Fun, Fun, Fun on the Euro-Bahn

by Roger Paz

Iggy Esquerre was among the sylph-like band of friskers that got the full length of my measure and went through my attache case with their tricorders and metal-detectors like a Salvadoran housekeeper with a habit. He nodded something oracular and suave to calm my anxieties. Solamente procedure, Senor Zhenshokov, his shades said. You understand. I understood alright. There had been too many moles from the IMF lately. The operation had been penetrated from behind by big money/bigger credit people from the Trilateral Commission and a fifth column of adenoidal insurance telemarketers from Chase Manhattan Bank. Some, seduced by the promise of offshore riches and Transitcheks, had bailed on their employers and set up shop with Gelt International. Gelt jissed not for these Holly Come-Latelys. They were too much, too late. I had to be screened three times; once in New York, then in Hong Kong and now here in Berlin. They had to make sure I wasn't a spy or saboteur, or a dun.

Once inside I saw how tense things had gotten. The heady days of '97 when Gelt still controlled all the world's encryptions, manipulated military dictatorships through the BCCI/ Vatican Bank Cartel and held a majority share in Starbucks, were gone. Giorgio Chinchinalgio, the mastermind behind the Microsoft bailout, the man who had fixed the '94 World Cup, was visibly disturbed, chewing on his cellular as if it were a bone and making angry canine noises whenever Tatso, his foppish right-hand man, tried to take it out of his dripping maw. Lars "Mucho Macho" Sorenson from SCAMdinavia.com was plopping Alka Seltzers into his Absolut and beet juice. There was a whiff of apocalyptic flatulence in the air that was not helped by the air-conditioning being out. I started to perspire. This was my way of telling myself that someone was going to get it, and it better not be me. My laptop, saviour of my skin on many occasions, blinked on and greeted me with its Slavic greeting: Do this or die!

I had worked everything out to the last detail. My customised G7 iMac held in its mental grasp Meitosis, the new post-Soviet pirate spy software that allows the cutting edge, freelance double-agent to infiltrate seven different moneylaundering cyberhubs that lay 'shadowed' in other banking computer systems, duplicate credit templates of any design, and play Tetris. In this case it was the EuroCard I had been assigned to swipe. The Euro having become the standard by which Europe would now conduct business, the Russians and Chinese had been in a race to get access to EuroCard, THE key to global financial domination. This meeting of the UnterBahn, a cabal of Mammon-mad meisterthieves from all around the world, paramilitary Jesuits of Gelt International, was really a coming-out party for Don Quixote, the Bill Gates of Barcelona. Through his ingenius melding of seemingly disparate mega-corporations, Q, as he was known to his fellow powerpurloiners, had quietly assembled the most invincible army of technothugs that the New World Order had ever seen. He had Zu Wen Mao on board, who with his Singapore-based entertainment giant Foo King Brilliant Ltd. and its myriad television satellites orbiting the earth, had subjugated the Asian market with "Hong Kong Fooey" reruns and Box Car Willie's Greatest Hits infomercials. There was Lefty Horowitz, the great labour lawyer and midget wrestler who could slice a man's cornea, a la 'Un Chien Andalou', with a razor-sharp BFP debit card from 75 meters away. He had also hired Desdemona Hindenburg, the Viennese trollop that had brought the Bourse to its knees in '93 with her rendition of "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend." And of course, he had hired me, Shlomo Zhenshokov, geek god and unscrupulous gonif extraordinaire, to be head of computer security. He didn't know it, but I was going to micturate unabashedly on his oyster bar parade.

Brought up on the backstreets of Sao Paolo, I wasn't given much to make it in this life. I ran numbers for Guyanese Indian gamblers that were subsidised by Peruvian cocaine dealers and WGBH Boston. I learned English so I could swindle tourists. I was a beggar and a mime; a safe-cracker and an Encyclopedia Britannica salesman. When I wasn't juggling balled up socks and grapefruit -- preparing myself for a career in soccer that was cut short by a tragic pube-braiding accident -- I was breaking into record stores and pharmacies to steal CDs, condoms and anything else I could resell. I had to raise money to get my sister off the street, my brother out of jail and my mother out of hock. I swore that one day, should I ever make it to a New England university, I would make this world pay for the poverty I had to endure. And now it was all about to happen.

The last bit of the download was taking place before me. While everyone around me prepared for the introduction of Don Quixote, inspecting the rather leathery finger-food that was being served, I prepared myself for the ultimate usurpation: The Y2K annihilation of all previous credit templates. My real superiors, FoxSportsAmerica, would not understand how big a payoff they would get from their trust in me. But just as I was inhaling the last breath of a middle-class life, there was a horrible click in my ear as the sexiest, huskiest voice I had ever heard cooed in my superfly earpiece.

-Jig's up, Zhenshokov.

I knew that voice, that seductive plosive 'p', that slushy 'sh', that adamantine 'koff'. It was Maybelline Bayswater, the British Airway stewardess I spent a weekend with in Lloret del Mar.

-Mabe?

-Negatory, Shlomo, she mock-pouted as I turned to stare into her turquoise eyes, I'm really Agent 19.

I was thunderstruck. My God! she was an operative!

-Agent 19!? Interpol? CIA?

-Nyet, babycakes. MIT.

-MIT?

Never was man born of woman more miffed than I at that moment.

She pulled out a barcode badge.

-Student Loans.

-You mean you're...?

-That's right, deadbeat: Student Loans Universal Retrieval.

S.L.U.R. How could I have been so reckless to not cover my tracks? Curses! I was foiled for the first time!

-Ok, Shlomo, let's go. Her German-made Schnitzelmacher automatic drove her point home.

She walked me out silently through the assembled powerbrokers. I was grateful that at least she did not make a scene, sparing me the humiliation. The announcer's voice boomed as we walked out of the room: -Ladies and Gentleman, I'd like to introduce the Man of La Mancha himself, the tops in e-trade, the stocktip of the iceberg, the caviar of cash outlays, the pinnacle of pesetas...

The door closed behind us as we left. I had been beaten at the supreme moment of victory and yet I smiled to myself. For though I had almost lifted the EuroCard, I was suddenly free, relieved. My lifelong flight from justice was finally over.

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