If all fiat money everywhere went digital and got recorded in blockchains, so that its location and transaction history could be traced and seen by all, then illegal tax dodges could be driven into non-existence by sanction, embargo, seizure, and erasure.
Thus it will be seen that a fully considered and vigorous tax regime, using digital trackable currencies and instituted by all the nations on Earth by way of an international treaty brokered by the UN or the World Bank or some other international organization, could quickly stimulate rapid change in behavior and in wealth distribution. Some might even call it revolutionary change. And of course taxes are a legal instrument with a pedigree as long as civilization itself, its rates decided by legislatures and backed by the full force of the state, meaning ultimately the judiciary, police, and military. Taxes are legal, in other words, and accepted in principle and used by all modern societies. So, targeted changes to the tax laws— would that really be a revolution, if it were to happen?
It would be interesting to try it and see.
68
Mary was flown back to Zurich in a military helicopter. They landed at Kloten and she was taken into town in a black van like the one she had left Zurich in. She sat next to Priska, watched their driver take the usual route into the city. But then where?
Home, as it turned out. Hochstrasse, stopping curbside in front of her apartment building. “Here?” she asked.
“Just to get some of your stuff,” Priska said. “They don’t think it’s a good idea for you to live here anymore, I’m sorry.”
“Where, then?”
“We have a new safe house up the hill,” Priska said. “We would like you to stay there. Once the situation becomes a little more clear, you can move back here. If that’s all right with you.”
Mary didn’t reply. She wanted to be at home in her place, but also the idea made her nervous. Who was watching, if anyone? And why?
She went in and packed a couple of big suitcases they provided. As she did she glanced around the place. She had lived here fourteen years. The Bonnard prints on the walls, the white kitchen; they looked like a museum recreation. That stage of her life was over, this was like walking around in a dream. Her legs were still throbbing. She needed to sleep. Shower and bed, please. But not here.
They carried the suitcases for her, down the stairs and into the street, into the back of the van. Then off east, past the little trattoria she had sat in on so many nights, reading as she ate. Farther up the Zuriberg, into the stolid residential neighborhood on the side of the hill. These big old urban houses were worth millions of francs each, they gleamed with the finish of all that money, unremarkable boxes though they were. The van turned into the gated driveway of one of them, the driveway just a concrete pad the size of one vehicle, in the middle of a garden behind a tall white plastered wall topped with broken green glass shards, an unexpected touch of evil in all this bourgeois conformity. A gate closed off the driveway and made it a compound. Her new home. She stifled a groan, kept her eyes from rolling. She could still walk to work from here, if they would let her.
Which they did. She could call and within minutes a little club of them would be gathered at the walk-in gate to escort her down the hill to Hochstrasse and the ministry offices, their blown-up building being rebuilt, the rest already re-occupied. She was surprised that the Swiss security people felt it was safe to go back, but she was assured that the area was now surveiled in ways that made it safer there than anywhere else. They couldn’t function from hiding, and it was important to show the world that Switzerland and the UN considered the ministry to be a crucial agency. Also that terrorism couldn’t change the momentum of history. They were going to defend that principle, and she was one of the living avatars of history in their time.
Or just bait, Mary thought. Bait in their trap, perhaps. But then again her team was reassembled and back in their offices or jammed into replacement offices, doing their familiar work. Possibly the Swiss had caught the people who had attacked them and thus eliminated the danger. Their banks were said to be back online and functioning as before; whether there were structural changes included in the reboot wasn’t clear yet. So if those assailants had been caught or rendered inoperative somehow, possibly they were safe now. There couldn’t be that many people in the world who felt a toothless UN agency was worth attacking. Although the Paris Agreement had enemies, sure. It could be that the entire military apparatus of some vicious petro-state was now aimed right at her, as the symbol of all that was going wrong for them. It would be great to take some of those petro-states down, somehow. Jail their leaders or the like.
But thinking of prison reminded her of Frank. Did she want to see him? Alas, she did. Possibly something in her wanted to make sure he was still locked up; maybe she was still afraid of the idea
