by Warren Esby
I learned later in grade school that real silk comes from China and is made from an animal called a cocoon, not a pig, which is different from an American raccoon which I found out when I got that question marked wrong on a test. I learned that silk was good for making a lot of things besides purses. All sorts of articles of clothing are made from silk as well as rugs and tapestries and many other silky things. The only article of clothing that I heard of being made from a raccoon was a coonskin cap like the one that Davy Crockett used to wear. But that’s a hard kind of hat to wear because it isn’t easy knowing exactly where that tail has to hang to make it look right. Davy Crockett always seemed to get it right. The hat always looked good on him and the tail seemed to be in the right place at all times. I tried one on once, but got it all wrong. The tail ended up hanging down in front of my nose and it made me sneeze, so I told my mother I didn’t want it after all, even though she had offered to pay for it and thought it would make me look more American, which was important for someone with a Russian last name.
After Olga and I reached Laundromat Town, we left the Escalade Hybrid parked next to the other two SUVs like I usually did after one of these trips, said goodbye to our newly made friends, and took my two shopping bags back to my apartment where boxes supplied by the U.S. Postal Service were waiting already pre-labeled. Olga came with me of course and asked what was in the bags. “Your Porsche 911,” I told her. She said she didn’t understand. I told her I would explain later.
We went back across the street to the Baskin Robbins where Ben and Jerry were supposed to be waiting for us. They were. They told me they had just finished their twenty fifth of twenty eight flavors. They only had a single scoop because they didn’t want to ruin their dinner. I figured I would live for at least another three flavors, but I didn’t know how long that would take since they often had sundaes or banana splits, and I also didn’t know how many gelato flavors they had tried. The gelato place kept adding new flavors and I hoped some new ones were scheduled.
Ben was extremely disappointed to receive the news that the Escalade Hybrid had returned. I didn’t tell him why because I knew he would be angry with us. Jerry said we needed to have a conversation now that the last load that we had agreed on had been delivered. I said what about tomorrow, and they agreed to meet at 10:00 AM.
As I’ve said before in my narrative, I’d rather be lucky than dead and so far I had been very lucky. Although I had also been very unlucky to have gotten myself into this mess in the first place, but once in it I had been lucky, or at least lucky enough to still be alive. So after going back to the apartment, I got lucky again. No, that doesn’t mean I had sex with Anya when I got back. The beach surf and apparel shop was still open and she wanted to finish checking it out. She wanted to choose the ones she wanted to show me without having me there while she narrowed down her choices. She was smart enough to know I would be bored and insist that we go to a nude beach rather than spend any more time trying to choose, because that’s what I told her would happen if she made me choose from more than three. A good salesman knows that if you give someone a lot of choices, they will have to think about it, but if they only have to choose between two or three items, they will generally be prepared to make a choice. See, I do have some practical knowledge, practical for most people that is, but not practical for me since I never had enough money to choose with.
So when I went back to the apartment, I decided to check the status of my little Beretta which was no longer a piece of shit but was now a well proven piece of military hardware having dispassionately dispatched three people fairly easily during the last week or so. I had mentioned that I like to keep my guns clean as most people who care about firearms do. A dirty firearm can kill you, or rather cause you to be killed if it malfunctions at a critical time, especially semi-automatics like the little Beretta rather than revolvers which are more reliable but are not in favor as much these days since they generally carry fewer rounds and the gang bangers like to spray the area with bullets rather than aiming as had been demonstrated so inefficiently by Igor and Vladimir. The most frequent cause of most semi-automatics malfunctioning is because they’re dirty, and they usually get dirty from the residue left behind when they are fired, and I had fired that little Beretta recently. I wanted to check how clean it was since I hadn’t had time to clean it since I bought it. Since I had delivered the last load of drugs and was no longer needed for that purpose, I was now expected to hand over ‘the goods’ or be killed, and I decided I wanted to go down fighting. I knew my Beretta would be a match for most of the agents, who would be similarly armed according to Ben and Jerry, although not perhaps a match for the Glocks that Ben and Jerry themselves were now carrying. I also knew I would need to get some more bullets since I only had two left if I had counted correctly. So I took the Beretta out of my pocket and racked back the slide twice ejecting the last two rounds. I noticed the little grip panels on the handle had loosened, probably because of the last several rounds that had been fired. But they shouldn’t have really done that and they were looser than I would have expected. In fact they were very loose and I wiggled them to get the grip panels lined up so I could tighten the screw but I couldn’t really make them line up the way they should. It felt like something was in the way, so I decided to loosen them some more and when I did, my bargaining chip fell out. Actually what fell out of the little hollow space on the inside of the hand grip panel was a little computer memory chip, a bargaining chip for sure if the memory it contained was the memory everyone had lost, and it is a terrible thing to lose one’s memory because that meant you were getting old, but I wanted to get old and not lose my memory, and a memory chip or bargaining chip would be the key to my getting old. I finally got the chip back into place and tightened the hand grip panel with the tip of my penknife, which I often use as a screw driver since I don’t have any tools. As I said before, I’d rather be lucky than dead and it was ironic that three people had to be dead for me to be lucky.
I wondered why Ivor had given me the gun with the memory chip rather than another Beretta since Olga had said they had six of them to start with. I mean, once I had it he knew I would keep it locked up in my locker and no one could get at it if they needed it unless they made me open my locker to get it. I thought at first that was a stupid move on his part, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought it might have been a very smart move on Ivor’s part after all. If someone came along and asked Ivor for the memory chip and he said he didn’t have it, they would probably want to look in his locker if they couldn’t find it on his person if they didn’t believe him. They might also ask politely that he open his locker by holding a gun to his head, which is a very polite way to ask indeed. If he opened his locker, they wouldn’t find a .25 ACP caliber Beretta automatic with the chip they would be looking for under its hand grip panel, because that little Beretta would be in my locker instead. Of course Ivor wouldn’t have access to it either. And then I realized, of course he would. He assigned all the lockers and had a list of all of the lock combinations to all the lockers at the gun range because he had to assign everyone their locker, and he was the only one who could do it. Anytime he wanted to, he could get into my locker and take that memory chip and leave the Beretta behind, and neither I nor anyone else would ever know about it except him. It was really a smart move after all, I thought.
Chapter 31
Ben and Jerry came by the next morning on schedule. Anya didn’t want to come to breakfast with us. She wanted to sleep late which she always wants to do, as I was finding out, especially if we’ve had a lot of activity during the night before, which we often have. As long as she’s willing to continue to have a lot of activity at night, I accommodate her and let her sleep late. It turns out I need less sleep than she does. So I went outside and met Ben and Jerry and we went to a little café that was not very far away and that served breakfast. We took a booth in the back room which was pretty much out of sight and hearing of other people. The ca
fé’s specialty was oatmeal pancakes which sounds gross but actually tastes pretty good and turns out to be a very good selling point for the restaurant. I mean it serves two purposes. It makes the customers feel like they are eating a very healthy breakfast because oatmeal is supposed to be good for you and has a lot of fiber. But it also allows those eating the pancakes to soak them with maple syrup to satisfy their sweet tooth as much as chocolate chip pancakes do without feeling as guilty. I no longer had a sweet tooth. I had lost that tooth in Chicago a few months before. I still had all my other teeth. I ordered the pancakes and ignored the syrup and they tasted pretty good without them. Ben and Jerry were not so shy about using the syrup and asked for more after they drained the jar that was on the table. They told the waitress it was half empty when they sat down, which it hadn’t been, and I think the waitress knew it. Talk about the kind of people that look at jars as being half full or half empty. Ben and Jerry turned out to be so pessimistic that they considered a jar that was ninety percent full to be half empty.
After we ordered, I got right to the point rather than having them bring it up.
“So let’s talk about what you think I have and what you’re going to do for me if I do have it. I want specifics of how you’ll protect me, what I’ll get to live on in your agent’s protection program and how you plan to keep the Russians off my back. You haven’t done a very good job in that regard. Not only did they almost kill me here, but we had to kill a couple of guys to protect ourselves while we were running a simple errand for you. And if the only thing you’re going to do for me is to let me keep the money I’ve received so far and just let me use my own resources to get away, then I’m not so sure I’ll be willing to cooperate.”
So they began their sales pitch. “No, that’s not all you’ll get. It’s much better than that. We’ll give you an assumed name and all the documents you’ll need to go along with it. You’ll get a passport, a social security card, a driver’s license from the state of your choice, credit cards in your new name and a really good credit rating. We suggest you leave the country and move to someplace like the Cayman Islands where the bank with your money is located. We’ll enroll you in the Alpha Rho Alpha 50-3 program so that you’ll have all the money you need. We’ll keep you informed if we hear anyone is looking for you, and we will be your only contacts so no one else in the Federal Government will know about you except for the person who sets up the Alpha Rho Alpha account and they’ll only know your social security number. The only ones who will know who you are and where you live will be us, and we’ll only check in with you once a year or if we hear that you’re in danger.”
“So how does this Alpha Rho Alpha account work? What is it? I’ve never heard anything about it.”
“The Alpha Rho Alpha stands for agent retirement account. It’s a quasi-military account so they like to use Greek letters instead of ARA. It’s really just like an IRA or a social security account. They don’t call it a Sigma Sigma account, although they could, because social security payments can be taxed and some IRAs, like Roth IRAs, aren’t. So this is like a Roth IRA with no tax consequences at all. You just withdraw money as you need it subject to the limitations of the particular account you have. A 50-3 account means it’s good for fifty years after it is set up and starts with three million dollars. When the balance drops to one million, they top it back up to three million. There’s always at least one million in it, but never more than three, and it’s different from your other account that’s already set up. The other limitation is that it’s only to buy goods and services. You can’t just keep transferring money to another account, and you can’t get more than three million in any one year. Pretty neat, huh?”
“Well, that’s fine. It sounds too good to be true so it can’t be true. I suppose it all goes away once something happens to you or if the administration changes.”
“Actually an administration change is in your best interest. These kinds of accounts, once they’re in the system, just keep going. The government is filled with them. You wouldn’t believe how many programs that the government has that just send out money, large amounts of money, to a large list of people and organizations that no one knows about or knows why they are receiving checks anymore. Once they get set up the reasons for them are long forgotten, but the payments keep being made on a regular basis. These accounts can be from two or three administrations ago and even longer, and they keep on going and no one knows about them or even knows where to look for them. They just drop below the radar. In the greater scheme of things in the government, it doesn’t matter how many millions are given out among the billions in the budget. It’s just small change and no one notices and they just print more money if they need more. Once you’re in the system you’re set, and once an administration changes no one tells them about all the old programs that are in place. No one has any incentive to do so. It would be too much work. And it’s too difficult for the new political appointees to search out all these programs and do something about them. They are too busy creating new programs and identifying new people and organizations to print money for. Most of the programs, once created, are on an automatic payment system, especially programs like this one that have only the highest level of security clearance. In fact the only one that has the authority to change anyone’s account once it is set up is a single individual, and that program is the only one he or she is in charge of, and he or she has every incentive to keep it intact. The head of the program only stays in that position a maximum of five years, and then he or she retires with his or her own Alpha Rho Alpha 75-5 five account, and the successor, who the old head has the sole authority to appoint, takes over. And that person, like his or her predecessor, gets to choose his or her own successor, and it is obvious that no head of the program has any incentive but to keep the program going with absolutely no scrutiny whatsoever, and since it is a CIA program, he or she can keep it hidden since it is so important for national security. It is kept so well hidden that no one in the CIA bureaucracy will tell any political appointee about it.”
“It sounds too good to be true,” I said again. “I guess I’ll have to hope that the government can keep printing money the way it does.”
“There’s no reason to think it won’t, although it doesn’t really print all of it here in the U.S. About forty percent of it is printed in China.”
“That makes sense. And what you just told me makes me feel better. But I still have a problem about the Russians finding me and killing me. I don’t trust you in that regard and I don’t want to depend on luck. I would like to give them something so they’ll think I fulfilled what I was supposed to do so they’ll leave me alone. It can be a watered down version of what you think I have, but it has to be enough to convince them and have enough real value to do so.” I was doing this to satisfy Anya and also to keep them thinking I was a Russian agent so I could qualify for what seemed like a pretty good program if it was true. It turned out to be true.
“Actually, we try to do that anyway since if we give them a few secrets that they want to have, and they’re happy with them, they won’t go digging quite as deeply and find other secrets we don’t want them to have. And the people in the sleeper cells are generally lazy to begin with, although you seem better than most. So, depending what you have, we may decide after looking at it to just give it to them anyway, but we need to see it first. In fact we would have suggested having you pass it on even if you didn’t suggest it, providing of course that it is something we want to have passed on. It’s actually part of the job of a double agent.”
So far I was satisfied with all the answers which I wanted to be since I really didn’t have a good alternative, and the Russians couldn’t protect me because I didn’t work for them, but I still had to hope that I could get something to give them too so Anya would not think I was a pig. And I still didn’t know why they weren’t asking question about Anya, so I asked,
“Where does Anya fit in with all of you? What do you know and why have
n’t you asked me anything about her?”
“You know we wouldn’t believe anything you told us anyway unless we could confirm it ourselves, so we just went about our own investigation and we think we understand now. At first we didn’t understand why she was hanging around with the members of the sleeper cell since Ivor wasn’t part of it. We figured it was just you three. We also knew Anya had been raised by the Federovs and should have been unhappy about Ivor being killed, but she didn’t seem to be. And then we found out that her last name wasn’t Federov after all, and she wasn’t Ivor’s sister as we had suspected. We found out that her last name is Astrova and we know that in Russian, that is the feminine equivalent of your name, Astrov, which meant she was either your sister or your wife. After you began sleeping with her once she got here, we realized she must be your wife and not your sister. And if we’re wrong and she is your sister, we’d be very unhappy.”
“She’s not my sister,” I reassured them.
“Then she must be your wife.”
I didn’t confirm that. I just said, “So continue with what you know.”
“Well we figured she convinced Ivor to steal some secrets for you because of her relationship with the Federovs and when he did and turned them over to you, you killed him so he couldn’t talk.”
“I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t have done that to Ivor and neither would Anya. We’re not that bad. It was Igor who shot him and I didn’t know anything about it until afterwards.” That part was all true and they believed me.
“Was that why you decided to leave the cell?”