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Acknowledgements

The author appreciates the invaluable help of several people: Howard A. Daniel III of the Southeast Asian Treasury regarding foreign currencies and printing techniques; Kregg P. J. Jorgenson for his insights into Seattle, the U. S. Customs Service, and crime in the Pacific Northwest; and Gerald Petievich for opening many doors at the United States Secret Service, and to the agents there who, requesting anonymity, shared their technology and expertise. Any errors contained herein are the author's sole responsibility.

A novel is a world built by many hands. Thanks to Patricia Crais, Lauren Crais, William Gleason and Andrea Malcolm, Jeffrey Liam Gleason, Carol and Wayne Topping, Aaron Priest, Norman Kurland, Robert Miller, Brian DeFiore, Lisa Kitei, Marcy Goot, Chris Murphy, Kim Dower, Samantha Miller, Jennifer Lang, and, especially, Leslie Wells.

SEATTLE

At two-fourteen in the morning on the night they left one life to begin their next, the rain thundered down in a raging curtain that thrummed against the house and the porch and the plain white Econoline van that the United States Marshals had brought to whisk them away.

Charles said, 'C'mere, Teri, and lookit this. ' Her younger brother, Charles, was framed in the front window of their darkened house. The house was dark because the marshals wanted it that way. No interior lights, they said. Candles and flashlights would be better, they said.

Teresa, whom everyone called Teri, joined her brother at the window, and together they looked at the van parked at the curb. Lightning snapped like a giant flashbulb, illuminating the van and the narrow lane of clapboard houses there in Highland Park on the west side of Seattle, seven and one-half miles south of the Space Needle. The van's side and rear doors were open, and a man was squatting inside, arranging boxes. Two other men finished talking to the van's driver, then came up the walk toward the house. All four men were dressed identically in long black slickers and black hats that they held against the rain. It beat at them as if it wanted to punch right through the coats and the Hats and hammer them into the earth. Teri thought that in a few minutes it would be beating at her. Charles said, 'Lookit there at that truck. That truck's big enough to bring my bike, isn't it? Why can't I bring my bike?'

Teri said, 'That's not a truck, it's a van, and the men said we could only take the boxes. ' Charles was nine years old, three years younger than Teri, and didn't want to leave his bike. Teri didn't want to leave her things either, but the men had said they could only take eight boxes. Four people at two boxes a person equals eight boxes. Simple math.