Bob Carpenter tried to help the conversation along, to preserve the good mood. “I thought the idea was to get a pile of money. This place doesn’t look like they’ve got much of it.”

Tony Wagner said, “I did see a couple of banks, but they didn’t look like much.”

Wolf said gently, “I’m sorry, guys. I haven’t been very clear about this, and that’s not fair. Remember who we are. We’re a subcommittee working for the Community of Ararat, provisional capital of the Swift Sword of the Savior, USA. We are out to get enough money to tide the community over this fall and winter, with the confidence that in the spring our needs will be met with an influx of normal funds and a growth in our food supply. We are not capitalists—we are groundbreakers for a Christian civilization. Remember what the Lord’s Prayer says? ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ Not a continuous feast, or a chauffeured Rolls-Royce to take us to all the three-star French restaurants. We’re not asking the Lord for more than we need for this day, nor are we taking bread out of the mouths of others. We’re going to rob a bank. All the money is insured by the federal government. We’re just bleeding the beast.”

Dave Sherman said, “But wouldn’t it make sense to go for a big bank, where there’s more money?”

“Not really,” said Lee Wolf. “If you study a big bank in the center of Manhattan, it has a whole lot of net worth. At any moment they have billions of dollars in deposit accounts, collateral on loans they’ve made, stock and bond investments, contracts for precious metals. In some of those banks it’s tens of billions, and some probably hundreds of billions. But it’s not where you can put your hand on it. Some of it is ownership of land, or office buildings and skyscrapers, and some is just numbers on a balance sheet that’s not even physical. It’s on a computer server somewhere, and it’s on the move. It can disappear from there to a bank in Zurich or Hong Kong in a thousandth of a second, and something else will appear there. Or not even there, but in the home office in Brussels, London, or Tokyo. The point is, none of it is worth anything to us because we can’t put it in a bag and carry it home. All we want is about four laundry bags full of cash. And where does that come from?”

“Beats me,” said Tony Wagner. “Never seen a bank without some.”