The Shadow Tycoon E-Book

Axel Trippe

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The Shadow Tycoon is no ordinary thriller - it is an attempt to rewrite history. With fictional calculation and frightening proximity to reality, the novel reveals how love, invisibility and digital thinking can change an entire world. What if "Satoshi Nakamoto" was not a technical vision, but an act of mourning? And what if all our world politics is just the echo of two invisible lives?

Leseprobe

THE SHADOW TYCOON

Foreword

Chapter 1.1 The shadow in childhood

Chapter 1.2 The first realization - "I am different"

Chapter 1.3 Camouflage as a life strategy

Chapter 1.4 Chronology of the shadow

Chapter 1.5 "The decision"

Chapter 1.6 The never-ending ascent

Chapter 2.1 The myth begins

Chapter 2.2 The first big deals

Chapter 2.3 The beginning of the network

Chapter 2.4 The retreat into the invisible

Chapter 2.5 The new order

Chapter 3.2 Custodes - The guardians

Chapter 3.3 The missing billions - a real legend

Chapter 3.4 The rise to an invisible world power

Chapter 4.1 The code of the future

Chapter 4.2 The invisible threat

Chapter 4.3 Operation Nemesis - The hunt begins

Chapter 4.4 The world order

Chapter 4.5 Mateo

Chapter 4.6 The end of the game of hide-and-seek

Chapter 5.2 The island

Chapter 5.3 The handover

Chapter 5.4 The Genesis moment

Chapter 5.5 The tycoon dies

Chapter 5.6 The judgment

Foreword

From someone who knows too much.

Some stories are too big to be true. And yet too accurate to have been invented.

This is the story of a man who never made an appearance - and yet controlled entire systems. Who never held political office - and yet influenced elections. Who never wore a uniform - but financed wars, prevented peace and overthrew governments.

He is not known. He is described in whispers, in headlines, in conjecture. Those who met him don't talk about it - or are no longer alive.

His life begins in poverty, in a country that was in ruins. And ... does not end. Because He is still active today. Global. Incredibly rich. Unattainable.

What you are about to read sounds like fiction. But there is no fiction that takes you so precisely through decades of economic, political and criminal entanglements. Too many details fit. Too many sources point in one direction. Too many doors opened at the right time - and closed forever behind others.

This book will leave you with a question that will haunt you:

How close was I to him - without knowing it?

And if at the end you think you've just read a novel, turn back the page. Read the quotes. The names. The places. The times. And ask yourself:

What if he really exists?

"The shadow that touches everything"

He was never on an official list.

No ministry, no public prosecutor's office, no court in the world could ever get hold of him.

And yet - everyone who has moved billions in the last fifty years knows his name.

Or rather: knows the myth."

I have never seen him.

And I've been looking for him all my life.

He was not a ghost. Ghosts leave no traces.

But he has rebuilt entire systems.

He has saved banks, steered governments, networked cartels - and he has not shed a drop of blood in the process. At least not himself.

Some called him a genius. Others a devil.

For us, he was simply: the shadow.

It began in Europe, in the years when money was still transported in cash in suitcases.

He was there when the first Italian bank came under pressure, when the first Russian roubles were exchanged for Swiss francs. He was there when Berlin fell, when Yugoslavian assets disappeared, when the Balkans burned and the West paid.

Always there - and yet never visible.

The accounts had different names.

The companies were just shells.

But the handwriting - you could recognize it if you looked closely.

He had no children, no wife, no biography.

Chapter 1.1 The shadow in childhood

Born to disappear

I wanted to live - not stand out.

You can smile at him today.

The old man in dark threads, with the reserved voice, the cautious looks.

You can puzzle, spread rumors, knit myths.

But before you judge, read. Understand.

Feel what he felt.

The gray walls of the workers' housing estate didn't just seem to surround him - they seemed to imprint themselves on him, as if they wanted to ensure that he would never forget them. The concrete, the crunch of shoes on the gravel path in front of the house, the dull hum of the heating in winter - it all became part of his childhood. Part of him.

The apartment was small, three rooms, kitchen, bathroom. The furniture was from better times - if it had ever existed. The dining table was the center. People ate there, counted, were silent. It was a quiet place, full of presence.

His mother was the center of his life. She smelled of soap, onions and sometimes lavender when she put on the good scent on Sundays. She got up every morning at four o'clock, prepared breakfast, woke him gently and quietly disappeared. At five she left the house, walked to the streetcar, and then on to the factory, where she stuck labels, stacked cans, ignored jokes and ruined her hands.

His father was a man of tact. Three shifts, rotating. When he was on night shift, there was silence in the apartment. No rattling, no banging. He slept like a rock, but woe betide him if he was woken up. Then Sunday was gone.

The boy - quiet, alert, highly concentrated - learned to live in the spaces in between. In the adults' breaks. In the in-between times when no one was looking. He taught himself what he wanted to know. Read what was there. Fixed things that nobody noticed.

When his mother came home in the evening, the real learning often began: she cooked and he stood next to her. Observed. Didn't ask questions. Just watched. Potato salad with broth and gherkins, sauerbraten on feast days, the roux that she checked with her bare hand. At some point, he got better at it. Not because she taught it - but because he saw it, memorized it, repeated it. He had a memory like a tightrope - one look was enough and it was there forever.

His mother said at one point: "You have an eye like a hawk. Nothing escapes you." He didn't know whether she was proud or sad that this was the case.

In long, dark winters, she sometimes talked about the war. How they had starved. How they traded leftover bread with the neighbors, how the sky lit up at night. Her mother's father - her grandfather - had gone missing in the war. He never came back. "Probably somewhere in Russia," she said quietly, "but no one ever confirmed it."

They were stories that he absorbed like air. Every detail was stored in his memory. The shuffling of her feet when she spoke, the flickering of the kitchen light when she paused. This world before his birth became part of his memory, even though he had never experienced it.

School, on the other hand, was an empty room. He saw the tasks, understood them at first glance, completed them without thinking - and was bored. The teachers didn't like him being quiet and too quick. They accused him of not being on task, even though he had long since moved on from them.

Once a teacher tried to show him up - a calculation that nobody understood. He stood up, took the chalk, wrote three steps on the board without thinking, turned around and said: "That's the derivation. You can shorten it.

Silence. Then: "Sit down."

Soccer became his equalizer. His place where speed was not suspect, but celebrated. He learned to assert himself on the cinder pitch behind the school. He wasn't just fast - he was precise. He had a feel for movement, for space, for gaps in time. A player who anticipated the game seconds before it happened.

He played outside right, moved inside, passed, shot, scored. His coach said: "He sees the game like an old man."

Once his father came to a game - he actually did. Standing on the sidelines, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he didn't say a word. But when he scored a goal and his father clapped slowly, the boy felt like a king. He never talked about it. But he never forgot.

And then there were the vacations.

First the North Sea. Year after year, always the same place. A boarding house with checkered tablecloths, the sound of the sea, a narrow bed under the window. He built castles in the sand, chased seagulls, heard stories in the evenings that his mother didn't dare tell at home.

Then came the first trips to the south - Austria, later Italy. In Austria, he drank buttermilk from jugs, heard the cows ringing and learned how to carve a toy out of wood. A farmer gave him a pocket knife. He has kept it to this day.

And then Italy. The first great view. Heat, voices that sounded like singing. Lake Garda, glistening green, strange and exciting. A boy his age showed him how to roll cigarettes. They smoked half a cigarette. Then they laughed, coughed, ran away.

The boy's name has long since faded. But the feeling - that has remained.

At home, however, order was waiting again. Everyday life. The emptiness, the duty, the expectation.

It adapted. Became quiet, efficient, invisible. A child who functioned - but was already beginning to map the world inside.

He observed everything. The bobbing of his father's leg when he read. The trembling of his mother's hands when she went through the bills. The silence of the neighbors while drinking coffee.

This childhood was not a childhood as we understand it today. It was early training. Learning in the shadows. A life in the in-between.

He was born to disappear. But in his disappearance, he gathered strength that no one noticed. He was silent. But an archive grew inside him. And the archive forgot nothing. No one could stop it.

Reminder.

Observation.

Power.

Chapter 1.2 The first realization - "I am different"

It didn't start with a big moment. No thunderclap, no outcry inside him. No movie that suddenly mirrored his life, no sentence that shook him up.

It was a quiet suspicion,

over months

spread through him like fog.

A suspicion that came at first,

when the others laughed

and he didn't know why.

He stayed when he was alone

and the images in his head did not go away.

It was the looks.

Not to the girls in the class,

who wore make-up, who wore glittery lips and fake laughter

passed by his table

like a ritual that they didn't even understand.

He saw her,

but he felt nothing.

They were like backdrops. Movable. Beautiful.

But hollow.

His gaze remained elsewhere.

In the changing room after training,

when the others tore the jersey off their bodies

and he had the feeling that he was seeing something,

that he was not allowed to see.

It was the body of a teammate -

the fine curve of his shoulder line,

the sweat that collected on his collarbone.

Drying off. Looking in the mirror.

The naturalness with which he was naked.

And he - stared. Just a second too long.

Long enough for it to burn inside him.

Long enough to know:

This is not curiosity.

That is longing.

He tried to push it away.

Told himself it was just interest.

Compared herself. Searched for confirmation.

But it stayed.

Whenever this one classmate approached him in class

and briefly put her hand on his shoulder,

it was as if someone had put a wire in his stomach,

that vibrated.

A tingling sensation that had nothing to do with fear.

Nothing to do with shame.

Not yet.

It was simply there.

Like a silent secret,

that could no longer be suppressed.

---

And then came this one moment.

A warm early summer's day.

The classroom windows were wide open.

Outside, the high-pitched chirping of the mowers could be heard,

the smell of fresh grass filled the corridors.

It was the last Friday before the Whitsun break.

These days had something floating about them.

After PE, a few boys stayed longer in the changing room.

They joked and laughed,

drank apple spritzer straight from the bottle

and made jokes about the girls from the parallel class.

They stood there in their boxer shorts,

as if her body were open terrain,

that nobody has to guard.

One of them - big,

with broad shoulders

and a voice that only recently began to sound deeper -

threw him a towel and grinned.

"Not finished watching yet?"

The others laughed.

Loud, shrill, as if on command.

He laughed too.

Too loud.

Too fake.

But inside -

collapsed somewhat.

Like a house of cards that had been kept upright for too long.

---

That evening, he lay down on his bed.

The curtains barely moved.

The sky was clear.

Through the window that looked out onto the street,

he heard the roar of a moped,

the soft call of a neighbor's child.

A doorbell, somewhere.

The world went on.

But inside him - everything had gone quiet.

He stared at the ceiling,

and for the first time he said it out loud -

very quietly, like a confession.

"I'm not like them."

---

This realization was a break.

Not just being different,

but an otherness that was dangerous.

Because in his world -

in the conservative working-class milieu,

between toolboxes, trade union regulars' tables

and the leaden silence of male closeness -

there was no room for his feelings.

It was a time,

in which homosexuality was no longer punishable everywhere,

but not visible for a long time yet.

Not permitted.

Not protected.

It meant:

Isolation.

Fear.

Perhaps even violence.

He didn't talk to anyone about it.

Not with his parents - his mother,

who took him in her arms in the evening and thought,

she would know what was going on inside him.

Not with his father,

whose quiet view beyond the horizon

could mean everything and nothing.

Not with a teacher,

not with a friend.

Because he knew:

It would bring nothing but pain.

---

So he began to disguise himself.

His voice became more controlled.

Every syllable was checked,

before it left his lips.

His eyes became more trained.

Never too long, never too soft.

Never where you could notice it.

His closeness to other boys -

became more distant.

He learned not to feel the skin of others.

Not to be smelled.

Not wanting to.

He became aware.

For codes. For dangers.

He listened carefully,

when the word "faggot" was used in the playground

and nobody said anything.

He observed,

how quickly people turned away

of those who fell off the grid.

How looks became cold.

How friendships broke up in seconds.

---

He now knew what was at stake.

And a sentence grew inside him,

which was to accompany him into old age:

"If you want to survive, no one must know your inner self."

---

Forbidden longing - sexuality in the post-war period

"It wasn't just a feeling. It was a risk."

The pressure increased with every year he grew older.

Not just the inner one, which consisted of longing and confusion,

but also the outer -

the pressure of society, the norms, the language on the street,

at school, at the kitchen table.

The world in which he grew up was not neutral.

It was a system of glances, half-sentences and clear fronts.

They knew what a boy had to be.

They knew how a man should behave.

It was West Germany in the late 1950s.

Homosexuality was still a punishable offense.

Paragraph 175 of the penal code stood like a threatening shadow over all those who loved differently.

The laws were not simply letters -

they were a reality,

that could destroy lives.

Secretly.

Efficient.

Noiseless.

---

Classmates were mocked at school,

if they moved too softly

or her voice sounded too bright.

"What are you?" some people shouted.

"Did you file your fingernails, you girl?"

The teachers made no effort to stop this -

On the contrary.

Mockery became an instrument of discipline.

Exclusion was part of the education.

It was not spoken -

it has been marked.

Who once stood out,

carried the stain forever.

He learned quickly:

If you desire the wrong one, you will be destroyed.

Not physically. Not directly.

But socially. Psychological.

Existential.

And yet, despite all the danger,

he couldn't change anything at his core.

---

When he lay awake at night,

he didn't imagine any girls.

Not the blonde from the parallel class,

not the one with the long legs,

that the others whispered about.

But rather: Hands.

Broad, strong hands.

Hands that gripped firmly.

Shoulders that were visible under wet T-shirts.

Glances that lasted longer than chance allowed.

His sexuality was not an adventure,

not a youthful fantasy,

but a hidden source of fire.

A permanent danger.

A silence that could vibrate.

He could have burned -

but nobody was allowed to see the fire.

---

In the changing room of the soccer club

every moment became a test.

He breathed more shallowly,

behaved like an observer,

not like a participant.

His thoughts were like a horse,

that he constantly held the reins.

An exercise in self-discipline,

almost like meditation.

When the others talked about their first experiences -

"She let me kiss her, with tongue!" -

he nodded. Smiled.

He was good at the game.

Better than them.

Because he was playing for survival.

---

Once - he was fifteen -

he ventured into a movie theater in the city center.

An old house in a side street,

half expired,

with peeling paint on the door frames.

The sign above the entrance flickered.

The ticket office was only open in the evening.

It was said to show "artistic films".

But everyone who came knew what it really was.

He slipped inside with his eyes downcast,

hands buried in their coat pockets.

He held the change in his pocket like a talisman.

The hall was sparsely occupied.

Silence hung in the air.

Only the quiet whirring of the projector and

the occasional rustling of a coat.

On the screen: two men,

A look, a hesitation, an arm almost touched.

Not explicitly. But clearly enough.

And in the hall:

brief glances.

Men who looked at him,

then disappeared into the shadows again.

It was not spoken.

Not smiling.

Only understood.

---

He only stayed for half an hour.

The fear of being recognized,

was greater than any desire.

He took a detour on the way home.

Avoided known roads.

Pulled up the collar.

Two voices battled in his head:

The one: What have you done?

The other one: Now you know who you are.

He felt soiled -

but also liberated.

Because he had entered something that belonged to him.

Something forbidden,

that felt more real than anything,

what else the world offered him.

It was not a place.

It was an awareness.

A truth that he could no longer take back.

---

From that day on, he knew:

His longing would never leave him.

But she had to -

at any price -

remain hidden.

---

Another encounter - Inevitable longing and a fleeting kiss

But he couldn't help himself.

The addiction to those forbidden moments that inflamed his insides was stronger than any reasonable caution.

Again and again he was drawn back to the place that gave him pain and comfort at the same time - the dark, fluctuating space between desire and fear, between closeness and hiding.

It was as if his nature could not be denied;

He was destined to return there again and again.

On another clandestine visit to those hidden movie theaters where fleeting light slipped over shadows, he sat again at the edge of the room - this time in an almost deserted section of seats - and felt his fingers tremble involuntarily with anticipation.

Then he came into contact with a new encounter:

A young man, about 20 years old, whose mature smile and self-confident aura immediately radiated from him.

The 20-year-old approached him quietly, almost as if he had read the hidden pain in his eyes.

With a calm voice and a mixture of desire and compassion, he whispered:

"You are not alone in this game of longing.

At that moment, when all the forbidden feelings began to boil,

he felt - inexorably, as if he could not help himself - the urge to follow through on this promise.

He wanted it, the warmth, the reassurance that another kiss could promise to make up for all those years,

in which he had learned to hide, to deny himself.

But as the hour stretched on and the moment drew closer,

the familiar fear rolled over him -

this paralyzing reminder of society's merciless judgment,

of the risk of losing themselves if the fire burned too openly.

In a mixture of desire and fear, their lips slid towards each other almost imperceptibly,

just a fleeting, barely measurable kiss that carried all that was unheard of, unspoken.

For a moment, time seemed to stand still.

The world around them blurred, while in that fleeting kiss

a whole story of longing, fear and unrealized freedom resonated.

But when their eyes parted, it was as if reality had drawn ice-cold boundaries again.

and he knew that this touch alone was not enough,

to pay off the relentless price he had to pay every day.

So it remained just this one kiss - a spark, a brief flare-up of desire that liberated as much as it imprisoned.

---

Chapter 1.3 Camouflage as a life strategy

"If nobody knows you, nobody can hurt you."

It didn't start with a decision, but with a reflex.

An instinctive protective mechanism - not planned, but born of daily necessity.

He realized early on that visibility was a risk.

Not just a risk for his feelings -

but for its security, its place in the world.

On the outside, he was a completely normal boy -

punctual, polite, reliable.

A model student,

who did not challenge the teachers,

showed respect to the parents

and laughed with the others at the weekend soccer match,

without ever being completely there.

It was not an act.

It was precise.

He had learned to observe himself.

His body language, his voice, his reactions.

Like an actor in front of a mirror, he studied every twitch,

every pause,

every unintentional blink,

that could betray him.

When the boys fantasized about girls in the locker room,

he listened, nodding in the right places,

laughed at jokes that made him shiver inside.

He began to model his language.

No soft formulations.

No slips.

No hesitation with the word "awesome".

Never too hesitant, never too enthusiastic.

Always in the center.

Always adapted.

---

It developed into a mirror

showed people exactly that,

what they wanted to see.

Not anymore.

And never too much.

What he felt no longer mattered.

Only what he radiated.

He had become such a projection screen,

that some even saw him as a role model -

for masculinity,

for discipline,

for inner peace.

But none of it was real.

It was a construction.

---

At the soccer club he was known as "the quiet one".

At school, he was told he was "mature for his age".

His mother often said that "he was inconspicuous, but reliable".

And he knew:

"That was his shield."

Not one character trait,

but a system.

A camouflage cap,

under which his truth remained hidden like a weapon.

The less conspicuous he was,

the more certain his secret was.

Because in a world,

in which being different is associated with exclusion,

Prosecution

or disgrace was paid,

the ability to camouflage was not an option -

It was essential for survival.

But not only that.

It became art.

To power.

---

He practiced looks that gave nothing away.

Movements that were considered masculine.

A smile that feigned interest -

girls, soccer, the latest jokes about "gays".

Never stand out.

Never allow too much closeness.

Never really being there.

He observed others like a chess player observes his opponents.

What they said.

How they betrayed themselves.

Which made them more careless.

He did not analyze masculinity in order to admire it,

but to imitate them.

This was his first great strength:

"the art of adaptation."

Not as a victim.

Not out of weakness.

But as a strategy.

Because the conviction grew deep inside him,

that he was different - yes -

but not weaker.

Not lost.

Not small.

He didn't want to be discovered,

but decide for yourself at some point,

"who he uncovers."

Who does not recognize his masks,

cannot protect itself.

---

His life became a stage.

He changed the masks so skillfully,

that even close friends never saw more than the surface.

He developed double meanings,

learned how to create ironic distance,

how to play interest without allowing closeness.

He could talk about women,

without ever wanting one.

He could laugh,

without feeling anything.

He was able to take part in conversations

and analyze every word at the same time -

as if he were an agent in the enemy camp.

At school, some girls called him "mysterious".

A teacher once said:

"He's clever, but you can't get to him."

He smiled.

Because that was exactly his plan.

Hide yourself so well,

that nobody notices,

how much you see.

---

"I was two. And no one saw who I really was."

He often sat at his desk at night, the light dimmed, the door locked. While the world outside slept, he looked at himself in the mirror attached to the inside of his closet.

A narrow boy with serious eyes looked towards him.

He knew that this was not the real me.

Not quite.

He also knew that there were more than two faces.

Two was just the beginning.

Sometimes he was the polite grandson who praised the soup at the table.

Then he was the tough full-back in soccer, silently determined, never sentimental.

On Sunday morning, he was the focused altar boy, waving incense without batting an eyelid.

And at night he was a shadow -

a longing, a silence,

that glided through the streets,

attentive, careful,

never visible,

always scenting.

What others saw - the disciplined student, the reliable son, the soccer player who never got into fights - was just the facade.

A construction, carefully built, cleaned daily, supported by habits and perfected self-control.

But underneath, in secret, someone else was living.

One who longed to be touched. For looks that really meant him. For a kiss that wasn't just secret, but honest.

A boy with soft thoughts and a hard will.

A boy who knew that his truth was dangerous - and therefore worth protecting.

He often wondered whether he would ever know which part of him was real.

Was the hidden boy his true self? Or had the mask long since become so ingrained that it had become part of his identity?

"If I play someone every day, won't I be that role at some point?"

This question drilled deep into him.

Because he felt that the better he became at hiding, the more he distanced himself from himself.

But he couldn't help himself.

Not in this world. Not in this time.

He started testing different versions of himself at school.

With the math teacher, he was analytical, correct, quiet.

He played the sensitive thinker with the German teacher.

On the soccer team, he was the tough, silent fighter,

and with the older ones, the yard break leaders, he was the one who understood the jokes - and yet was never one himself.

He developed a variety of masks.

Sometimes he spoke with emphasized depth, sometimes with a neutral tone.

He practiced in front of the mirror - posture, pauses, eye contact.

He imitated commercial announcers, older boys, radio presenters.

Sometimes he even practiced how to cry - not out of sadness, but for safety, in case it ever came in handy.

Sometimes he imagined what it would be like to live in another city.

Far away from his parents.

A place where no one knew him, where he could be free to be who he was - not just in his thoughts at night, but in the light of day.

But that was utopia.

Illusion.

He knew long ago:

Freedom was not a given.

Freedom had to be taken -

masked, disguised, hidden.

Here and now he had to be two:

The boy with the clean grades who stood up politely on the bus -

and the other, who walked through strange streets at night in search of something he could not yet name himself.

Two faces.

A life.

And a decision that was quietly forming:

If he had to inhabit two worlds, then he would learn to master both.

In the light and in the shade.

Without ever feeling weak again.

---

First small businesses - instinct for values and people

"I never knew how rich I was. But I knew how to make something of it."

Even before he was of age, he had discovered something that others his age didn't even know about: the invisible game between supply and demand.

It started harmlessly - with Panini trading cards in the school playground. While other children were dazzled by the glossy pictures, he recognized patterns. Which motifs were particularly popular, how to get them rarely, and above all: how much a child was willing to exchange for the one missing picture.

He wasn't loud, he wasn't pushy. He spoke quietly, asked the right questions. And sold what others were looking for - without ever revealing too much himself.

His classmates thought he was generous.

The teachers for reserved.

Only he knew that every exchange, every deal was part of a bigger game that he increasingly understood.

And he kept a separate voice for each version of himself.

He was the "colleague" at the exchange on the farm.

For the older people who asked about Rauch, he was "the little one with the connections".