For the record, I have nothing against governments as such. If countries are a logical progression from tribes, government is the tribal council, and I get that. The problem is that while it was much harder to insinuate myself into a tribe—which I had to do quite a lot—once I was in, I was in. Governments tend to require proof of who you are on a regular basis, and they don’t really like it when your reason for not having proof is that you’re older than their country. I can get away with a lot, thanks to Tchekhy’s exceptional forgery skills, but I haven’t invested in the kind of detailed identities that could survive extensive scrutiny. And since governments tend to institutionalize paranoia (this happens with every government once it gets large enough) it wouldn’t take much to get me locked up.
“The FBI thinks I’m a person of interest,” I explained. “And now I’ve got a surveillance team on me. I could use some advice. I’m using a cell phone I just bought, by the way, so don’t hang up.”
“And are you . . .”
“I’m on the strip watching one of my tails have an animated argument with his own ear. It’s sort of funny. But I think they’ve already replaced the bugs in my room, and I’m afraid if I go to sleep tonight I’ll wake up with one of those trackers they put on wildlife to follow migratory patterns attached to me.”
“This is a valid concern.”
“Is it really?” I asked, surprised. I was kidding.
“Microdot technology, yes. Probably not legal yet.” Somehow, any long conversation with Tchekhy ends with me being more terrified than when I started. “You will need to blow up their surveillance entirely for at least one hour to allow time for the trail to disappear. As soon as you have a window, you must put as much distance between yourself and Las Vegas as possible. Do you have a car?”
“I don’t. And buying one won’t work, will it?”
“No. And a taxi means a driver. You would have to kill the driver.”
“Yeah, I’m not going to do that.” I would love to tell you I didn’t consider taking this suggestion seriously.
“No. Likewise airplanes leave trails.”
Standing on the corner, I was still scoping the people on the strip, passively looking for anyone showing interest in me. I saw Mike. He was in a coffee shop, pretending not to look my way.
“Let’s say I’ve got that covered,” I said. “Tell me how to open that window.”
* * *
“Good coffee,” I stated, taking a seat at a table adjacent to Mike, who was attempting to disappear into his newspaper. It was a few minutes after I’d gotten off the phone, and Mike had no doubt spent those few minutes muttering, Don’t come in here, don’t come in here under his breath as I walked over.
“Don’t talk to me,” he muttered, snapping his newspaper. “Get out of here before they put us together.”
“Maybe you had too much,” I said cheerily. “It makes you jittery.” This caused Mike to stand, or attempt to, until I put my hand on his wrist. “That will draw even more attention to you. Stay behind the paper.”
Urgently, he growled, “I can’t help you if I’m locked up.”
I had positioned myself so that I could look straight out onto the street. None of the people who could have made our conversation extra awkward were in the shop.
“What do you want?” Mike asked.
“Well, I was thinking the best way to get you to stop following me was to prove you aren’t in Maui. What do you think?”
Mike glared over the paper. I wasn’t looking right at him, but it felt like a pretty violent stare.
“I’m kidding. I want your help. But you do need to relax.”
“I’m pretty damn far from relaxed here.”
“Look, they have a four-man team on rotation, I’ve made all of them, and the one with eyes on me right now is busy looking through the trashcan across the street. With the sun glare off the window, he can see me, but not you. Although I might be wrong about that last part, so keep the paper up.”
“Why is he looking through the trash?”
“I tossed a prepaid cell phone in there a minute ago,” I said, taking a quick sip of coffee. “I think he thinks I made an important call on it.”
“Did you? They’ll trace the call.”
“Not on that phone. I bought two.”
The paper crumpled, which may have signified either surprise or consternation. “I would hate running surveillance on you, wouldn’t I?”
“I actually know what I’m doing when I’m sober,” I assured him. I leaned over to pretend to tie my shoe. This put me just below his table. The coffee shop was agent-free, but it was also busy, and I didn’t care to have a lot of people hearing us.
“I’m going to make sometime alone for myself this evening. Do you have a car?”
“Yeah. Nice one. You can’t borrow it.”
“I’m a lousy driver anyway. Wait for me around the corner from here, and be ready to drive extremely fast.”
“I can do that,” he said. “How’re you planning to get to me without an entourage?”
I sat up, because there’s only so many times one can tie one’s shoes before someone asks if you’re not feeling well.
Glancing across the street, I saw my lead tail had found the phone and was talking to his ear again. He was looking my way. In another few seconds, the person on the other end of his earphone would be telling him to check on me from inside the shop. Incidentally, when I did this sort of thing, we had to rely on line-of-sight and hand-signals. Kids these days.
“Give me an idea, at least,” Mike said.
I stood up and edged away from the window seat, right past Mike’s chair. “I think I might start a riot.” On my way out of the shop, I got to hold open the door for my FBI tail. I smiled and wished him a nice day, and he did the same for me. It’s the little things.
* * *
When I reached the casino floor that night, I was extremely uncomfortable. For starters, it was a Saturday night, so it was the absolute worst place to be if one still wasn’t entirely comfortable with crowds. That it was also full of attractive women practically bursting out of their evening gowns mitigated this complaint, but only slightly. I did make a point to check out many of them, and told myself it was because one might be Ariadne.
Also, I itched. I would not be returning to the room unless something very unfortunate happened, and there was the matter of all the cash I had in the suitcase under my bed, which I needed to keep some of in order to travel. To that end, Mike had a marvelous point, as plastic was really the way to go. In the future, I expected I would have to accustom myself to the concept. But for now, all of that money was on my person, stuffed into two money belts and duct taped to my torso. (I did the tape in my room, which was a tremendous pain since I knew people were listening. To cover some of the noise, I turned the TV on and found a movie with lots of explosions in it. Fortunately, that defines nearly every movie nowadays.) A T-shirt went on over the money and then, in order to disguise the added bulk—I didn’t know how observant the FBI was, but I had to think someone would notice if I’d suddenly gained twenty pounds—I was wearing an exceptionally large, baggy, and loud Hawaiian shirt. This also made me much easier to spot in the crowd, which was actually the idea.
My shoes were another problem. They were brand-new to go along with the new black slacks I was wearing. I hate breaking in shoes, but I always thought shoes were a stupid invention anyway. If I could go barefoot everywhere, I probably would.
All the new clothing was partly because Tchekhy had convinced himself the FBI was using trackers in my clothes. Given the way they tag-teamed me when I left the casino earlier, I thought this unlikely, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. Besides, I needed to look as much like a member of security as possible from the waist down, and new clothes were the best way to approximate that.
Itching all the way, I found a seat at a bar near the blackjack tables and took my time looking over the room. The unfortunate consequence of picking a busy casi
no floor for this was how difficult it made spotting my fan club. Mike told me they were jacked into the surveillance feed which was fine if that was all I had to worry about, but given my excursion earlier in the day, I was pretty positive they had at least a couple of agents on the floor with me in case I ran for the exit. They would be stupid not to.
After an hour, I had identified ten possible agents, and about thirty women I would have dropped the entire escape attempt for if they agreed to come back to my room with me. I wasn’t sure whether to blame the alcohol or Clara for this.
What sobered me a little was the notion that all ten of the possibles were agents. If I really warranted that much manpower, Mike had underplayed the degree of danger I was in significantly.
At a table about fifty feet from me, a man in a blue blazer removed his jacket, placed it on the back of his chair, and sat down. The jacket wasn’t quite right, but it would do for the few seconds I needed it. I put down my drink and started heading his way.
* * *
I am incredibly indifferent about money. I know that as a person who has a tremendous amount of it, I can afford to be indifferent—and really, most of the people I have ever met who claim not to care about money already have more than they could ever need—but I have been poor many, many different times and really don’t have a problem with it.
What I think people forget is that money isn’t a real thing. It has value only in relation to other things—like how many actual real things it allows you to acquire. We got along fine without anything like money for a long time, is what I’m saying. Influence, for example, worked just as well for titled lords in the feudal system. And fifteen hundred years ago, you could live a fine life with a fortune made up entirely of bolts of silk.
One of the good things about money—and why I’m glad not everyone shares my perspective—is that people act predictably when in the presence of it. For instance, from the moment I left the bar to the time I reached the table with the blazer, I had been pulling cash out of my money belts and dropping it onto the floor.
* * *
The place was elbow-to-elbow when I began dropping cash on the floor, which was fantastic because nobody identified me as the source, and I was a good distance away before anyone saw the money.
What happened next was pretty close to that riot I told Mike I was hoping to start. Surprisingly, though, it took a little longer to catch on than I had anticipated.
Crowds can be odd. I’ve seen plenty of crowd-panic and mob-rule moments—the French Revolution comes to mind—and it’s very difficult to anticipate when and how things will turn from order to chaos. In this case, everyone around me was dressed in their finest Saturday night clothing and there were loose piles of large bills at their feet. To pick them up, someone was going to have to make the decision to forego propriety, surrender to the possibility that their nice clothes were going to end up looking not-so-nice, and get down on that floor.
I expected it to happen all at once, but instead the half-dozen people aware they were standing on money had to first look around and see if anyone else was going after it. Nobody was. And then, all at once it seemed, everyone was. Five or six people dropped down at the same time. The people around them looked down to figure out what they were doing, saw the money, and dropped down as well. The effect cascaded.
And since I’d left a trail that circled around the table with the blue blazer, the mayhem that followed cascaded in my direction.
These sorts of things grow exponentially. The floor, already packed to begin with, got denser and tighter as more people pushed in. It drew the attention of casino security and—I assume although I couldn’t see most of them anymore—my many FBI friends.
I had dropped a particularly large supply of one hundred dollar bills on the floor next to the gentleman in possession of the blazer, and stood to one side of the table until he noticed. It didn’t take long. Then I snagged the jacket, dropped to the floor, and crawled until I was under the lip of another of the blackjack tables. This was the best I could hope to do when it came to avoiding the cameras for the few seconds it took to remove the loud Hawaiian shirt and slip on the blazer.
This is an old trick. I think the first time I saw it was onstage in Athens. I loved going to the theater then, much as I enjoy movies now despite all of the explosions. The story required that the main character vanish at the end of the play, so at the critical moment the entire chorus surrounded him until he was obscured from view, and when they parted he had disappeared.
Of course he hadn’t actually disappeared. What he had done was put on a long robe and a mask and joined the chorus, but the effect was still breathtaking.
Similarly, if one knows one is being followed, the adornment of a loud Hawaiian shirt is not only done to make oneself easier to spot; it’s to train the people following you to look for the shirt.
After ditching said shirt, I crawled a few yards—half the people were on their hands and knees by then—and stood. Looking around, I spotted several members of the casino security pulling guests away from the piles of money, with some guests acting extremely unhappy about this. And with my pants and jacket and uncomfortable shoes, I could pass as one of them.
I grabbed the lightest person I could find—an elderly woman who was holding eight hundred dollars in her teeth and another grand in her hands—and pulled her off the floor. She grunted in disapproval, but as she was unwilling to speak and risk losing the cash in her mouth, I was spared any expletives she might have otherwise shared. I dragged her to the entrance, which was what all of the real security guards were doing.
When I turned around, I found myself somewhat face-to-face with one of the FBI tails. There was twenty feet between us, and a complicated ocean of humanity in that twenty feet, but for a few seconds I was certain he knew exactly who he was looking at.
Then he looked away, put his finger to his ear, and started shaking his head, which is something people still do when they’re talking to someone who can’t see them because the telephonic age hasn’t quite drummed out eons of non-verbal behavior. Seeing people gesture while on the phone is almost as entertaining.
I really wanted that earpiece thing he was listening to, but it didn’t seem like it was worth the risk to get it. To do it right, I’d have to get behind him, and then I’d feel a little silly since he was standing in front of one of the exits. Getting around him would be the difficult part; taking the earpiece was easy, but once I was there, what would be the point?
I pushed my way toward his exit, looking for signs that he was tracking me, but he was still looking for someone in a loud Hawaiian shirt, so I wasn’t registering. I ended up brushing right past him. If there were cameras recording this, he was going to be getting hell from someone once they’d sorted it all out.
Outside, I didn’t waste any time. The blazer I traded with a kid who looked to be about my height and who, more importantly, was heading in the opposite direction as me and was wearing an oversized Hard Rock Café shirt that covered up the bulk of the money on my torso. And then I walked as quickly as I could without drawing any undue attention.
Ten minutes and several blocks later, I found Mike leaning against the rear fender of his car in the alley next to the coffee shop, holding a walkie-talkie.
Mike was shaking his head. “Jesus. You sure know how to make an exit.”
“Have they figured out I left yet?” I asked, more urgently than I’d intended. It was a terrifyingly long walk to the car.
“No clue; they’re checking the room now. It’ll take ‘em hours to dissect the footage and figure out what happened.”
I opened the car door. “Let’s assume they’re more competent than that and get the hell out of here.”
* * *
From the archives of Silenus the Elder. Text corrected and translated by Ariadne
AND SO IT CAME ABOUT THAT SILENUS THE ELDER DID FIRST ENCOUNTER THE GOD UPON A PERILOUS SEAWARD JOURNEY OF MANY LEAGUES AND GREAT DANGERS.
T
HE MIGHTY SILENUS, BEAUTEOUS AND PROUD, ENVY OF ALL MEN AND BEASTS AND ADVISOR TO KINGS, COUNSEL TO THE GREATEST OF WARRIORS AND TO THE MEANEST OF COMMON MEN, WAS IN FLIGHT. AS ORDAINED BY THE GODS THEMSELVES, THE GREAT WISDOMS WHICH DID POUR FROM THE NIMBLE TONGUE OF SILENUS ONE DAY GREATLY OFFENDED THE SLUGGISH EARS OF THE PERGAMON KING.
SILENUS BOOKED HASTY PASSAGE ABOARD THE FIRST SEAGOING VESSEL WHOSE DEPARTURE WAS IMMEDIATE, CONCERNED LESS WITH ANY PARTICULAR DESTINATION THAN WITH WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN SHOULD HE REMAIN ASHORE TO BE RECOVERED BY THE DODDERING KING’S VERY LARGE ARMY. IT WAS NOT A FLIGHT OF FEAR, FOR SILENUS THE MAGNIFICENT WAS NOT A COWARDLY MAN.
AND SO IT HAPPENED, THE VESSEL ON WHICH SILENUS TOOK CHARTER WAS BESET BY PIRATES ON THE OPEN SEA. THE FOUL BRIGANDS TOOK ONLY THAT WHICH COULD BE SOLD OR RANSOMED AND ALL ELSE WAS OFFERED TO POSEIDON. AS A MAN OF GREAT IMPORTANCE SILENUS THE WISE WAS SPARED, TO BE BARTERED BACK TO THE VERY KING FROM WHOM HE FLED.
SO, TOO, WAS A SECOND MAN. HE CARRIED LITTLE BUT WORE THE FINERY OF A NOBLE AND SPOKE THE LANGUAGE OF THE GODS. HE CLAIMED NO BIRTHRIGHT OR TITLE, AND WHEN A NAME WAS DEMANDED OF HIM HE PROVIDED SEVERAL. TALL AND GRACEFUL, HE WORE HIS RAVEN HAIR LONG AND CURLY, AND SPUN INTO A BRAID BETWEEN HIS SHOULDERS IN THE MANNER OF AN ETHIOPIAN PRINCE. BUT THAT HIS SKIN WAS TOO FAIR, HE COULD HAVE BEEN MISTAKEN AS SUCH. LIKEWISE, WITH HIS LOCKS AND CARRIAGE AND RAIMENT THE MAN COULD HAVE BEEN TAKEN FOR A WOMAN, ON A CLOUDY DAY AT DUSK.
THE PIRATES SHACKLED TOGETHER SILENUS AND THE STRANGE MAN, AND FIXED THEIR CHAINS TO A BOLT ON THE AFT OF THE DECK. THERE WERE THEY LEFT TO THE ELEMENTS UNTIL SUCH A TIME AS RANSOM COULD BE NEGOTIATED.
“WHAT MANNER OF BEING ARE YOU?” THE STRANGE MAN ASKED OF SILENUS, “THAT WALKS AND TALKS AS A MAN BUT WITH THE EARS OF A DRAUGHT HORSE AND THE SMELL OF A CAMEL?”
“I AM SILENUS AND I AM THE ONLY,” SILENUS SAID PROUDLY, FOR IT WAS TRUE. “AND WHAT MANNER OF MAN MIGHT YOU BE, THAT GLIDES THROUGH THIS SPHERE SO GENTLY AND WITHOUT AFFECT? THAT SHINES OF NOBILITY BUT ACCEPTS THE IGNOBILITY OF FATE WITHOUT PROTEST?”
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