'Why Vancouver?'
'We’re here because this is where a man named Lewis Feng is. He’s the best.'
’’The best what?'
'He’s the one I sent your pictures to.'
'What’s he doing here?'
She sat up and looked down at him. ’’The people who need the best American passports and licenses and things aren’t in the United States. They’re on the outside looking in.'
'Who are they?'
'Right now what’s driving this market is China,' she said. ’’There are a lot of rich people in Hong Kong who don’t think it’s going to be a great place to be rich when the British lease runs out. Some are setting up to move to other places, maybe sending a couple of members of the family to establish residency, set up bank accounts, that sort of thing.'
'So why do they need fake papers? A person with serious money can still buy a congressman and get real papers.'
'Some of the richest probably do. A billionaire doesn’t have any trouble getting in anywhere, but then there’s family, retainers, friends, and if you’ve lived through, say, sixty years of Chinese history, you get used to the idea that governments change their minds fast. So a lot of them are hedging their bets, setting up a second place they can run to if the door closes, a second identity if the first one doesn’t hold up. The same thing is happening in Taiwan and Singapore. A lot of people who have made a lot of money in the past twenty years don’t want to bet their lives that China is always going to leave them alone, either.'
'So all of a sudden Vancouver is the best place to get forged American papers?'
She shook her head. 'God, no. Just one of the places. There’s Miami, where you have refugees, drug runners, and prospective revolutionaries, or ones who already tried and blew it. L.A. is the big money-laundering center now, and that means bagmen have to bring it in, and others have to get enough I.D. to do a lot of banking and buying. And New York, just because it’s New York and it’s still the best place to buy anything you want.'
'That’s where we were heading, wasn’t it? New York.'
'Yes. That was before.' She didn’t say before what.
'Why didn’t we just fly there?'
'This is safer for you.'
'Why?'
'Because Lew Feng has a very specialized clientele. A lot of them may be gangsters, but if they are, they’re from Shanghai or someplace, not St. Louis. That means they aren’t interested in you and they don’t know anybody else who is. In New York I can’t guarantee that.'
'All right,' said Felker. 'What do we do now?'
'I go out and make some more arrangements, buy you some clothes. You’re going to stay here, out of sight.'
'How long?'
'We meet Lew Feng tomorrow night.'
17
It was a small shop on a quiet block, the third in a row of seven narrow painted fronts, each with a single door and a small display case full of expensive knitted clothes, ivory carvings, furs, or leather. The sign over the door said WESTMINSTER STATIONERS. When Jane pushed the door open, a small bell attached to a spring on top tinkled for a few, seconds, then rang again when Felker closed it. On all of the shelves were neat displays of boxed stationery, open stocks of vellum and linen, hand-pressed paper of silk threads and cotton, and colored inks and pens for calligraphers, artists, and architects.
Jane stood still in the middle of the room in front of the video camera so she could be recognized on the monitor, and in a moment Lewis Feng appeared. He was about six feet tall and very slim, dressed in a dark suit and a shirt so white and starched that it seemed to belong on the shelves with the paper. 'Hello, Jane,' he said.
'Hi, Lew,' she answered.
'Come in.' The way he said it told Felker that this was only an anteroom.
He led them into an office that looked like a doctor’s consulting room. He went behind his desk while Jane and Felker waited, then opened a filing cabinet and pulled out a key. He used it to open another door, which led into a large workshop with dozens of pieces of equipment, a few of which Felker recognized. There were a light table, an enlarger, engraving machines, even an old-fashioned printing press. Felker understood. A stationer could have an incredible collection of printing equipment and special papers without anybody giving it a thought. Lew Feng noticed that Felker was looking around, and said, 'The foundation of our relationship is our mutual lack of curiosity.'
'Of course,' said Felker. He glanced at Jane with a wince.
Feng went to a shelf where there were ream-size packages of paper with the wrappers still on them. He lifted one off the pile, tore it open on a workbench, pulled a piece of paper out, and set it in front of Felker.
'Here is your birth certificate. The form is genuine. The signature is forged, but the county clerk in question is both real and dead.' He paused while Felker glanced at it, then reached into the package again. 'Driver’s license. This is genuine. The written examination and driving test were taken, and the license issued. The only thing on it that we’ve added is your photograph. The military discharge papers and the old tax returns are convincing but false. You can use them with anyone but the government. The Social Security card is genuine, but its value is limited. The only way to get one was to have an eighteen-year-old with a second birth certificate in your name apply for it. So you can safely use it and pay taxes into the account, but I’m afraid you would have to wait forty-seven years to collect the benefits.'
'I’ll just have to save my money,' Felker said.
Lewis Feng betrayed no amusement. 'I know this doesn’t seem like a big penalty compared to your present problems, but you need to know. If you misuse these documents, you could be ... embarrassed.'
'I understand,' he said; 'Please, go on.'
'This diploma is a Bachelor of Science from Devonshire-Greenleigh College, a reputable small college in Pennsylvania that ran short of money about eight years ago and closed. We maintain the fiction that there is still a registrar’s office that employers can write to for a transcript, funded by the alumni, so if you need academic records, just write to the address on the envelope.'
Felker picked up the diploma and read, 'John David Young.'
Lew Feng said, 'Many of our clients are Orientals, so we use Oriental names that don’t attract attention in North America: Young, Lee, Shaw, and so on. Jane specified the first name John, and we had a John Young.'
'Had one?'
'We had been building one. Jane asked for the deepest kind of cover, and that takes time. The credit cards are real. The car was bought from a dealer in John Young’s name—'
'Car? I have a car?'
'It’s the safest way to cross the border.'
Felker looked at Jane, then at Feng. 'What is all this going to cost?'
'We were paid in advance,' said Lewis Feng.
'We’ll talk about it,' said Jane.
Lewis Feng went on. 'This is the key to your apartment in Medford, Oregon. It was rented for you by a legitimate apartment-finding service, so nobody is going to be expecting you to look like the person who put down the deposit.'
'This is all safe?' asked Felker.
'Nobody knows anything except members of my family, and I protect them by making sure they never see the customer or know anything more than a long list of new names we make up. I have to keep some record of the information that we’ve generated so that when you need additional documents, we won’t create inconsistencies. But it’s well hidden and it’s never cross-referenced to your original identity, which I don’t know. As I said, our mutual lack of curiosity is the foundation of our relationship.'
