The night sky was streaked with flecks of gold, announcing the fast approaching day by the time the gang had been subdued and the warehouse was in the control of law enforcement.
The FBI had one critically injured agent and the NYPD had four casualties. There was grimness on every person’s face as the cleanup reached its final stages. The 41S bodies had been carried away, and those alive, had been arrested.
Media vans and choppers had arrived at the scene and had commenced live relays. Reporters crowded at the barrier erected by the police and shouted questions. Burke was a visible presence as she went about directing the operations. Pizaka and Chang worked with their team, swiftly and efficiently.
Each container in the warehouse was opened and its contents recorded. One container had counterfeit bills. Thousands of them. The vicinity of the warehouse was searched and a box truck was found, filled with shoeboxes with more bills.
‘Millions,’ a reporter’s mic caught a police officer murmuring under his breath.
‘MILLIONS OF COUNTERFEIT BILLS FOUND IN QUEENS WAREHOUSE,’ banners screamed on thousands of TVs around the country.
The social media accounts burst into action and whipped up frenzy. Billions of fake bills in circulation. Government lying. #yourmoneyisworthless.
Burke gave a bland statement, confirming the haul, and said she had nothing more to add. The investigation was ongoing. She praised the injured officers and agents and called them heroes.
Her statement was picked up and ran worldwide. The Department of Treasury spokesman called a press conference and condemned the social media storm. There was no proof that there were billions of counterfeit bills out there, he said.
No one believed him. No one believed the Federal government. Online retailers reported a surge in the sales of counterfeit detection kits. Bank officials in several small towns were surrounded by angry townspeople who felt they had been cheated by the system.
The business newspapers reported loss in confidence in the currency system and predicted that the stock markets would open several points down. The U.S. dollar took more beating and was at one of its historic lows.
Meghan and Beth walked slowly, matching their pace to Zeb’s, as they accompanied him to their favorite watering hole, next to their office, several hours later.
Zeb had been attended to by a doctor the Agency employed, in the very early hours of the morning. The doctor had taken one look at her patient and had sighed through pursued lips. The patient was a frequent visitor and left each time after making empty promises of looking after himself.
‘A broken rib that didn’t pierce your lung. Thank the Lord for that. A shoulder that was dislocated but is now back in position.’ She jabbed it with a forefinger and her lips curled at Zeb’s wince. ‘You should’ve thought of that before doing whatever you did.’
She recited the litany of injuries, most of which were superficial. The muscle and ligament tears would take more time to heal. She strapped his chest so tight that it hurt and jabbed a needle in him. ‘Have you heard of taking it easy? R&R? Beaches and a drink?’
‘It isn’t what you think, ma’am,’ Zeb said solemnly, his wits back. ‘The twins…they took turns kicking me.’
A snort of disbelief escaped her as she wrote out a list of prescriptions. ‘There’s nothing that needs surgery. You need sleep, rest, and all those medications,’ she thrust the slip at him, knowing it would find its way in a trashcan the moment he hit the street.
‘This’s the sixth time you’ve visited me this year,’ she said as he was leaving. ‘If you want a date, why don’t you ask outright?’
Zeb had slept like a log when the twins drove him to their office and had awakened only when Beth had accidentally dropped her mug of coffee. He raised himself from the couch and limped to the shower where alternating bursts of hot and cold brought back a semblance of life.
Coffee, strong and hot, sparked his vitals and he started feeling better. The limp would remain for days, the rib would take as much as that to heal. Ligaments would heal since he had the constitution of an ox, the doctor had commented sardonically.
Beth brought him up to speed when he’d finished his brew, her eyes bright, her face triumphant. ‘The 41S is finished. All but Peng Huang are in custody. Some of them have unloaded everything that they know. The fake bills were to pay for buying drugs. The whole plan was drugs related. They had come across a forger in China who was a master in producing fake Yuan. Peng Huang saw the potential… buy drugs with fake bills.’
‘They got him to make plates for their bills, acquired the plants in three states, took them over, and here we are.’
‘That required a lot of planning. A lot of time.’
‘Years of it,’ Beth nodded. ‘The initial batch of plates were bad, they had to restart. Your guy Zho killed a few employees to get others to cooperate. It took time, but Peng Huang wasn’t in any hurry.’
Zeb turned it over his mind, looking for holes. It sounded plausible. ‘The spying?’
‘That has the smell of their government. An outsourced job to them. Only Peng Huang knows the details and he isn’t around. The State Department has gotten involved and they have raised the matter with China. They’re strongly denying involvement in any spying. They would, wouldn’t they?’
‘Zho?’
‘Isn’t talking.’
‘Sarah wanted to know what you’d done to him. I told her you and he had a discussion, a mature one,’ Meghan interjected, her voice drier than a desert.
‘All that stuff?’ he pointed to the TV which had the screaming, rolling banners.
‘Nothing to do with the gang, apparently. Stock markets and the dollar have taken a beating, but Sarah says they’ll recover. There’s a separate investigation going on into those social media accounts, but she’ll handle that on her own. Doesn’t need us.’
The TV screen cut to a video of Burke talking to reporters. It changed to show Pizaka, all dressed up, at four am in the morning, speaking seriously to the press.
‘He’ll get another book deal out of this,’ Beth laughed cynically.
‘Bwana and Roger?’
‘They’re in their apartments. Bwana said looking after your ass wasn’t any fun. Boring. Bear and Chloe…Sarah asked them to stand down. She’s got her agents in place.’
‘Broker’s with her?’
‘Yeah, where else.’ Beth approached him and gave him her arm as she led him to the elevator. ‘Let’s get some food in you, and then back to bed.’
Zeb seated himself at a corner table, his back to the wall, while the sisters went to the counter to place their orders. He stretched out his legs gingerly, feeling like he’d been run over by a truck.
An elderly lady glanced at him and clicked her tongue in sympathy. ‘Old age, honey. Happens to all of us.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
A newspaper rustled. A suit reading the day’s business sheets on the neighboring table. He didn’t want to be disturbed. Morning coffee and stock market performance and corporate news were his escape.
The sisters returned with mugs and a plate full of cookies. ‘Our part is done,’ Beth spoke with her mouth full, swallowed, and continued. ‘Sarah said we should drop into Federal Plaza sometime today and tie up the loose ends, but our role is finished.’
She glanced at Meghan who was tracing circles on the table with her spoon, and quirked her eyebrow at Zeb. He shrugged. He’d no clue.
‘She needs a boyfriend,’ Beth mouthed.
‘I heard that. I can take care of my love life, thanks.’ The sister spoke.
The newspaper rustled again and the suit glared at them above its edges. Couldn’t a stock broker get any quiet? His eyes disappeared when Zeb looked at him and he got the quiet he wanted.
Beth rolled her eyes and grabbed the last cookie before Zeb could. She broke it in two and offered a piece, the smaller portion, to Zeb. Meghan was still silent and when she turned to her sister, she saw the familiar expression on her twin’s face.
A floating thought, a connection, had just struck Meghan.
Meghan couldn’t turn away from the suit’s newspaper which was angled just right for her to read the front page. The headlines were all about the counterfeit scandal, however, below the main article was another report.
Chinese fund poised to close largest semiconductor deal today.
Chinese government backed fund is likely to take significant stakes in three semiconductor companies today. Historic day with three M&A deals to go in favor of fund, within hours of one another. Total deal value in excess of one hundred and fifty billion dollars. One of the largest M&A combined transactions.
The country’s name was what had drawn her attention in the first place. Government was the second word.
What if...? she began thinking and trailed off when suit turned down Zeb angrily when her friend asked him for the front page. Mehan's sister tried, requesting him politely, smiling widely and sweetly at the suit, who immediately melted and handed over the cover page to her. He crackled the remaining pages and glared at Zeb. You need to learn some manners, he seemed to suggest.
Beth cleared their table and spread the page for them to read.
The Chinese state backed fund had been wooing the three semiconductor companies for years, it stated. All three were in California; Moeda was listed on the NASDAQ, the two others were privately held.
The fund had appeared to fend off an American suitor and a Japanese one. Moeda, the largest of the courted companies, was due to have its board meeting at three pm that day; it was expected the board would green light the Chinese offer.
The other two companies had similar board meetings an hour later, and similar outcomes were expected. The fund was expected to get CFIUS approval; it had done its homework and had presented several proposals to the agency to mitigate any national security concerns it might have. It was rumored that the proposals had been received well.
CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, was an all-powerful inter-agency committee chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury. It had members from Defense, State, Commerce, Homeland Security, and many others.
CFIUS could approve transactions or could recommend that the president block an acquisition if the agency believed the acquisition was against national security interests.
Meghan skipped over details of how the agency worked and read the rest of the report rapidly.
The transactions would be all cash, with the majority of funds coming from the acquirer’s country, if the acquirer was a foreign company. The technology of the three companies was widely used in general computing applications, however, Moeda’s chips were used in avionics and robotics as well.
Meghan paused from reading and searched her memory for a distant recollection. I’ve heard of Moeda before. In which context? She leaned back and let Beth take the newspaper from her as she racked her brains, trying to remember.
No memory came and she looked around the coffee store in frustration, as if hoping inspiration would strike. A barista looked at her and nodded in acknowledgement when she indicated a second serving of their drinks. A couple was seated in a corner whispering sweet nothings. A few students were poring over books and writing in notepads. She thanked their server absentmindedly, not paying much attention to Beth and Zeb who were conversing softly.
She froze in mid-swallow when the memory came back. Letwoski! He mentioned Moeda. They were interested in the research, even though it was commissioned by the DoD. The research would fit in with their chip development.
With that came another sickening thought, one that made her draw closer to Beth and Zeb and flag their attention.
‘What if those bills were meant to be found?’