preliminary meeting, I’ll introduce everyone.” He gestured to his CIA cohorts. “Mr. Hamilton Whitbread is the Director of CovertAction Staff. Mr. Gene Berlinger is the Director of Special Activities Operations. You know Paul Kohler.”
The first two were big boys, thought Murdock, almost deputy director level—Special Operations and Covert Action, the people he’d been working for lately. Kohler had worked with Stroh on Port Sudan.
“And from the Secret Service, Deputy Director Jim Capezzi and Special Agent Dennis Flaherty.”
The Secret Service? Murdock couldn’t figure it out. Unless maybe some bad guys were planning to kill the President and needed to be taken out. His palms started itching again.
Then Stroh said, “Since this briefing is directly related to Operation Granite Ghost, Lieutenant Murdock’s raid on Port Sudan, I’d like to begin by extending him the Agency’s congratulations on a job well done. Video and document analysis, along with communications intercepts, confirmed that the target four-man cell was accounted for in the villa, along with a number of significant high-level personnel of the group involved. The adversary has no idea what happened, or even if any non-Sudanese external force was responsible. From other documents recovered, preliminary indications are that the raid derailed at least five other future terrorist operations. Well done, Blake.”
To Murdock’s utter embarrassment, Stroh began clapping, and everyone else in the room must have felt they had to join in.
Stroh continued. “Since our main focus today is the money recovered by Lieutenant Murdock in the Sudan, I’ll let Denny Flaherty give us the background.”
Murdock knew it. He just knew that damned three million was going to come back and bite him in the ass one day. That was why he kept the receipt in his safety deposit box. Let them try what they wanted. He was covered. He’d tell the admiral that himself.
This small-scale internal emotional episode was cut off bySpecial Agent Flaherty, a beefy Irishman with a pronounced Boston accent. Boston College, Boston College Law School, Murdock thought.
Flaherty wasn’t much for bullshitting around. He clicked on a slide projector to display a blowup of a one-hundred-dollar bill. “Gentlemen,” he stated, “the entire three million dollars discovered in Port Sudan was counterfeit.”
That stunned Blake Murdock, since he’d personally counted the money at least three times and it had all seemed genuine to him.
“Are you familiar with the Supernote?” Flaherty asked.
Murdock looked around. Everyone else was looking at him, so he shook his head no.
“In 1992,” said Flaherty, “two Lebanese-born drug traffickers got caught trying to bring three tons of hashish from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon through Boston Harbor. They were looking at thirty years mandatory, so they asked the federal prosecutor if he’d be interested in high-quality hundred-dollar counterfeits being printed in Lebanon. He was. They turned the bills over, and the U.S. Attorney passed them on to Secret Service.
“These bills,” said Flaherty, “were close to perfect. Our top technical analyst, who had examined every counterfeit ever produced, called them genuine. On a second viewing, he picked out three tiny imperfections which are now our only way of identifying this note, which we named the Supernote. It’s also been called the Super 100.”
Murdock checked around the room. Everyone else was just listening dispassionately.
Flaherty continued. “The Federal Reserve uses some extremely sensitive scanners to screen all the currency that comes through each of the twelve Fed Banks. The black ink on our notes is magnetic, and the scanners read the magnetic field down the center line of the portrait. The scanners are so precise that a thousand genuine hundred-dollar bills are rejected forevery one that’s later found to be a counterfeit. Gentlemen, the Supernote passes right through
The first two were big boys, thought Murdock, almost deputy director level—Special Operations and Covert Action, the people he’d been working for lately. Kohler had worked with Stroh on Port Sudan.
“And from the Secret Service, Deputy Director Jim Capezzi and Special Agent Dennis Flaherty.”
The Secret Service? Murdock couldn’t figure it out. Unless maybe some bad guys were planning to kill the President and needed to be taken out. His palms started itching again.
Then Stroh said, “Since this briefing is directly related to Operation Granite Ghost, Lieutenant Murdock’s raid on Port Sudan, I’d like to begin by extending him the Agency’s congratulations on a job well done. Video and document analysis, along with communications intercepts, confirmed that the target four-man cell was accounted for in the villa, along with a number of significant high-level personnel of the group involved. The adversary has no idea what happened, or even if any non-Sudanese external force was responsible. From other documents recovered, preliminary indications are that the raid derailed at least five other future terrorist operations. Well done, Blake.”
To Murdock’s utter embarrassment, Stroh began clapping, and everyone else in the room must have felt they had to join in.
Stroh continued. “Since our main focus today is the money recovered by Lieutenant Murdock in the Sudan, I’ll let Denny Flaherty give us the background.”
Murdock knew it. He just knew that damned three million was going to come back and bite him in the ass one day. That was why he kept the receipt in his safety deposit box. Let them try what they wanted. He was covered. He’d tell the admiral that himself.
This small-scale internal emotional episode was cut off bySpecial Agent Flaherty, a beefy Irishman with a pronounced Boston accent. Boston College, Boston College Law School, Murdock thought.
Flaherty wasn’t much for bullshitting around. He clicked on a slide projector to display a blowup of a one-hundred-dollar bill. “Gentlemen,” he stated, “the entire three million dollars discovered in Port Sudan was counterfeit.”
That stunned Blake Murdock, since he’d personally counted the money at least three times and it had all seemed genuine to him.
“Are you familiar with the Supernote?” Flaherty asked.
Murdock looked around. Everyone else was looking at him, so he shook his head no.
“In 1992,” said Flaherty, “two Lebanese-born drug traffickers got caught trying to bring three tons of hashish from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon through Boston Harbor. They were looking at thirty years mandatory, so they asked the federal prosecutor if he’d be interested in high-quality hundred-dollar counterfeits being printed in Lebanon. He was. They turned the bills over, and the U.S. Attorney passed them on to Secret Service.
“These bills,” said Flaherty, “were close to perfect. Our top technical analyst, who had examined every counterfeit ever produced, called them genuine. On a second viewing, he picked out three tiny imperfections which are now our only way of identifying this note, which we named the Supernote. It’s also been called the Super 100.”
Murdock checked around the room. Everyone else was just listening dispassionately.
Flaherty continued. “The Federal Reserve uses some extremely sensitive scanners to screen all the currency that comes through each of the twelve Fed Banks. The black ink on our notes is magnetic, and the scanners read the magnetic field down the center line of the portrait. The scanners are so precise that a thousand genuine hundred-dollar bills are rejected forevery one that’s later found to be a counterfeit. Gentlemen, the Supernote passes right through
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