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What Ever Happened to Me?
Only the paranoid surivive.
- Andrew S. Grove, Former CEO of Intel
Dirt has a definite and distinct smell. Naturally, I didn't notice it when I lived on dry land, but when I pulled in to the harbor at Mindelo the mineral smell of it was strong enough to be overpowering. I had been out to sea for over two years. The last year involved a circuitous route to the Cape Verde Islands mainly using the currents around the north of the Sargasso Sea and then down along the coast of Africa. I hadn't intended to take so long, but I was nearly out of fuel so there had been no other way. I had been through months of hunger and suffering on the journey. I had mainly subsisted on little fish and seaweed, and had lived in constant fear of being caught.
So there was a war in my head between immense relief and paranoia as I anchored my little fishing boat at the edge of the harbor at Mindelo. I tried to fight back the fear and drink in the sights and sounds of actual people leaving real lives. The sounds of other boats and cars. The way the blue of the harbor gave way to the impoverished beauty of the dilapidated city that now surrounded me. It was all too much for someone that hadn't seen another person in all this time. I tried to stick with the voice in my head that was glad to be here.
Finally a guy in a little boat came out towards me. "Bom dia. Taxi da agua?" he yelled pulling alongside. I didn't know Portuguese, and of course I didn't have a clue about the creole dialect that he was speaking. But I figured that "Taxi da agua" probably meant "water taxi".
I spoke back in Spanish, hoping it was close enough for him to understand, "Un memento por favor". I grabbed my stuff, handed him a couple of U.S. dollars and said "?es esta autorizacion?" and pointed to shore. I have no idea if he understood what I said, but he frowned, nodded and motioned me into the boat.
A few minutes later, I stepped on to dry land. I half expected sirens to go off and police to instantly appear, but it seemed that nothing exciting had ever happened in this place. After all this time, I was finally back on dry land. Cape Verde was a sleepy, poor, crime ridden country far away from everything, I was fairly sure that no one would expect to find me here, as I had worked hard to do all of my communication out of Cuban waters. Hopefully the people at Interpol and the FBI actually thought that I was in Cuba.
My plan was to hook up with a guy named Eugenio Pereira that my lawyer had recommended in an email. The guy would help me get access to my money, and provide me with a way to get a semi-legitimate Cape Verdean passport. And I was told that he could do this quietly, without alerting the authorities.
I was nervous, because he could also just turn me into the police. Or have me killed and claim the money from the Malrone family. I had spent many days and nights during the year it had taken me to get here thinking of all the possibilities. But there was no other choice. I had to trust someone, sometime, and it seemed likely that it was more profitable for Eugenio to overcharge me for services than get involved in a messy deal with the authorities or drug lords. Especially in a country like the Cape Verde Islands where the law was interpreted as a loose guideline at best. Still I could barely keep the fearful voice in my head at bay.
Eugenio had a legitimate job as a bank manager, and I was to look for him there. So I stumbled into the lobby of the Primeiro Banco do Mindelo, probably looking like I was some alien from another planet. But when I asked for Eugenio, the receptionist kind of gave me a knowing smile and led me to a back office.
Eugenio was exactly the kind of greasy haired, sleazy guy in a business suit that I had expected him to be. He didn't speak Spanish or English, and so I asked if we could call my lawyer in Portugal and get his help to translate. My lawyer was a leading international criminal asylum attorney named Miguel Vargos that was based in Lisbon. I had never actually spoken to him on the phone before as I did all of my transactions by email via a remote controlled submarine in Cuban waters, which had to be one of the most bizarre methods of communication ever attempted. And I hadn't even done that for a year now, as I didn't want to tip the authorities off that I was on my way across the Atlantic.
Miguel had been in the process of negotiating on my behalf with the U.S. and Interpol and was looking for a place of asylum for me when I had disappeared. So it had to be pretty strange to have me call from Eugenio's office in Mindelo after all this time. I had never told Miguel where I was or what I was doing, because of my own paranoia, and I figured he probably didn't want to aid and abet a criminal anyway. So it really wasn't a surprise that at first he didn't seem to want to help me with Eugenio. But I begged and pleaded and told him that I was really only there at his recommendation. He was the one that had pointed me to Eugenio all the way down in the Cape Verdes as the best way to get at my money, and find a place to hide. Finally he agreed to transfer about 75K of my money through him to Eugenio. I didn't trust Eugenio with my account information, and I didn't want to tip the authorities off through bank transactions that I was in Mindelo, so I needed my lawyer to act as an intermediary. Of course Eugenio took a big chunk of that for himself, and held the rest in a "trust" until I had a new identity.
But when I finally walked out the door with money in my pocket, I was as happy as I had ever been in my entire life. I had previously thought that there was no greater feeling in the world than the soft warm touch of being blown by a beautiful talented woman. But after subsisting and drifting on the boat, after a 4,000 mile journey to the Cape Verde islands, being on dry land with money and freedom actually topped it. I immediately sat down to a meal in the best restaurant I could find, and started to work on a new plan.
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Everybody in Mindelo minds their own business. People are poor, and most people around the port seem to have done a thing or two outside of the law to put food on the table. So when I showed up at an office Eugenio recommended, asking for a Cape Verdean passport, the only question was whether I had the equivalent in roughly $5,000 cash that was required. I walked out an hour later with a valid looking Cape Verdean passport under the name Luis Heitor.
Then I opened up an account at Eugenio's bank and loaded it up with funds transfered through my attorney in Lisbon under my new name.
Then I paid to have my boat repaired and refueled. Nobody even batted an eye when I explained that I had to abandon my ship hundreds of miles out to sea and had come to port in my little fishing boat. As long as I had the funds, they were happy to help. No questions. I had the feeling I was relatively safe here, which was an immense relief after such a long time. I had been feeling like a hunted animal ever since Mexico City.
Lastly, the most valuable thing of all. A duplicate satellite connection on my boat. This one registered under my new Cape Verdean identity. I could communicate again! I was able to freely email, and even talk on the phone with my lawyer. My days of drifting alone at sea were at an end.
So the first thing I do with the satellite connection is start searching for myself. I find a lot of links, but they are mainly rather dated. I had been a hot discussion topic on the net and there were all kinds of conspiracy theories about who had helped me record all those hot actresses fucking. Of course there were competing theories that said that I had nothing to do with it, and still others that said that I didn't even exist. A popular theory held that I was just a fictitious person to conveniently take the blame for the crimes of others.
But since there had been no real news of me in quite some time, the world had moved on. Interpol had dropped their red status warrant for my arrest. I was still technically a wanted man, but they were no longer actively looking for me. I also found a magazine article from a few months ago that talked about how celebrities now need to live with constant scans to search for wireless bugs like the ones that I first planted. The scanning procedure was even named the "Jenkins Test" after me. So it appears that my impact on the world was to make at least some famous people almost as paranoid as I am. I suppose that I should have felt guilty about making the world a sadder and wiser place, but I have trouble working up sympathy for A-listers. A few of them do get caught screwing around on video by copycats of mine now and then, but mostly they live as wild and free as ever. As an aside, the article mentioned that I was still at large, but quoted an unnamed government source who said that I was thought to be hiding out in Cuba.
I had worked very hard to get the authorities to think that I was in Cuba by sending the sub there on the few internet searches and communications that I made before I went to Mindelo. But I was still suprised to read that it actually worked.
My lawyer said that I was pretty much free to come and go through any port of entry that did not have facial scanning/recognition services. Essentially that meant that I could not fly through a major airport or even visit anything but a third world country. So it seems that I no longer really needed asylum, but I wasn't free to go any country that would feel like home. Still, that paranoid voice in my head started to quiet down a little. It was pretty obvious that the world was no longer all that obsessed about finding me. It made sense when I finally thought about it rationally. I had committed some pretty bizarre crimes by making those videos, but I wasn't violent, or part of some major crime ring, and I also wasn't around causing any further trouble. After all this time, it even seemed odd to think that I had ever done all that stuff. I really felt more like "Luis Heitor", the man from Cape Verde with no past, than "Thomas Jenkins", the voyueristic pornographer/engineer. But now I needed to figure out what to do with the new me.
Next Story: Apron Pussy
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