Wealth is Relative

On that second trip in, Kirk was finishing up a number of contracts - delivering the buildings and collecting payments. To complicate matters, the payments were all made in cash. It sounds utterly insane, but I think a lot of small contractors worked that way. It meant they could pay employees easily... or something... nope, it still sounds utterly insane.

By the end of the trip Kirk found himself driving north to the Turkish border carrying something a little over a million dollars. A. Million. Dollars. Cash.

He was supposed to drive through the border, head on to the airport and fly back to Istanbul. But things went a little wrong. Kirk had to declare the money he was bringing in to the country, which was fair enough, but the border official then insisted on publically, slowly, LOUDLY counting the money out. Then he looked around the roomful of men and carefully spelled out the make,model, color, and registration number of Kirk's car. Now, Kirk was a highly trained intelligence officer with experience in dangerous situations, so he was able to figure out fairly easily that this was not a good thing.

I have no idea how he got back to Istanbul, but I know it didn't involve that car, or the plane ticket the border agent had examined. He called me that night from the office. He was sleeping, he said, with his head about two feet from a million dollars.

'Wow,' I said, 'vicariously wealthy.'

'Yeah... Hey, did I tell you what C said to me? He said I look like I've dropped ten years since I got here.'

'You're doing what you want to do, aren't you.'

'Yup. It's a little crazy, but it's what I want to do.'

'okay then. We'll settle for vicariously wealthy and ten years younger.'

'Goodnight. I love you.'

'Me too.'