Dollars: D.C. Heist (Fan-Fiction)

Two ex-CIA brothers want to rob the Riggs National Bank in D.C. as a political statement and may create some real street dash!

Since some of my readers may have noticed that I simply adore heist-tales, I'm opting to sign off with this capitalism-critique American heist fable about modern political paranoia, inspired by the poignant Richard Brooks film Dollars (Warren Beatty). Thanks so much for reading,

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Two brothers, ex-CIA, decided to rob the Riggs National Bank in D.C. in the summer of 2021, after the Coronavirus quarantine tribulation had finally subsided. The two brothers were Algerian-American twins, Amlan and Simian Satan, who worked for years as underground operatives bridging P-IRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army) cells with Sinn Fein to create more dialogue in Parliament about the cessation of civilian-targeted terrorism in Belfast (Northern Ireland) that prompted retaliatory frustration-induced British police violence in an area co-habitated by the Irish Catholic minority and a British Protestant majority. Amlan/Simian wanted an end to violence in Northern Ireland and improved Parliamentary policies regarding the addressing of socioeconomic disparity between Protestants and Catholics in Belfast that was dividing the two world's largest denominations in the Christian community. The CIA had stationed the brothers in Belfast for years, since there were grave concerns that the petroleum-politics of Israel-Palestine were leading to a neglect of the European inter-religious conflict between Irish Catholics and British Protestants in Northern Ireland. Now, Amlan and Simian were retired from the CIA, and they were only 40 years-old, and they wanted to leave behind the scars of traumatic government work and just rob the Riggs National Bank in D.C. and then flee to the Virgin Islands to retire as 'quiet' angels. This was their simultaneously dramatic and tragic dream.

Amlan and Simian were no strangers to doing camouflage infiltration work and were prepared to be wearing the perfect masks for their bank heist in the summer of 2021 in D.C. They decided to choose mask-sets that would highlight the profundity and anti-establishmentarian symbolism of their grand heist in America. They wondered at first if they should simply select basic plastic transparent make-up masks that were clown-like in appearance.

The twin brothers then wondered if they should instead wear a face-camouflaging head-and-mask gear-set that would make them resemble Middle Eastern terrorists. This sort of camouflage or costume technique would facilitate them being able to enter the Riggs National Bank and carry themselves off as not only robbers but also dangerous terrorists, perhaps using paranoia-media to make their heist altogether more indicative and elusive and confounding and dizzying. After all, they didn't want to be terrorists after working for the CIA for so many years and just wanted to be the perfect thieves now. They wondered and wondered what they should don as their costumes!

The Riggs National Bank was an age-old building in D.C. and was located in Pennsylvania Avenue, near the White House itself. There was much traffic surrounding the bank, so any careful heist would have to be performed at the right time and moment and with the right technique. The security was tight and computerized and armed guards guarded the vault-room which held over $30 billion in assets (cash, gold, diamonds). Amlan and Simian did their homework prior to the day of the actual robbery in the summer of 2021. They respected the fineness and grandness of the Riggs National Bank building itself.

The ex-CIA brothers decided to don two celebrity masks for their heist of the Riggs bank. They chose a Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise mask, two celebrities whose work in canonical Hollywood (USA) films made they symbols of American capitalism and media and society in general. Amlan wore the Tom Hanks mask, and Simian wore the Tom Cruise mask. They wanted the heist to be perfect and dramatic and perhaps even entertaining and definitely not violent or terrorist-like in scope or stance. Their celebrity-masks would be the right choice for their style of robbery on that summer day in 2021.

Now, we all know that Americans are fascinated by crime-stories and have romanticized legendary bank-robbers and bandits in its national history such as Bonnie and Clyde, the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, the Newton Boys, and Ma Barker and her gang of sons. In fact, even artists and film-makers spent much time portraying these legendary 'celebrity' thieves in various works of art and film. Amlan and Simian were actually fans of the Michael Mann film Public Enemies about the American robber Dillinger.

Amlan and Simian walked into the Riggs National Bank that summer day wearing their Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise celebrity-masks to perform the symbolic anti-establishmentarian heist. They recruited an inside-person, a female employee named Shirley O'Hara, an Irish-American and sympathizer of the Republican troubles in Northern Ireland. Shirley was a teller at the Riggs National Bank and knew the code to the vault-room. When the masked brothers walked into the bank, they first noticed its immaculate architecture and were honestly humbled by its grandeur. Would they succeed?

Every Christmas season, the Riggs National Bank mounted a very ornate gold Christmas tree in its front-entrance welcoming-area and lobby. This was a symbol of the proud place the building had in American culture and in D.C. Everyone went to the Riggs bank, and President Trump visited there too for a special media address on the fineness of American banking institutions and their reliability through hard times. Amlan and Simian made sure they didn't overlook the details of the bank's design itself.

When the brothers walked in wearing Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise masks, the guard at the front entrance asked them why they were dressed like celebrities! Amlan/Simian explained they were at the Riggs bank that day for a special photo-shoot involving a media marketing campaign on the Internet about American movie-stars using iconic American banking institutions, an article for TIME magazine! The brothers went to the bathroom where Shirley O'Hara, their inside-person, hid two machine-guns in the bathroom that morning before the bank opened. She also hid a third gun which she'd wield herself. The brothers took their guns and then walked out and announced they were in fact robbing the bank. They walked up to Shirley O'Hara's teller-station after tying up the guards and put a sack-mask on her and gave her the gun she'd wield. They then had the bank manager and Shirley walk with them to the vault-room itself and Shirley opened the vault itself.

In the confusion of the strange event, the guards and manager were honestly confused about whether or not this entire robbery was some bizarre PR-stunt, since the brothers were wearing celebrity-masks (Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise). Since the brothers used Shirley O'Hara as their team-mate, the guards and manager also wondered if she was secretly pulled aside and recruited earlier to make the Riggs National Bank a part of this elaborate media stunt! In other words, the celebrity-signature of the brothers had made the heist seem like a possible media-circus, which led to the people in the bank simply standing aside quietly and almost with funny smiles, thinking this was most likely some kind of media-activity that should not warrant any kind of police intervention or guardsman-heroism!

The brothers took about $40 million in cash from the vault-room and were walking out of the bank with Shirley O'Hara still masked and walking alongside them! They then turned to the people inside the bank, including the manager and the tied up guards, and told them that this media-stunt was performed to complement President Trump's media message about the popularity of American banking institutions. They told the people in the bank that Shirley would be returned to her D.C. apartment and would safely return to work the next day! Because no one was sure if Shirley was part of the heist or not, no one wanted to get involved with an intervening act of heroism, and Shirley knew the bank's alarm system was disarmed that morning by a computer-hacker the brothers employed to scramble the security-system 15 minutes prior to their entry into the bank. The brothers walked out of the bank and escorted Shirley O'Hara to her D.C. apartment as promised. They then went to the D.C. police-station and explained they were robbed of their media-stunt money on their way to the local news-station. Apparently, Shirley had told a friend of hers about the heist and the info leaked and real robbers had scooped up the money the ex-CIA brothers performed for TIME magazine. The brothers were then mocked in a comic-strip in the Washington Post, describing them as dumbfounded CIA robots!

The Post even described Shirley O'Hara as the perfect idealized inside-man but was equally confounded by the real robbers/bandits who ended up stealing the money the brothers took from the Riggs National Bank that summer day in 2021. Shirley apologized for leaking the media-stunt rumor to the public which resulted in the Satan brothers being robbed of the media-stunt money they took! The Post characterized Shirley as an equally-dumbfounded 'robot' girl!

AMLAN SATAN: We were ex-government intelligence officers working in Northern Ireland and frustrated by all the inter-religious Protestant-Catholic troubles there and wanted to coordinate a media-stunt for a national magazine to remind Americans of the neglect of the Belfast problem in preference for the more money-oriented petroleum-politics of Israel-Palestine! We had no idea we'd be robbed ourselves of the money we took that day, since Ms. O'Hara had foolishly but forgivably leaked the media-stunt robbery info to the public, allowing real robbers to intervene and rob us as we walked out of Ms. O'Hara's apartment after escorting her there as promised! My brother Simian and I have decided to retire to the Virgin Islands were we'll open an island pub for tourists and perhaps become philanthropists. We still hope that the robbery media-gesture we intended to publish to spotlight the hypocrisy of Northern Ireland Protestant-Catholic inter-religious division neglect by world leaders in preference for the more 'capital' Israel-Palestine petroleum-relevant 'issue' that facilitates more mass neglect of the deep division within the modern Christian community in the United Kingdom! In other words, Simian and I simply hope that this heavy incident will remind the world that capital in the modern world is truly a thing...of dread. That's all.

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)