by Chris Knopf
Monsieur Prefontaine stood at the table while we ate, giving us a comprehensive description of the contents, procurement, preparation and ideal presentation. We responded with relentless appreciation, for the flavors both novel and delicious, and for his generous attention.
The obvious occurred to me—food in France is truly an art form, not unlike drama. You can put everything you have into training as an actor, but your success is ultimately determined by applause from the audience. Monsieur Prefontaine had the exclusive focus of an audience of two, and he was determined to deliver his finest culinary performance.
The arrival of dessert was both a gigantic relief, and cause for horror, since it was composed of five large balls of ice cream, each flavored by plants and wildflowers harvested from the surrounding woodlands. We sampled from each—lavender, thym, rosmarin, jasmine and marjoram. I was ready to beg off finishing the bowl, when Natsumi bravely dug in and rescued our family honor.
“Then perhaps we can now finish with our crème brûlée?”
It took all of Natsumi’s considerable diplomatic skill to get us out of there with good will intact and up to our room, where we collapsed on the bed, hands resting on our bellies as if containing a potential explosion.
“I don’t think I can take off my shoes,” I said.
“I wonder what the crème brûlée tasted like.”
“Local moss.”
HAVING LEARNED the benefits of apartment dwelling while staying in Madrid, we rented a pay-by-the-week tourist flat a few blocks from the Cours Mirabeau in the old town area of Aix-en-Provence. The rental agent was a very round woman with excess makeup and delusional body image, as demonstrated by the fuck-me high heels and form-fitting skirt.
The rooms were perfectly appointed, abundantly filled with light and fresh air by way of the classic French floor-to-ceiling casement windows, whitewashed rough plaster walls, the larder partially stocked with packaged meats, cheese and snack food, and a bottle of wine waiting on the counter with two glasses and a corkscrew.
The agent looked disappointed when we took it on the spot.
“But we have just begun to look,” she said, her upsell strategy in ruins, assuaged when I offered to pay two weeks in advance.
We went through the unpacking and setup process like the regimented routine it had become, requiring very few words and little deviation from the settled division of labor. While I configured the electronics array, Natsumi went out to procure basic foodstuffs and necessities. Once the computers were up and online, I placed a few orders for gear I thought we might need for the next round, now that we had a fixed address to receive the goods.
I tested to see if my backdoor into the enterprise system at the Dirección General de la Policía y de la Guardia Civil was still unlocked. It was. I found the email address of the officer in charge of the comandancia that covered the eastern portion of Castille-La Mancha. By using my admin privileges, I was able to drop a note directly through the email server, thus disguising the origin of the message.
I wrote that I had witnessed two guardias (whom I described) driving an official vehicle—license number cited—buy the services of an underage prostitute with a small quantity of cocaine. It was rumored that this pareja—team—had also been using their authority to shake down small businesses in the remote rural areas they served.
I hit send and quietly sneaked out the way I came.
MY PACKAGES started arriving a few days later. The largest was only about 2 × 4 × ¾ inches. Inside was an AM/FM radio and flashlight that ran on batteries, solar power, or human power in the form of a hand crank. I unscrewed the housing and carefully extracted the electronics. Then I opened another box which held a micromini tracking device, which I also separated from its housing, disconnecting the AAA battery, the bulkiest part of the working system. Then I integrated the tracker into the power supply of the little radio, and managed to cram it all into the radio’s green plastic case.
I downloaded the tracker’s software and ran a test, which it passed.
I moved on to InDesign and Photoshop, graphics programs that I used to create lurid new packaging for the radio and the shipping box. Also a selling pamphlet that announced to the unidentified recipient that he/she had been selected at random to receive this outstanding once-in-a-lifetime offer to visit a beautiful new condominium complex in Lloret del Mar on the Costa Brava, the resort region north of Barcelona. All travel and hospitality expenses for two people will be covered for three gorgeous days and exciting nights. All in return for just one hour touring the condominiums and watching an entertaining informational video.
All one needs to do is return the enclosed SASE with the quick and easy questionnaire filled out (please include all requested information) and you’ll be sent the dates for your free fun vacation on Spain’s glorious Costa Brava.
And the perfect-for-the-beach radio that never runs out of power? Keep it as a token of our appreciation for considering this unique and exceptional offer.
Natsumi had come home in the course of all this, just as I finished printing the material in high-res. While I showed it to her, I gave her the outlines of the plan.
“Okay, so we track the package back to his house,” she said. “Then what?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m too busy figuring this part out.”
I printed out several test copies before producing packaging that looked legitimate enough. I’m fairly impervious to giveaways with a commercial purpose, but even I wouldn’t throw out a little radio you can fire up with a hand crank.
At the post office, I told the woman behind the counter that my company was running a promotion wherein we picked a single number at every postal box location in France. That way, we could track the connection between the promotion and the successful sale of a condominium. If her P.O. Box came through, we’d publicize the event in the local newspaper. This was why it had to be hand-delivered.
“Give me the package,” was all she said. I gave it to her and she disappeared into the back for a few moments, then returned and sat down at her station. “It’s in the box,” she said, and by her body language, told us we were dismissed.
“You gotta love the French bureaucracy,” I said when we were back outside.
“All that nicey-nice doesn’t get the mail there any faster, Monsieur.”
Then we went back to the flat and did something we’d also become accustomed to. Waiting.
“ARTHUR,” SAID Natsumi, “why didn’t we go to Chile?”
We were sitting on a balcony at our flat overlooking a small, lushly planted courtyard. She had a glass of wine, I was trying out cranberry juice and soda, with a slice of lime. I said the drink made me feel French, but Natsumi said I was confusing the Riviera with Cape Cod.
“The withdrawals from Florencia’s Cayman account mostly went to a bank down there, but none of the coordinates were in Chile. It seemed like a long way to go when far more fertile possibilities lay elsewhere.”
“What do you think happened to the money?”
There was something about giving voice to the jumble of the-oreticals churning around in my mind, often unarticulated, that felt uncomfortable. It was a type of superstition, that once out in the air before having a chance to mature, the suppositions would vaporize or turn into foolish fantasy.
Yet I owed Natsumi an explanation of where I thought things had been, and where they might be going. Especially if she felt moved to ask.
“It went into several different bank accounts in Chile which had been set up to redistribute the funds through another chain of financial institutions, some of which operated under questionable regulatory standards—essentially money laundering operations. From there, I think the money went to a person or persons connected to safe houses in Europe, Costa Rica, New York, et cetera.”
“Which person or persons?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Since we turned up at two of those safe houses, you’d think the others would be on hig
h alert, or already shut down, as a precaution.”
“You would, except that would represent a pretty big financial loss. I’d leave them open, but closely monitored. As bait.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” she said.
“I know. Which is why we’re here.”
We sat in silence for a while. I admired the little courtyard garden and the abiding beauty of the surrounding architecture. I didn’t know what Natsumi was thinking, until she said it.
“That note built into the code was pretty suggestive. Does that bother you?”
I smiled at her.
“It does.”
“Because you loved her so completely and can’t imagine she’d also be in love with someone else.”
“Also?”
“You can’t love two people at the same time?” she asked.
“Not like that. Though I’m hardly an expert on these matters.”
“You might be missing something.”
“Really.”
She poured some more wine, because she wanted to top off a nearly filled glass, or to kill time while she framed her thoughts.
“We assume because we found the postcard and flash drive in Florencia’s safe-deposit box that she had composed the message. But what if it was the other way around? What if it had been sent to her, and she stashed it in the box? To me, that makes a lot more sense. She donated the money, someone else secured the properties. The code was a manifest, detailing how her investments had been deployed. Obviously something sensitive enough to put in code and for her to bury in an offshore safe-deposit box.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way, which Natsumi somehow knew. She was right, though. It did make much more sense.
“So by that logic,” I said, “the romantic words were written to her, not by her.”
“Right. That makes a difference. Admit it.”
“It does,” I said, admitting it.
“We don’t know if the same feelings were reciprocated,” she said. “And in the absence of that insight, you’d be forgiven for thinking they weren’t.”
Even though Florencia and I were obviously mismatched in the physical attractiveness department, I never had a jealous feeling drift through my heart. Because nothing Florencia ever did suggested I should. At the few social events she was able to drag me to, she stayed by my side the entire time, and spent most of the evening showing everyone how devoted we were to each other.
“Thank you,” I said to Natsumi. “Those are sublime and generous thoughts.”
“You’re welcome.”
TWO DAYS later, the alarm went off on my smartphone. The little box on the screen told me the package was in motion. By prior agreement, Natsumi stayed at the flat and I ran for the car.
The tracking app on the phone was identical to Google maps, with the simple imposition of a bright green dot to distinguish the tracked from the tracker, represented by the standard blue dot. So there was no need to make visual contact, though I hoped that opportunity would arise.
It was in the early afternoon, so traffic in Aix was moving well. The green dot went from the post office directly to one of the city’s main arteries, which took it to the four lane highway called La Provençale that ran south of the city; and if you went east, down to the Mediterranean, connecting the coastal cities all the way to the Italian border.
Which is where the green dot was headed. It was about a mile ahead of me, a distance which opened up quickly when we were on the highway. I sped up, slightly uneasy to be going almost 160 kilometers an hour, or about 100 mph. First data point: the package’s owner had a lead foot. And less than adequate regard for the Gendarmerie, the French equivalent of the Guardia Civil, who patrolled the major highways.
Thus I was grateful when the green dot slowed to a more comfortable 128 kilometers an hour as the highway curved up the side of a steep hill. I considered keeping up the torrid pace, possibly identifying the vehicle, but settled on the mile gap I’d maintained so far. There was no point in thwarting the advantages afforded by the technology.
We had just begun to crest the big hill when the green dot exited the highway. I followed down a long exit ramp, turning left and driving down a rough country road with low hedges to either side. From there, the green dot made several turns onto ever more narrow roads, mostly through fields wild and cultivated, occasionally a tiny village as old and burnished over as the land itself.
And steadily we climbed, sometimes up easy grades, other times steep switchbacks that the green dot followed with the confidence of deep familiarity. It was more challenging for me to keep the car on the pavement and a steady eye on the tracker app.
After nearly a half hour of this, the green dot stopped. I slowed, zooming in on the dot to get a more precise fix on its location. According to Google maps, it was in the middle of a big field, but when I passed by I saw you reached that location by a long driveway closed off by a tall iron gate. I drove by and pulled over about a half mile away so I could fix the spot with a dropped pin, and used a navigational app to capture the latitude and longitude.
Then I drove back to Aix-en-Provence.
’WHEN I got there, an email to David Reinhart was waiting in his mailbox.
At any given time, I maintained about a half dozen fully-equipped false identities with associated drivers’ licenses, passports, email addresses and other useful communications channels. And at least another half-dozen virtual identities acquired through a variety of means, none of which could be traced back to me. Since these were far simpler to set up, they were also easily discarded after serving the needs of a particular project.
I still kept many of them going when there was little reason not to, mostly to have a ready means of secure communications on an immediate basis. One of these online phantasms was David Reinhart. The last time he was deployed was to send a verification notice to First Australia Bank in Grand Cayman in support of Kirk Tazman’s legitimacy.
Mr. Reinhart:
We would like to talk to you. It is possible that we can reach an accommodation that will both preserve your freedom and protect the national security interests of the United States.
We understand your desire for anonymity. We are certain that a means for this can be established.
Our best intelligence suggests you are in a strong financial position. If this is not true, there is much we can do to alleviate your predicament.
Intelligence also indicates you are an American. We appeal to your love of country to help us come to a mutually satisfying conclusion to this matter.
Sincerely,
The Federal Bureau of Investigation
I read it three times as electric currents shot through my nervous system. Heat blossomed in my chest and spread to my abdomen. My breath caught in my throat and all the saliva in my mouth evaporated.
Shit.
I called to Natsumi. She must have heard something different in my voice, because she ran into the room. I let her read it.
“Shit.”
“Indeed.”
“How secure is this mailbox?” she asked.
“Secure enough that the FBI hasn’t traced it back to me.”
“Fucking bank.”
My first impulse was to start moving money out of all my accounts, then stopped myself. The bank must have shared Florencia’s account history, which would show the transfer of a lot of money, mostly into the Chilean bank, giving them a fair assumption of my financial well-being. I couldn’t know if they’d tracked down where the rest of it went after I’d made my withdrawals; but after checking the accounts squirrelled away around the world, it was all still there. Now bait? I couldn’t know that either.
Just to make myself feel better, I moved it all anyway. This took about three hours, but it was good therapy to be doing something.
Natsumi sat next to me the whole time, watching the computer screen and occasionally squeezing my leg or rubbing my shoulders. She listened to me muttering under my breath, but had the wisdom not to
respond or ask me what I was saying. It was comforting, and despite the fury of the moment, I thanked her whenever I had a chance to do so.
“No prob, Arthur. You just keep doing whatever the hell you’re doing.”
Much of my strategy since being declared dead was to stay dead, and entirely under the radar. I believed the best way to avoid being caught was to avoid being pursued in the first place. I knew this was a little deluded, logic being that the more actively I operated, the greater the odds I’d draw the wrong kind of attention.
The email’s existence said as much as the content of the message. If they’d known enough to track us down, I’d be upside down in a dark room somewhere at the tender mercies of an interrogation team. It was a big decision to rob themselves of the element of surprise, so their search must have stalled.
Writing to David Reinhart was also significant. He was clearly connected to the bank. Assuming they gave up everything they had, an interview with Mr. Etherton, the safe-deposit guy in Grand Cayman, would confirm my nationality. Yet David Reinhart lived in the outer precincts of my fabricated world of false identity. If they could have penetrated another layer or two, they would have.
It was also possible the reckoning with Florencia’s killer had led to exposing her embezzlement scheme to the FBI. If I could grab an end of that string and pull it free, any forensic accountant could do the same. The trail led to the bank in the Caymans. They would have found it virtually empty, everything cleaned out but the safe-deposit box.
Easy enough to keep the box intact and wait to see who shows up to claim the contents.
“What a dope,” I said to Natsumi, sharing my logic.
“Sort of,” she said. “We did get the code. I bet they’re thinking, what dopes we are for letting those tricky people grab the goods and make a clean getaway. With just a little stopover at the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service.”
I said she had a good point. “Ramming our little car could be seen as an act of frustration. With no official jurisdiction, they took the crudest approach.”
“They probably didn’t expect the driver of the little car to take off like a jack rabbit on amphetamines.”