One Trillion Dollars

by Andreas Eschbach

  “What’s your name?” John asked him.

  “Mande?” the boy said in reply. He looked to be about seven or even younger. He wore shorts and a dirty plaid shirt.

  John saw the woman cooking over an open fire in front of the doorway, and when she brought him some soup his hunger banished any questions about hygiene. This seemed to make her happy. At any rate she smiled and gave him more.

  The fever was back, but not as bad, just a minor relapse, which diminished as the days passed. One day he sat beside her while she cooked and he watched her. She talked with her child as if having John there was the most natural thing in the world. They exchanged a word or two once in a while with the help of her bad English and the unspoken language of gesticulation. He found out her name; Maricarmen Berthier. She scribbled it on a piece of cardboard for him. He put it into his pocket.

  “I want to repay you as soon as I can,” he explained to her, not knowing how much she understood. “I have an account in every bank in the world, can you imagine that? All I have to do is go in and say who I am, and then I get money. Then I will repay you, more than that.”

  She stirred around in her pot and smiled wanly.

  Finally the day arrived when he felt strong enough to leave. She told him to go west. He said thanks again and left. She stepped out of her hut and folded her arms, holding on to herself. She watched after him until he was out of sight.

  When he reached the road a small truck coming away from the dump stopped and picked him up. They drove at breakneck speed along wide and narrow roads, through endless slums, smoky industrial areas, and dreary housing projects. It would have taken him days to walk this distance. At one point he noticed that he had no idea where the ride was taking him, and whether he might actually be being taken yet further away from his actual destination. What was his destination? He knocked on the cab window and made a gesture for the driver to let him off.

  There he stood all alone and lost in a city, which made New York look uncomplicated in comparison. He waved to the truck who had given him the ride and a bare, brown arm waved back as it drove away. Then it was gone.

  He looked around and saw a bunch of uninviting walls, weathered billboards, barred windows and dirt. The few people that were out and about made an effort to avoid him, and when he looked down at himself he understood why. His once elegant, light-colored suit was in tatters, colored with unknown shades of dirt. His shoes were gone, and his feet were clad in dirty socks full of holes. He had lost all sense of smell and wondered how badly he must stink. It was a weird feeling to realize that it might be very difficult to prove that he was the wealthiest man on earth.

  At a place that looked like a bus stop there was a billboard bolted on a house wall. It was a simple wooden board with a bus schedule and a rough map of Mexico City and the surrounding areas. John studied it closely and worked out that he was somewhere in Azcapotzalco in the northern part of the city. He tried to retrace the route that the truck had taken and determined that the garbage dump had to be in Netzahualcoyotl, a place not far from Lake Texcoco. This meant that he should keep to the south.

  Using the sun and the approximate time of day, he tried to find where south was. He wondered if there was any way he could get on a bus, but he could not think of a way. He would have to take a bath for a few hours, put on a fresh set of clothes and get some money before thinking about such a thing.

  He turned around when he heard a car approaching. It was a police car. Of course, the police! There were presumably people out looking for him since he had been kidnapped. All he had to do is go to the first policeman he saw, and his worries would all be over. At this moment a window opened in the house across the street and an old woman stuck her head out, pointed a finger at him, and shouted something. The police car stopped and two police officers got out. With macho-style gait they went to John — their right hands resting on their batons.

  It appeared they were not exactly out to help him. John started to walk, going the opposite direction, away from the cops, and was glad that they were satisfied with driving him off.

  Maybe going to the police wasn’t such a good idea after all. He would be putting himself at the mercy of people with weapons, and he had enough of that for now. He remembered what he had heard on the flight to Mexico, perhaps from one of the bodyguards: nothing in Mexico is more dangerous than the police. No, he would do this on his own. Fontanelli Enterprises had a branch office in Mexico City; he needed to make his way safely there. Though he did not know exactly where it was, he did know it was somewhere in the city center. And he would have to get there entirely by foot.

  He plodded on. What if it took days — what then? There was nothing he needed. He was not even hungry after all the time with fever. Once in a while he found a well or a small stream, where he could wash down the road dust in his throat. He didn’t even care that the water was sometimes brackish or had a thin, oily film on it. He walked along roads and the traffic got denser the further he went, which to him meant that he was heading in the right direction. He passed through tiny picturesque streets with colorful painted housing. There were flowers and herbs planted outside the house doors, growing in rusty iron barrels. Laundry dangled from lines strung across the road. Some children were playing with cats and they looked after him with curiosity. A woman waved him over to her and gave him a pair of worn sneakers … a gift that brought tears to his eyes. He went through miserable-looking neighborhoods where the roads were nothing more than tightly packed dirt and covered with trash, and where the houses to the left and right were half-finished concrete blocks, and had rusty reinforcement rods sticking out. The sky seemed covered with TV antennas and the power and phone lines crisscrossed wildly. Mangy dogs were digging around in dark corners and some kids had only blankets wrapped around them. Here, he did not attract much attention. At times he would sneak through better neighborhoods, where the houses had facades of stucco and little French style balconies, and places where the churches had small picturesque squares, surrounded by trees or large palms. As he walked the buildings got taller and taller, and there were more illuminated advertisements. When he finally found another city map he knew he did not have so much to go any more because it showed only the city center and not the surrounding areas.

  Here, he saw the first beggars in large numbers; crippled men sitting on the streets holding out their hands and looking imploringly at passersby. There were women with babies following men wearing business suits until they got a coin or two, meant to make them leave the men alone. And children, wearing filthier clothes than he had even seen in the slums, surrounding Japanese tourists and begging. The locals let the beggars beg, but it was obvious that they tried not to take note of them.

  He found a telephone booth that had a phone book in good enough shape to find the address of the branch office, and, using the city map in the book, where it was located. Plaza de San Juan, south of Alameda Park, which he thought would be easy enough to find. When he asked someone the direction they were glad to tell him the way as soon as they realized he did not want money. He only had to follow a hastily outstretched arm. “Alameda? Alla!”

  He finally found the building. It was a narrow structure in colonial style with the dark-red Fontanelli f on a white background and it was surrounded by the press.

  The man behind the steering wheel of the mobile broadcasting van emptied the Coke can to the last drop. His Adam’s apple bopped up and down as he drank. Then he squished the can and threw it out on the street. “Let’s assume that his corpse is floating in some lake,” he said to the woman who stood by the open door. “How would they ever find it? We could be waiting here for years.”

  “We won’t be here for years, so calm down,” the woman said. She was slim, delicately built and had wild red curly hair.

  John, standing behind the two reporters watching the Fontanelli building, knew they were talking about him. He was assumed dead. If he were to go into the building now they would be all over him thinkin
g he was a bum and intruder and maybe he would then wish he were dead.

  “Mexico City of all places,” the man complained. “This city makes me sick. I feel it in my chest, I tell you. Every morning when I wake up I have to cough as if I never quit smoking. What do you think of that? I quit smoking, and then I get stuck in this city for weeks, where it stinks miserably in every corner and crevice …” The man suddenly turned around, as if he sensed John. He grimaced. “Hey, Brenda, look, we have company.”

  She turned around and looked to John. John was surprised to see that he knew the woman. Brenda Taylor from CNN, his still functioning memory told him. She was the one who had asked him a hundred years ago in the Vacchis’ house if wealth made him happy. And now she looked at him questioningly.

  On impulse, John pulled his head in, reached out a hand and whined, using the same slang TV shows used to depict Mexicans speaking English: “Pleaze, señora, ten dallas, pleaze, señora!”

  “Oh God,” the man said, “I hate that.”

  She immediately turned away from John, crossed her arms, and told her colleague: “Give him the damn ten bucks so he gets lost.”

  “Ten bucks? I think that’s a lot, Brenda. The others …” He reached into a pocket, fished out a bill and threw it towards John. “There you go. Now get out of here, vamos! Damn, I hate this city,” he griped and turned around too.

  “Gracias,” John mumbled, having practically used up all the Spanish he knew. “Muchos gracias, señor.” He left.

  A few streets away he found a small telefonos office that advertised with the words larga distancia on a blue and white sign. He went down a few steps and entered a room with low ceiling and a soda machine. A fat man sat behind a counter with a map of Mexico on the wall behind him. Thick layers of old posters hung on the other walls showing concerts and church services. The office was run down, but still tidy enough for the man to look at John disapprovingly.

  “May I use the phone?” John asked and placed the money on the countertop.

  The man’s bushy eyebrows rose when he saw the money.

  “International call … USA.”

  The eyebrows dropped again. A hand with a bunch of rings reached for the money and the other pointed to the telephone hanging on a wall to the right. “Está bien. Dos minutas.”

  John nodded and grabbed the phone; now to dial the right number. He followed the instructions for international calls; 98 and then 1 for the US. Then he waited. He wanted to call the front desk of the New York branch office to have a security team come pick him up, but suddenly the idea felt strangely wrong.

  The man behind the counter grumbled something and gestured for John to continue dialing. “Ándele, ándele!”

  No, he didn’t know why, but it wasn’t a good idea. John lifted his hand and was about to hang up when another idea crossed his mind. It was an idea he followed through without a second thought. His finger dialed a zero and then a phone number he was unlikely to forget — his best friend’s birthday.

  “Hello?” Paul Siegel’s voice said.

  $42,000,000,000,000

  ZÒCALO WAS THE center of the metropolis and the pride of the city’s inhabitants. It was huge, big enough to accommodate huge throngs of people and parades. There was a massive cathedral and a grand palace. The square was crowded with everyone from pedestrians to beggars to artists drawing pictures on the cobblestones, and love-struck couples, families with kids, and tourists with cameras. A never-ending stream of people crisscrossed the square and in the middle of it all the national flag fluttered. Every evening an honor guard marched onto the square to take down the flag in an elaborate ceremony. After that thousands of lamps went on to impressively illuminate the surrounding imposing facades.

  John felt invisible here. He slowly walked around the square, always on the lookout, always ready to run at the hint of danger. But no one looked at him and no one paid him any attention. He wandered along the sheer endless front of the Palacio Nacional, was fascinated by the reliefs on the cathedral, and ambled through the arcades and the many little shops that either sold jewelry or hats, nothing else. Once, he stood in front of a display, musing as he stared at jewelry lying before him looking like Aztec Gold, when a stout matron with wavy hair squeezed a few coins into his hand so forcefully there was no way he could refuse. With the money he bought a taco a few stands onward, downed it in no time, only to find it lay in his stomach like a brick.

  He felt invisible and oddly enough … free. During the past weeks the necessities of civilization seemed to have disappeared. All the pesky performances of personal hygiene, the myriad obligations of cohabitation, he remembered all these things as belonging to another person and it was as if he had only heard of them. He had nothing to do, yet he was not bored, and he actually felt satisfied when he got to sit against a wall somewhere and just stare off at nothing in particular. Once in a while he felt a bodily need of some sort, but the feeling was repressed, almost as if his body wanted to leave it up to him to decide how much of a need it really was. Hunger, thirst, fatigue … those were all there, yes, but they remained in the background and never got bothersome or demanding. It was a feeling of peace with the world that he had never felt before, and he almost wished that Paul wouldn’t turn up after all

  Then suddenly he was there. It was unmistakably Paul with his gaunt figure and eyeglasses. He stood there in front the portal of the cathedral without paying the least attention to the historic structure just scanning the square. Sighing, John stood up and sauntered over to him, making a wide semi-circle and at an inconspicuous pace, until he was almost by Paul’s side without being unrecognized.

  “Hello, Paul,” he said.

  Paul Siegel spun to his right and stared at him, disconcerted at first. The longer he stared the less he could believe what he was seeing. “John …?” he uttered, and his eyes looked like they were kept from popping out only by the lenses of his eyeglasses.

  “Have I changed much?”

  “Changed?” Paul gasped. “My God, John … you look like a fakir come down from the Himalayas after twenty years of meditation.”

  “And stinking like a sewage worker, I take it.”

  “After spending twenty years in the sewage, yes.” He shook his head. “Good thing I rented a car.”

  They left the city and headed north, with windows wide open because Paul couldn’t have taken the stench otherwise. He had brought a load of food along; cookies, fruit, and drinks in bottles and was amazed when John was reluctant to eat much. “It’s all clean and quite safe,” he told him jokingly.

  “Sure,” John was all John said.

  They stopped at a hotel that Paul found in a thick, highly detailed travel brochure. “I had plenty of time to read during the flight from Washington,” he said almost apologetically. “So you can ask me whatever you want, because I think I know Mexico like the back of my hand.” Paul checked them in and then smuggled John into the room. Paul had made sure that it had running water and a bathtub. “I thought this might be useful after you told me about the garbage dump. And this too,” he added as he pulled out a large bottle of special liquid soap from the travel bag. “Miners use this, and, well … garbage workers too.”

  John took the impressive looking bright-red bottle, and even made a joke: “I see you are up to doing a few chores, pal. And let me guess; you’ve also brought fresh clothes?”

  “In the trunk. I’ll go get them while you get cleaned up.”

  “You’re a genius.”

  Paul smiled. “Oh, really? Then why aren’t I rich and happy? Come on, off you go into the bath tub. You are a disgrace to humanity. Oh, and one more thing … I would keep the beard if I were you.”

  After the bath and lots of the special soap, John felt like a newborn baby. The clothes that Paul got for him fit reasonably well — the style of shirt, slacks and shoes were chosen to look normal, nothing expensive.

  Later on they sat together on the patio of the hotel and ate dinner while they discussed w
hat to do next. “I flew to San Antonio and crossed the border at Laredo,” Paul explained, “and in case you won’t give me a reason not to, I would like to take the same route back. Oh yes, by the way — your passport.” He pulled out an American passport and shoved it across the table towards John.

  “What’s this?” John took it and leafed through it. The photo showed a man with a thin beard on the chin. His name was Dennis Young, born on March 16, 1966, in Rochester. “Who is Dennis Young?”

  “A good friend of a good friend who doesn’t ask questions and doesn’t know any journalists.”

  “John looked at the youthful-looking face again. “And you think it’ll work?”

  “You will need a passport if you want to get across the border, right? And I’m really amazed how well the photo resembles you after your stay at the garbage dump. I can’t imagine a border official getting suspicious.”

  “Hmm,” John said pensively. “Well, I guess it’ll work.” He put the passport away. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” Paul poured some more wine, and then he leaned forward with the wineglass in his hand. “You do realize the question I need ask you sooner or later?”

  “Yup.”

  “You could have gone to the police.”

  “Sure.”

  “They are still looking for you.”

  “I should hope so.”

  “You could have at least called your bodyguards.”

  “I wanted to at first.” John took a deep breath. “I can’t quite explain it. It was … a feeling. Call it intuition … some a voice told me to keep a low profile, disappear, hide.”

  Paul looked at him skeptically. “A voice.”

  “Well, not really a voice,” John admitted. “I’m not sure what it was. A feeling you have sometimes, like running your tongue across your teeth and you feel something is not quite right, but when you look in a mirror there is nothing there.”

  “Hmm,” Paul said.

  John tided up some crumbs on the tabletop. “Bleeker said something about a person who gave him the job of kidnapping me. I can’t get that out of my head.”