Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom
Page 16
Chapter Seven
Mick sat in a hotel lobby in Yogyakarta, playing a drone strike game on his phone. Across from him sat a fully-grown Korean man with virtual reality goggles on and a cacophony of sounds spilling out of his earphones and into the lobby. Mick was still not used to such bizarre public displays, as everywhere else he had lived was populated by people who frowned deeply on wearing virtual reality gear anywhere but in the privacy of your own home. Everyone assumed you were watching porn. But, what was considered grounds for expulsion from any public space in the western hemisphere and in Europe, was apparently acceptable here in Indonesia.
Mick, figuring the man was watching some sort of extremely deviant porn, debated moving over to the other side of the lobby and waiting there until Ally arrived. After some thought, he decided to stick with his comfortable couch and his drone strike game. The game was created with actual video and audio of real drone strikes, and it was not easy to put down when there were active targets on the ground. The addictive game could be paused, of course. But Mick was not a procrastinator when it came to video games.
However, before he could finish droning what was either an Albanian terrorist training center or an Albanian refugee camp, he sighted Ally. She looked completely different than the last time Mick saw her. She was now wearing a conservative business outfit. And she looked like she had always worn that style.
“Hey Mick, how was your holiday away from me?”
“Great, of course. But what’s with the corporate clown suit?”
“You don’t like it? Not that I care what you think…”
“No, no. I like it. You are actually selling this look, Ally. I almost take you seriously as a person who should be entrusted with investing and managing my money.”
Ally smirked at Mick.
“And your outfit matches your accommodations,” added Mick. “Nice hotel, by the way. Better than the one you people put me in.”
“Oh, this isn’t my hotel. I just walked in through the restaurant entrance on the other side.”
“My god, Ally, you suck.”
“What, you think I tell everybody where I stay? Is that the sort of incompetent person you want to team up with?”
“So we’re a team now?”
“No, you’re my sidekick, obviously,” said Ally, with her smirk turning to a playful grin.
“Well, if you’re the hero then you’re paying my salary.”
“Nah, this is something like an unpaid internship.”
“Don’t you anarchists kill people for that sort of thing?”
“Yup. We did. We had a special unit for that. But, unsurprisingly, unpaid internships have fallen out of favor. Not so many targets anymore...”
“Yeah, that’s really inconvenient when you have to end a program because you murdered everybody.”
“No, that’s the sign of a successful program,” said Ally. “I wish we could end them all similarly.”
“I wish we could end this conversation.”
“No, I think you like our little talks,” insisted Ally. “You’re only grumpy because you’re hungry. You get like that, silly. Let’s go get a burrito.”
“They have burritos here?”
“No. No, they don’t. Do you believe anything that sounds enticing?”
“Well, that’s it,” said Mick. “I officially have zero trust in you. Now, please, if you are done torturing me, pick a lunch spot for us.”
After arguing over restaurants while reading competing online reviews and ratings by over-fed expats, Mick and Ally finally chose a place that promised you wouldn’t see many other expat diners.
Sitting in the side of the restaurant that had the fewest westerners, Mick and Ally got down to business while they waited impatiently for their lunch orders to be boiled.
“How’s the situation with your new ID?” asked Ally.
“No problems. The American consulate here is as corrupt as the consulates and embassies in Latin America. They deny me consular services because I defaulted on my debt, but they’ll sell identities out of the back door as usual. I’m now a decorated war hero. Well, I was until I changed the name in the passport.”
Mick didn’t need to give Ally any more details. She knew what he had done. Consular officers in American embassies and consulates around the world had paid for their positions. To be precise, they had paid for their positions with a small bag of high denomination Euro banknotes. The consular officers, having purchased their position from higher ranking State Department officials, now had a set amount of time to make their bribe back. If you were really good, you could make it back in six months and then spend the next two-and-a-half years making pure cash profit. The salary was a joke, so the bribes and payments that consular officers took in from American expats was the focus of their work.
As for bribes from local nationals seeking a tourist visit to New York or a terrorist excursion to Washington, these were collected by the ambassador or the deputy chief of mission. Of course, nobody would ever meet the ambassador. All bribes went through local national employees. Everybody knew what the Americans did in their embassies overseas. But still, nobody enjoyed their time on hidden camera footage, so the best you could do would be to reveal the corruption of a rogue local employee.
As a result, Mick was easily able to procure a new passport with a new identity; or rather, a new passport with somebody else’s identity. The most popular identities were those of recently deceased soldiers. They were of the age that matched most Americans on the run overseas. And, as they were dead, they wouldn’t be complaining about their identity being stolen. The process was simple: the consular officer paid a mid-ranking bureaucrat in the Department of Defense to send the identity file of a dead soldier with the bio-data erased. And then, the consular officer would insert the bio-data of the bribe-payer. A quick edit would be made to change the name, and a new passport would be issued. It sounded risky, but the Department of Defense had classified as top secret the numbers and names of American casualties from operations overseas and at home. This, plus the embarrassing level of corruption that went up to the highest level, gave everyone an incentive to block any investigation into this activity – not that anyone really cared anymore.
America and most other countries had the most incredible surveillance and security tools. Their bio-data identification and tracking systems were flawless. But this was all easily circumvented with the payment of a reasonable bribe. Criminals, terrorists, anarchists and American debt runners were indebted to this corruption. Furthermore, without the corruption, the State Department would, in fact, collapse. It was a giant pyramid of patronage and bribe-taking, and many people were invested in the system.
But this didn’t bother Mick. He now had a new passport and, hopefully, a new life.
“You feel dirty at all?” asked Ally.
Mick shrugged.
“What’s your new name? Something sexy?”
Mick shrugged again.
Ally did her best exaggerated fake frown and said “I don’t get to know your name? That was your chance to show me that you trusted me.”
“Trust? Like the trust you showed me by telling me to meet at your hotel which actually wasn’t your hotel because you don’t want me to know where you sleep at night?”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot about that,” admitted Ally. “So are we even?”
“Only if this food is good. If not, then you’re going to have to invite me to your secret safe-house and cook me a decent dinner. ”
The food arrived and they both ate silently; Ally enjoying the silence and Mick enjoying the food.
After being talked into full-sugar sweet iced tea by the waiter, Ally got back to business, if only briefly.
“No news yet on your debt collector friend,” she said. “All I can say is that he knows you are here, in Indonesia.”
“Yeah, great news, Ally. Thanks,” said Mick, not smiling.
“Don’t worry. He thinks you are in Jakarta. And we’re
not going there for a couple of weeks until everything is set up and ready.”
“Are we done for the day?”
“Yeah, we’re done. But the day’s not over,” noted Ally while smiling. “If you’re free, let’s be tourists and go visit some temples.”
Mick was surprised at what appeared to be a sign of genuine friendship, even if he didn’t show it.
“Sure,” said Mick, secretly quite pleased. “I’ve got nothing better to do. Just please, go back to your safe-house first and change out of that investment banker outfit. You’re embarrassing me again.”
Ally kept smiling.