‘I wonder why they bother with all that,’ remarked Wilby, ‘seeing how little it can buy. The moneychangers in the west won’t even take it in exchange!’
‘Have you ever thought,’ asked Thesinger, ‘that this might be the way the Russians want it? By keeping the value of their currency so low, they discourage all those capitalists, whom they despise, from meddling in their economy. And as for the complexity of their printing methods, it is an acknowledgement of how much damage could be done if they lost control of their monetary system◦– a lesson the British very nearly learned the hard way during the war, when the Germans came up with a plan to flood Britain with counterfeit five-pound notes. If the plan had worked, it would have caused total chaos.’
‘Why didn’t it work?’ asked Carter. ‘Were the fakes not good enough?’
‘On the contrary,’ said Thesinger, ‘they were nearly perfect. When German agents travelled to Switzerland with some of the counterfeit money, they approached a bank in Zurich with concerns that the money might be fake.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Wilby. ‘They went to the bank with fake money and told them it was fake?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Thesinger. ‘What they did was actually very clever. They wanted the money to be examined by experts, to see if it would pass the test of authenticity, but the only way they could do that was to approach the bank as if they had their doubts.’
‘And what happened?’ asked Carter.
‘After examining the currency themselves, the Swiss bank then forwarded it to representatives of the Bank of England, who assured them that it was authentic. This was how the Germans knew that it had passed the ultimate test◦– to be approved by the very people whose job it was to safeguard the British monetary system.’
‘Then why didn’t they go ahead with it?’ asked Wilby.
‘In the end,’ replied Thesinger, ‘they were unable to distribute the money in a way that would have allowed the fake currency to mingle effectively with the real currency. The only plan they had was to throw it out of aeroplanes and let it rain down over the English countryside, in the hope that people would immediately gather it up and start spending it. The trouble with that plan was that the fraud would have become known immediately, and it relied on the dishonesty of anyone trying to spend it. Whatever damage it might have done would have been extremely short-lived. The only way it could have worked was to let the money trickle in slowly. The art of the counterfeiter is not simply in persuading someone to exchange something that is real for something that is not. It is, in fact, in making them believe in a lie, and the more elegantly that lie is told, the more likely it is that those who are being lied to, even when they realise it is a lie, will cling to it regardless, because they have invested themselves in the idea that it is the truth. It is not just their wealth that is at stake. It took the average British worker almost a month to earn five pounds. Trust in the authenticity of that money also represents their peace of mind. The only thing that prevents even real money from being just a pretty scrap of paper is an agreement between you and your government that this paper’◦– he waved the rouble note in the air◦– ‘is worth what they say it is. And once the counterfeit bills have found their way unnoticed into the arteries of commerce, even the innocent become complicit in the deception. When the fraud is eventually revealed and, more importantly, accepted as a fraud, the result is that nobody knows anymore what or whom to trust. The Russians have virtually perfected the art of misinformation in their dealings with other countries. It can be very effective in undermining the governments of their adversaries, but they use the same tactics just as vigorously on their own people, which leaves them open to the same vulnerabilities they exploit in others.’
‘So is that why somebody is smuggling counterfeit Russian currency back into Russia?’ asked Carter.
‘Maybe,’ answered Thesinger, ‘or it might be much simpler than that. Perhaps these counterfeiters simply want to buy something and don’t have the money to pay for it.’
‘Have you ever heard of a man named Garlinsky?’ asked Wilby.
At that moment, the little chime attached to the front door tinkled softly.
‘It seems I have a customer,’ said Thesinger.
‘But the name?’ Wilby persisted. ‘Do you know it?’
‘Unlike my door,’ replied Thesinger, ‘it does not ring a bell. Excuse me, gentlemen.’
Wilby reached into his pocket, pulled out a roll of American bills and handed it to Thesinger. ‘That’s the real stuff, by the way,’ he said.
‘If it wasn’t,’ answered the old man, folding the money away in his hand, ‘I would have been sure to let you know.’
Leaving the shop, Carter noticed that the three men were gone. The sound they had heard was them departing and not the arrival of a customer, after all. Out in the street it was raining and Carter felt sorry for the ragged man, scurrying along before his suitcase disintegrated in the downpour. But, these days, there were so many like that ragged man, wandering like tramps from town to town in search of food and shelter, that you could not feel sorry for them all and not go crazy in the process.
With the collars of their jackets held against their throats, Carter and Wilby walked south along the wide boulevard of Neusserstrasse, heading for the central station where Wilby would catch the train back to Bonn.
‘Who is Thesinger,’ asked Carter, ‘and how does he know what he knows?’
‘At the end of the war,’ replied Wilby, ‘he turned up in a refugee centre somewhere in Austria. Before that, he had been in a concentration camp. In the debriefing given to all refugees, he said he had been employed before the war as a technician at the Reichsbank. His specialty was what’s called “rotogravure”, which means engraving the copper plates used for printing currency. His story checked out and he was released from the refugee centre. He may be a book dealer now, but that old man used to work at the heart of the German banking system. The reason he knows what to look for in a counterfeit note is that he used to be in charge of making the real stuff.’
‘But why go to him?’ asked Carter. ‘Surely you have people in your organisation who could have told you what you needed to know.’
‘I told you I had concerns,’ replied Wilby.
‘But you answer to people at Bonn station, just like I answer to you. If this is as big as you say it is, surely you can’t keep it hidden from everybody.’
Wilby had been striding along, but suddenly he skidded to a halt. Beads of water dripped from the brim of his hat. ‘I can keep it hidden,’ he said, ‘and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.’ He took hold of Carter’s arm and led him under the red and white awning of a bakery to get out of the downpour. The two men faced each other, rain thrashing down so hard around them that they almost had to shout to hear each other. Except for a tramcar sliding past, sparks trailing from where its overhead connector touched the wires, the streets were empty. The windows of the bakery were fogged with condensation. Dimly they could make out the shapes of people moving around inside.