Chapter Ten
Mick woke up in a bathtub. It was a generously large and empty tub, and he fit quite nicely. But he had no idea where he was. Then he remembered a table full of empty beer bottles. He also vaguely recalled yelling arcane Marxist terminology at The Executioner and others. How embarrassing, he thought. Hopefully they realized he was using the terms ironically.
Deciding to investigate his current predicament, Mick walked out of the bathroom and heard a conversation as soon as he stepped into the hallway. Both the voices were familiar in a good-bad sort of way. As he had no other option, he followed the sound of the voices.
Entering the kitchen, Mick saw Rukma berating The Executioner for his lack of skill with a Moka pot.
“It’s European, dude. Why do you not know how to make coffee from this Moka pot?” laughed Rukma.
“I’m not European. I’m American,” said The Executioner. “I buy my coffee from a person who makes it for me. Or I press a button on a machine that does the same. Or I tell my phone to tell the machine to make one for me.”
Seeing Mick, The Executioner added “Mick, if you want coffee…sorry, you can’t have any. Rukma is too rude to make coffee for his guests. I hope you know how to use this.”
Picking The Executioner’s phone up off the counter, Mick stepped over and scanned the Moka pot and said “Find video tutorial.”
“See? He’s smart,” said Rukma. “Watch the video, don’t bother me.”
Finding what he was looking for, Mick watched the short and very simple video.
Then, taking the coffee grounds away from The Executioner, he said “You’re putting the coffee in the wrong part. Let me do it…”
“Do you want some water to drink first, before the coffee?” asked The Executioner. “You puked like six times last night on the street. That’s why we threw you in the bathtub. Rukma would have killed us both if you threw up on his floor.”
“Do you have anything to drink that has flavor and sugar? Like juice or a sports drink? And I need some hang-over or headache pills.”
After going through three cans of coconut water and medicating himself, Mick decided to inquire about the previous night. The facts given matched what he had already guessed had happened: he got drunk, he got sick, The Executioner couldn’t take him back to the hotel, and he was generously offered a spot in Rukma’s bathtub for the night.
“Hey, sometime today I need to go back to the hotel to get my stuff.”
“Yeah…how did you leave that hotel, by the way?” asked The Executioner jokingly.
“You know, I have no idea.”
“We put him in wheelie bin,” said Rukma with a grin.
“What’s a wheelie bin, Rukma?” asked The Executioner.
“It’s a bin with wheels.”
“A bin?”
Rukma rolled his eyes and spoke the word into his phone.
The Executioner looked over and read the word in Bahasa Indonesian: ‘garbage can.’
“Rukma, I’m not Australian. In America we say garbage can.”
“This isn’t America.”
“So it’s Australia then?” asked The Executioner sarcastically.
“Close to Australia. Closer than America.”
“We say bin in America also,” said Mick, cutting in.
“OK. This talking is stupid,” said Rukma. “I’m leaving. I need to take money to my…parents. Close windows before you leave, OK guys? No key for you. The door will lock by its own work when you leave.”
And within ten seconds, Rukma was out the door and gone.
“So, what’s your plan, Mick? Are you sticking around for a while? Heading back to Mexico? Elsewhere?”
“I’m done with Mexico. But I’m not sure where I’m heading. I need to think about it.”
“I told you last night that I’ll never live and work in the United States again,” said The Executioner. “But what about you? Still holding out hope for a debt amnesty?”
“Nah, nobody believes that anymore. It’s just something that some random powerless congressman brings up once in a while.”
“Did you ever believe that would happen?” asked The Executioner.
“Well, at one point in time I did think that there was a chance. I thought that if enough people defaulted on their student loan debt, then maybe the government would just give up. I thought…or rather I hoped that the problem with student loan debt would reach some sort of critical mass and the government would just give up. You know, sort of like the prohibition of alcohol or illegal immigration – we’ve had about four amnesties for illegals.”
“So why hasn’t a debt amnesty happened? I mean…I know. I’m just wondering what goes through the minds of debtors who finally realize that there will be no amnesty.”
“This isn’t my original idea – I just read it somewhere,” said Mick. “The basic reason is that the government and the lenders are not just going to walk away from trillions of dollars that are owed to them. My guess with the end of prohibition on alcohol is that alcohol could be taxed. It made sense from the revenue-hungry perspective of government to made alcohol legal. As for the immigration amnesties, well, both the government and corporations are invested in cheap labor that can be disposed of quickly. And anyways, the debt collection system is not a burden for the government and for the lenders. They make a profit. And the profit is guaranteed by law – as long as they can keep the debtors in the United States.”
“Yeah, that’s basically it,” admitted The Executioner. “You just have to look at where the incentives and the interests lay. There is just too much invested in continuing the current system of student loan debt payments. Nobody is going to walk away from trillions.”
“And that’s why I live outside the United States,” replied Mick. “Sometimes, though, I forget my circumstances and I start to make plans or form dreams or whatever. But then I snap back to reality and realize what I’m thinking of is hopeless, given where I'm at now in life. I will live and die overseas. America is becoming a fuzzy memory.”
“But don’t you miss home at all? Do you ever think about going back and giving it a try?” asked The Executioner.
“I have a dishonorable discharge from the US Army and massive student loan debt that defaulted. I would basically be living at the bottom rung of American society if I went back. So why would I ever consider going home?”
“Well, lots of runners are going home – probably thanks to me and my friends chasing them all over. What do you think it would be like for you if you went back?”
“My parents wouldn’t refuse me my old bedroom if I showed up back in Metropolis,” said Mick. “And I know that living with parents is something most people have to do these days, just like in every other third world country. But I couldn’t do it after all these years of being independent. And nobody leaves small Midwestern towns and then returns home to live. There is no way I’m going back to Metropolis. And then there is the job situation…”
“Yeah, the American economy is not exactly a worker’s paradise, is it?”
“That and my student loan repayments schedule would be crippling. The system has been reworked so that you will end up paying right up until retirement age – even though there’s no such thing as retirement anymore. So one day you realize that you are an old man and that you have nothing. You’ll end up eating at church soup kitchens and dying of some easily treatable ailment.”
“I can see why you ran off,” said The Executioner. He expressed sympathy, but not surprise. He knew this sort of story quite well from all the debtors that he tracked down.
“Not only that…With my credit rating, nobody would give me a real job,” added Mick. “My student loan default has completely destroyed my rating. Employers have the pick of job applicants these days. And they filter the applicants without even reading the resumes. They use a number of simple tools. Credit rating is one of them. And then there is trying to find a place to live. Obviously, no bank will give me a loan for a h
ouse. But with a bad credit rating you can’t get by any landlords or rental agencies. I would end up living in a shelter or, best case scenario, a weekly cash-payment place with a bunch of other young and hopeless men. And if these men weren’t hopeless enough, you know how dating apps work, right?”
“What, they ask for your verified income?” asked The Executioner.
“Yeah, the good apps do that, but they also make it mandatory to show your credit rating. I mean…why would a girl or guy want to be with a person who would destroy their own hard-earned credit rating? The guy or girl you end up with won’t pull you up to their level; you will pull them down to yours. They know that. That’s why they wouldn’t even glance at your profile. You are already filtered out.”
“Why don’t you just find a guy in the same sort of situation as you? He wouldn’t discriminate, would he?” asked The Executioner.
“Maybe he wouldn’t, but I would. Why would I choose a person like that? Two miserable, broke and destroyed guys? I can’t even imagine what it’s like for a guy who’s seeking a girl…”
Mick poured himself some more coffee and added five sugar cubes.
“What about you? You hiding a wife or girlfriend somewhere?” asked Mick.
“No. No girlfriends recently. Not that I’m actually trying. I spend so much time traveling and jumping in and out of different expat social scenes.”
“So, there’s your chance for a nice American debt runner.”
“I’m done with American women.”
“Well, that’s discriminatory,” said Mick, in a not entirely serious sort of way. “Why not American girls?”
“Come on, have you met any local women here yet?”
“Not really. Alison scared them all away.”
“OK, then. I’m not going to give you an answer,” said The Executioner. “But after you have been here for a while, you will just know.”
“Let me guess: submissive and always smiling…in the kitchen, bare foot and on birth control?”
The Executioner laughed.
“I know the stereotype, but anybody who told you that women in East and Southeast Asia are submissive must have last been here in the 19th century. In fact, I find them remarkably confident and straightforward. You need to quit listening to bitter white American women whose ex-husbands ordered a Cambodian wife.”
“That’s not very patriotic,” said Mick in a disappointed and sarcastic tone.
“Patriotic? There are no patriots here. We need to invite Alison over and we’ll have a trio of American rascals, all doing their bit to destroy the United States of America.”
“Alison thinks that her group is helping rid the country of some cancerous tumor.”
“Yeah, and they want to start by removing the brain and throwing it in the trash,” said the Executioner. “They are the worst thing America has dealt with in decades.”
“They’re the new Islamists?” asked Mick.
“Nah. For America, the Islamists were a disease of the skin, but the anarchists are a disease of the heart.”
“That’s eloquent. Where did you steal that quote from?”
“I didn’t steal it. I just thought it up now,” said The Executioner. “We were using medical metaphors.”
“I steal or paraphrase quotes all the time. And I can recognize when someone else is doing it.”
“Well, whether or not I stole that quote, it’s true.”
“You know,” said Mick. “I honestly can’t see the anarchists running the country, or even running an apartment building. But they kill a lot of people who sort of have it coming. They’re like a really murderous version of Robin Hood. The Islamists, they murdered indiscriminately. They didn’t want to fix or help America, they wanted to burn it down.”
“Well, the Islamists were an external problem, aside from a few wacko converts and the occasional Muslim American who decided to go all jihad. The anarchists were internal. Rather, they are internal,” said The Executioner.
“Yeah, it’s not the regular pattern of civilizational decline.”
“You don’t have a PhD in history, do you? Is that what you spent your student loans on?”
“No. I’m surprised how little you know about the people that you track,” said Mick. “Now back to what I was saying: when a civilization is in decline, there is usually internal rot, but there should also be some barbarians at the gates.”
“Like immigrants?”
“No!...you racist. Immigrants are attracted by the centers of civilization and its prosperous outposts. They fit within the system in a symbiotic manner. They don’t want to destroy or plunder. They want to join.”
“So who are the barbarians today?” asked The Executioner.
“Well, there are none. The consensus of the international state system is that we need to cooperate to manage these sorts of people.”
“Like how?”
“Well, for example, at a low level, pirates. Even states that hate each other cooperate to destroy pirates at sea.”
“Uh huh. Poor pirates. But shouldn’t the decadent centers of civilization pay the barbarians not to plunder them?” asked The Executioner.
He was not entirely joking.
“Well, actually, European governments funded a lot of the old Islamist terrorist groups. They paid tens of million of dollars at a time for hostages, sometimes for only one or two hostages.”
“Europeans? Did we do the same? I always heard that we relentlessly killed them and refused to ever negotiate,” said The Executioner.
“Yeah, back then we wouldn’t pay the terrorists to release American hostages. Same as the British and the Canadians. Maybe even the Aussies, I can’t recall exactly. This is all a vague recollection from a university seminar class back in the day.”
“So European countries would pay tens of millions of dollars to get back just two hostages?”
“Yeah, sometimes they paid that much,” said Mick. “It depended on how serious they thought the kidnappers were.”
“God, and just imagine that the Europeans used to dominate the world. How did they get so soft?” pondered The Executioner.
The Executioner then started to think, and to connect disparate thoughts in his head. He started to form an idea.
“Couldn’t people have pretended to be Islamists and then demanded ten million dollars for some Danish backpacker or an Italian journalist or whatever?”
“Yeah, and they did,” said Mick. “There were criminal groups that specialized in it. But usually they were not too savvy internationally, so often they sold the hostages to actual terrorist groups that could deliver and collect ransom demands.”
“I never hear about this anymore. What happened?”
“Islamist terrorist groups mostly burned themselves out. It was like all other violent radical movements: they have a limited lifespan. They are still around, obviously. I made a decent amount of money ripping off them and their funders. But they are greatly degraded. Also, NGOs and journalists quit going to the worst of the places, thus fewer targets for kidnapping. So Islamists switched to oil and drug smuggling to finance themselves. They also turned to regular taxation in their areas of control.”
“Taxation? Sounds like they were imitating government tactics. The bastards,” said The Executioner jokingly.
“Yeah, exactly like a government. You would be surprised how many states started in a similar way.”
“OK, so why don’t the anarchists do the same today? They must need the revenue? Why not kidnap rich brats and demand that their billionaire parents pay up?” asked The Executioner.
“I don’t know. You would have to ask them. I think that they are just very focused on murder and mayhem. So they would want to go straight for killing the billionaire, not stealing his money,” said Mick. “Plus, they seem crazy. I have the feeling that if they ever grabbed twenty million in cash from a billionaire, they might set it all on fire and call it performance art.”
“You know, I’ve met some rich
kids in China and Southeast Asia. Rich American kids. They like to…slum it with all the dirty expats who have no money,” said The Executioner disdainfully. “But obviously, they have no student loan debt and so are of no interest to me. But what if an anarchist was to kidnap and ransom them?”
“You should show up to an Insurrectionary Anarchist meeting and float that idea. They might like it.”
“I’m not talking about real anarchists,” said The Executioner. “I’m talking about imitators. For example, there is some debt collector out there pretending that he is me. He wears the same gear, uses the same tools, and uploads videos claiming to be me. So what’s to prevent me from pretending I’m an anarchist and to start collecting ransoms?”
“You want to be a representative of the new barbarians? Plundering what remains of Western Civilization?”
“No, specifically just Europe. Apparently the Americans won’t pay ransoms to terrorist groups,” said The Executioner, with no hint of irony.
“You could also add rich Arabs to that list. They are accustomed to occasionally paying ransoms for family members.”
“Huh. I didn’t think of that. I guess they have money…so why not? I had heard of people making money by targeting Qataris and Saudis – but from killing; not kidnap and ransom.”
“I know all about wringing money out of Saudis and Qataris, but how do you make money from killing people?” asked Mick, almost not wanting to know the answer.
“Well, specifically it was hunting. Not just plain old killing. I heard about it from this jerk named Tim. He’s in the same line of work that I am. Anyways, he has a military background. And after that he fought in France as a mercenary. Then, afterwards he was looking for ways to make money, and he was doing some security contracting work in the Gulf Arab countries. At some point there he met a Pakistani guy. The Pakistani specialized in arranging bustard hunts.”
“What are bustard hunts?”
“Bustards are birds. Houbara bustards, to be specific. Fat and slow. They are on the ground minding their own business and eating seeds and shit like that. And you come along and scare them. Then you shoot them out of the sky. Rich Arabs and Saudi princes love it. It’s like an obsession for them.”
“So like duck or pheasant hunting?” asked Mick.
“Yeah, but bustards are really hard to come by, especially from early spring until late fall when they all migrate north. You need to go to really isolated places in Central Asia as there are none left in Pakistan or Afghanistan,” explained The Executioner.
“I almost don’t want to know how this involves making money from killing people.”
“OK, so…Tim and this Pakistani guy must have been brainstorming over drinks one night, plus they are probably both sociopaths…or psychopaths. I’m not sure which one. Anyways, the Pakistani guy told Tim that he despises his Arab clients because they treat him like a dog. The Arabs would often make the Pakistani eat and pray separately from them. Stuff like that. But, it’s not a problem for the Pakistani as his profit margins are not looking good and he’s thinking about getting out of the bustard safari business. So Tim, being a psychopath, comes up with an idea for parallel hunting.”
“What’s parallel hunting?” asked Mick.
“Well…the Pakistani guy arranges a safari out in Turkmenistan or Kazakhstan or wherever for the Arabs to hunt bustards. And, at the same time, Tim arranges a safari in the same area for people who want to hunt Arabs.”
Mick couldn’t speak.
Then, after a pause, he burst out laughing.
“Why have I not heard of this sort of thing before?” asked Mick incredulously.
“Well, for one, Tim’s clients were mainly Russians. And nobody believes any of the crazy stories and rumors that come out of Russia.”
“But someone must have missed the Arabs when they didn’t return?”
“Yeah, the Saudis and Qataris did notice that a suspiciously high number of people were not coming back from bustard hunting.”
“And they obviously would have noticed that all the missing bustard hunters were clients of the Pakistani guy, right?” asked Mick.
“Well, the Pakistani guy spread it out a bit. He paid for information from other hunting safari companies’ employees so that he could target their clients as well. He also got tips from the foreign ministry employees of the Central Asia countries about impending VIP visits from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.”
“How did this guy Tim find people who wanted to hunt Arabs?” asked Mick. “How do you advertise that sort of thing?”
“I don’t know exactly. He said that he knew a Russian guy who did overseas security for Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, and that guy was able to hook him up.”
“Did the Arabs ever fight back?”
“With a bird gun? Versus a large caliber sniper rifle? I’m not sure. But I doubt it,” said The Executioner. “Plus, the Russians were pretty hardcore. They were not soft bureaucrats or stupid tourists. Many of them had gotten rich when they transitioned from the military and security services into more lucrative jobs. One of the Russian hunters even destroyed a Qatari Air Force cargo plane on the ground in Central Asia, out on some hillbilly Turkmen runway. He RPG’d it. I think the Qataris were actually royal family members who had commandeered an air force ride. Whatever. The local authorities in Turkmenistan blamed some non-existent terrorist group.”
“This guy Tim, you said, is a debt collector now. So I assume the business model was not sustainable?” asked Mick.
“No, it wasn’t sustainable. Tim said that nobody goes bustard hunting anymore, what with the birds being so effective at self-defense and all.”
“Damn.”
“On the upside, the bustard population has apparently surged back to very healthy levels,” noted The Executioner.
“I heard plenty of ridiculous rumors and conspiracy theories when I studied the Middle East, but I can’t say I heard anything like that.”
“Well, you should get online and spread some crazy conspiracy theory about the bustard hunting deaths. Conspiracies theories are a great way of having your enemy inflict injuries on themselves.”
“How does that work?” asked Mick.
“Well, for example, looking at Japan, Korea and China. Hundreds of years ago Japan realized that the outside world had surpassed it in everyway possible. They were weak and were dominated by outsiders. So, the Japanese leaders in, like, the 19th century, decided to travel the world and find the best of other societies and countries and introduce those things to Japan.”
“Is this a real story, or merely a random historical guess?”
“No, I had to hang out with some former graduate students when I was tracking debtors. I listened to some runners with master’s degrees and PhDs in Asian history and politics and stuff. So I’m only repeating what some smart guy said. It seemed like a great explanation, and I remember it pretty well.”
“What does this have to do with conspiracy theories?” asked Mick.
“Just let me talk, it’s not a long anecdote. So…Japan decided that it was behind the rest of the world in economics, infrastructure, education, government, industry, military, everything…And they set out to fix that. And they were successful. They went from peasants farming and dudes on rickety boats catching fish to a huge economic, cultural and military force. Now, imagine if instead of admitting that they were behind the rest of the world because of their own cultural, political and social inadequacies, they blamed some massive hidden conspiracy as the source of their problems. Then there would be nothing that they could do about it. They could just say ‘We are poor and backwards because of some outsiders oppressing us.’ But instead they decided to seriously analyze and fix the cause of their ills, which were internal.”
“OK, fine. That’s Japan. But what about countries that were colonized? They had their resources stolen and they were kept backwards by an actual real conspiracy,” countered Mick.
“Korea. Indonesia. China. Mal
aysia. Philippines. Vietnam. Look at these countries! They were all colonized – some for hundred of years. Some were utterly destroyed in war. Korea was stamped on so many times. And after the Second World War they were a peasant farming society that was at the same level of development of the African countries at the same time. But look at them now. Korea could have blamed China or Japan or the Americans or the decades of North Korean rule for their problems, but they haven’t. They didn’t. They said, let’s fix ourselves. Let’s lift ourselves up. How do we do that?”
“By their own bootstraps?”
“Yeah, why not? They all have in this part of the world. And they deserve the prosperity they now have. I mean…Korea. Look at them. I can’t go to Korea because the Korean embassy will laugh at me if I ask for a visa. They are superior. They have surpassed America. I am from a third world country. America is a wreck. Whose fault is that? The Illuminati? Zionists? Anarchists? Islamists? China? Freemasons? Reptilians? Europeans? No, it’s our own fault. The fault lies within America. Now, we have crazies that believe some dumb shit, but in general we acknowledge that our weakness is as a result of internal rot. We’ll eventually fix it. We’ll rebound, just like Japan did after we nuked and destroyed them. Just like China after they suffered under Mao.”
“I imagine it’s probably far more complex than that…” added Mick.
“Yeah, probably. But my point still stands. Every time I hear about some insane conspiracy theory that’s circulating in a country where the people and/or the government hate America and Americans, I think: good. I’m glad that you think that. Can you imagine if these people were like Japanese, Koreans or Chinese? They would be, in the worst case scenario, economic and military forces that would destroy us. They could do it in a single generation. But they aren’t doing it, and they won’t be doing it. They’re too busy blaming anybody but themselves. They paralyze themselves with anger and they refuse to fix or even merely acknowledge their problems. This is a godsend. America needs more than a generation to fix itself, and this gives us some breathing space.”
Mick didn’t say anything in reply.
“So, you’re the Middle Eastern expert. You must have a thought on this?” asked The Executioner.
“Oh, I don’t know. I think it has more to do with the culture of predatory greed and corruption and nepotism of the ruling classes in Arab countries than with people’s beliefs in conspiracy theories,” said Mick.
“Nah. It’s Mossad. The Israelis have created robo-bird cyber-flocks to eat Arab crops and spray virile Muslim men with birth control hormones,” said The Executioner.
“You’re being sarcastic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that conspiracy actually exists in some people’s minds.”
“Well, in fact, I think we should promote conspiracy theories,” stated The Executioner.
“But then we might end up with there being a conspiracy theory that blames the existence of conspiracy theories on an American conspiracy,” said Mick.
“I can live with that…”
After letting the conversation take a break, The Executioner exclaimed “Wait, we got sidetracked. Let’s get back to the anarchist kidnap and ransom thing.”
“Are you just talking about that to amuse yourself, or are you getting a business start-up idea?
“I’ll be honest; I’m getting really close to being done with debt collecting. I was going to use your sadly non-existent money to leave the business. That’s not going to happen now, but I still want to get out of debt collecting. It’s turning into nickels and dimes. I have some savings, but I still need to find a new revenue stream, and it sounds like the European countries are reliable sources of income when you kidnap their citizens.”
“Well, good luck with that,” said Mick.
“But… I can’t say I know anything about the Arab world. And you – if my information was not a total lie – you have spent the last decade or so ripping off rich Arabs.”
“Yeah, first for the Army and then independently.”
“You speak the language and you know the culture?”
“Absolutely.”
“Huh. You know,” said The Executioner. “I’m good for figuring out the European side of things. And there are all sorts of Europeans throughout Asia. But parts of Southeast Asia are absolutely crawling with Arab princes and rich kids. They can’t visit Europe anymore, so lots of them are showing up here.”
“What are you saying?”
“What I’m saying is,” said The Executioner, “are you looking for a real job? Or do you want to get in line to teach English?”
Mick thought about it. He thought seriously about it.
Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom Page 24