She looked after him when he turned and left her desk. Lawrence Woolford cut a pleasant figure as thirty year old bachelors go. The Boss looked up from some report on his desk which he’d been frowning at, nodded to his field man and said, “Sit down, Lawrence. I’ll be with you in a minute. Please take a look at this while you’re waiting.” He handed over a banknote. Larry Woolford took it and found himself a comfortable chair. He examined the bill, front and back. It was a fifty dollar note, almost new. Finally the Boss, a stocky but impeccable career bureaucrat of the ultra-latest school, scribbled his initials on the report and tossed it into an Out chute. He said to Woolford, “I am sorry to cut short your vacation, Lawrence. I considered giving Walter Foster the assignment, but I think you’re the better choice.” Larry decided the faint praise routine was the best tactic, said earnestly about his closest rival. “Walt’s a good man, sir.” And then, “What’s the crisis?” “What do you think of that fifty?” His trouble shooter looked down at it. “What is there to think about it?” The Boss grunted, slid open a desk drawer and brought forth another bill. “Here, look at this, please.” It was another fifty. Larry Woolford frowned at it, not getting whatever was going on. “Observe the serial numbers,” the Boss said impatiently. They were identical. Woolford looked up. “Counterfeit. Which one is the bad one?” “That is exactly what we would like to know,” the Boss said. Larry Woolford stared at his superior, blinked and then examined the bills again. “A beautiful job,” he said, “but what’s it got to do with us, sir? This is Secret Service jurisdiction, counterfeiting.” “They called us in on it. They think it might have international ramifications.” Now they were getting somewhere. Larry Woolford put the two bills on the Boss’ desk and leaned back in his chair, waiting. His superior said, “Remember the Nazis turning out American and British banknotes during the Second War?” “I was just a kid.” “I thought you might have read about it. At any rate, obviously a government—with all its resources—could counterfeit perfectly any currency in the world. It would have the skills, the equipment, the funds to accomplish the task. The Germans turned out hundreds of millions of dollars and pounds with the idea of confounding the Allied financial basics.” “And why didn’t it work?” “The difficulty of getting it into circulation, for one thing. However, they did actually use a quantity. For a time our people were so alarmed that they wouldn’t allow any bills to come into this country from Mexico except two-dollar denomination—the one denomination the Germans hadn’t bothered to duplicate. Oh, they had the Secret Service in a dither for a time.” Woolford was frowning. “What’s this got to do with our current situation?”