The Fake - Karlheinz Moll - E-Book

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Karlheinz Moll

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Beschreibung

After the killing of a bank employee in Munich is linked to the violent death of a man who worked at the Luxembourg branch of the same global banking group, Alexander Granger of the German Federal Police (BKA) is asked to investigate the mystery involving company accounts at these banks where it seems large sums of money have been flowing in and out for unknown purposes. At the same time another man is killed in Singapore while making a call to Interpol agent Cynthia Yeow in Hong Kong to tell her about financial irregularities on a company account he was reviewing. Alexander and Cynthia join forces after more people are killed, all linked to the same few connected companies, and follow clues that ultimately lead them to the United States. In Montana, a Senator is being pushed out, requiring a special election that kicks off a fierce battle for the vacant seat and an unexpected candidate quickly outruns his competitors. A strange business man in Azerbaijan shows an interest in the Montana Senate race while fiercely protecting his secret global business interests in Europe and Asia from detection. More people will have to die unless Alexander and Cynthia can solve the mystery surrounding The FAKE.

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Seitenzahl: 414

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

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Karlheinz Moll

The FAKE

Deadly Finances

© 2018: Karlheinz Moll

Cover, Illustration: Petru Stendl

Proofreading: Peter Sherwood

Publisher: tredition GmbH, Hamburg

ISBN

Paperback 978-3-7469-6272-6

Hardcover 978-3-7469-6273-3

e-Book 978-3-7469-6274-0

Published & printed by: tredition GmbH, Hamburg

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, electronically shared or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means. Any electronic or mechanical photocopying or recording is not allowed without written permission by the author.

This is a work of fiction. All names, their background and stories herein are the product of the author´s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual personal-life persons are purely coincidental and unintended.

Prologue I

One Month ago – Singapore

He had left his office in the financial district a few minutes before and cycled towards the Gardens of the Bay, the futuristic tropical park on Marina South. He locked his bike next to those of hundreds of others who had also flocked to the 54 acres, a mixture of habitat and city park, after office hours to exercise, eat take out or meet with friends.

He sat on a park bench with a good view of the Super Trees´, the vertical gardens reaching up 54 meters into the Singapore sunset. Like many he spent only a little time on the scenery before focusing his attention on the incoming messages and mails on his smart phone. The working day in a private equity firm like the one he was employed by was long and quite often continued into overtime.

For a few days now he had struggled with what to do next. What he had found out worried him. He could go to his superior, the CEO of the small boutique, or his colleague sitting next to him who was the Co-CEO as well as head of risk and compliance. Small but highly profitable firms like this didn´t need much staff despite the huge volumes of business they transacted. He brushed the thought aside once more. If he was wrong and there was nothing, he would look like an idiot or might even lose his job, he thought, while browsing through his list of close contacts on one of his social media accounts. There it was. The name he was looking for.

He sat there a moment in silence, listening to his inner voice, staring into the darkening Singapore sky, as if searching for some guidance from somewhere out there, hoping that he was doing the right thing. Then he pressed the green phone button to dial the number in Hong Kong.

The phone was quickly picked-up and they exchanged pleasantries like old friends, which they were. After a short while he changed the subject to a more serious topic. She could hear in his voice that he had something important to talk about. She had no idea where it was leading when he started to explain how it had all began a few weeks ago but it got quite interesting after a few more minutes and she understood why he had called her after so long.

He explained what he had dug up so far and where he would need her advice and support. He did not notice the people around him. He was concentrating on telling her what he wanted her to know without revealing anything which could either jeopardize his job or set the hares running. If he had looked around he might have taken notice of the person sitting on the park bench next to the one he occupied. This person was alone and observing the surroundings. Most people had moved on now and there was nobody else close-by. The perfect opportunity to act.

The person had assembled something from a black leather bag before getting up and walking by the bench where he was sitting. Nothing special about it. People entered and left the park all the time. The person almost passed his position before turning around to face him.

He was about to come to the point where he needed her help. He had explained what he would like her to do and started to give her a name to look into when he saw the person standing in front of him holding something in their right hand which he could not clearly make out at first. Then he saw what it was. His eyes widened and his expression turned into shock and fear. Before he could open his mouth again a loud crack followed by another broke the silence. Loud enough to be heard by any person close-by but quiet enough not to draw much attention as there was no one near and there was traffic noise which drowned out the reports for those further away.

His head sank down and his body fell off the bench. The person knelt down and felt the pulse of the now dead body. The person saw the smart phone and picked it up. The call was still connected and the voice of a woman could be heard asking “Hello…are you still there?” before the red button was pressed ending the call. The person made a mental note of the number of the woman in Hong Kong before leaving the park and disappearing into the dark just like any other visitor.

In Hong Kong, she wondered what had just happened. A minute ago she had been listening to one of the most interesting and disturbing stories she had heard in a long time, especially coming from someone in the financial world. She got a bad feeling as soon as the call was interrupted and pressed the re-dial button several times to no avail.

The last words she had heard him saying were `Check out Dragon…´

Prologue II

Six months ago – Baku, Azerbaijan

Aview like this was unparalleled in this country. He stood at the window of his penthouse on the 83rd floor of the high-rise tower bearing his name. The building was the pride of modern-day Azerbaijan, an oasis made of steel, cement and glass in an otherwise rugged country.

He held a glass of single malt in his hand which had cost more than most of the ordinary local people made a month. But then he was no ordinary man. He could be a very happy man and would be if some disturbing news had not come his way today. Why could time not stop for a while when the world seemed to be perfect? Like yesterday when he was full of joy when he had received much better news than what he had to deal with now.

Yesterday he had learned that his plans in the U.S. had finally gone in the right direction. Some seeds that are planted may take ages till they germinate, if ever. Just like in this case. ´Finally, we are getting somewhere´ he remembered himself muttering less than 24 hours ago. He shook his head in disbelief when he remembered how the first steps had gone, how he had sown the seeds, one at a time. Looking at it now, it had felt to him like he was adopting an orphan and was turning it into his love child. And now this.

This afternoon he had again got some news from his many sources around the globe. This time the news came from Luxembourg. His loyal underling there, whom he had never met and who certainly had no idea that the trail ultimately led back to him, had called someone, who called someone else before he got the message. It was a long memo, not much different to security services intelligence briefings but with the small difference that he was not part of any government. He had never heard of the ´Common Reporting Standard´ or the ´Automatic Exchange of Information` but he understood enough that action had to be taken, and quickly too.

While he took another sip from his glass, he thought about how to deal with the situation. It needed to be addressed with utmost discretion, this he was clear about. But it also needed to be done fast. It took him a few more minutes before it became obvious to him that there was only one person fit for the job. That person was the best in class and the best money could buy.

He took out one of his many phones, untraceable just being one of the many features the expensive tool provided and dialed a number which some of his associates had obtained.

When the phone was answered the conversation was short. It was the first time they had spoken and even though he had heard plenty about her they had never met in person. But who needs meetings in this globalized world? Results were all he expected from the people working for him one way or the other and results were what he had received from previous assignments, sometimes in a way which surprised him.

The necessary details were quickly exchanged which would be followed by some more written instructions through secure channels. He made it clear that the assignment might involve several targets at various locations around the globe and that the contract may take a bit longer than usual.

Last came the price he was willing to pay for rendering these services. There would be retainer for the full length of the contract and a fixed amount for each human target plus expenses, of course. He knew from previous occasions that it would be a waste of time to start negotiating, so, he offered what he thought would be acceptable and it turned out to be the right approach. The offer was accepted without resistance.

Quality always has its price. This goes for assassins too.

Chapter 1

The Present: – Munich, Germany

It looked like another day of overtime for Joachim Gauweiler, compliance officer at Global Wealth Management Bank in Munich, the German branch of the global bank with the same name located in Zurich, Switzerland and known to the public simply as GWMB. For several weeks now he had had to stay in the office longer than he wanted and he had neglected his young family, remaining chained to his office chair in the evenings. He was neither behind with his regular work nor would anyone have accused him of working too slow. The cause was the additional workload ever more frequently dumped on his desk that was not in his job description. `That´s the pay-off for attending one training course too many´ he heard himself saying.

Joachim had been with the bank for the better part of two years. Barely thirty years old he had joined after learning the ropes for a few years with one of the Big-4 consulting companies. His specialty was tax-and-reporting-related regulatory compliance. When he first joined GWMB he was motivated by an escape from the strenuous long days at the consulting company where putting in a 70-to-80-hour week was not unusual for youngsters like him. When his wife-to-be became pregnant he considered it a signal to go for a more mundane job which would have regular working hours, or so the theory went.

Right at the beginning of his tenure with GWMB he had been sent to a seminar on CRS, short for Common Reporting Standard. After the workshop his boss and literally the whole bank considered him the expert on CRS. This in itself would not have been a problem but unfortunately for him it also resulted him becoming some type of internal service and competence center on the subject of CRS.

Another pile of CRS cases was the reason that he once more would be late home for dinner and miss reading a good night story to his little daughter. For quite some time he had given up sorting the files by urgency or anything else and just took them as they came.

The next file he picked triggered a kind of a déja-vu. It related to a company called ´Pegasus Transportation GmbH`. He remembered the name well from the last time he had had to look at it several weeks ago. Obviously not much had happened since then, he figured.

The firm had opened an account a few years back and must had brought considerable liquid assets to the bank at the time. The latter was probably the reason that the account was then opened without the proper complement of information, including a form covering CRS. The former head of the wealth management department had obviously given in to the Dollar signs in his eyes rather than giving in to reason and more importantly, to internal procedures. To make things worse, the client advisor who had opened the account had recently left the bank making it even more difficult to get anywhere particularly to get to the bottom of the issue.

Contact with the client had been attempted several times regarding the missing documentation without any reply. The account had recently been flagged as dormant as no activities had taken place in more than six months and the bank had not been in contact with any representatives of the company, if there still were any, for about the same period of time.

This alone would had been strange but before the account went into silent mode there had been heavy activity. Large amounts of money had been wired in and out, and not all of the transfers seemed to make any sense. Also, equities and bonds were frequently bought, sold and transferred from and to other domestic and foreign banks. This was all under an ‘execution-only’ mandate, so there had been no involvement of the bank in the decision-making process. All-in-all there was plenty of stuff which should have raised red flags.

A savings or commercial bank would have closed the account a long time ago or at least contacted the authorities but not an institution like GWMB where banking secrecy seemed to have been adopted from the Swiss headquarters.

Once again, he checked the notes he had put in the file the last time the case had made it to the top of the pile. There were print-outs from mails he had exchanged with his colleagues in the Luxembourg branch. This was because one of the stake holders of Pegasus Transportation GmbH was another company located in Luxembourg and in the due diligence process he had found out that this company maintained an account with the local GWMB. That was the maximum information he could squeeze out from the compliance staff there.

Joachim took another sip from his still-warm green tea, which he had been drinking by the gallon after he had quit drinking coffee. He had gained a few more extra pounds around the middle which he certainly didn´t need. As exercising was only possible on the weekend and he wanted to reduce his intake of sugar and fat, both of which he had piled liberally into his five to six cups of coffee a day, he´d stopped drinking coffee altogether. When he put the cup back on the table to again focus on the file of the Pegasus company he realized that he would have been alone in the office were it not for the cleaning lady tidying up after everyone had left the office, except for him that is.

He reviewed the reminders and letters which had been sent to the company and looked up the company on a public website. There the company still seemed to exist and there were good reasons for it, he thought. The assets in the account, mostly corporate bonds and exchange traded funds, had a current net worth of almost 8 million Euros. With that much value hanging around, he could only wonder why they acted so strangely, or rather, not at all. Next, he checked the call logs from all the attempted phone calls made to the company. His colleagues in the front office had got some feedback at first in the sense of ´of course we will provide the information and will have it sent to you in no time´, however no one had picked up the phone for over six months. Even though the company was located in nearby Rostock, at least that´s what the company papers said, nobody from the bank had taken opportunity to go there in person and knock on the company´s door.

Joachim made some further notes and decided to call his counterpart in Luxembourg. Banking secrecy or not, he had to find out if the account in Luxembourg was in the same state, perhaps equally dormant. That would be something, he thought, shaking his head. A multi-million Euro account and nobody around who cared.

The cleaning woman continued her tour from one desk to the next, emptying the waste baskets and giving the desks at least the appearance of cleanliness. She was standing at the desk opposite his computer when Joachim briefly took a glance at her. Very pretty face for a cleaning woman, he thought not realizing at first what she was holding in her hand. When he did it was too late.

Two sequential shots hit him in the heart and the head. The woman took the silencer off the gun, shoved the cleaning cart into a corner and headed to the exit door.

Chapter 2

The Present – Munich, Germany

The Nymphenburger Strasse is a street with plenty of high-end living and office space but also home to many coffee shops, restaurants, doctors and lawyers. At this hour of the morning both sides of the road were jammed with commuters driving to work towards the city or in the other direction towards Rotkreuzplatz. The same applied to the packed bike lanes.

Hauptkommissar Mathias Koch liked this part of the city and enjoyed driving down the street to work in the early morning hours before rush hour set in. He lived in the section of Munich called Gern, just minutes away from the Nymphenburger Strasse. He drove to the northern end of the street, passing by the same buildings he did when driving home at night. But it was a different time of the day now and he was not heading home but to a murder scene, double murder to be precise.

He stopped in front of a tall office building with a glass front. Some police cars were still around closing down the perimeter. The two bodies were already on their way to the morgue when Mathias reached the reception on the 7th floor. Not much forensic work was needed to confirm the cause of death. Two bullets in each of the bodies were self-explanatory. Before he was heading to the office of the bank he first collected some information on GWMB, so he would be prepared when talking to the people there. From what he was told by the first responders, nothing was taken or destroyed and it looked like a professional assassination for no obvious reason just yet.

Mathias had printed out some corporate documents of the bank earlier on, providing him with an overview of the management and the corporate structure. He learned that the office in Munich was opened in the 1990s, starting off with a small office in upscale Bogenhausen, serving wealthy Munich citizens. Over time, the bank had grown steadily and revenues increased considerably. The bank moved into its current building some ten years ago. The records he obtained showed that the bank had had it built and paid for it in full. Business must really have been good, Mathias thought browsing through the documents. He was certain that he had heard the name of the bank before but was unable to place it. It would come to him eventually, he was sure about that.

At reception, Mathias was greeted by Polizeihauptmeister Michael Mohr who had coordinated the onsite investigation from the time the police were contacted by the security guard shortly after midnight. “What have we got so far?” Mathias asked.

Michael took his notes and started to run through the information gathered so far. The security guard started his shift at 8pm. His main task was to sit in the reception watching the security cameras located at all entrance doors. Once each night his schedule also included a walk round all the office floors. At about midnight he had reached the fifth floor, where the compliance department is located and had noted that one desk was still occupied, although the lights were out when he had come up to the floor.

He knew the person sitting at the desk from many other late nights without knowing his name but he had never seen him sleeping. At least, he looked like he was sleeping at first, with his face lying on the table, the guard had said. When he came closer to the desk he realized that something terrible must have happened. A pool of blood was visible on the desk around the head and another one on the floor. He had almost thrown up and immediately went to the bathroom where he got another surprise. A woman lay on the floor, apparently dead too. She was one of the cleaning women.

“Anything on those security cameras?” Mathias interrupted.

“Too early for that. The records are currently being checked by forensics. Give it another hour or so and we should know more.”

“What about the cleaning company or was there only this woman?”

“Also in the works. There were 3 women, arriving separately and also leaving separately after each of them was done with their work.” Michael Mohr explained.

“Except that one of them was done before she could do much cleaning.” Mathias said laconically.

Michael overheard the comment and continued reading from his notes.

Three women entered the building after 8pm and three women left the building around 10pm. From the perspective of the security guard, everything was business as usual. When interviewed, he admitted that he did not pay much attention to them when they came in, heading straight to the elevators one by one.

“When we pressed him during the interview he could not swear that there weren´t four women entering the building. The security camera records will probably reveal more about that.” Michael said before moving to a few more updates regarding the killing.

Both people were shot at short range with two bullets from a pistol. It seemed obvious that the cleaning woman was shot first and that the killer was disguised as a cleaning woman when approaching the second victim but that too was still under investigation.

Most of the employees headed back home or did not even show up for work when they learned through calls and E-Mails what had happened. News spread as soon as the first ones learned what had apparently happened. The police wanted to talk to most of them eventually but it was not considered urgent. At this stage there was no reason to believe that the employees had anything to do with the murder, although it was way too early to rule it out.

Frank Brandl was one of the few who stayed. He was also a compliance officer and he sat opposite the late Joachim Gauweiler. He was now sitting in one of the meeting rooms on the same floor. Mathias had decided to start interviewing him first before talking to one of the managing directors.

Mathias started with a few routine questions to calm Brandl, who was obviously in slight shock. His voice trembled when he answered the first bunch of questions about who he was and what his job in the company was. Mathias could feel that Frank was loosening up after a while. The method almost always worked, Mathias thought. He continued with a few more questions about Joachim Gauweiler, his responsibilities, his private life and whether Frank could think of any reason why someone wanted him dead and who it might be. Frank had no answer to either of the latter two questions. Mathias realized that he would not get any more useful information from this witness.

“That´s about all we wanted to know at this point. It might be that we will come back for further questions. Thank you for your input.” Mathias said shaking hands with Brandl.

Frank got up and went to the door, shaking his lowered head.

“Strange things happen” he murmured. “I´ve been working for the company for almost 30 years and never had any colleagues to mourn, not even from traffic accidents or sickness. Now there are two people murdered in just a few months. Plus the cleaning woman.”

“What you mean ´two´?” Mathias asked surprised.

“Oh nothing.” he said, realizing he was talking to himself too loudly.

“Nothing what? You just said something about two people murdered. Let´s have it…this is a murder investigation, if you haven´t noticed.”

“I am sorry, I didn´t meant to…well, it´s just that a few months ago a colleague from Luxembourg also died. I forget his name, but could look it up…he was killed too.”

Now he had Mathias´s attention. Mathias´s gut feeling told him straight away that this was no coincidence. So he kept on asking. Frank told him that a few months ago a colleague from the Luxembourg branch was killed. When pressed, Frank had to admit that he knew very little about the incident, just enough to say that it did happen outside the office. He believed that the victim was choked or strangled. Mathias did not show it but he made mental notes in addition to those scribblings on his notepad. He had no idea what all of this meant or how it may hang together but the story of another employee of the bank killed not too long ago definitely got his attention.

“Thinking about it, there was another one but that was more than a year ago. It happened in the U.S., somewhere in the west, Montana or Colorado…I don´t recall exactly.”

“Seems pretty risky working for this bank, would you not think?” Mathias asked wondering what would come next. He never had been either to Montana or Colorado but he remembered well what had happened a year ago with a killing in Munich related to a man shot in Montana. Before he could finish the thought, Frank responded to his sarcastic question.

“I know what you mean…actually, it never occurred to me but now that you mention it. But why would anyone want to kill people working in this bank. We are no investment bankers.” he said, not sure whether he wanted to crack a joke or just wanted to say, that people like Joachim or him were just ordinary people with no obvious reason to be killed.

“What do you know about that Montana or Colorado story?

“Even less than I know about the one in Luxembourg, with one difference; I remember the name of that guy, because I met him once in Zurich. His name was David Wolferding.”

Mathias almost fell out of his chair. Now he remembered it all and he knew who to contact as soon this was over. Before he got on with a full day of interviewing more employees and the managing directors and analyzing the evidence gathered so far he sent an E-Mail to Hauptkommissar Alexander Granger.

Chapter 3

One month ago – Nice, France

The ‘Marché-aux-Fleurs’ was one of her favorite places to go when she was visiting Nice, which was pretty much every time after an assignment in Europe. Two days ago she had returned from Switzerland where three people had died of natural causes in a car accident. At least, that´s what she had read in the press. She always smiled when she read how some of her jobs were reported in the news with only her knowing what really happened. She wandered along to a stall where lavender products were sold. She loved the scent of lavender soap and bought two bars. She was just finished paying for it when her phone pinged with a text. Looking at the number she could tell who it was from instantly.

She quickly walked away from the market to a quieter place next to a church. When she had read the few short lines only she could make sense of she headed to her hotel room. Once she had her laptop booted up, she connected to Wi-Fi and then to a Darknet channel using a special program installed on her computer. After a short while she was able to communicate with the party, who still was unknown to her, about the next assignment.

The message said that there were two men to be dealt with in the next couple of weeks. A file containing all the information she needed was attached to the message. Just like last time she thought, although it had been a rarity to receive two contracts at the same time. The money offered was same as last time plus a bonus, 50% payable right away and the other half once the jobs were completed.

As always, she insisted being paid by various wire transfers through a chain of companies and bank accounts with the payments disguised as retainer and billing payments for consultancy services rendered. Once the funds reached her ´corporate account´ at a Swiss bank, they were as clean as they could get. She even paid taxes to make it fully legitimate. The low income-tax rate in the canton in which she was listed as a tax resident was an affordable way to keep up a front for her real business. She typed a message back confirming that she accepted the contracts.

Anastasia Borovka was her real name and she used it occasionally among other ´real´ identities whenever she travelled on business or vacation. In this age of technology, she did not believe in fake identities. Rather, she made sure that wherever she had to go to fulfil a contract she had some ´official´ documents under various names on her. If she travelled as Anastasia Borovka, she ensured that she had some legal business in the same country where the contract was to be executed, naturally far enough away from the target to avoid getting caught in the web of the authorities.

Anastasia was in her early thirties, tall with short dark shiny hair, brown eyes and an athletically fit and attractive figure that turned heads wherever she went. She could easily pass as a fashion model or film star. Nobody seeing her anywhere could imagine or could believe her to be one of the best global professional assassins for hire. No matter who, no matter where or how someone wanted a person dead, if they were willing to pay her non-negotiable price, she was the go-to person. Skilled in the art of killing with weapons, poison or even bare hands, she had never failed during her almost ten years as a contract killer.

Before she became proficient in the art of killing, she was raised by a family in Moscow who adopted her from an orphanage at the age or three. Her new parents were a wealthy family who made it big in the 1990s providing Anastasia with a first-class upbringing. Her parents died in a car accident a few years later and she had spent her remaining school years in a private college before being accepted at an equally private university, both located in London. Unfortunately, her inheritance was locked up in trust until she turned twenty-one and her spending on tuition, clothes and parties mostly ate-up her monthly allowance by mid-month.

It did not take long to find a lucrative source of income. Through a fellow student she learned about an exclusive escort service. It did not take a lot of convincing to have her sign-up. She was at ease with men and her looks were pure marketing. The encounters were of the no-sex kind at first but quickly followed by an ´all-in´ service offering once she realized how much money was in it. It helped that she had no difficulty sleeping with other men and could easily separate the emotional part of sex from the physical action, if the price was right. She nevertheless had acted very selectively, keeping the number of ‘appointments’ low but each one lucrative.

One day she met a Russian business man who fast became a steady client. He was in his sixties, quite obviously very wealthy and she figured him to be a powerful person in whatever business or political activities he was involved in. A few months later he asked her if she would be interested in working for him beyond sexual service. He hadn´t mentioned what it was he wanted her to do but the money offered had been too much to be ignored.

In the months following she had to undergo a top-notch physical training program which felt like a marine boot camp on steroids. After each day of exercise her body ached like never before and new bruises and scratches were added before those from the days before were able to heal. At night she continued her studies, lectures now provided by private tutors and professors.

After she reached a physical level comparable to the top of the line in special forces, martial arts training was added. Her instructors were grand masters of karate and taekwondo and former mixed marital arts champions. She had a natural talent and progressed rapidly. At the same time shooting training was added. Like in the military, her training went way beyond target practice. She had to learn to assemble and disassemble any type of gun, and be able to choose the perfect gun for any given occasion and situation.

All in all, it took her more than a year to reach the level of proficiency her Russian mentor was looking for. They continued sharing a bed from time to time but it was clear that they increasingly became business partners. He started by assigning her first killing barely three months after she had started the training. Not yet able to use combat skills she was requested to poison her targets or lure them to places where they could be killed by others.

The year she received her MBA in financial services she already had killed more than a dozen individuals. It was also the same year that her mentor died under still mysterious circumstances. Luckily for her, he had taken preventative measures to shield her from any close connections to him. In one of his last messages to her he told her that she should stay in that profession. On more than one occasion he had told her that she was one of the best in the artful profession of killing and that a great career was ahead of her. He was to be right about that.

During the last decade she had put more Airmiles on her account than she could ever spend, having accepted contracts from all over the world, mainly in states of the former Soviet Union, Africa and especially Middle and South America. She worked for warlords, drug traffickers and oligarchs, becoming a household name among those needing a ´problem´ solver, the problem being a person that needed to disappear.

One of those seeking her skills and services was a person who had first contacted her more than three months ago. She had just returned from a relaxing vacation in Belize after completing a number of contracts for a cartel in Nuevo Toledo, Mexico. The cartels in Mexico, Guatemala and San Salvador had become a steady source of income. During one of those assignments she got firsthand training on how to launder money and to communicate with her world through channels invisible, and sometimes unknown, to the ‘normal’ world. The accountant and IT whiz of one of the cartels told her that he had one of the most important jobs in the whole organization; counting the money and laundering it without anyone noticing. In her special line of work she could need some of the techniques she was shown, communicating through the Darknet being one of them.

It so happened that this new client had first contacted her briefly by phone followed quickly by communication through that very channel. She still had no idea who it was she was working for, but the money was convincing enough. She had been very careful with new clients to avoid running into a trap laid by someone out for revenge who wanted her dead. The first contract for this client had taken her to Luxembourg, and was carried out as professionally as requested and reimbursed in an equally professional manner, opening the door for future assignments.

As much as she would have liked to stay in Nice a bit longer, her new contract got her full attention and she knew she would be back on the road shortly.

She logged off the Darknet and disconnected from Wi-Fi so she could read the file without anyone snooping around on her computer. Ever since she had learned what Facebook, Google and others did with her data, she had got rid of all social networks. The less people knew about her, the better, particularly when moving around using her real name.

Once she had completed reading the very detailed file regarding the first target, where she was required to act immediately, she reviewed the information on the second one. The file told her that some guy in Germany, Joachim Gauweiler needed to be killed. There were a few official pictures of the target, probably from the company website or other sources on the net, and details about where Joachim lived and worked. The target worked for the same bank as the other one in Luxembourg. There was no mention of any restrictions, meaning she was free to take care of him any time, place and method.

After she had completed the first part of the contract, she had let more than three weeks pass. As the contract details did not include any due date she decided to take it slowly with the contract in Munich. Although there was little risk of someone connecting the two or even the one in Luxembourg, it was a safety measure to allow a timing gap between hits, particularly in this case where in the end three dead bodies would be accounted for in the financial world. The last thing she or her client wanted to read in the Financial Times was that someone was taking out bankers.

Two days before the scheduled hit she arrived at Vienna by plane and took the Rail Jet to Salzburg, where she had bought an apartment some time ago. She stayed the night there and took another Rail Jet into Munich the next day. During the past two weeks she had travelled to Munich on various occasions getting familiar with the localities and the whereabouts of her target. Considering the various options, she had worked out a plan on how to deal with Joachim Gauweiler. The office where he worked seemed like an ideal place. She had learned that he worked long hours and could be found at his desk after hours almost every day. He lived in an apartment building in Schwabing and moving in and out of there without being noticed seemed riskier than finding a time where it was quiet in the office building where there would be few potential encounters.

She had found out how the offices of GWMG were maintained and how security worked. Disguising herself as a cleaner turned out to be the perfect way to enter and leave the building late in the evening. She had tried it two times already, just walking in, making sure to be noticed from afar, moving around the building like the other cleaning staff and getting familiar with the floor and desk of Joachim Gauweiler.

On the third occasion she decided that it would be the perfect day. Unfortunately, things did not work out as planned. As soon as she had left the elevator on the floor where her target`s office space was located she was approached by a cleaning woman who obviously wanted to chat with her. That was not in the plan. She could not afford to be face to face with a person who could identify her later on. The decision was made quickly. Once the woman was close enough, she put a bullet from her silenced gun into the cleaner´s head and chest. She took the lifeless body by the shoulders and pulled her off the floor into one of the restrooms. Sometimes, unwanted distractions could not be avoided and needed to be dealt with, as she knew from past experiences.

Next, Joachim Gauweiler came into sight. He did not take any notice of her. She pushed the cleaning cart which she had taken from the dead woman until she reached the desk opposite the man she came to kill. When he briefly looked up to her she let off two more shots, again one to the head and one to the chest.

She turned around, took the elevator down to the ground and left the building. The security guard at reception did not take any notice as she walked out of the building. At the corner of the building, out of sight, she got out of the cleaning gear, put it into a plastic bag and started off towards the main station. Now, she looked like a business woman who had had to work late and was on her way home. She entered the first-class coach of the next Euro City to Salzburg where her apartment was waiting for her. At the Salzburg main station she threw away the plastic bag in a trash bin. Her part of the contract was fulfilled.

Chapter 4

The Present – Bonn, Germany

The office building of the German federal police, Bundeskriminalamt, known as BKA in Bonn was unusually hot. Although air conditioning had been added a few years back on some of the floors, the entrance and lower floors where still air conditioned the old fashioned-way, by opening the windows. It was already very warm outside which meant it was already hot inside. The warm and humid night had not done much to bring temperatures down.

Hauptkommissar Alexander Granger had been off a few days as some of his friends had the idea of celebrating his birthday in the mountains nearby Kitzbühel, Austria. They had hiked the Kitzbühel Horn and spent five days in a cabin close to the top which was owned by some of his friends. He was curious what they might do next year when he would be forty.

He entered his office and deposited his rucksack on the table taking out some clothes before heading to the shower room in the basement. He got out of his cycling gear, took a shower and put on his shirt and suit. His leg muscles and joints ached from the long hiking trips he had taken with his school friends. All of them had landed in different professions and finding time together needed proper planning, and a lot of flexibility, to say the least. Taking his bike to work this morning helped to ease the pain a bit. He had already decided to skip his taekwondo training until his body had gotten some rest.

The day he had left the office heading to Kitzbühel, he got an E-Mail from a colleague in the Munich police, Mathias Koch. He had replied that he would be out of office for a few days and booked a phone appointment on the morning of his return. They had had their first encounter more than a year ago when they investigated the killing of Andreas Brooks in Munich. This had triggered his journey to the United States to chase a killer whom the press later on dubbed ‘EGO SHOOTER’ not mentioning the fact that the person who went on a revenge rampage turned out to be his father who had died at the end of the hunt.

“Good Morning Mathias”

“Hello Alexander, thanks for the call. I followed your investigation in the American west after we met in Munich, at least the parts that made it to the public domain. How has it been for you since then?” Mathias asked.

Alexander gave him a summary of the previous investigation and some bits and pieces of the cases he had been working during the past year. Just the usual kind of small talk police officers swap as a warm-up for the case at hand. Mathias listened and made a few comments before adding some details from previous cases before he turned to the shooting of Joachim Gauweiler and a possible connection to a killing in Luxembourg.

“We have made some progress but we are now at a dead end. That´s where you might be able to help.”

Alexander wondered where this may be heading but did not say anything. On the train to Kitzbühel he had read the report on the man shot in Munich. It was a professional hit, no doubt, but there was not much he could learn from the little information they had had at the time. Now he was curious what Mathias and his colleagues in Munich had turned up in the last couple of days and how this involved him or anyone else at the BKA.

While Mathias started running down the case point by point, he simultaneously emailed the full report to Alexander to allow him to delve into all the details of the investigation later on. Mathias started by confirming that there was little doubt that a woman had been responsible for the death of the late Joachim Gauweiler. Security cameras at the entrance showed one woman too many dressed in the standard outfit of the cleaning company entering the bank after office hours. The cleaning company was able to identify all but one of the women, including the one found dead. The other two women were interviewed and confirmed their presence but neither of them noticed anything suspicious and neither of them had seen that other woman. The cameras only provided grainy pictures of the female killer, who wore a scarf to cover her head. That was about all this investigation could unearth on the killer. There were no finger prints or any other forensic evidence to get them any further.

“Sorry to hear that.” Alexander cut in, still wondering where he came in. He imagined it could have something to do with another killing in Luxembourg.

“Not as sorry as you are going to be when the case ends up in your lap.” Mathias joked.

Mathias continued his story, now turning his attention to the murder in Luxembourg.

After the interview of Frank Brandl he had had a hunch that these two killings could be related and collected all the information available through public records. He did not have enough evidence yet to request an international investigation and would require the involvement of the BKA, Europol or Interpol.

“That´s where you come in.” Mathias said. “Although I still have not the slightest idea regarding motive. One was client relationship manager, at least that is what the article in the newspaper said, and the other a compliance officer.”

Mathias had a point there. While Mathias spoke Alexander read through the full report and saw the possible connection too. Two men working for the same company being murdered rarely happens, if ever.

“Maybe a client was unhappy with the advice he got.” Alexander answered laconically.

“That must be it. Even I have murder on my mind when my banking fees go up while the interest rates on my savings account hit rock bottom.” Mathias shot back.

“Well, I might not be able to help you there but I guess I can do something about that Munich and Luxembourg connection. I suggest I take it from here and keep you in the loop.”

“Sounds like a deal. Good luck with that.”

Alexander and Mathias agreed to have a short call at least every week on any developments. As soon as Alexander hung up his phone rang again. It was his boss, Willibald Reuter, requesting a meeting in his office. Knowing Willibald, he probably already knew about what he and Mathias had talked about. Alexander got up and walked down the corridor to Willibald´s office.

“Morning Alexander. How was your birthday?” Willibald Reuter greeted him.

“My body is aching and feels ready for retirement.”

“Probably too much Kaiserschmarrn. A bit more exercise may do you good after all that feasting.” Willibald said, although he knew that Alexander probably spent every free minute exercising in some way. “As a matter of fact, while you were away I was informed that Munich police requests our support in an international case.”

`There you go`, Alexander thought to himself.

Willibald explained that Luxembourg police had also taken notice of the killing in Munich and considered a connection likely.

“They informed Interpol and requested an international investigation and Interpol contacted me. They checked on the two killings and this bank…what´s the name…Global Something Bank…and found, to their own surprise, that the BKA, namely you, was involved in another case involving the very same bank. Though there seem to be no connections to your investigation a year ago, you probably have the most in-depth knowledge of the bank. Long story short, we had a conference call between Interpol, police in Luxembourg and Munich and it was agreed to put you in charge of the investigation, temporarily reporting to Interpol.”

“Does Mathias know about this?” Alexander wondered aloud as Mathias hadn´t mentioned that this was a done deal.

“I sincerely doubt that, the telephone conference just ended ten minutes ago.”

`That explains it. ` Alexander thought and said “The world is full of surprises.”

“Why is that?”

“Never mind.”