Emergency

by Neil Strauss

  Though I have my paranoid moments, I don’t buy into conspiracy theories as involved, risky, and unsubstantiated as the ones he was outlining. A true Fliesian knows that large groups of people don’t keep secrets that well, especially if leaking it can either bring them glory or hurt a competitor.

  The person who convinced me of this was President Lyndon Johnson, who recorded hundreds of his phone calls in the White House. When I first heard him in the documentary The Fog of War discussing withdrawing from Vietnam, and basing decision after decision solely on whether it would make him look bad, I officially retired my conspiracy theory card.

  As the bearded man continued his inside-job rant, I waited for a pause so I could extricate myself. But this man did not pause. He seemed willing to talk to anyone who wanted to listen—and, evidently, anyone who didn’t. As he tried to make a case for income tax being illegal, his wife grabbed a pickle chip and started spreading butter substitute on it. I found her eating habits much more fascinating than the sound of his voice—until, suddenly, I heard the word “offshore.”

  My ears buzzed. My heart raced. Blood rushed to my head. Now he had my attention. “The entire fabric of the United States is dependent on a reciprocal system,” he was saying. “Should it be interrupted, or should it collapse, there would be mass chaos because the average American is incapable of doing anything for himself. Now is the time to move everything you own offshore.”

  Suddenly, I felt like a man in possession of a metal detector that had just started beeping. I would never have guessed that this conspiracy nut might have the answer to the question I’d been wrestling with for the past year.

  Until then, every path I’d tried to take out of the country had led to a dead end. Of the twenty-five immigration lawyers and organizations I’d contacted after Katrina, fifteen of them never returned phone calls and e-mails, and two of them said it would be months before they could offer me a consultation. A Japanese lawyer, Yoshio Shimoda, told me I’d need to live in Japan for five years and give up my U.S. nationality in order to be a citizen there. And Camila Tsu, a Brazilian lawyer, told me her country required four years of residency, fluency in Portuguese, and relinquishing my U.S. citizenship.

  Not only were these time commitments too long, but I wasn’t about to give up my U.S. citizenship. Despite its faults, I still love America. My friends are here, my family is here, and so is Manhattan, Hollywood, Chicago, Austin, most of New Orleans, the national parks of Utah, Kauai, the dry-rub ribs of Memphis, the juke joints of the Mississippi Delta, the Pacific Coast Highway, the Carlsbad Caverns, Clint Eastwood, and the Titan Missile Museum in Arizona, where you can actually turn the launch key in a deactivated nuclear bunker.

  An attorney in Rome told me that Italy wouldn’t require me to give up my U.S. citizenship, but I’d need to reside there ten years to get a passport. And a lawyer at Lang and Associates informed me that Costa Rica—one of the few countries without a military—has a seven-year residency requirement.

  My favorite response, however, came from Dan Hirsch of Hirsch & Associates. “We require a $3,000 retainer fee and a signed retainer agreement,” he wrote in an e-mail. “You do not really need my help, but if you want to use it, send me the retainer and the check.”

  The only glimmer of hope came from three companies, which each suggested trying Guyana. One of them, P&L Group, claimed there were hundreds of thousands of American citizens already living there.

  So I did a little research: On the Atlantic coast of South America. Semidemocratic republic. Former British colony. English-speaking inhabitants. Former site of the Jonestown massacre. Sounded nice.

  The only problem was that Guyanese passports were among the world’s least-credible travel documents because there were too many counterfeits and altered ones floating around. So I was right back where I started.

  Until now.

  “Do you know,” I asked the man in the World Trade Center shirt, my voice shaking, “the quickest way someone like myself could get citizenship in another country?”

  As soon as the words left my mouth, I imagined black vans full of dark-suited Homeland Security agents pulling up and arresting me for sedition. I watched carefully for his reaction, hoping he wouldn’t ask too many questions.

  “You should check out the Sovereign Society,” he said slowly, after some thought.

  “What’s the Sovereign Society?” I asked greedily.

  “They teach people how to be independent of their government.”

  I didn’t like the way he spoke. I didn’t like the way he looked. I didn’t like the way he smelled. But I would be forever in his debt. For he had just given me the clue I’d been looking for.

  Perhaps this man who I disliked so much—this conspiracy theorist in the socially unacceptable shirt—and I were not so far apart. Perhaps I didn’t like him because, in him, I saw a part of myself that I didn’t like. Perhaps that was the part pursuing this escape plan.

  We make fun of those we’re most scared of becoming.

  Some people talk about the power of intent. They say that if you set your mind on something you really want, it will come to you. This is often misinterpreted as a rationalization for laziness, because it’s a lot easier to lie in bed and dream than to go out and work.

  Personally, I believe in the power of the odds. If you interact with enough people, and you look for clues leading to what you want every time, you’ll eventually find someone or something that can help you.

  This was what had happened with the conspiracy theorist at Alcor. And it was how I found my first real ally in this heretical quest: Spencer Booth.

  He picked me up at JFK International Airport in a black Mercedes, which, like him, was tasteful but not flashy. Pale-skinned, with large red lips, ears that thrust violently out of his head, and a fleshy nose that seemed designed for a bigger face, Spencer didn’t look like a billionaire. He reminded me more of an albino Mr. Potato Head. It was only when he spoke that his cheeks filled with color and his eyes with light, and it became clear that he was a man to be respected and reckoned with.

  Road trips with strangers are long. Especially when they involve New York traffic. Along the way, I was indoctrinated into the world of Spencer Booth. He was from a world I’d never visited or even imagined before. It was the “B world,” as he put it, full of “B people.” B, I gathered, stood for a billion dollars. And B people, most of them big businessmen, were worth at least that much.

  Spencer had just made a B after selling his latest technology company. Bored in the downtime afterward, he’d contacted me after reading my books because he thought I should start my own business. So he invited me to the house he was renting in the Hamptons to discuss it.

  I took him up on the offer not because I actually wanted to be a businessman, but because I’d never been to the Hamptons before. I didn’t have those kinds of friends.

  Spencer pressed play on the CD player in his car and the deep, somber voice of one of my favorite songwriters, Leonard Cohen, prophesied through the crystal-clear sound system: “I’ve seen the future, brother: it is murder.”

  “The way to take over an industry,” Spencer was saying over the music, beginning my first business lesson of the weekend, “is not to fix the current model, but to completely destroy it and replace it with a model you know is better.”

  “So let me ask you something, since you’re a businessman.” I didn’t know why exactly—perhaps it was the music, perhaps it was a plea to the gods of the odds—but I felt like Spencer might understand what had been on my mind since Craig’s terrorism speech at my book party. “Don’t you think that’s exactly what the terrorists want to do to America? They don’t just want to destroy the country. They want to destroy the entire model.”

  “I do.” Spencer turned onto the Sunrise Highway and sat silently in traffic. He glanced at me, scanning my face for something he could trust, then turned back to the road. “That’s why,” he continued slowly, nodding, deciding, “I hired a law
yer to help me get a second passport.”

  As soon as he said the word passport, my face exploded with color. I was excited, nervous, and, mostly, relieved. From the shift of energy in the car, it was clear this was no longer a business trip. I’d met a fellow runner.

  It suddenly felt as if a weekend would not be long enough to talk about everything we needed to.

  There is a theory called memetics, which suggests that ideas move through culture much like viruses. Thanks to the catalysts of 9/11 and Katrina, the escapist meme had clearly spread from the minds of fringe extremists to early adopters in mainstream society. It was only a matter of time, I began to worry, until countries further tightened their immigration policies because of the large numbers of Americans leaving, like their forefathers, for somewhere safer, more prosperous, and more free.

  “What have you found out?” I asked Spencer. “So far, the only thing I know about is this organization called the Sovereign Society.”

  After returning home from Alcor, I’d found the Sovereign Society website. I’d actually stumbled across it earlier in my search but assumed it was just another scam to sell foreign real estate, international currencies, fraudulent passports, and expensive consultations.

  This time, however, I noticed that the society was holding its first-ever Offshore Advantage Seminar in Mexico the following month. So I’d signed up in the hope of finding a community of like-minded escape artists who were further along in their quest for a safe haven.

  “I’ve never heard of them,” he replied. “I’ve been working with a lawyer, Holland Wright. When you get back to L.A., call him and tell him you know me. He’ll take care of you.”

  Between the Sovereign Society and Spencer, I was no longer fumbling in the dark for an emergency exit. Suddenly, I had options.

  Spencer parked in a gravel driveway outside his rental house and ushered me inside. Considering that he was sharing the place with one of the owners of a media empire, the vice president of a large mortgage company, a major hedge fund manager, and a venture capitalist from one of New York’s wealthiest families, it was very un-opulent. Just a two-story white wooden building with five sparsely furnished bedrooms and a communal walkway that led over a ravine to the sea.

  “So what country are you going to get your passport from?” I asked Spencer as he showed me to my bedroom. I had so many questions I wanted to ask, and so far he was the first person I’d met with any answers.

  “I was thinking about the European Union.”

  “But I doubt Europe is going to be safe if there’s another world war.” I had discounted Europe immediately because anything America was involved in, Europe would surely be swept into as well.

  “That’s not the point. There are twenty-five countries in the European Union. And those countries possess territories all over the world. So with an EU passport, you can get somewhere safe from just about anywhere.” His potato head contained so much knowledge. That’s why he was rich and I wasn’t.

  “So what does it take to get an EU passport?”

  In response, he brought me to the balcony, where a short man with a round, boyish face was talking on a cell phone.

  “Neil, I want you to meet Adam,” Spencer said. Adam was the venture capitalist. “He just got his Austrian citizenship this week.”

  I’d definitely stumbled into the right place.

  While we waited for Adam to finish setting up a date on the phone, Spencer turned to me. “If you want female companionship this weekend, I can bring some up for you.” He smiled cryptically, as if he were testing me. “I know these two breathtaking Russian girls who will really take care of you.”

  “Sounds kind of shady,” I replied. A young Hispanic cleaning lady with Mrs. Kaufman–sized breasts mopped the floor begrudgingly in the living room. Her jaw was clenched, and her eyes shone with resentment at her humiliating task and those who paid her so little for it.

  “They’re not prostitutes or anything. They’re just looking for wealthy guys to marry. That’s pretty much their entire purpose in life. If I tell them you’re rich and let you use my black card, you can have whichever one you want.”

  “But if they want to get married, why would they sleep with me on the first date?”

  “Because it’s going to be the best sex you’ve ever had. They know what they’re doing. Just watch your condoms. They’ll poke holes in them to get pregnant.”

  “That’s one of the most devious things I’ve ever heard.” No wonder Spencer was so paranoid.

  Adam was still on the phone, complaining about his parents. It seemed strange to hear a man well into his thirties still calling them “Mommy” and “Daddy.” On the end table next to him, I noticed a book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy, and made a mental note to buy it.

  “You don’t even know the half of it,” Spencer continued. “When I sold my company, I had to get my number changed. These kinds of girls check the newspapers for financial transactions, then wait outside the apartment of someone who’s just made a lot of money hoping to meet them.”

  “Do they ever succeed?”

  “The guys in this house would never marry one of those girls. What they’re looking for is a very specific genetic stock. The girl needs to be beautiful, intelligent, and from a respectable family, with no history of hereditary illnesses.”

  “So they pretty much approach marriages like they approach their businesses?”

  “That’s why they’re successful.”

  Rather than freezing themselves like Craig, these billionaires strove to extend their lives by creating new, improved versions of themselves. They didn’t believe in children; they believed in a legacy. We were all, in our own way, running from death.

  As Pulitzer Prize–winning psychiatrist Ernest Becker explained it in his book The Denial of Death, because we fear our own obliteration, we give our life purpose by embarking on an “immortality project” that will outlast us—whether it be our work, our children, the way we affect others, a good seat in the afterlife, or, in Craig’s case, hope.

  Adam hung up, then promptly called his parents. While we waited, Spencer suggested devising a plan to select my second citizenship. He loved plans—which was fine with me, because I’d always been bad at them. It was hard enough for me just to leave the house without forgetting my keys or wallet.

  As if on cue, the maid started vacuuming loudly in front of us while Spencer took a pad of paper, set it down on the coffee table, and numbered it from one to five. By sorting through both practical necessities and personal preferences, we eventually selected five criteria required of the host country:

  1. Must have a credible passport providing a wide network of visa-free travel.

  2. Must be politically and regionally stable, with a low crime rate.

  3. Must not significantly increase the tax liability of Americans living there.

  4. Must not require more than two years of residency for citizenship.

  5. Preferably in a warm climate with beaches.

  Admittedly, the last criterion was more personal than political.

  Adam soon joined us. He reminded me of a thinner, better-groomed version of Ignatius J. Reilly, the overweight mama’s boy with an unwarranted superiority complex in the novel A Confederacy of Dunces.

  As he sat down, he glanced up in irritation at the maid. She met his gaze coldly and continued vacuuming the same spot. She was obedient when under observation but seemed like she’d drop poison in his coffee the moment he turned his back on her.

  “Neil wants to know how you got your passport,” Spencer prompted him.

  “My passport?” Adam asked. “Anyone can get one”—a smug smile spread across his face, like that of the only kid in the playground with a chocolate bar—“if they invest over a million dollars in the country.”

  “In Austria?”

  “It’s the only place in the European Union that will give you citizenship for making an economic investment. I started a venture
capital business there and hired a bunch of Austrians. It took forever to get approved. I had to go to the highest level of government.”

  I didn’t have that kind of money to invest, let alone those kinds of connections. It looked like the European Union was for the B boys. “How long did it take to get it?”

  “I started trying as soon as Bush was reelected.”

  Suddenly, I didn’t feel so foolish. If the smartest, richest guys in the country were doing this, then clearly I wasn’t paranoid. I was just ahead of the curve. St. Slim Jim, prophet of passports.

  “A bunch of other B people are doing similar things right now,” Spencer told me. “Do you know the Walton family? They own Wal-Mart. They just built an underground bunker near their home in Arkansas. They even have a helipad in case they need to evacuate.”

  “That’s crazy.” It was amazing how little difference there was between the billionaires and the cult leaders.

  “Actually, it isn’t. If something does happen in America, it may be difficult to get out,” Spencer replied slowly, as if confiding a secret he hadn’t meant to tell me. “So we’re taking flight lessons in a few months.”

  Spencer didn’t start any business without researching every minute detail, then drawing up a schedule that looked forward at least ten years, included all expenses, and had contingency options for every possible obstacle, including death. His escape-from-America plan was no different.

  “I’m not taking any chances with my family,” he continued. “I just bought them guns, in case we have to shoot our way to the airport.”

  Coming from the mouth of a respected businessman—especially after watching the Fliesian looting in New Orleans—these extreme preparations were actually beginning to sound reasonable. Except for the guns. I couldn’t imagine killing anyone. Unfortunately, as Bettie the goat knows, that lofty ideal of mine would fall by the wayside as the country continued its downhill slide.

  Instead of inviting the Russian gold diggers over, Adam and I spent the rest of the night drinking wine and debating his escape route with his housemates.