“You tell her about the incident at the pool?”
“I did, yeah.”
Ten minutes later, amid a cacophony of bells and jingling, the two SEALs negotiated banks of pinball machines and gaming tables, and arrived at Jeri’s office. She stood at a desk with a wall of video monitors behind her, talking on the phone. Jim Walker, the assistant director of hotel security, wearing a maroon blazer and sporting a Burt Reynolds mustache, stood beside her.
“Yes, Mr. Leong. That’s right, Mr. Leong. Carl Wong and Jon Petroc. I know. They claim to be part of a Chinese diplomatic delegation from your Ministry of Industry. Thanks for checking. Yes, please, as soon as you can. Thanks for your time.”
She hung up, muttered “Douchebag,” sipped from a cardboard cup of coffee on her desk, and sighed. “Hi, Crocker. That was the Chinese consul. I asked him to check the validity of their passports, and he asks me to comp him and his family for dinner for six at your most expensive restaurant. Can you believe that BS?”
“Hi, Jeri.”
“Thanks for coming.”
“We just saw two guys wrestle with your security guards and run off.”
“Yeah, I know. Carl Wong and John Petroc. Those are the guys I’m talking about.”
She turned to Walker, who had the glazed look of someone who’d seen it all.
Walker asked, “Which restaurant does the Chinese consul want to go to?”
“The Guy Savoy.”
“Of course. Call François. You got his number?”
Crocker stood in his black jeans and T-shirt that he had changed into, looking confused. “You talking about the guys we saw by the pool?”
“Yeah,” Jeri nodded. “Wong and Petroc. They’re holed up in their room and refuse to come out and talk. Claim to be holding diplomatic passports and working for the Chinese government.”
“They didn’t look like diplomats,” Crocker said.
“Didn’t act like them, either,” added Mancini.
She held up her hand to Crocker and Mancini, and picked up the phone again. “Just a sec…François, it’s Jeri. Yeah, Jeri Blackwell from the Secret Service. Comment tallez vouz, honey? I need a table for six, eight o’clock. Cram ’em in the toilet if you have to, but make it happen. Thanks.”
She hung up and pointed to the monitors on the far right behind her. “They’re in there. The Titus Suite in the Augustus Tower. That’s where they ran to when you were chasing them just now. See? Completely dark. What kind of diplomats know how to find and disable the monitors in their hotel suite?”
“Shady ones,” Crocker answered, trying to grasp what was going on.
“They’ve got something that’s interfering with our electronics, too.”
“You really believe they’re working for the Chinese?” Crocker asked. “Why are they here in the first place?”
“Trouble. What else? I want to show you something.” Jeri picked up the phone again and said, “Lester, come into my office for a minute and bring the strongbox.”
Two minutes later a man in a blue-and-black teller’s uniform entered-gray hair, gray mustache, late fifties. He carried a metal box, which he set on the desk.
“Lester, these two studs are friends of mine. Show ’em what you found.”
Lester turned to Walker, who nodded. Then he used one of the keys on a chain attached to his belt to open the metal case. Inside were stacks of new hundred-dollar bills. He pulled one out and handed it to Crocker.
“Thanks,” Crocker asked.
“It’s counterfeit,” Lester said. “So are all the others. We’ve taken in almost a hundred thousand dollars’ worth in the past two days.”
“Who’s we?”
“Caesars Palace.”
Turning to Jeri, Crocker said, “These match the ones we grabbed in the Ukraine?”
“You’re smart, honey,” she replied, nodding toward the teller. “Check ’em out.”
Lester removed a jeweler’s loupe from his pocket and held it to his right eye. “If you look closely, they all have the same anomaly along the lapel of Franklin’s jacket.”
He handed the loupe to Crocker and used a pencil to point to the fine lines in question. “Missing is the microprinting near the collar. It’s a small detail, but significant. All the new Treasury bills have it. These don’t. Here’s a genuine Franklin for comparison.”
Crocker checked the real one and barely made out the words “United States of America” along the collar.
“Same as the ones we seized in Ukraine.”
“Yup,” said Jeri.
He passed the bills and loupe to Mancini. “What do you want us to do?”
Jeri said, “Nothing yet.” Flipping through the papers on her desk, she found a report and passed it to Crocker.
“We did a high-resolution scan of one of the bills and sent a report to headquarters. They told us it was part of set of counterfeits, known as 2HK1, that have started to find their way into circulation in Hong Kong, Thailand, Hawaii, and Russia over the past month and half.”
“How much?”
“Millions of dollars’ worth. This is the first time they’ve appeared in the U.S. And here are the guys we think have been passing them.”
She handed him a set of stills taken by surveillance cameras. They showed individuals of different nationalities standing at casino cashier windows and blackjack tables, handing cashiers and dealers hundred-dollar bills. The time signatures in the right-hand corners indicated the pictures had been taken over the past thirty-six hours. None of the faces in the pictures matched those of Wong or Petroc.
Crocker shrugged. “I don’t get it.”
“We call the guys in the photos storks. If Wong and Petroc are doing what I think they are, they’re the suppliers,” explained Jeri. “They’re selling the fake stuff at fifty to sixty percent face value to storks, who quickly cash it in and split town. We haven’t caught a one of them, but we’re looking.”
“When did Wong and Petroc arrive?” Crocker asked.
“Two days ago, shortly before this bullshit started. These counterfeits have been showing up at casinos all over town. I figure they’ve spread about two mil worth already.”
“Why don’t you just arrest them?” Crocker asked.
Jeri thanked Lester, who left with the locked box and counterfeit hundreds, then continued. “The fact that they’re carrying diplomatic passports poses a major obstacle. I figure we need two things to happen before we can grab them. One, the Chinese consul general establishes that the passports are fakes. And two, we get clearance from the State Department.”
Mancini said, “By the time that happens those two characters will be long gone.”
“I like this guy, Crocker.”
Crocker asked, “How can we help?”
Jeri rubbed her hands together. “We’ve got ourselves a cat-and-mouse-type situation. I’ve got guys all over town chasing down the fakes, and I know Treasury’s not going to commit more officers until clearances have been given to make arrests.”
“Bureaucratic nonsense.”
“No, it’s China. They’re big crybabies. Unfortunately, our economy depends on the cheap shit they sell us. So our government is afraid of even watching them carefully. Nobody wants to upset the Chinese.”
“How do you know it’s the Chinese?”
“Don’t know for sure, honey. Maybe they ain’t really Chinese. It’s Nevada. They could be from anywhere. All I can do in my position is station my guys outside their suite. But if Wong and Petroc pay their bill and leave, which I expect they will, I can’t detain ’em.”
“Even after the incident at the pool?”
“Caesars’ management will let that go.”
Walker, who was sitting behind the desk quietly going through paperwork, nodded. “We’re cooperating with Treasury, but management strongly discourages any kind of commotion at the hotel. It’s bad for business. Any kind of violence keeps people away.”
“Got it.”
“That’s where I’m thinking you come in,” Jeri said. “One of those assholes slammed into your eighty-year-old aunt and didn’t apologize. As far as you know, you don’t know anything about them holding diplomatic passports. So you confront ’em outside the public areas, like, say, the parking lot. A fight breaks out. You get some shots in, then I call Las Vegas PD and have them arrested. LVPD cops don’t know shit about diplomatic immunity. They end up holding those guys for a couple hours at least, while we go through their suitcases and see if we can find more counterfeit bills. Not exactly legal, but it’s the best we can do.”