Money for Nothing Read Online Free PDF

would ever know he'd been recruited. Twenty thousand dollars a month, two hundred forty thousand dollars a year, for ten years. I felt I could maintain the fraud for that long, and then, with two and a half million dollars U.S., I could very easily disappear. Buy an island, for instance, in the Caribbean. There were many choices."
    Josh said, "I was one—" and the inner door opened again. This time, what came out was male, short, skinny, about forty, with a face speckled in acne and a nose like a can opener. He wore a New York Mets cap, a New York Knicks T-shirt, baggy dragging green running shorts, white tube socks, and large white sneakers. He scuttled across the waiting room, not looking in their direction, pretending he was alone, his pocked cheeks twitching. He fumbled in panic with both hands on the knob of the lobby door, finally managed to pull it open, and scuttled away, the door snicking shut in his wake.
    After this apparition had gone, Josh got back to the topic at hand: "I was one of the people you pretended to recruit. But I
got
the money."
    'This was absolutely unforeseeable," Mr. Nimrin said. He sounded very irked. "Less than two years into the project, I became caught up in a ridiculous case of industrial espionage."
    "I read about the trial," Josh told him.
    "There was no trial," Mr. Nimrin said. "It was all ludicrous." Then he gave Josh a keen look. "You read about it? Very enterprising. In the
Washington Post
? You saw that photo."
    "You had a moustache then."
    "The only public picture of me extant." Mr. Nimrin sounded bitter about that. "Forced to make a change, I did away with the moustache. In any event, that farrago cost me my position with the agency. My desk was taken over by others, who of course had no idea what I'd been up to. I'd only managed to insert six of my false sleepers into the system, including yourself, and now all six of you began to receive my money."
    "Every month."
    "Infuriating," Mr. Nimrin said. "Three of the six never cashed their checks, so it was assumed they'd had a change of heart and were dropped from the program. But the other three, including you, have done very well off me the last seven years."
    Josh said, "You couldn't take charge again?"
    "They no longer trusted me," Mr. Nimrin said. "A secondary effect of that ridiculous federal case was that certain things came out that made my employers suspicious of me. That's why I'm still in this country. They've taken my passport so they won't lose me. I have fine quarters at a safe house in nearby Long Island, and they're waiting to find out what I've done. I have developed ways to elude them temporarily, as I have done today. Until now, I've been safe, if bored. But
now
! Now they've activated
you
!"
    "Yes, they have," Josh said.
    "You! A guileless naif! An artless witling! An unskilled, untrained, unqualified marplot! A—"
    "Hey," Josh said. "Enough."
    Mr. Nimrin lowered a brow at him. "Do you disagree?"
    "No, not really. But you don't have to rub my nose in it."
    "But I do," Mr. Nimrin told him. "I have to make certain you understand the part you are now to play."
    "I've been activated," Josh said.
    "Yes, that's all well and good," Mr. Nimrin said, "but the
part
you have to play is someone who has been an undercover mole all these years. A willing traitor."
    Josh sat up. "Traitor?"
    "You took our money," Mr. Nimrin pointed out.
    "I didn't know it was yours, I didn't know
what
it was."
    "You do now," Mr. Nimrin told him, "and let me tell you what you must do about it."
    Go straight to the authorities, Josh thought, but kept the thought to himself.
    Or did he? "If you try to go to the authorities," Mr. Nimrin said, "who wouldn't believe you anyway, or would believe you were an actual turncoat trying to turn back—"
    Josh moaned.
    "And you have nothing real to tell them anyway," Mr. Nimrin added. "But if you did make the move, you would almost certainly be stopped. They are watching you. If they think you're betraying