I PARKED UP IN THE STATION HOUSE LOT, FARTHEST SLOT from the door. Put my gun back in the glove compartment and got out of the car. It was getting late. The evening gloom was gathering. The huge Georgia sky was darkening. Turning a deep inky shade. The moon was coming up.
Roscoe was at her desk. She got up when she saw me and walked over. We went back out through the door. Walked a few paces. Kissed.
"Anything from the car rental people?" I asked her.
She shook her head.
"Tomorrow," she said. "Picard's dealing with it. He's doing his best."
"OK," I said. "What hotels you got up at the airport?"
She reeled off a list of hotels. Pretty much the same list you got at any airport. I picked the first name she'd listed. Then I told her what had happened with the two Florida boys. Last week, she'd have arrested me for it. Sent me to the chair. Now, her reaction was different. Those four men who had padded through her place in their rubber shoes had changed her mind about a lot of things. So she just nodded and smiled a tight grim smile of satisfaction.
"Two down," she said. "Good work, Reacher. Were they the ones?"
"From last night?" I said. "No. They weren't local. We can't count them in Hubble's ten. They were hired help from outside."
"Were they any good?" she asked.
I shrugged at her. Rocked my hand from side to side, equivocally.
"Not really," I said. "Not good enough, anyway."
Then I told her what I had found in the Buick's trunk. She shivered again.
"So is he one of the ten?" she asked. "Spivey?"
I shook my head.
"No," I said. "I can't see it. He was outside help, too. Nobody would have a slug like that on the inside."
She nodded. I opened up the Bentley and got the gun out of the glove box. It was too big to go in my pocket. I put it back in the old file box with the bullets. Roscoe put the whole thing in the trunk of her Chevy. I got the carrier bag of stained clothes out. Locked the Bentley up and left it there in the police lot.
"I'm going to call Molly again," I said. "I'm getting in pretty deep. I need some background. There are things I don't understand."
The place was quiet so I used the rosewood office. I dialed the Washington number and got Molly on the second ring.
"Can you talk?" I asked her.
She told me to wait, and I heard her get up and close her office door.
"It's too soon, Jack," she said. "I can't get the stuff until tomorrow."
"I need background," I said. "I need to understand this international stuff Joe was doing. I need to know why things are happening here, if the action is supposed to be overseas."
I heard her figuring out where to start.
"OK, background," she said. "I guess Joe's assumption was it's maybe controlled from this country. And it's a very difficult problem to explain, but I'll try. The forging happens abroad, and the trick is most of it stays abroad. Only a few of the fake bills ever come back here, which is not a huge deal domestically, but obviously it's something we want to stop. But abroad, it presents a completely different type of problem. You know how much cash is inside the U.S., Jack?"
I thought back to what the bank guy had told me.
"A hundred and thirty billion dollars," I said.
"Right," she said. "But exactly twice that much is held offshore. That's a fact. People all over the world are holding onto two hundred and sixty billion dollars' worth of American cash. It's in safety deposits in London, Rome, Berlin, Moscow, stuffed into mattresses all over South America, Eastern Europe, hidden under floorboards, false walls, in banks, travel agencies, everywhere. And why is that?"
"Don't know," I said.
"Because the dollar is the world's most trusted currency," she said. "People believe in it. They want it. And naturally, the government is very, very happy about that."
"Good for the ego, right?" I said.
I heard her change the phone to the other hand.
"It's not an emotional thing," she said. "It's business. Think about it, Jack. If there's a hundred-dollar bill in somebody's bureau in Bucharest, that means somebody somewhere once exchanged a hundred dollars' worth of foreign assets for it. It means our government sold them a piece of paper with green and black ink on it for a hundred bucks. Good business. And because it's a trusted currency, chances are that hundred-dollar bill will probably stay in that bureau in Bucharest for many years. The U.S. will never have to deliver the foreign assets back again. As long as the dollar stays trusted, we can't lose."
"So what's the problem?" I asked her.
"Difficult to describe," Molly said. "It's all about trust and faith. It's almost metaphysical. If foreign markets are getting flooded with fake dollars, that doesn't really matter in itself. But if the people in those foreign markets find out, then it does matter. Because they panic. They lose their faith. They lose their trust. They don't want dollars anymore. They'll turn to Japanese yen or German marks to stuff their mattresses with. They'll get rid of their dollars. In effect, overnight, the government would have to repay a two-hundred-sixty-billion-dollar foreign loan. Overnight. And we couldn't do that, Jack."
"Big problem," I said.
"That's the truth," she said. "And a remote problem. The fakes are all made abroad, and they're mostly distributed abroad. It makes sense that way. The factories are hidden away in some remote foreign region, where we don't know about them, and the fakes are distributed to foreigners who are happy as long as the stuff looks vaguely like real dollars are supposed to look. That's why not very many are imported. Only the very best fakes come back to the States."