Once the escalators stop at the tenth floor, I wait for an elevator. The doors slide open, and I squeeze in. Surely we’re above the weight capacity, but the elevator moves on upward anyway. I get off at the twenty-seventh floor.
It’s just apartment units up here. I hear the cry of babies, the play of children, the scolding of mothers. I hear four or five distinct languages, maybe more. I walk down the hallway, hazy with smoke, looking for unit 2712, and eventually find it.
The doorbell plays a tune. It’s the British national anthem.
The door is buzzed open, and I step inside an air-conditioned and carpeted room. It’s a small office, and far, far cleaner than the corridor outside.
“You can take off your mask,” a young Hong Kong man says to me. He’s tall and wire-thin. He speaks with an English accent, but from where in England I can’t hope to tell.
“We have an air filtration system.”
He offers me a seat after I take off my mask, and so I sit.
“I read your email. I tried to reply, but the email bounced.”
“I deleted the account,” I tell him.
“Very wise,” he says off-handedly. “So you are looking for an Australian passport?”
“Yes.”
“You are American?”
I nod at him.
“Very good, very good.” He flicks through some sheets of paper on his desk, then pecks away at his keyboard for a moment. “Do you have a criminal record in America?”
I furrow my brow. “Why do you ask?”
“Our service is a trade-in one,” he tells me patiently. “I cannot issue you a new identity without taking your old one.”
“You want my American passport?”
“Yes,” he says. His manner is perfunctory. “I need to know your background so I can measure how desirable your passport may be, and price it accordingly.”
“Will you give it to someone else?”
He pauses, and slowly lifts his eyes to meet mine. “What do you think?”
I purse my lips. “No, I don’t have a criminal record.”
“But you want to change who you are?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“I didn’t stay in this business for as long as I have without accruing information to trade. It is doubtful anybody will track you to me, but if they do, I intend to save my own life.” He smiles. “I don’t care about yours.”
I sigh. “I’m running away from my father.”
“Okay,” he says, completely unfazed by that response. “And your father is a powerful man? Government official? Senator?”
“No. Mafia.”
“Gangster, huh,” the man says. He thinks for a moment, chews on the end of his pencil. “Okay,” he says eventually. “I can work with this.” He puts out his hand, but I shake my head at him, not knowing what he wants. “Your passport, please, and all other identity documents you have.”
“No,” I tell him. “Not until I see the passport I’m going to get.”
He sighs, and gets up. “You foreigners… no trust. Wait a moment.” He disappears into the back for barely a minute, then comes out with four passports in his hand. He drops them on the table, and gestures at me. “Choose a name.”
I open them all up. Lydia Johnson, Yasmin Butani, Caroline Sax…
“This one,” I say. I like the sound of the name Caroline Sax. It reminds me of my roommate.
“Now, your passport, driver’s license, social security, everything, please. Fee is ten-thousand US dollars, cash only.”
I swallow, and begin to rummage through my backpack. I take out everything he asks for, including the cash. I unroll the thick wad, count out ten thousand one by one in front of him.
Calmly, he takes the money and puts it through an electronic counter.
“Good,” he tells me. “I need to take your photograph.”
He guides me to the wall, and the flash blinds me for a moment.
“Wait here.”
“For how long?” I ask.
“As long as it takes me,” he throws over his shoulder before retreating into the back room.
I notice then that there are security cameras pointed at me, one in each corner. God, I hope this isn’t going to be a bad idea.
Not thirty minutes later he comes out, and hands me my new identity. “Ms. Sax,” he says.
I flick through it to the back page, see my photo inlaid perfectly. I run my finger over it… it’s seamless.
“That was fast,” I say, impressed. That’s when I feel the microchip. “Wait a minute,” I say, looking up at him. “This has a digital chip. It will bring up the photo of the real Caroline Sax at immigration.”