked and from the light sound of his breathing could sense that he was right behind me.

“I’m ready,” I whispered.

I felt his hands gently cover mine and then move up to the wrists. He gripped both of my wrists tightly, but not painfully, and then laid down flat on the floor of the ventilation shaft.

“Ok, just move slowly,” he ordered.

I dropped my feet through the vent and held my body in place with my elbows. My body dropped sharply, but Bae’s grip did not waver as I jerked downward. Somehow, Bae managed to edge his body forward at a slow and controlled pace. Unsure what to do, I simply let my body hang freely as Bae lowered me out of the ventilation shaft and in to the darkened hallway below. While the ventilation shaft had been nearly pitch black, the hall of the office was a dark bruise of color, the light pollution of Seoul infiltrating and corrupting the blackness with patches and beams of yellow and orange. I looked downward and could see that I was now only a few feet off of the ground. Bae must have checked how far down the carpeted floor of the office was when he opened the vent, because, as if on cue, he gently let go of one hand, waited a moment and then let go of the other. I hit the ground smoothly, letting my knees bend under me to cushion my fall.

Feeling exposed as I stood in the middle of the empty hallway, I instinctively padded to the wall and knelt. The slightest movement from each shadow or pool of light caught my nervous eye. I suddenly remembered the gun and reached into my jacket to remove it from the pocket. It rested heavily and awkwardly in my small hand, but I was suddenly very glad to have it as I crouched alone in the hall.

I looked up to the open vent where Christian’s legs and then body soon materialized. Impressively, Bae managed to lower Christian’s much larger and taller frame out of the ventilation shaft as effortlessly as he had mine and soon Christian dropped to the ground with a light thump. His eyes searched the hall frantically before they settled on my small figure and I saw his shoulders slump with relief as he came over and sat next to me.

“I hated it in there,” he said in a hushed murmur.

“Me too,” I replied and rested my free hand reassuringly on his knee. He seemed to relax until he noticed the gun in my other hand. He visibly stiffened, but nodded subtly as if to show that he understood the prudence of arming myself despite the discomfort he experienced at the sight of a gun.

Bae’s head appeared in the vent and the disappeared briefly before his silhouetted form extended out from the opening and then shot to the ground. He made only a light flop when he fell, almost like the sound a pillow makes when it drops onto a bed. Once on the ground, he cautiously looked both ways and then unholstered his own gun from somewhere beneath his jacket. He brought his eyes to ours and then waved with his gun to indicate that we should follow him. We rose in compliance and took off down the hall, as quietly and quickly as possible, trying desperately to mute our footsteps against the dense office carpet.

I had no idea how to even begin looking for Robert Harper, but Bae must have had some plan or intuition because he walked with surprising speed and purpose. In fact, we passed several doorways and rooms without stopping to check in them as Bae took us around corners as though he had been inside the office before. It was very strange and I could tell from the perplexed look on Christian’s shadowed face that he was equally confused. Just as I was about to try and stop Bae so I could ask where we were going, a noticed a small beam of light filtering into the hall from a door up ahead. I figured we would stop and he would tell us what to do, but once we reached the door he put his hand on the knob and pushed it right open. I wanted to cry out and tell him to stop. What if there were people in there? Didn’t we need some kind of plan?

But I didn’t say anything and neither did Christian. Instead, we just followed him headlong into the room, clueless and terrified of whatever we were about to find. When we first entered, Bae’s body blocked my view and my eyes did not immediately adjust to the bright lights so that I was unable to see anything. But I didn’t need to see the room when I heard the all too familiar voice that greeted us.

“You’re late,” it said.

It was Robert Harper.

Fifty-One

I stepped out from behind Bae to see Robert Harper standing next to a large desk. He was precisely as I remembered him, perfectly clad in a black suit with a white shirt and green tie, his wrought and hardened face condensed into a focused and incisive glare. Sitting at the desk was a small Korean man who looked stunningly familiar but I could not generate any more than a glimmer of recognition in my mind. I felt like he was someone I had just met and then forgotten immediately. Then I realized why I did could not identify him immediately. When I had first seen him – only earlier today – Lee Chung Hee had been wearing sunglasses. I looked back and forth between Harper and Chung Hee, but before I could open my mouth to speak to ask what was going on, Harper sharp voice barked out to Bae.

“You brought them here?” he said. “Why the hell did you do that? When we met earlier today, I told you to leave them at the hotel.”

“They insisted,” Bae shrugged, seemingly unmoved by Harper’s wrath. “I thought it might be easier to keep tabs on them if they were with me.”

“What is going on?” I asked weakly, but Harper ignored me.

“Keep tabs on them,” he said. “They’re like children in the wilderness.” His stormy face stretched into a sneer. “You don’t trust me, do you? You still don’t trust me. That’s why you brought them.”

“Of course I don’t trust you,” Bae replied, still emotionless. “But that’s not why I brought them here. I told them everything we planned, but they wanted to come with. Now do you have the fifty dollar bill?”

“It’s right here,” Harper replied as he reached into his front pocket and removed a small plastic sheath. I couldn’t clearly see the off-white and greenish piece of paper inside, but I didn’t need to. I knew that fifty dollar bill from any distance. It was Arthur’s counterfeit. I wanted to ask where he got it, no longer concerned with the confusing exchange that had just taken place before me. It was as if I shared some strange bond with the counterfeit bill, as though only I really knew – really understood – its secret. But again, Harper spoke before I could force anything out of my tense vocal chords.

“He had it with him the whole time,” Harper said as he glanced to Lee Chung Hee, who sat stoically at the desk as if none of us were present. “Although this is as good a place as any to do what we need to do.”

“What’s that?” Christian asked suddenly. All eyes turned to him, including my own, as though we were all surprised that he was actually there. Even Harper, who had completely ignored our presence, now directed his gaze at Christian. Uncomfortable in the silence, Christian continued as if we had not heard him correctly. “I mean, what do you need to do?”

Harper just stared at Christian as his hand disappeared within his blazer and then reappeared armed with a small black handgun. He aimed the gun at Lee Chung Hee’s head and then, eyes still fixed firmly on Christian, he pulled the trigger. I slammed my eyes shut as the gun blast rang out in the small office. Lee Chung Hee’s face shimmered in my mind’s eye like the lights that dance behind my eyelids when I close them on a sunny day. It was contorted in an expression of instantaneous horror as though he had enough time in that split second to comprehend fully what was about to happen. When I finally peeled my eyes open, all that I could see of Chung Hee was a leg protruding from behind the desk and the spray of thick, dark blood on the walls and desk.

“That,” Harper said to Christian, his tone flat and sickeningly removed.

Christian lowered to one knee. He was breathing hard and visibly sickened by what he had just seen. I heard Bae sigh next to me.

“Then it’s done,” he said simply.

What was done? I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t find any words. There was too much to process. I closed my eyes again, this time not in fear but to escape the immediacy of this incomprehensible scene. I felt overwhelmed, as though everything in this office was a kind of different language, one my eyes and mind could not translate into anything meaningful. What had happened here? Then, slowly, a thought started to take shape in my mind. When I opened my eyes, Robert Harper seemed to be looking at me expectantly, as though he could sense I was beginning to put everything together.

“I already know that North Korea produced the counterfeits,” I said, almost unconsciously, as though someone else were speaking. “Arthur told us.”

“I thought he might do something like that,” Harper replied matter of factly.

“But you told him that you were trying to warn United States diplomats negotiating with North Korea of their counterfeiting activities,” I continued. “You said that the North Koreans had killed members of the CIA in order to prevent that information from coming to light and endangering the talks.”

“I did,” Harper replied, then raised his eyebrows as if to help me along.

“But that didn’t happen, did it? That was all a lie.”

“It was.”

“You weren’t trying to recover the fifty dollar bill in order to expose North Korea’s counterfeiting operation – you were trying to suppress it.”

“I was.”

“Lee Chung Hee, all of his threats about showing the world that North Korea was not to be trusted. He was referring to counterfeit United States money, wasn’t he? The fifty dollar bill, it was the proof he needed to embarrass the North Koreans and derail the nuclear talks.”

“So far, so good.”

“But why was he working with the North Koreans?”

“Who? Lee Chung Hee?” he asked, his brow knit in confusion. “What North Koreans?”

“Do Hyun-Su,” I replied and, when he stared at me blankly, continued, “The man Bae killed earlier today.”

“Do Hyun-Su?” Harper asked, eyebrows raised, his attention now directed to Bae.

“Pak,” Bae replied, his eyes cast downward. “That’s how they know Pak. It’s the alias he uses.”

“You told them Pak was North Korean?” Harper cried, almost gleefully. “Who do they think you are then?”

I whipped my head around to face Bae.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “You’re not in South Korean intelligence?”

Bae said nothing, but kept his eyes on the floor.

“South Korean intelligence?” Harper roared. “They really believed that?”

Bae’s face darkened in shame and his shoulder slumped as if he were collapsing within himself. He closed his eyes and sighed.

“Who are you?” I asked, my voice shaking and urgent. He did not reply, so I repeated, “Who are you, Bae?”

“He is in intelligence,” Harper interrupted, his voice now cold and precise. “Just the other side of the border.”

I was too stunned to speak. I could not forget the horror in Bae’s eyes when he described the atrocities and crimes committed by the North Korean regime. He hadn’t been lying. There was no way.

“It’s not what you think, Ionia,” he said quietly and then reopened his eyes. “My parents were prominent communists, or at least that was how they appeared. In truth, they were dissidents and led an underground movement to change the regime and unseat Kim Il Sung and, now, Kim Jong Il. They were able to secure me a place in the North Korean version of the CIA. I was a spy, not for North Korea, but for them, for the people who would make our government one that cares for its people and does not rule through terror and fear.”

“And so one day, about a year ago, he approached us,” Harper interjected. He repositioned himself so that he half sat on the desk, one foot planted on the floor for support. “He said he had information, proof that North Korea was counterfeiting United States currency. We knew that high quality counterfeits were coming from some organization in East Asia, but we had no idea that it might be the actual North Korea government. He said he would help us if we—helped him, so to speak.”

I looked at Bae questioningly.

“They were going to give us support,” he answered. “Money, resources, information. The United States government was secretly willing to recognize us as a legitimate ally within North Korea.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, turning back to Harper. “At first, you did want to investigate the counterfeits?

He nodded.

“Well—what changed?”

“I’m not sure precisely what Arthur told you,” Harper said. “But he helped us discover that a bank in Macau that we believe helped launder the North Korean counterfeit notes.”

“He did tell me,” I said.

“Good. Well, when we discovered this, we froze North Korean assets in that bank. The United States position was that counterfeiting our currency was a crime, but that economic relations between North Korean and the United States had nothing to do with political or military relations. The North Koreans didn’t see it this way. They refused to engage in diplomatic talks to abandon their nuclear program until we unfroze the assets and agreed not to accuse them of counterfeiting.”

“Even though they were actually producing counterfeits.”

“Exactly. So the situation changed. What was an attempt to unearth and corroborate the illicit manufacture of United States tender by North Korea was abandoned.”

“That’s it?” I asked. “But what about the people Bae works for? Have you abandoned them, too.”

“No,” Bae said. He did not face me as he answered, but instead aimed his now fiery eyes at Robert Harper. “They promised to continue clandestinely supporting us, even though they’re now negotiating with the Jong Il regime.”

“And it’s a promise that we intend to keep,” Harper said dismissively.

“They’re giving his government legitimacy,” Bae countered. “You shouldn’t be negotiating with that man.”

“This is too important,” Harper yelled, “And until you get that you’ll never succeed. I’d rather see a madman in power without nuclear weapons than any North Korean – no matter how pure his heart – with them. We said we’ll give you help and we’ll give you help. There’s no one in the U.S. who thinks much of Jong Il, but there isn’t anyone who would pass up this opportunity either.” He stopped there and looked down as if slightly embarrassed that he had lost his composure. When he met Bae’s eyes again, his features had calmed and he reassumed a perfectly level tone. “Anyway, all this diplomatic business is above my pay grade. The point is that this counterfeit investigation is officially closed.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s it.”

“No,” came a voice from somewhere in the room. It was Christian. He was still hunched over, still resting one knee on the floor, his eyes blank with horror from what he had witnessed. His voice sounded deathly and empty, like it came from some other dimension. “That’s not all.”

“Excuse me?” Harper said as though he were slightly affronted.

“If that’s all,” Christian continued in his pale groan, “Then why is he dead?”

He pointed to the form lying motionless on the floor behind the desk. I had tried to ignore Chung Hee’s body, but now the small bits of it I could see from where I was standing filled my vision. It seemed to me his leg, which poked out from the side of the desk, looked heavy – bigger almost – than it would have if he were alive.

“Why is he dead?” Harper replied. “Because he was an annoyance, one that finally needed to be taken care of. His lackey, Pak, had taken the fifty dollar bill from you in Washington. Bae tracked him back here and discovered that he worked for Lee Chung Hee. While you and Bae were busy—how shall we say, dealing with Pak, I broke into Chung Hee’s limo. After his press conference, he got back into the limo with his entourage. Fortunately, he’s always the last one to be dropped off. So, instead of going home, I took him here. Needless to say, he was rather surprised not to see his driver when we got out of the car.”

“So you were at the hotel to kill Do Hyun-Su?” I asked Bae. “And you were both planning to meet here the whole time?”

He nodded, but did not meet my eyes.

“That was the plan,” Harper said, “Although you did your best to raise the alarm and mess everything up. You were lucky. You could have caused a lot more trouble than you did.”

I ignored him, but kept my eyes locked on Bae. Now they were as fiery as his had been only a few minutes ago.

“What about the cell phone?” I asked. “I knew I didn’t remember you taking it. Did you just make all that up about Harper being kidnapped?”

“A cell phone?” Harper chimed in. “I remember telling you not to talk to them again. Please tell me what plan you came up with yourself, one that ended in you dragging these two along with you.”

Now it was Bae’s turn to ignore Harper. He finally made eye contact, although he seemed to wince when he caught the anger in mine.

“I didn’t mean to lie to you Ionia,” he said, “But I wanted to see you, to give you some kind of information. I was ashamed of the truth and that I had lied to you in New York and then Washington. I did not think you would trust me if you knew I was North Korean. I’m sorry.”

It was my turn to cast my eyes to the floor in shame. I could not believe I had been so easily duped. My life was devoted to telling true from false. Now I had not only believed Bae’s lies, I had fallen for him. No, I had not become enamored of the man who stood before me, but some fake man I had constructed from the artificial scraps this man – this real man – had thrown to me in order to gain my trust. Like a child, I wanted to run out of the room and hide somewhere. If only I could have been home in bed, where I could pull a blanket over my head and imagine the world would just leave me behind. But then, the thought that had been budding indistinctly in my mind when I first started to piece everything together now shone slightly more clearly and poked at me again.

“How did Lee Chung Hee find out about the fifty dollar bill?” I asked. “Why did Pak come to the United States?”

“Ah, we finally come to the real question,” Harper said. I could have sworn he sounded satisfied. “But first, let me ask you a question: what were you doing this afternoon at the Empire Peninsula Hotel?”

“In his message to me, Arthur said that it had housed the North Korean counterfeiting investigation. He said that the North Koreans had ambushed the CIA there and stolen information from the investigation. He told us that you were worried the North Koreans might track him back to the United States.”

“I did tell him that,” Harper conceded. “Perhaps unwisely, but what I told him wasn’t entirely accurate. There was an ambush at the Empire Peninsula Hotel, but it wasn’t anyone from the North Korean government. It was Pak and some of Lee Chung Hee’s other henchmen. I don’t know how, but they had gotten wind of the counterfeiting investigation. Chung Hee saw this as his chance to unravel slowly warming relations between the North and the South. My men were good agents. As soon as they saw the attack coming, they destroyed almost everything. Many of them died making sure that information didn’t fall into the wrong hands. Unfortunately, an obscure reference to Arthur Mantes survived.”

“So they used that to track him down?” I asked.

“Exactly,” Harper replied.

“But they needed information, why would they kill him?”

“They didn’t,” Bae said suddenly.

“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice filling with rage. “You told me it was the North Koreans, which means the South Koreans, right? Or did you lie to me about that, too?”

“No,” Bae said. “He—” he pointed to Robert Harper, “—told me it was Pak and his gang. What I told you is true. The night that you attacked me in Arthur’s office, I was there looking for the fifty dollar bill. Harper and I were trying to find it after Arthur died. Harper told me that Pak killed Arthur Mantes, but now I see that can’t be true.” He pointed a finger at Harper. “It was you, wasn’t it? You killed Arthur Mantes.”

His face once again donned that awful sneer.

“Of course I did.”

Fifty-Two

My hand was shaking and I could not tell whether it was from fear or sadness or rage.

“Why?” I whimpered. “After everything he did for you, why did you kill him.”

“Arthur knew too much and Lee Chung Hee’s men were after him,” he replied coldly. “It was simple, really. I could try and kill Pak and anyone else sent to find him, or I could guarantee that this information never fell into the wrong hands. I chose the guarantee. I didn’t think he would act as quickly as he did to pass all of this information on to you. To be honest, I think I underestimated him.”

It wasn’t just that he killed Arthur, it’s the way he talked about him, about a human being that I loved dearly. He spoke as if Arthur was just a problem to be solved, with one means no better or worse than another. It sickened me.

“I’m sorry you had to find out,” Harper said, though without sympathy. “I tried to make it look like a heart attack. No one needed to know that Arthur was killed—for other reasons. If it makes you feel any better, Pak did kill Helen Mantes. I had nothing to do with that one. He was looking for the fifty dollar bill and apparently she got in the way.”

“You son of a bitch,” Bae muttered under his breath. “Is there anything you won’t do to get your damn results? Are they worth any price?”

Harper did not turn to meet him, but kept looking at me, the hint of a self-satisfied grin still hanging on his face.

“Yes,” he said softly. “They are.”

It happened quickly. I saw Harper’s hand shift slightly next to his leg. I started to scream Bae’s name out but it was too late. In one, swift motion, Harper had raised his gun and fired straight at Bae. I didn’t see where the bullet hit, but Bae collapsed to the floor immediately. I threw myself down to him, but he took only one breath before sinking lifelessly down into the floor and falling eerily still. I shook him gently but he did not move. A hand rested on my shoulder and I looked up to see Christian. His eyes held mine fearfully and sympathetically as he tried to pull me away from Bae’s body.

“Why did you do that?” I cried, hot tears burning my eyes.

“I told you,” he said, “I can’t risk that any information about North Korean counterfeiting will fall into the wrong hands. Anyway, the body of a prominent South Korean politician found dead on the eve of major peace talks doesn’t look good. Fortunately, I’m sure we can get the North Koreans to corroborate a story about a rogue intelligence agent disobeying orders and taking matters into his own hands. In fact, a swift North Korean apology and vigilant investigation will help accelerate the reconciliation, don’t you?”

“You bastard,” I choked. “And what about us? Aren’t we a liability, too?”

His eyes narrowed.

“You are,” he said in a low growl. “Fortunately, no one will miss you.”

He lifted the gun so that it aimed directly at my head. In a panic, I pushed myself away from Bae and leaped across the room. I landed on my stomach several feet away and instinctively pulled my hands to over my head, bracing for the gunshot. Instead, I heard a loud grunt and crash across the room. I rolled over onto my side and saw that Christian had lunged over the desk and tackled Harper. They wrestled behind the desk as Harper struggled to force the gun to point towards Christian’s chest. He groaned as he tried to turn it, but Christian struck it out of his hand and it clattered a couple feet away.

I looked down at my own hands and realized that one of them still held the gun Bae had given me. With my free hand, I pushed myself up off the ground and walked around the desk so I could try and get a free shot. Just as I settled myself into what I could only guess was a good shooting position, Harper kneed Christian in the chest and somehow swung him into the side of the desk. Christian grunted and fell to the ground. He rasped for air, but was unable to move. In a blur, Harper turned himself over, reached out and had his gun back in his hand.

“Who do you really think is faster?” he asked through heavy breaths as he crouched on the floor, his gun pointing at my head. “You or me? Only one of us leaves this room, Ionia, and I think you know who it will be.”

My hand started to shake. I had no choice but to aim as best I could and squeeze the trigger. I narrowed my eyes and tried to stay my rattling teeth. I inhaled deeply as I readied myself to pull the trigger with all my might.

A loud bang interrupted my concentration and some force pushed Harper’s head straight to the side, as if someone had grabbed him by the neck and thrown him to the ground. Still shaking, I looked back toward the door to see Bae holding his gun out with one arm and propping himself up with the other. He inclined his head to make sure his bullet had struck Harper and then his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he melted back to the ground.

I tucked my gun into my pocket and went to over to him.

“Bae?” I whispered, my voice raspy and quivering. “Are you ok?”

He grumbled and breathed, but did not move.

“We have to get him out of here,” Christian said weakly. I looked over my shoulder to see him standing above me and rubbing his torso where Harper had so forcefully planted his knee.

Perhaps it was the adrenaline, but somehow we found a way to lift Bae’s arms onto our shoulders and drag him out of the room. Harper’s bullet must have hit him chest above the heart, because his chest was bleeding profusely through the top of his shirt. Christian pressed a scrap of his own shirt against the wound as we hauled Bae through the corridors of Lee Chung Hee’s office, but I could see the blood oozing out of the cracks between Christian’s fingers like water about to burst over a dam. The front door to the office was locked by a simple deadbolt that did not require a key from the inside and we were able to head right out the door to the elevators.

When we reached the ground floor, we first walked toward a large bank of glass doors. As we neared them, however, the distant whine of police sirens arrested our step. We listened for a moment longer until it was clear they were heading this way.

“What should we do?” I asked aloud.

“I don’t know,” Christian replied. “Is there another exit?”

Though I was sure he had been unconscious, this roused Bae and he started mumbling in between his sharp, sickly wheezes.

“Behind the elevators,” he said. “Service exit.”

Christian and I looked at each other and then swung our passenger around as quickly and carefully as we could. We stumbled back toward the elevators and found a service door much like the one we had entered on the other side of the building. Christian toyed with the handle but it didn’t open.

“Give me your gun,” he commanded. I reached into my pocket and offered it to him. As he aimed it at the lock we both turned away. A bullet whined ricocheted off into the atrium as soon as he fired. When we looked back, the lock was deformed but appeared intact. He handed me back the weapon and tried again. To my relief, the door resisted only briefly before yielding to Christian’s strong grip. He yanked it open and we rushed inside as the sirens drew nearer.

Bae was starting to feel heavy, but we pressed ahead as fast as possible, our step picking up to a jog at times. We were in a darkened corridor, barely lit by electric torches every five feet or so. About halfway down the hall, there were either no more electric lights or for some reason they were shut off and we were plunged into darkness. Unable to see the end of the corridor, I began to grow nervous that we wouldn’t make it. Surely the Seoul Police would see the dent left in the door by the gun. And maybe we didn’t take the service exit Bae was talking about. He was barely alive as it was—could we even trust he knew what he was saying? Just as my fears started to run wild in my brain, Christian came to a sudden halt.

“What is it?” I asked and stopped along with him.

“I see something,” he started quietly and then, “There, just up ahead. Do you see a light, kind of up in the air?”

My eyes searched through the darkness until I saw a thin line of light trace a rectangular outline several feet in front of us.

“I see it,” I confirmed.

“It’s a door,” Christian said. “Move slowly, I think there might be some steps.

Sure enough, as we inched forward my toe struck a concrete step. Because we couldn’t see anything and were carrying Bae’s weight, we had a difficult time ascending the steps, trying clumsily to move upward without dropping Bae. We finally got to the door and Christian felt around until a scratching told me he had the handle. He clicked what I could only suppose was a lock and leaned his shoulder against the door as it slowly swung open. We found ourselves outside on the sidewalk all alone. It must have been an alley used for deliveries because there was absolutely no traffic or sign of life. Only several large dumpsters stood against the wall opposite us like inanimate sentries left to guard the empty street.

“Where should we go?” Christian asked.

“I dunno,” I said frantically. “We can’t just run out and call a cab with Bae bleeding like this. I don’t know how to get out of here.”

Bae stirred again.

“Leave me,” he rasped.

“What?” I said gently, lovingly even. “Bae, no, we’re not going to just leave you.”

“I’ll be fine.” He opened his eyes to mere slits and tried to peer around the street. “There, the dumpsters. Put me in between two of them.”

“Bae, I—”

“Ionia,” he said, his voice no longer weakened, but firm as if he were wide awake and in perfect health. “Listen to me. This is the only way you’re going to make. I promise I’ll be fine. Now leave me.”

My eyes started to fill with tears and I looked over at Christian to see his eyes also glass over with emotion. I wanted him to help me, to assure Bae that we could carry him out of here to safety.

“He’s right,” Christian said, a light tremor running through his words. “We have to leave him.”

I hung my head in defeat but did not resist. We both dragged our feet as we brought Bae over to the dumpsters and tucked him gently between two of them. I propped him along the wall so that his back was upright and his legs lay extended on the pavement. I then placed the scrap of Christian’s shirt in his hand and brought it to the wound in the vain hope that he could stifle the blood pouring out.

“Just go,” he whispered as I continued to try and adjust him.

We stood there together, Christian and I, looking down at his face, ashen from the loss of blood.

“Goodbye Bae,” I said as I wiped the tears from my eyes. But he did not reply, now fully unconscious, his head slumped over and his breathing quick and shallow.

“Let’s go,” Christian said.

We turned our backs and jogged to one end of the alley which we guess would take us away from the main entrance. When we reached the road, we hailed down a taxi from the steady stream of cars that whirred past us. As we climbed inside, I could see the cab driver stoically examine us in the rearview mirror. If anything surprised him about the blood spattering our shirts, he didn’t show it. Instead, he nodded courteously when I told him the name of our hotel and eased the car back into the anonymous river of traffic.

Fifty-Three

“Early reports are that the talks have been a complete success. Diplomats from all sides have been forthcoming with praise for the talks and for the strides being made. Our sources indicate that the three parties have established a framework for North Korean disarmament and have established a schedule for reunification talks. American negotiators have indicated that normalization talks with North Korea will also be pursued, but on an independent timetable.

“Although it did cause a minor stir ten days ago, the untimely death of South Korean politician Lee Chung Hee has had no discernable effect on the talks. All parties called the incident tragic. While it is not definitive, the death is believed to have been a suicide committed in Chung Hee’s downtown office. Chung Hee was known as a vociferous opponent of reunification with North Korea.”

“In other news—”

I clicked the television off and stood up to stretch. News stories about how the wildly successful peace talks had been pouring in for days. I had no idea how they took care of Robert Harper’s body and the fifty dollar bill, but there was no mention on television or in the newspapers of any American found mysteriously dead, nor was there any rumor that North Korea had been counterfeiting United States currency. Perhaps the South Korean police had willingly cooperated with United States’ attempts to keep everything secret. I didn’t know.

Things were surprisingly normal when we returned to the United States, as if leaving South Korea somehow allowed us to leave everything behind. Or maybe it just hadn’t really sunk in yet. Part of me hoped it never would. I thought I could rest content imagining that everything had been a dream. That I had never seen Lee Chung Hee and Robert Harper shot or Bae bleeding to death next to a dumpster. A horrible dream, to be sure, but a dream nonetheless. But I knew that could never be. Someday I would have to confront these memories and recognize them as things that really did happen to me. I just prayed I would be ready, as if it would be more frightful to remember them – to really remember them – than it had been to live them.

As soon as we returned, Christian visited home for the end of his winter break, but I went right back to work. I also mailed the memory stick with Arthur’s report and his message to Jonathan Attleton at the CIA. Christian had asked me not to do this. He said just to destroy it and forget about it. I thought he was scared that Attleton would come after us, just as Harper would have. We both were, really. The first few nights I would check the locks on the door three or four times before going to bed and I slept horribly. I would wake up constantly in the night and, when I was asleep, would find myself stuck in nightmares and bad dreams. But after a week, things began to feel normal again, as if since Arthur died I had stepped outside the real world and was now only catching up. The pace and tempo of everyday life alleviated my fears and made them feel almost silly, like they had been motivated by some grand illusion or play. What had happened to Christian and me could not have happened in the real world, it had no patience for such fantastic and harrowing adventures.

By now I barely thought about any of it unless I was watching a report like this one on the television about the talks. The first few times I saw mention of the talks on the news, the torrent of memories would incapacitate me. But tonight it was just a news story like any other and I started getting ready for bed without a thought in the world. Then, as I was brushing my teeth, the phone rang.

“Hello?” I answered, my mouth thick with toothpaste.

“Ionia Han?” a voice asked.

“Yes?”

“This is Jonathan Attleton from Langley.”

At this my heart stopped and I held my breath, unable to say anything. I’m sure that if I had been in front of a mirror, I would have seen my eyes bulge out of my head in shock.

“How can I help you?” I asked warily.

“I just wanted to thank you for the package—it was very helpful.”

“Are you concerned that I know its contents?” I asked.

“Should I be?”

“No, but I’m not sure Robert Harper would have believed me if I said so.”

“That’s not a risk Harper was willing to take,” Attleton explained. “His style was—cautious, let’s say.”

“What about you?”

“Me? That’s a risk I’d be willing to take, I think.”

I squeezed my eyes shut in relief.

“How can I be sure that I can trust you?” I asked eagerly, hoping the answer would be an unqualified yes.

“I’m not sure you have much of a choice,” Attleton replied. “But I’d be willing to offer some proof of that my intentions are good.”

“Like what?”

“You’ll see,” was all he said before hanging up.

I stared at the phone for a few minutes as if it and no Attleton had some how held out on me. What was the point of that phone call? Merely to thank me for sending him the memory stick? Some of my still fresh fears clawed their way into my stomach, but I pushed them out and went to bed. In my idle moments over the next couple of days, I turned the conversation over and over in my mind. I wondered what kind of proof he could offer that I was safe, that my knowledge was of no concern to anyone.

A couple of days later I received a letter with a return address to the CIA. I opened it up and discovered two pages, the first a small note with letterhead “From the desk of Jonathan Attleton”:

Dear Ionia,

Thank you for your help. It will not be forgotten. One of our assets in East Asia asked that I pass this along to you. Consider it a good faith gesture.

Yours,

J. Attleton

I turned to the second page and recognized the handwriting immediately as that which had greeted me when I returned from Dupont Circle so many weeks ago:

Dear Ionia,

You saved my life in more ways than one. Someday I wish that the two worlds we seem to inhabit can be one. Until then, please remember that my thoughts are with you always.

Yours eternally,

Bae Chang-Su

I had been wrong. I did not want to forget this dream entirely. Some of it had been more than just a dream. Some of it had been real.

The End

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