The journeyman, p.2
The Journeyman, page 2
She wore her hair long with a buoyant body of dark curls that was both casual and romantic. As I meandered through the crowd, her natural charisma and fine features drew my focus. I listened to her whole speech and applauded at the right moments; it was a welcome diversion. Her whole being exuded enthusiasm, which I wasn’t used to, so I decided to abandon the rest of my shopping plans, and hung around afterwards when she was answering questions from the audience.
We heard,”Fake news!” called out by someone in the crowd. She turned and looked.
“Who was that? Do you have a question, sir?”
A man in the audience who sported a knit cap, thin blond pubic beard, and too-large camo coat with emblem patches on the sleeves chirped up, “We know socialism doesn’t work, didn’t the Soviet Union prove that point?”
“That’s debatable, sir, depending on who you ask. But even if you believe that old cold war propaganda, public banking isn’t socialism. It’s just a way of making the banking system work better for working class customers.” She generously explained, “It’s more transparent, and less susceptible to the kind of corruption you have in the financial institutions we all have to rely on now.”
Another voice interrupted, “You commies are always trying to raise taxes and take away our freedoms! That’s why they call it ‘Free Enterprise, baby!’”
“Free for those who have the money, man, it’s the golden rule, don’t be lying to yourself!” came another voice in the crowd.
“I would rather trust the existing system, call it corrupt if you want,” quipped the questioner, his hands smugly shoved into his jacket pockets, “it wouldn’t be so strong if the bankers didn’t know what they were doing, it’s survival of the fittest.”
I knew something about this stuff, and I answered from behind him. “You’re pretty naive if you think the bankers know what they’re doing, and you’re really naive if you think that they’re not corrupt.”
I got some cheers for that from the crowd, and the dude confronted me: “Oh, like you’re some kind of expert?”
“I used to work in that field. There’s a reason I don’t anymore.”
“Hey, there’s always winners and losers, which are you, bro?”
“I don’t even play that game.”
“We’ve seen what bad investments companies like BBHM make,” Rachel retorted. “It’s just that when they blow it, they get bailed out to the tune of billions of dollars. If you’re worried about socialism, what we have is socialism for the very rich and the corporations, and hard knocks for everyone else.”
That triggered a crescendo of cheers from the crowd. There were laughs and jeers, a few call-outs from one side or the other, eventually winding down to mumbles and a dispersing crowd. When the rally ended we were all milling about and she came up to me. She turned and flashed those eyes at me. I paid attention.
“So you have firsthand knowledge of that world? I’d like to hear about that. What are you up to now?
Just looking for a good seat from which to watch civilization collapse.”
“Wanna get a drink with me?”
i
We went out for drinks, and then to a club where she knew the DJ, and as often happens with music, alcohol and good times, we took to each other. We began sharing tid-bits of autobiography, just enough be sporting, but not so much as to reveal red flags. In the ensuing days, we perused the Japanese Garden in Golden Gate Park, and caught a bit of the Outside Lands festival, and had pho at a dive in the Haight.
The chemistry was strong, and at one point in the evening we exited a club from the back door into an ally, and she wheeled around and kissed me. I was ready, and pulled her close, our mouths testing each others lips, ears, neck, and downward, the sinews and swells of her steaming body melding with mine as we made love standing there against the brickwork, enveloped in shadows.
After a while, I found out that she had just emerged from a long affair with her poetry professor; something about Dylan Thomas, she implied. My history was best left unexplored, I thought, so I just focused on the simple joys of physical contact. I let her in a bit on my history among the wolves of Wall Street, and that I was now on the outside, but not much else. She took to my cynicism about the financial system, perhaps mistaking it for political conviction, and soon I had a real girlfriend, the first in a few years, with a potential future and everything.
Only thing was, I was making my living in this questionable and compromising way. Which made having a public presence as a couple among her circle of the high-minded problematic to say the least. If she were to graduate into a level of political notoriety where she would have to begin answering for her connections, our relationship might become an unfortunate casualty.
My career, if you could even call it that, consisted of freelance activities of a shadowy nature. Things companies needed done, but couldn’t be caught doing. Eventually I did happen on a kind of specialty. I did find work among those that were willing to take the risk, personal, financial and legal, of spying on their competition. I asked myself, how bad is that, really? Doesn’t everyone want to know what the competition is doing?
But it’s the truly ambitious that will take the chances that others won’t. It’s not so much that they are afraid of doing something wrong, it’s that they just don’t know how to get the information they need; people today are lazy, made lazy by relying on the internet for everything; if they can’t Google it, they don’t know how to find it.
i
Legitimate work wouldn’t touch me after the Dennison affair, so I found a way to operate in the margins. And I would be remiss if I didn’t say I resented them for it, the whole preening lot of them, so that fed into my activities as much as pure commerce. My game is that I do know how to get that kind of data, and I don’t just rely on what’s available through a search engine.
People have become careless about everything else, door codes, passwords, thumb drives, newspapers, manila file folders, handwritten notes, the contents of pockets- all much more fruitful for the corporate Pimpernel.
It might even be part of a personality trait, or perhaps disorder, depending on who’s calling it. When I was in college, I learned to pick pockets as a bar trick (The old bump-and-lift); I would drink four or five espressos and practise the moves on a jacket that I had hanging from a closet door. That sort of trick gripped my imagination as long as I can remember, it had even started when I was a kid thinking about being a magician, it turned out to serve me well in my post-career business. Old school subterfuge. Misdirection.
I have to admit that there was a thrill in the act of taking advantage of my mark’s obliviousness, like the surprise in an audience watching as a dove emerges from a silk handkerchief. It is a rather perverse euphoria that comes from having full advantage over someone without their knowledge, and then revealing it to them when they least expect it.
It’s actually a violation in fact, if you take the time to think about it, but one that happens in a subtle area between consciousness and illusion. To be honest, I got a rush from it; which is something I would never share with Rachel. Because she would of course be able to instantly recognize that malevolent spark that is evil.
The same was true in my martial arts training. I got into it back in college as a P.E. credit, and ever since then there has been a local community wherever I go of practitioners that have a dojo, where we are always welcome. Community with anonymity; the best of both worlds.
Aikido, a form which is much misunderstood, was a regular discipline for me since coming to California. Like magic and crime, it relies on the assumptions of your opponent. Where an audience might assume that a painted box is just a painted box, and a silk hat is no more than a silk hat, Aikido exploits assumptions about things like gravity, balance, and timing. That’s what made it so enjoyable for someone like me.
As soon as I got the call from my client, a new gig, I went to my class at the dojo to clear my mind. The white “Gi” outfit has a purity about it, and as I took turns running various throws and pins, the echoing of bodies hitting the mats was both mesmerizing and comforting. There’s always a rush of adrenaline when one throws or is thrown on the mat. There’s little talking, and what few words are spoken are in Japanese, which makes them refreshingly meaningless to me.
My body throbbed with sweat and adrenaline; it always made my breathing deep and my mind clear. I bowed with Sensei, but as I swept the mat with the others, and I filed with the class out of the room, I wondered how many of these people who are so honorable and sportsmanlike on the mat, in the dojo, have lives as morally questionable as mine. I drove along the beach on the way home, under a blood red sky. I showered and put on a suit, and set up my gear for what was to happen later that night.
i
It was one of those balmy evenings in San Francisco, the palm trees in Golden Gate Park swaying in the gentle breeze against the deep azure Pacific twilight. I got the word on my client’s network screen in my car that the data would be carried around by an unsuspecting minor official from the Shanghai Bank in Lagos, Nigeria, who was visiting for a conference that was being held at Moscone. They posted a photo of a bespectacled African man in a fine British suit, a certain Mr. Ikorordou.
I drove across the Golden Gate Bridge that evening having made every preparation, clear as to the steps of my mission. There was a concert for the conference participants at the atrium at new De Young Museum in Golden Gate park. I was to find my mark there, and the target was his iPhone, and I had a hardware override key purpose-built for defeating Apple’s security (They never mention the hardware).
I drove there that evening listening to a radio conversation about the peculiarities of the European banking system under the EU. An economics professor was being interviewed about the management of debt in the poorer EU countries in 2008. It came down to hubris finding it’s nemesis. Just as it was getting interesting, I pulled into the parking lot outside the DeYoung museum, and I could identify Mr. Ikorordou walking along the museum’s bronze exterior wall. He turned and entered the glass doors to the museum. Time to get to work.
I went in and I could hear the orchestra tuning up, and made my way through the crowd past a multi-screen art installation to where a platform was set up that the orchestra was seated on. I could see Ikorordou ahead, his blue blazer and white collar visible on the back of his neck. He tapped the screen on his phone and glanced at it, then replaced it into his right trouser pocket.
He was engaged in conversation with a woman, perhaps a colleague, and whatever he was saying seemed to be getting him somewhere, so now would be my best time to make my move. I made my way through the standing audience to where he was standing and brushed up behind him, just as his story was reaching a crescendo. Up the flap of his jacket, and two fingers in the pocket, immediately feeling the cold glass of the phone, and just as quickly into my jacket pocket and away.
I turned off into the side of the room behind a curved glass wall that reflected the colored lights of the multiscreen installation and clicked my device into the slot of the iPhone, and the screen immediately wiped off to a crude red screen that had a simple text box and progress bar, and I could see that the data was being downloaded to my decryption device. After not quite a minute, it was done. I wound my way back through the audience to where he was standing, still talking, and I was able to slip it back in the same pocket, and I made my exit.
So within a few minutes, I had Mr. Ikorordou’s data, and his phone was back in his pocket without him (Or the shapely regional account exec he was hitting on) being any the wiser.
So you can see, in this new, sketchy line of work, a few keys, a few passwords, a few casual sticky notes here or there would get me in to the treasure, not brain surgery, but apparently all that really mattered was swift execution and lapsed ethics. A hell of a job description.
i
What kind of people would hire you to do such a thing, you might ask? You would be surprised.
You might think that the clients would be risk takers and wildcatters, with an eye to get rich quick and pad their lives with hookers and blow, but not so; my work was slow, quiet and methodical. No room for drama, and the clientele that came my way valued anonymity, simplicity and silence. I endeavored to deliver on these maxims, and I was well compensated for it. After a while I began to see it as a kind of meditative practice, transcending the emotional drama of normal society. I would focus my attack, slip in and out like a ghost, collect my fee and clear the drives.
The ideal client was equally stoic. That’s how I got hooked up with Kurt Waldenstein. There was a professionalism about him that made my job easier. And the DMG Group was based in Frankfurt, a comfortable distance. I preferred the foreign gigs- less chance of it putting me in danger of colliding with Rachel’s world, she had a lot more to lose than I did; all I had to lose was her, and I didn’t want that.
Kurt Waldenstein always had one job or other for me to do- He was never any trouble for me, always a straight deal. His business was money, so I could always count on being paid. He always used yellow manila envelopes stuffed with neat stacks of unmarked bills. Almost an anachronism. I never asked about the details, and neither did he. Better to keep it simple. I knew how to find things out, that used to be my world. Not anymore.
At least that’s what I told myself. Now each piece of information that I provided was a neat little package- they could do whatever they wanted with it, and it was easy to wash my hands of it right away. Clean. That’s how I like it.
This one began to be a pain in the ass though. When I got into the network of a particular eastern European server, it didn’t behave normally. Every time I discovered something, it would disappear. It was as though I had come into it just as it was being taken down on the other end, almost as if they had anticipated my move.
I like to deliver the goods, pick up my cut, wipe the drives clean, move on to the next one. But this time, it was like tugging on your line thinking you snagged a trout- but you wind up with a Great White Shark instead, that would in turn vaporize as soon as you saw it.
I had the same feeling when I was at summer camp, and I first saw the hired entertainment, a magician who was billed as “The Great Cassini” place a red silk scarf in my hand, touch it with the white tip of his magic wand, and then incredibly, I opened my hand and discovered it to be empty.
Finance. Sounds simple. Obvious. Like “Plumbing” or “Laundry.” Soon I was to discover what kind of cataclysmic power lies behind that word. The dread of kings, the folly of saints. Some of them march to that ticker from duty or need; others ride that tiger for sport, for the glory of the game. They are compelled by misanthropy and thrill to the smell of blood. They have a compelling need to make a mark on the world- even if it’s a black one.
i
This particular night, Rachel was out at one of her fund raisers, so I just kept working away at Waldenstein’s gig. Once I got the data home and parsed a few database entries, I found within it a series of banking records. A section about Albania. Some weird paramilitary gang site. They had the website tricked out with pixel art skulls and machine guns; that Balkan sense of black humor.
Kurt’s company was the DMG group; a private fund he managed, based in Zurich from what I could see. A rival fund was Doremus, a large brokerage house that had its fingers in all sorts of eastern European pies. Kurt hired me to get the scoop on Doremus’s transactions with European banks, and I came across one big one, but not theirs- 1.3 billion dollars- from the National Bank of Greece. As I scrolled across the page however, the listing disappeared. Someone was deleting it as I was looking. It had a strange moniker- TO ARNAKI- a quick Google translate identified it as Greek: “The little lamb.”
And the strangest thing here in this Albanian payout record- a column of payments to DMG group, Waldenstein’s company, my client. And suddenly gone while I was watching. I refreshed the page; nope. Gone. Someone was literally swiping the record clean on the other end while I was watching! Did I imagine it? Not likely.
i
I had in that room a wall that was papered with a seventeenth century map of Rome that was blown up and covered the whole wall, and I often traced my fingers along the streets that converged at a fountain or piazza. I did this as a kind of reset when I arrived at a logical impasse in my work and couldn’t think anymore, I suppose as a kind of reminder of the fact that everything was connected to everything else.
I would pick two points and try to find a route between them, through all the roundabouts and switchbacks of the ancient city as depicted on this old map, now reproduced as wall covering. There was something tying all the elements together about Waldenstein’s job that I still couldn’t find.
For my part, on the other hand, at this point in my life, I was finally feeling the intoxicating allure of potential domesticity. Maybe this was it. Debts paid, a new relationship, maybe even settling down and having a… Family? And Rachel- She was a real find. Smart, conscientious, and looks that make you rethink the nature of the universe. But, alas, she was on her own track.
Deep into politics, which is something I did my best to avoid my whole life. But it looked better on her than it would on me. From time to time I would wish that I was young and naïve again. She was a native element of that great Berkeley movement of ethical righteousness; fairness and justice were as natural to her as air and water.
Anyone as cynical as myself would have to pause, at least for a moment, to think that perhaps the world could become a better place, if only… Yes, if only. Still, I liked seeing that in her, even though I knew what the world was really like. At least I thought I did.
Beautiful, strong and healthy, Rachel gave me a glimpse of what my life might be like if I went straight, and I was almost convinced that I was ready. These little missions got more tiresome as it went on, and I was looking forward to a nice long chill on an island somewhere, and to take the time to see how much of me is left after all those years of dealing and double-dealing.
