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CHAPTER ONE 

It had been a rainy day, with a cold wind whipping through this corner of Bavaria, close to the Black Forest. The rain had whipped across the fields and the trees, the winding roads that were like flat dirt ribbons close beside the stone fences dotting the farmlands. As I had sat at the window of the little inn where I was staying, I had told myself it was a bad omen for Project Plates. 

I felt no better about the situation as Mark Condon braked the Mercedes-Benz at the foot of a bit of slope that wound upwards between tumbled boulders and green fields toward a high ridge covered over with firs and oaks. There was a small castle on top of that hill, called Castle Schwarz, or the Black Castle. 

I stared at its somber outlines against the gathering dusk. Turrets and curtained walls gloomed back at me, increasing my feeling of dread. This place was like something out of a Dracula movie, at any time I expected a bat to come swooping low against the rising moon, or see a dark coach drawn by six black horses and driven by a skeleton in a cloak come rushing toward us. 

When I said something of this to Mark who was beside me, bending to peer out the windshield, he grunted. “You see too many horror movies. We have a job to do, Cherry. Forget Dracula. This isn't Transylvania." 

"It looks like it," I muttered, shivering. “Come on, let's go see." 

He got out and I had to follow him, to go where he went. It was my job. I stood a moment, breathing in the scents of flowers and other growing things, my uneasiness increasing. 

My name is Cherry Delight. I am a redhead, I am considered something of a beauty, which accounts for the fact that I was connected with the Femmes Fatales division of the New York Mafia Prosecution and Harassment Organization—known as N.Y.M.P.H.O. in the trade—and rank as one of its best operatives. 

Of course, my real name isn't Cherry Delight. It's Cherise Dellissio. I am Italian by extraction, American by reason of birth and the fact that my parents are naturalized citizens. I am paid a very good salary by N.Y.M.P.H.O. because I am the sort of girl all men drool over, being lovely of face and sexy of figure, because I can crack a safe with anybody ever born, pick a pocket with the best of them, and am considered a crack shot. 

I also employ judo, karate and a touch of Burmese boxing in my various assignments. To say nothing of sex, natch. It is because of these various facets of my character that I have come through unscathed in all sorts of hairy endeavors. 

Like Project Plates, I hoped. 

I stared up at the Black Castle, standing beside the car as though ready to jump back inside it at the flutter of a bat's wing. Mark Condon had gone on up the bumpy little road that served as an access approach to Castle Schwarz, now he turned and looked back at me in the growing darkness. 

"What in hell's the matter with you?” 

"Mark, I don't know. It's just that I have this funny feeling that things aren't what they should be, here." 

He was patient with me, he came back and took both my hands in his, he looked down into my face and smiled gently. Mark is a lover, he's kind and gentle—though he can be a holy terror in a fight and he's usually reasonably understanding. 

"There may be danger, yes. You've faced danger all the way from mainland China to the Riviera." 

"It's something more than that. I—I just can't explain it. But I get a creepy feeling at the back of my neck." 

"More Dracula stuff?”

"Nah—no. Not exactly. Oh, how do I know what it is?” 

It was a hunch I had, the kind of feeling a soldier or a detective will get, from the experience in battle or law enforcement work that tells him to be damn careful. 

My hand slid into my Gucci handbag, my fingers closed about the butt of the Gold Cup Colt automatic that is my constant companion in my N.Y.M.P.H.O. adventures. I brought the gun out into the moonlight and waved it around. 

"I'm shooting at the first sign of a shadow, Mark. So don't make any." 

His chuckle was ghost-like in the mists that came sweeping from the ridge heights, gathering about Castle Schwarz like wraiths from the past, to protect it. It brooded, as black as its name, from that eminence on which it had been built. It seemed to threaten, to dare. It whispered—or this might have been the wind—that it would open its old doors to us but that it would keep us within its walls, forever. 

Stupid Cherry! I told myself. Get a grip on your nerves, girl. You are here in West Germany to do a job. You get paid a damn good salary, even if it is in deflated Uncle Sam dollars, and it's up to you to earn it. 

Mark was ahead of me, walking slowly. He turned, glared back in my direction. I sighed, patted the Mercedes-Benz as though to tell it not to go away by itself, and started after him. 

As I walked, I thought back on Project Plates. 

During World War II, Adolph Hitler had come up with the idea of breaking the currency of England. To this end, he had the finest craftsmen in the German treasury, the very men who made the Third Reich's money, work on plates that would produce a perfectly legitimate British pound. 

By flooding England with these bogus notes, he could break the English back. Money wouldn't mean a damn thing anymore. It was a scheme to give an economist the screaming meemies. 

Fortunately, this plan didn't get the chance to operate. The American and Russian armies surrounded Berlin, Adolph Hitler committed suicide, and the British pound plates were impounded by the Allies. 

What was not known at the time, and for many years thereafter, was the fact that at the same time those Third Reich money experts had worked on the British pound, they had also been very busy on the American dollar. The only thing was, nobody ever found those plates. Indeed, until very recently, nobody even knew about them. 

Then a couple of months ago, Mark and I were called into a meeting with Avery King. Now Avery King is a tall man, very lean, who could have made his living as a clothes horse. The finest in men's fashions hang on him as though they were created for him, or he for them. He has a British accent and looks like a movie actor. He is also the N.Y.M.P.H.O. Coordinator. 

His graying black hair was in place and there was a grim smile on his lips when Mark and I entered his office. He stood to receive us, holding out his hand to Mark and giving me a gentlemanly bow. Right away, I knew we were in for trouble. 

He held up a couple of airline tickets. "For West Germany," he told us. "A Mercedes-Benz has been put at your disposal, you will have an unlimited amount of money to draw on, and you are absolutely on your own." 

"Neither of us are due for a vacation," I found myself saying, hoping against all common sense that we were being rewarded. 

He smiled very grimly and my heart sank. 

“The police of West Germany, of France and Great Britain, of Switzerland and Italy, are to offer you all the help they can." 

He held up two plastic-coated cards. They bore the seal of Interpol, which also works hand in glove with these police agencies. "These cards you will put in your wallets and you will not lose them under pain of death. They are your letters of introduction." 

“Whom do we kill?” asked Mark in an effort to be light-hearted. He knew just as I did, that the Coordinator didn't go around giving out cards like those unless it was a matter of the highest priority. 

"You're going to save your country from a fate worse than total war. If you fail, your paychecks won't be worth the paper they're printed on." 

This was hitting below the belt. I yelped and sat up straight. "How's that again?” 

He explained about the fake British pound plates. We listened in utter stillness. 

"Now we are informed that Adolph Hitler had United States plates made, that will perfectly duplicate the one-dollar bill, the five, and the ten. Six plates in all, done by the finest craftsmen Hitler's Germany could produce." 

I broke out in a cold sweat. Mark said softly, “then nothing will mean anything, anymore, if anybody gets hold of those plates and begins making money with them. The financial troubles the dollar has had, the inflated price of gold, will be like a man losing a penny when he has a thousand bucks in his wallet, compared to that." 

"And what we call inflation will be remembered as a joke," Avery King nodded. “It will mean the annihilation of everything we've built up in this country for the past two hundred years. Everything!” 

I leaned forward. "I take it that these plates are in West Germany?" 

"In Bavaria, in a castle there. Or so we are given to understand. But let me tell you how we learned about them. 

"One of our men was in West Germany last year, traveling about on a vacation. He speaks German as fluently as any Berliner, he knows the countryside his grandfather came from the Black Forest—and he was accepted as a native in his leather jacket and Tyrolean hat. 

"He was traveling from Munich to Bad Reichenhall when night caught him on the road. He stopped at a roadside inn where he hired a room and had his dinner. After dinner he wandered into the local bar and proceeded to have a couple of beers. 

"There was an old man there with whom he struck up a conversation. The old man said he had known Hitler well, he told stories about him. Our man was enjoying himself, the beer was excellent and the old one knew how to spin a yarn. 

"It was almost closing time when three men came into the bar and looked around, then came straight toward the old man. They were Italians, our man said. They were—Mafia." 

I sat up straight. It is my job to fight the Mafia, and at mention of the name I sat up much after the manner of a pointer putting its nose toward a quail. 

Avery King smiled. "They meant to take the old man with him, you see. They laid hands on him and were about to drag him from the inn—there was nobody about who dared resist them—when our man went into action. He pulled his gun, shot two of the men and the third man ran off. 

"Before he disappeared, the Mafia button yelled, 'If you won't tell us, you won't tell anybody!" And he shot the old man through the chest.” 

The Coordinator paused and drew a pack of short cigars toward him. He took out one, put it in his mouth and lighted it. I squirmed around impatiently. 

“Well? Well?” I yelped. "What happened?" 

"The old man was dying, of course. He must have been in his eighties or early nineties, he had no stamina in him to fight a wound like that. 

"Our man knew this, he knew also that the old one had some sort of very vital information that the Mafia wanted. Though he was on vacation, he felt he couldn't pass up an opportunity like this. He stayed with the old man while somebody ran for a doctor. 

"They were all alone in the pub, the barmaid had run home in hysteria and the owner had left for that doctor. It was quiet in that bar, our man says all he could think about as he knelt with the old man in his arms was how much he would have given for a beer. 

"Then the man tugged at him. 

"I want to tell you something, something very important to your country," the old man said. 

“Naturally, the agent pricked up his ears and forgot his thirst. He had tabbed the attackers, two of whom lay sprawled in death on the bar floor, and felt that what the Mafia was interested in, N.Y.M.P.H.O. would also want to learn. 

"He encouraged the old one to talk." 

It was almost as if I were there in that little inn with its stained wooden walls and beamed ceilings, with the smell of beer hanging heavy in the air. I could see the dying German held in the agent's arms. His old hand would pluck at a sleeve, he would force his tongue and lips to shape words. 

"American dollars," the old man whispered. "There are plates to make them, hidden in Castle Schwarz. I do not know exactly where. Those men were—after them.” 

There would be a little silence in which the heavy wheezing of the wounded man would hint of a death rattle. His hand would tug again and his voice would be a little weaker as the bullet in him brought him a little closer to his dying. 

"When the Third Reich fell, when the Russians and the Americans were closing their ring around Berlin, a truck left that city and made its way southward toward Bavaria. There were SS troopers in that truck, led by an officer, a high-ranking general. In those days I was stationed at Castle Schwarz. 

"They came at dawn, the general demanding that the servants in the castle go home and that he be left alone in it. What could I do but obey such a great one? 

"I went out into the morning light and spoke with the SS troopers. One of them was talkative. They were going into Switzerland when they had done their job here, they were deserting Germany and its defeat." 

The old man had questioned the troopers; he learned enough from them, with their hints and innuendoes, to understand that perfect plates with which to reproduce American dollars were hidden somewhere in Castle Schwarz. 

The general came back, told the old man—he wasn't so old in those days, of course to stay on at the castle and not let the Amerikaners enter it. As though he could have stopped them, when the war was over! 

The truck drove off. 

The old man stayed on at the castle, its owners died in the destruction of Hamburg, where they had their business and a townhouse, they never came back. The old man made that castle his home, he kept it in repair as best he could, and waited for the general to come back. He never did. 

The years went by. The old man used them very advantageously, he searched Castle Schwarz from turret roof to dungeon floor, and eventually he found the plates. 

They were no good to him, he had no way of selling them, of seeing to it that they fell into the proper hands. Besides, he was a loyal German, he waited for that general. 

But now he was dying. This man in whose arms he lay had been good to him, he had sought to protect him. He would tell him where the plates were hidden. He could do with them what he wanted. 

I woke up to the fact that Avery King had stopped talking, that he was leaning forward to crush out his little cigar. 

"And did he tell him?" I asked. 

The Coordinator shook his head. "No. He died before he could do that." 

I stared at him indignantly. "And we're to search that castle for the plates?” 

Mark grinned, "That won't be so hard, Cherry. So we hole up in the castle and play hunt the needle for a couple of weeks. What's so hard about that?" 

Avery King stirred. "It may not be quite as easy as that, Mark. We know the Mafia is interested in those plates, that's why three of their soldiers tried to kidnap the old man and make him tell where they are. 

"They may very well be in that castle now, making their own search. I wouldn't put it past them." 

Nor would I, so I stood up. "The sooner we get going, the better. If there are Mafia there, we'll soon find out and put a stop to their activities." 

The Coordinator nodded, handing over our tickets and those plastic-covered cards that were our personal passports to the police forces of half a dozen countries. I grabbed what he offered and put them into the Gucci bag. 

"An Air Force jet is waiting for you," the Coordinator growled. "It has top clearance, just as soon as you're aboard. It will take you to Berlin. Men will meet you, escort you into the waiting car. 

"After that, you're on your own." 

We shook hands and turned our backs. Before we were at the door, Avery King said, "Oh, by the way. Our man said that, from what the old one told him, he rather thought the plates were hidden somewhere below the first floor. In the dungeons, possibly." 

When we were halfway down in the elevator, I grumbled at Mark, "Now he tells us. Why didn't he wait until we were in the plane?” 

"Oh, stop grousing," Mark chuckled. “This is going to be a fun thing, the way I look at it." 

So now we were walking toward Black Castle. 

The wind whispered across the fields below us, stirred the gray mists through which we made our way, barely able to see the path where we were putting our feet. The leaves of the trees that formed a little forest on this high ridge where Castle Schwarz was set rustled to the passage of that wind. From somewhere far off, an owl hooted. 

I felt as if I were walking right into a horror movie. My skin was all over goosebumps and a little trickle of sweat ran down my spine. At any moment a bat would come swooping from the castle and change into Dracula himself. 

The huge stone pile that was the castle loomed before us, half visible through the fog. No lights showed in its windows and arrow slits, it must have been built a long time ago to have those narrow embrasures where archers could stand and fire their bows, I told myself. It was dark and forbidding, it menaced us. 

I snarled at my imagination, below my breath. But Mark heard that sound I made, and turned his face to chuckle at me. 

"I hope there are a couple of Mafia buttons in that place," he said softly. "That'll calm your nerves." 

I had to smile, even if it was a weak one. Mark Condon knew me better than I knew myself. I am always pretty itchy at the beginning of a case. Once I go into action, things seem to settle into place. It's a lot like a baseball player before the World Series or a football player before the Super Bowl. 

Our heels rang hollowly on wooden boards as we crossed a small bridge toward the front door of the Black Castle. I peered down, through the mists I made out a deep ditch which at one time had been filled with water to make the moat. There were big rocks down there, a fall from here could break bones. 

Mark was at the door. His hand touched the wood, damp from the fog, and pushed. A creek of rusting hinges, a breath of dank air coming from inside this place, and the door opened to reveal an utter blackness. 

A flashlight in Mark's hand came to life. We stared into a huge room. I caught a glimpse of paneled walls, of stag's heads and oil paintings between them, a big table on which a molding cloth was laid, and a sense of utter emptiness. I took a few steps forward onto an old carpet. 

"If that old man lived here, he must have had some way to light this place," I remarked. "Candles or kerosene lamps or maybe even electricity.” 

Mark found a light switch, worked it up and down. No electricity. I began my own hunt and turned up a dozen candles in the drawer of an old fashioned cupboard pushed back against a huge stone wall. I caught up a couple of them and waved them at Mark. 

We lighted two and found holders for them so the hot wax wouldn't burn our fingers. Thus equipped, we made a search of the ground floor. 

It was spacious, besides the great hall in which we found the candles and that had those stag-heads on the walls, there was a huge kitchen with vast fireplaces in which whole steers could be roasted. In the days when they were built, oxen had taken the place of steers. There was also a chapel off to one side, and a rather large room that must have been the garderobe, or toilet. 

We found a spiraling stone staircase that led upward to other floors, but no door that showed us the way into the cellar. We went back and forth over that castle floor two or three times, opening doors and peering into closets, without any luck. 

I stared at Mark above my candle. "If this place has a dungeon, it's almost as well hidden as those plates we're after." 

“We missed it, Cherry. It's got to be here, somewhere." 

I turned away, and as my eyes touched the worn carpeting, the idea came to me. "Mark, we've been looking in the wrong place." 

He stared at me, his candle making his face a grotesque mask of total exasperation. 

"The dungeon is in the cellar, right? And the cellar is always under a house, right? And the next floor is the ground floor where we're standing, right? Now where would you suggest we look to find a door leading to the cellar?” 

“We're not looking for a door," I told him sweetly. "Or not the sort of a door you and I have in mind." 

He stared at me blankly. 

"You said the magic word,” I told him. "You said floor. Mark, I think we ought to look around on the floor." 

“For a door?" he howled. "For a trap door." 

He gulped and grinned weakly. His arm came out to catch and hug me. He took advantage of the situation to pat my soft buttocks caressingly. “Remind me to be extra nice to you tonight. You deserve it." 

I wriggled my backside away from his petting hand, bumping him with my hip. "We have work to do, Condon. If we get those plates, we'll see about some fun and games." 

“It's been a while, between us,” he muttered wistfully. 

“So it has. But the plates, first." 

We searched the floor of that castle for a long time. We found spider webs and rats' nests, we this covered a whole number of things including a rusting dagger and a copper coin before we came at last to a metal ring. A carpet had been thrown over it, we had to dislodge the carpet to see the faint outlines of a trap door and the ring bolt by which it could be lifted. 

Mark caught hold of that iron ring, braced his feet, and gave a yank. The trap door swung up easily. He was surprised and so was I. Its hinges had been well oiled, and fairly recently. 

"That old caretaker did his job," I muttered, staring into the black well that showed us, by the gleam of our candle flames, a set of stone steps leading into cellar darkness. 

"If it was the caretaker."

"Oh? What's that mean?" 

Mark shrugged. “I'm not sure I know myself what I mean. Maybe somebody else has been here, looking around." 

My heart began a faster beat. "The Mafia?" 

"Could be. Can you imagine how those boys would dearly love to get their hands on perfect plates for American singles, fives and tens? They could take over the country, or just about.” 

“Then we'd better find the plates first." Mark went first down those worn stone steps. I could picture the servants that had gone down those treads in the centuries since Castle Schwarz had been built. According to what we had learned at the little inn where we were staying, where we had arrived this afternoon and stowed our gear in the adjoining bedrooms that had been prepared for us, the Black Castle had been erected during the time of the Crusades, by a Baron Wolfgang von Hofmannsthal. 

This Baron had gone to the Holy Wars with Frederick Barbarossa, he had come back to Bavaria with enough loot from Acre and Antioch to build this castle for himself and his wife, and here he had raised his family. It was a remote area in those years—it's still pretty remote, as a matter of fact—and he was absolute lord of all he surveyed. 

The Black Castle had been in his family ever since, until his last descendants had died in Ham burg during the second World War. I wondered, as I followed Markdown into the cellar, what the ghosts of all those Von Hofmannsthals might think, could they see us two Americans descending into the dungeons where those barons had tortured their enemies and kept their food cool against spoilage. 

Now it belonged to nobody. Or maybe to the state. Whoever its owners were, made no difference to us. We were here to do a job. 

We stepped onto cobblestones. A cool breeze moved along the long hall in which we found ourselves. This entire cellar was apparently divided into many rooms, the doors of which we could see recessed into stone walls as we lifted our candles. 

“We have a lot of space to search," Mark murmured. “Let's get going." 

We went into rooms by opening doors and studying them by candlelight. We would probably have to come back, even in our wildest dreams we couldn't see our finding those plates this night. The old caretaker had needed months, maybe even years. Of course, his dying words had narrowed our field of search to these cellars. 

We decided to split up, to work our way outward and circle around, if it were possible, and meet again by the cellar stairs. I stood and watched Mark walk off, his candle-flame making black shadows and little islands of light as he went away. 

Then I turned and made my way along this corridor between high stone walls with my candle raised high to guide my footsteps, to startle big gray rats and send them scurrying out of my way, their claws making faint scratching sounds on the cobbles. Now and then I had to lift my hand and brush away spiderwebs that clung to my fingers, and occasionally, came down across my face. I could have thought of a million places I would rather be than down in this castle cellar-way. 

But I went on, trying to ignore my creature comforts. My hand turned doorknobs, I stared here and there into rooms that were dark and empty, or filled with rotting things I would not touch. 

With a faint smile on my lips, I reminded myself that I was here to find six metal plates, carefully etched in the likeness of American money, and that these plates might well have been pushed into a pile of rotting velvet or muslin. 

With the barrel of my Colt, I did look inside and under some things, but I found nothing. Some of these moldering objects must have been here since God knows when. I found a couple of flags—battle standards, I decided they were—that could have been laid away when Baron Wolfgang von Hofmannsthal came back from the Crusades. Or almost. They seemed that old. 

I wandered on. My footfalls made whispering echoes, though I was at pains to make no noise. I heard no sound that would indicate that Mark Condon was, anywhere within five miles of me. Yet I knew him to be hunting, too. 

I came at last into what must have been the wine cellar, long ago. A wooden rack had been built into the wall recess that held it, I saw a dozen bottles scattered here and there, lying on their sides. They were covered with dust. 

My hand went out, I caught one of those bottles and lifted it. It was a Rhine wine, some sort of sauterne, but the lettering was so faded, I could not make it out. 

I giggled. I would take it along with me so that when Mark and I finally sat down tonight to have our dinner, we could share a bottle of this stuff. I wondered if it was any good. 

I raised the candle to study its label. And a bullet hit my candle.