Killing Floor

Reacher flies to New York to meet Professor Kelstein. The professor says he collaborated with Joe as a “sounding board,” because he is the most successful counterfeiter in history. Kelstein and Bartholomew, the Princeton professor, were drafted in World War II and succeeded in flooding the German markets with counterfeit money, effectively shattering the economy. After the war, the Senate commissioned a report from them about counterfeiting. The report became the Treasury’s “anti-counterfeiting bible.” Joe met with them because his “impossible” job was to eradicate counterfeiting of American currency. Joe shut down a massive counterfeiting ring in Lebanon and reduced in-country counterfeiting by 90%. He tracked ink and paper so closely that many counterfeiters were arrested before they had a chance to distribute the bills. Joe found a second large operation in Venezuela, a private effort that Reacher confirms is Kliner’s. Kelstein explains that American currency is produced by pressing the paper between two plates to create an embossed texture and then printed with four different inks. The press, plates, and inks can be obtained anywhere, so Joe focused mostly on preventing people from buying the correct paper. That was what made Kliner’s counterfeits significant: the paper was perfect, and Joe could not figure out how he got the right kind.