BEg2 Chap 8 Summary Part 1

[Joseph Tracy]

“Which you think is more serious than simple fraud. What could be that big of a deal?”
 “You’re the expert, Maxine. If it was a classic fraud haven, Grand Cayman or whatever, it’d be one thing. But this is the Mideast, and somebody’s going to way too much trouble to keep secrets, as if Ice or somebody in his shop ain’t just squirreling it away but bankrolling something, something big and invisible—”  BE pg 83

 I will probably get slammed for this but ….Let us suppose  or at least ask iourselves if this secretive movement of money  centered on Dubai is or could be something real and related to 9-11.  Is it something that appears  elsewhere? Could Pynchon, who seems to have some interesting sources of hard-to-access information and research be using fiction to make suggestions about who might have been in on the 9-11 plan beside Salafists temporarily centered in Afghanistan?
Or is it a red herring? All I can say is by the time P wrote BE there had been a great deal of research into this event and to many people’s dissatisfaction, including family-members-of-victims  who were part of 9-11 commission, many incriminating leads were abandoned due to the US’s friendly and lucrative relationship with Saudi Arabia  and the inconvenience of digging too deep into conflicting evidence regarding the mainstream narrative.
Dubai is a weird place, the international London/Switzerland of Arab/Islamic finance, a major world tourist destination and a safe haven for western interests, money operating in the Gulf. Its power and wealth have steadily increased since the gulf wars. If i recall, all the hijackers were either Saudis or UAE( Dubai).  

Would a high tech ’security” business be needed to facilitate hiding something this big, the movement of money, paying bribes, moving and silencing the right people, etc. ?  My own skepticism has a lot to do with how much the narrative was controlled in an event that left so many questions and loose ends. I don’t have a theory, but am unsatisfied with the dismissal of legitimate questions.  

 I can only say that it really seems to me that Pynchon too has  questions about that narrative and has written what  seems like a goofy detective story spiced with dead-end paranoia  and a more obvious red herring ( the  Kennedy-esque rooftop event)to remind us that some serious questions that really do demand the deeepest and most thorough attempt at resolution have been buried, while horrifyingly misdirected wars have been pursued with no positive result. 



> On Dec 10, 2021, at 9:47 AM, Allen Ruch <quail at shipwrecklibrary.com> wrote:
> 
> Sorry, I sent this but it didn’t seem to arrive: maybe because I attached an image of a Furby? Anyway, here it is again, sans Furby:
> 
> Chapter 8 Summary Part 1
> 
> Part 1: Outside Bagel Quest, near Queensboro Bridge.
> Cast: Reg and Maxine
> 
> Reg, now in full paranoid mode, meets Maxine for lunch. He’s convinced he’s being followed, that his apartment has been searched, maybe even his computer. Maxine confides she believes she’s being followed, too.
> 
> Reg tells Maxine about a hawala, an off-the grid method of moving money around through families and organizations, leaves no trace. Things remain in human memory, fees may be paid in discounts and barter.
> 
> https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hawala.asp
> 
> Reg’s spy Eric has a wired a Furby in a back office at hashsligerz.
> 
> https://furby.hasbro.com/en-us
> 
> According to Reg, he’s learned that hashslingerz is “hiding a lot of major transaction history down behind multiple passwords and unlinked directories.” Some of this is coded in a “strange Arabic” called “Leet.”
> 
> They believe that a memory-deficient “hawala” at hashslingerz is trying to move money out of the country into Dubai, and thence throughout the Persian Gulf.
> 
> Recalling that the Islamic world has its own interest-phobic financial rules and workarounds, Maxine believes that Ice “stands to make a bundle in the region.” Maxine and Reg discuss that this is not simple fraud; but “Ice or somebody in his shop” are bankrolling something “big and invisible.”
> 
> Reg asks if Maxine still keeps the Tomcat in her purse.
> 
> https://www.beretta.com/en-us/beretta-3032-tomcat-inox/
> 
> He wonders if he should bail, and points out that Eric is growing increasingly paranoid, and only wants to meet in the Deep Web. Thinking about her time in DeepArcher, Maxine volunteers to meet Eric. She decides a “real-world meeting” would be in order first, and Reg promises to email her a list o Eric’s hangouts.
> 
> [Minor spoiler: This comes to fruition in Chapter 20 at the strip-club called “Joie de Beavre.”]
> 
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l