Doubled or Nothing

by Warren Esby

  I looked at the Glocks that the Si Si Riders had been carrying which were both lying on the floor and saw they had both jammed on the second shot. They were both filled with dirt. They had never bothered to clean the guns that day when they were thrown in the dust when we saved their lives. Let that be a lesson to you, I thought. Keep your guns clean. But it was ironic that they tried to kill two people who had saved their lives and had died because of the circumstances under which their lives had been saved. If we hadn’t saved their lives, then they wouldn’t be alive to carry guns that were dirty, and both Anya and I would possibly be dead at this point as a result, because they probably would have sent two different Si Si Riders and they wouldn’t have had dirty guns.

  Ben and Jerry got on the phone with Sam. You know the routine. We didn’t go out to the desert to watch the festivities the following day. I had to go to work because I promised them the last two weeks and Anya was tired. We checked into a hotel that night while they re-cleaned the apartment and we got a good night’s sleep. I was late to work the next day because Anya wanted to sleep late after her quick trip back and forth to the East Coast, and since we only had the one vehicle and she had to drive me to work and pick me up. Nothing much happened for the rest of the week, and that weekend I kept my promise to Anya and we went shopping for her Porsche and finally bought one.

  They had a really sharp looking black one with red leather interior that she kept going back to, and I had to keep reminding her those were no longer her colors. She reluctantly agreed to the silver blue one with the grey leather seats. The clincher was when I told her that black was much more difficult to keep clean and that we already had a black SUV that she complained looked dirty all the time because it was always covered with dust since San Diego was so dry. She said she remembered that it had been that way with her Buick Regal. At first I had trouble paying for the Porsche 911 with cash because the manager looked at me suspiciously and said that drug runners were one of only two groups he knew at that time that could afford to pay cash for a Porsche 911, and he didn’t want to get in trouble for laundering money. When I told him not to worry because I was a government employee he said that was okay after all, because that was the only other group that always seemed to be able to pay cash for a Porsche 911. I arranged to have the Porsche sent to the Cayman Islands along with all of our other possessions that we planned to ship which consisted of one Porsche 911. Everything else we owned could fit in a suitcase, and I was planning to sell the Expedition since it was really too big to mess with in the Cayman Islands and didn’t look like the kind of car a rich ex-pat would have.

  The following week went by quickly. I had to spend part of it at HypeTech. Anya and I were very careful and kept away from the apartment after it was clean. We kept moving from motel to motel at night. There was no sense messing up the apartment anyway since I was moving out and there would be an inspection. I hope they considered a few chips in the cinder blocks normal wear and tear. Actually, Sam’s crew had filled them in and touched them up and you couldn’t tell that four people had been killed there and two more had almost been killed in the last month. I gave the landlord notice and an extra two month’s rent even though I only owed him for thirty days. We had so much fun in that apartment I thought it was worth the extra amount I paid. I’m really a softy in that regard and nostalgic to boot. We sold the Expedition and rented a car for the last week that we were allowed to turn in at the airport rental car return.

  After work on Friday, Ben and Jerry took Anya and me to the place it all started, the Torrey Pines Inn. Well that was the place it started for them. It is a really good restaurant and we enjoyed it. We enjoyed it so much that we drank too much and actually had to check into the Torrey Pines Inn for the night since we wouldn’t have passed a sobriety test if we had been stopped. We hadn’t made reservations anywhere else, and we were lucky that it was off season and they had space. Ben and Jerry told me the Alpha Rho Alpha 50-3 account was set up and ready to use and gave me the account number and paperwork. It was in the same bank in the Cayman Islands that my ordinary checking account was in so that was convenient. He also gave me two first class airplane tickets and reservations at a resort in the secret destination where we would be hiding out and which he had not been able to tell me before for security reasons. Regulations said we were only allowed to know twenty four hours before we were to depart. Imagine our surprise when he told us that our secret destination would be the Cayman Islands.

  “What a surprise!” we both said.

  Ben told us not to expect to hear from them for a year unless it was a dire emergency, and they would call us at yearly intervals after that. They told us that once we got settled in a permanent house or condo, to just make sure our new name was listed and to hold onto our current cell phone numbers until then, and they would call us or leave us messages as necessary. We said goodbye, and I thought that I would probably never see them again even though I did think I would talk to them again.

  Chapter 37

  We lived in the Caymans Islands for a year without hearing anything from Ben and Jerry, and it was a really pleasant experience compared to the previous six months I had spent after I had received my Ph.D. We bought a house on the beach and a speedboat and a yacht, joined a country club, and learned to play golf and tennis by taking exorbitantly expensive lessons. We had all the money we wanted and right on schedule at the end of the year we had our account filled up, and we began our second year with three million in the Alpha Rho Alpha account. We had never touched any money that had been deposited in the original ordinary account they had set up for me, and it had been sitting there just accumulating interest. We spent all the money we wanted to but didn’t leave the Cayman Islands until after we talked to Ben and Jerry on the first year’s anniversary of our exile.

  Before we talked to them, we had noted in the news that the Iranians had managed to take over the guidance system of a new stealth drone that was flying over their country and had managed to land it safely within Iran and were now sharing all the information they learned about it with the Chinese and Russians. When they called, I asked Ben and Jerry about it.

  “It looks like we made a mistake giving that to them,” I said.

  “Not really. We have to give them something every once in a while and it really doesn’t matter that much. As I mentioned before, we have better guidance system, and now we have an even better one than the one from Georgia Tech. Caltech has one that’s even more sophisticated and we’re switching over to that one. And we also still have a large surplus of drones.”

  I didn’t ask about the new one, because I didn’t want to know, but I did say,

  “I thought that there were sanctions in place for any country supplying weapon technology to Iran. Aren’t we now guilty of violating the sanctions we imposed by supplying them with new stealth technology?”

  “We didn’t supply them,” said Ben. “The Russians did.”

  “Yes. We didn’t supply them with the guidance system. But we flew the drone over there and essentially gave it to them.”

  “Well that doesn’t really count. For one thing we can’t impose sanctions on ourselves and for another thing, it was only a single drone,” said Jerry. “The system of sanctions is to prevent them from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, and drones don’t fit into that category. They aren’t considered weapons of mass destruction. They’re more like a weapon of individual destruction or small group destruction at best.”

  “Except when they’re used against an entire town,” I replied.

  “They haven’t been used for that,” said Ben.

  “Yes they have. How about that prairie dog town east of Flagstaff? That makes them a weapon of mass prairie dog destruction at least.”

  “Don’t be silly. Prairie dogs aren’t people,” Jerry replied.

  “That’s right, but prairie dogs today could be people tomorrow. Look, they have animal models of human disease that are used to develop treatment for human
diseases. That’s my original field, remember, before I switched careers. So using drones as weapons of mass prairie dog destruction is really just an animal model of mass human destruction. It just shows that drones can be used as weapons of mass destruction and you’ve supplied that to Iran in violation of the sanctions.” I knew Raffy and Wyatt would be proud of my argument.

  But Ben had the last word or words in this case. “First, you may be right but you won’t know until the drones are actually used for mass destruction which they haven’t yet. Second, the government can’t impose sanctions against itself because the government can’t be held responsible for anything it does. It’s ultimately the people’s fault because they elected them.” And then he used the argument for his third point that no one can argue with. He said, “And third, what’s done is done.”

  Then he continued, “I have good news for you that should make you feel more secure. First, the person in charge of the Alpha Rho Alpha program has retired, and the new head starts fresh and has no records available to him on who was in it before he took charge so that you are safely grandfathered in until you’re a grandfather.” It was of course an attempt at a joke on his part which he wasn’t very good at. The program for me would only last fifty years and I could be a grandfather by then if I had children and my children had children, but he didn’t have any way of knowing that would be the case. As usual, a government employee was making assumptions about the future without any real data, which they always seem to do and are never right about. I just hope this would not be the typical case because I think I would like to be a father and a grandfather one day.

  Jerry continued as he usually did after Ben paused, “Your friends in Rosarito Beach, both the Mexican policeman and his compatriot the San Diego policeman, are unfortunately both dead. They got into a gun fight with members of the opposite drug cartel. It seems their guns jammed during the fire fight and they were both killed. And Boris, who was the only other one down there who could have identified you, is also dead.

  “How did he die?” I asked.

  Ben said, “He was killed in a drone strike. It was the first one, no make that two, of the drones we sent south of the border and one of them took him out. We lost the other south of Cabo San Lucas. It had to be blown up when it was clear it had gone too far to get back on the fuel it had left. Both operators of course were given a bonus for the first successful Mexican operation.”

  “Why did you eliminate him? That can’t be good for the inter-spy services relations?”

  “Because he did something he knew he should never do when dealing with us. He really crossed the line,” said Jerry.

  “What was that?” I naturally asked.

  And Ben naturally continued, “It seems that our friend the Mexican policeman down there had the opportunity to acquire a practically brand new Mercedes G550 SUV. It was a real steal and he couldn’t pass it up. His Escalade, which he felt was underpowered for a SUV anyway, was now disposable, but our friend Boris, who had always admired it, had the temerity to ask if he could have it and our friend the Mexican policeman obliged and gave it to him. Now the last thing we can let the Russkis get away with is driving a Cadillac. That was a ‘no no’ according to our unwritten agreement. He could have had a Buick of any sort or a Tahoe or Suburban if he wanted a SUV, but a Cadillac was out of the question. We had to kill him because of his brazen act of ‘chutzpah’ which is, I believe, a Russian word and appropriately so, for unmitigated nerve. I think it’s from the same word root as czar which I think can be translated as the one with the most nerve.”

  “So it seems that everyone you ran into down in Mexico is now dead and can no longer identify you. So maybe you can breathe a little easier now. We’ll give you an update next year,” Jerry ended up.

  I thanked them and said I looked forward to talking to them at that time, but I haven’t heard from them since.

  Chapter 38

  We’ve left the Bahamas and are heading back to the Cayman Islands on the last leg of our around the Caribbean trip and have had a really good time. After we left Trinidad, we had a little ceremony with champagne and everything and dropped the little Berettas in the sea. We still had the Glocks that we had taken from the Si Si Riders. They have been properly cleaned and are now functioning flawlessly. We both target practice occasionally during the voyage, but only at inanimate pieces of flotsam or jetsam. I haven’t learned which is which yet, but Anya always seems to know. Anya won’t let me shoot at the occasional shark we see. She said they hadn’t done anything to me, and I replied, “Yet.” I tried to tell her they were sea pigs, but she didn’t buy it so we only use flotsam or jetsam as targets and there is plenty of that floating around in the Caribbean. Ben and Jerry had given us the okay to keep the Glocks. They didn’t need them since they had their own. They did take down the serial numbers and had them checked with the ATF to see if they were being traced. The ATF said they guaranteed that there was absolutely no record left of any gun that they had ever sent to Mexico. They had permanently destroyed all the records for security reasons, their own job security reasons.

  Another thing about being in the Bahamas was that I had a chance to see my folks and my sister and her husband again. When I knew we would be in the Bahamas, I contacted them and sent them first class tickets and arranged for all of us to stay at a really upscale resort. It was the first vacation outside the U.S. that any of them had had and the first time they had been to any beach outside of Cape Cod. We contacted them and invited them to all come down after Ben and Jerry told us we were probably safe and that no one who could identify me as a CIA or Russian agent was currently alive except for them. When my parents got off of the plane and we greeted them when they got through security, they immediately recognized Anya. They said she was my long lost sister who they had to give up for adoption many years before. Only kidding! Only kidding! It’s just a joke to wake you up since things are winding down in these memoirs and you are beginning to think since nothing exciting has happened in the last few pages, there is no reason to finish the narrative. They immediately recognized Anya because we had been in touch since our exile by internet. They had seen her whenever we communicated with them on Skype. And that just proves that despite government policy, the internet is useful for other things besides pornography. We really had a good time with my folks and sister and brother-in-law, and Anya seemed happy to be part of my family since she didn’t have one of her own left. We have decided to see all of them once a year from now on in one location or another outside the Cayman Islands. Maybe even back in Boston if Ben and Jerry give us the okay.

  We’re almost back to the Cayman Islands and I saw two items of news on the internet. I laughed when I read the first one, but the second one made me very sad.

  The first was about a Baskin Robbins ice cream truck that had crashed on Pacific Coast Highway south of Big Sur in California. It was on a section of road that comes down along the coast and sits high above the Pacific and has some very difficult twists and turns. Trucks and cars sometimes go off the Pacific Ocean side of the road and plunge hundreds of feet to the rocks below. It can be very dangerous, especially in the fog which often sets in along the coast. Well apparently the Baskin Robbins driver was very experienced, having driven that road often, and when his brakes began to fail, he just made sure he steered the truck to the side away from the Pacific Ocean and crashed it into the wall on the land side of the road in order to stop it. He called for a tow truck. Local people showed up to see the crash, and all of the people who were driving up and down the highway had to stop because the truck was blocking the entire road, and they knew they would have to wait until the tow truck came to clear the road. All of these people got out of their cars and walked over to see what was holding them up. Since the Baskin Robbins driver knew the shipment was now a total loss and all the ice cream would melt without the truck running and the refrigeration on, he started to hand out gallons of ice cream to all the bystanders who came up in increasing numbe
rs from the cars going both up and down the highway. There was a news flash about the crash warning people to be careful and also mentioning there was a big ice cream party going on at the crash site as a human interest component of the story when they mentioned that no one had been hurt by the crash.

  There was also another shorter story amending the fact that no one had been hurt. Apparently a Cadillac Escalade Hybrid was coming down the highway from the direction of Big Sur a little faster than it should have been and went off the Pacific side of the road only a few miles north of where the Baskin Robbins truck had crashed. Both inhabitants had been killed when the Escalade blew apart and burst into flames when it hit the rocks below. They reported that it was just a coincidence and unrelated to the crash of the ice cream truck. I knew differently when they identified the drivers as Benjamin Franklin and Gerald Ford. I was really sad for both of them, but I was philosophical about it as well. They had died for what they believed was a good cause, trying to do what they loved to do.

  Chapter 39

  We’re back in the Cayman Islands now and are celebrating the end of our second year here. We haven’t been contacted by anyone from the CIA since Ben and Jerry had called us the year before, and we don’t expect to be contacted now that Ben and Jerry are no longer with them. We had named our boat Bubble Gum Ice Cream in their honor and we’re now glad we did. We had originally planned to name it the Good Ship Lollipop after the raspberry and licorice lollipops Anya liked as a child, but we were worried about copyright infringement.