ZUrabia

by Peter Dash

Overview

ZUrabia—a word that makes the CIA and MI5 shudder, conjuring images of bloodlust in extremists.

It is the secret code name for a deadly coalition of rogue Wall Street and Swiss bankers, as well as Arab sovereign fund managers. Together with the Islamic terrorist group called Al Quomini and European neo-Nazis, they seek to enslave the free world.

One soldier in the fight for freedom is an unlikely

one—at least on the surface. Professor Adrian Sands, a Harvard University associate, has a shadowy past that few know. The scholar is also a trained mercenary and assassin secretly in the employ of the independent, spy agency called Z5. In an attempt to unravel the plans of ZUrabia, he partners with an ancient female Masonic order led by Isolde, an Austrian countess, and other allies from the Middle East. Shared peril soon draws Adrian and Isolde together in ways neither deems safe or prudent.

Nothing less than the fate of Western civilization is in the hands of Sands and his Masonic companions, and the clock is ticking down to the physical and financial doomsday of ZUrabia’s making. The Masonic order is charged with stopping the corrupt bankers and terrorists from destroying Western democracies and much of the global economy along with it.

Can Sands and the order unravel the conspiracy in time?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781462048779
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/31/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
File size:	467 KB

Read an Excerpt

ZURABIA

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By PETER DASH

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Peter Dash
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-4879-3

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Chapter One

The Zentrum district that Friday evening had the vibrancy of a Van Gogh wrapped in mysticism. Street streams of lit-up bistros, cafés, and shops were casting their gentle shadows onto the cobblestone running up and down the lanes. Above, bloodred geraniums in flower boxes were twirling out their senses in the light breeze. There was only one major problem with this enchanting scene that early evening. It was being lost on faceless financial figures marching down Bahnhofstrasse, the corridor to temples of global banking power.

As these bankers hurried through the shadows on the way to their trains, they remained oblivious to a more decipherable stone face of a free-spirited noble lady. She was babbling water and looking down at a wounded, snarling dragon. No one seemed to notice her spears in the bubbling fountain of the square as they quickly passed her by.

Throughout the city, the church steeples stabbed too, but into a fading woolen blue sky. The tower protectors of a cathedral seemed to project onto walls of wooded hills in embracing parks. Farther afield south to southeast, the snowy pointed peaks of the Bernese Alps appeared like ramparts to the city's outer defenses. Closer by, the moatlike river waterways gave a feel of inner security. Altogether, a near perfect collage of quaint edifice snuggled into the bosoms of Nature's ecstasies.

To many global investors and bankers, the city was more than a lovely setting. It was a serene financial fortress to an upside-down world that was increasingly sending its gold bullion to the city for safekeeping. A growing number of fiscally failed governments evermore at financial war, or even violent war, were making desperate grabs for private wealth that was escaping them into this tax haven. The succeeding waves of mass austerity, new taxes, and restructuring of sovereign debt had led to large-scale protests. Terror and economic fear seemed to be spreading almost everywhere but here.

Despite such growing threats, the town still remained the Big Comfy, as if nothing could ever disturb it. It was a name that had been derisively used by American investment bankers, such as Rich Fole, the Chief Executive Officer of Ripman Brodie. Fole was a man who had been brought up in New York street gangs and dilapidated tenement housing. He was a carnivorous male who liked to rapaciously attack his bloody rare steak and even his staff, rather than visit this European city known for its cultural pleasures.

However, the leading headline in the American media that May day waswhethercertainWallStreetfinanciers,withtheirLondoncollaborators, would be turned into Swiss refugees. Would the Foles be forced to suffer those softer delectables, such as Swiss fondue with Gruyere cheese? So intense was the US Justice Department's scrutiny and so antibanker had become the American populace that there was almost a feel of mob rule and revenge in the spring air. It seemed doubtful, nevertheless, that these bank executives would ever leave, or be allowed to.

After all, many of the senior US bankers subpoenaed by a congressional committee on financial mismanagement were still too glued to their modern, glass-and-cement towers. They still enjoyed the "in your face" urban-spread culture of Manhattan, along with her red-hot lips that stirred their blood juices. New York, with its primeval energy for making big, fast deals, would keep them away from the gentle refuge of sipping softly and talking reflectively on Picasso and piano, while slowly cultivating mistresses.

And what about often-forgotten Chicago, the Midwest dynamo, looking as if it were about to go into financial seizure? According to activists, some of its investment houses of retail "slaughter" had replaced the real meat markets in importance, but not so much in nature. This criticism of greedy investment bankers and stock brokers was more politely stated on the website of a group of Dutch tulip farmers, who had been warmly welcomed into US commodity futures with no future. And less politely stated by insanely angry hordes that had stormed or firebombed their way through banks in Michigan, New York, and Ontario, Canada.

Then there was London, so full of young financiers who had been enraptured by American banking hyperprofit and collapse, like junkies on and off heroin—or cocaine, in some of their cases. Their careers had accelerated and decelerated as fast as their repossessed Maseratis.

But at the end of the day, the Big Comfy seemed just too dull and even a bit too cozily regulated for American and London manic bankers. For all I cared, you could have called it the Big Sleepy or Camp Golden Pond. However you embraced it, however you despised it, this was Zürich: pristine, attractive, and smug right down to its superior wealth and false sense of security. Right down to its haute cuisine, outer sophistication, and smooth, precise manners. And on time to the exact minute, and even its very last big ticks.

Into one of Zürich's more cuddly banks—or "slaughterhouses," if you had a penchant for US antibanking terminology—I had truly descended. There I had met its head fund manager, known as the Baron. Or pardon me, "head butcher" in the meat-market, hyperparlance of the new Chicago school of anarchism and antimonetarism. Where indeed had these vocal protesters refined their vocabulary vitriol? Likely during the foreclosures on their houses or in the broadening unemployment lines—or in the near collapse of their investment portfolios.

Yet as a Swiss banker, the Baron was truly a misnomer. For he was a principal officer of an American bank in Delaware that was more secretive than a Burmese dictator. The Delaware bank was essentially a subsidiary to a main Wall Street bank. His small private Swiss bank provided his vaulted temporary office and served a correspondent function to the same Wall Street bank.

On both sides of the Atlantic, he had had shady underground dealings with questionable customers, some of whom could be well described as wanting to radiate global ill will. Some of them, he killed simply for personal profit.

He had used his title widely and tidily among the rich, ripped-off widows of Wilmington, Palm Beach, and New York. There, he had tried to feign a more charming profile. He was a true delight for these American ladies who loved to lap up anything with the taste of royalty. Especially if it was packaged with tax savings, and packaged carefully.

In Delaware, this half-blooded American, who had dumped near-worthless mortgage securities onto collapsing Icelandic, Irish, and regional US and German banks, would set up accounts for dubious clients to funnel their laundered money into onshore/offshore secretive US accounts. But in Zürich, he had kept a lower public profile. There, he internally wielded his own saw of cutting costs and generating high revenues from staff and traders. His slicing away, though, had also included polishing off some of his customers as well as his steak tartar with their own silver.

To his bank bunker, he would take uncooperative customers who did not want to pay exorbitant fees under blackmail. He would force-feed them bottom-up with their own gold or silver until they spat out everything but the metal. Soon after their receiving the deadly shining booty, their raw inner linings would be stuffed with rough diamonds. Then the "packages" would be smuggled off by the help of an old, charming ex-Nazi. The elderly Alsatian would ensure the corpses would be delivered to their scheming widows. "Sehr effektiv und sehr gut," he would say in satisfaction as he sent off the next body and collected his payment.

The silver that was left in the poor sods was neither magnetic nor detectable to customs. Nor for that matter were many of the shenanigans of this banker. He was a financier who liked to play around with the wives of the deceased-to-be or the widows of those who already had mercifully joined the hereafter.

In fact, some of that body booty had found itself into a nice set of steak knives. It had nostalgically been bestowed to the Baron for a job well done by one of his favorite Leuvenstein widows. Well, that was what the silver embossed thank you card out of New York had stated from one of society's finest.

After finishing my meeting with him in his deep underground vault, soundproof to all except the well-stacked gold bars, I felt relieved to come up in his secret private elevator. Given its old mechanics and shiny brass accordion door, it seemed like it was a hundred years old. Fittingly, the bank, which was older, had a pungent fungal air, as if what was below was more mortuary than depositary, more monetary crypt than modern vault.

On the other side of the bank, up the long winding stairs, was the reception hallway, considerably more uplifting. There, just several paces from the entrance, was the bank's "guardian angel." She wore a long brown tweedy skirt and white blouse without frills, along with an expression that promised absolutely no thrills. She wore thick-framed, silver-rimmed designer glasses while seated at a long, narrow, fashionable black table that allowed a perspective on her legs as you came up the entrance stairs.

In fact, it was a view without a chair, so as not to impair the message that you were to be quickly swept away in one direction or another. No matter how much you liked the legs—or even if you had preferred the table—you knew you would not be seeing her beyond a few snappy clicks of her clock.

After getting past this stiff sentry on the way out, as fast as my own legs could escape past her mahogany ones, I decided to go for a stroll. I wanted to get as far away in thought as possible from the Baron's disgusting packing operations. The walk, at first, had been good for my health.

After rounding the train station square, I passed over the bridge spanning the Limmat with its fast, vibrating, turquoise spring flow. With a deafening roar at that time of year, the river invigoratingly cut through the Alstadt, known as the old town. It had almost cleansed me from the sordid residues I had taken with me from the bunker. But I had a different destination in mind to provide for more peace and solace.

It was the far tower of the Grossmunster that had been my real destination. I arrived there after about ten minutes of a somewhat brisk and relieving walk. It was a tall and enigmatic, twin-towered cathedral largely built in the Dark Ages. Inside the first tower, the spiraling narrow steps made for a long, ponderous climb, which allowed me to think about whether I would ever be forgiven for the sinister forces that I had succumbed to. Curiously, the other tower stairs were boarded up.

These medieval symbolic titans of past absolute faith and inspiration for secret orders were more inspiring nowadays for adding aesthetic charm for passerby tourists. They were relics to when religion and state had been practically one and the same. Relics to when much of faith had been intolerant and dominant throughout the continent.

I looked up through the sliver openings. It gave me the shivers. I could see a steeple that was eerily lit up toward its heaven-piercing tip to ghostly effect. Overall, the atmosphere was Gothic cold and creepy, and it somehow made me think of inquisitors through the ages ruling with severity. And of newer castles and temples. Of newer crusaders and newer inquisitors, too.

At the top of the tower, I still managed to enjoy the better part of the fainting scenery in the broad panorama of the Alps that rolled their pastured foothills down to the shores of Zürich Zee. The lake then seemed to carry forth the motion of the mountains as it waved in the wind up to the rooftop of the opera house. It was a pure illusion of undulating, telescoping horizons. There, the percussive rhythms of waving winds and strings of landscapes orchestrated with the escaping voices of sopranos and coloraturas. Those voices seemed to call out to the Baroque angels moored in masonry to sing out Nature's praises. But what could one expect of the unfeeling, stone-deaf statues cemented to their lofty perches, irrespective of their designs to look like rising angels?

After taking in this "concert" in air, I walked down the tower's steep stairway, which from its great height to its very bottom seemed to take an eternity of steps, as if each foot had felt one decade following another. Centuries, even millennia, were seemingly in the dust that I disturbed in the shafts of light that were broken by dark stained-glass images and by my passing body. Would this brick and mortar eventually pass into dust too? I morosely wondered.

I left through the Romanesque archway, recalling the physically transient and the transformed. According to legend, this was a church built over the graves of three saints discovered by Emperor Charlemagne. It was erected in sight of where a Roman fortress had once stood, now replaced by a Masonic lodge. Decades ago, some of the Roman subterranean passageways from the lodge to the cathedral had been secretly converted into a vast network of gold vaults of some of the largest banks in the world. What a divine evolution. And what goose bumps.

After a short while, I felt a bit nauseated. I needed to stop along the crusader pathway known as the Limmatquai that hugged the river. There, the restless warblers sang their own opera. But it was an opera that portended darkness or ill weather.

It was at the foot of the Rathaus bridge that all went wrong. Melancholy was met massively with violence, and I found out how foolish I was to think that the very change in time and being in a sacred place would give me the real peace that I had desperately sought.

Instead of being cuddled by the end of the day's soft light that had couched the nearby holy sanctuary, my body was savagely bludgeoned. The subtle hues and pleasures made for soft canvas were suddenly severed to red all over. It was as if the sunset had decided to pour out its anger. As if the piercing, inflexible spires of surrounding faith had drawn blood.

For that moment, my sad, screaming, and broken body had become a metaphor for the violation of the first commandment. In the unwritten book of executions, there was no space for public killings or a maiming. A professional would have made it a lot quicker and more painless. He would have understood what it meant to kill in Zürich—the need to make it quick, hidden, and above everything else, clean. Certainly well away from the tourist crowd, who expected everything to be postcard perfect.

The unseemly public disturbance had unfortunately included my own blood flowing down eyes and chin. It felt like I had been crashed into by a runaway manifestation of the Swiss Bundesbahn. As if a locomotive feeding on some electricity of hatred had plowed into me. But if it had, I might have puckered up for that baby, given my occasional love for wreckage.

But the trains, like so much in the city, were so coldly dependable that they were even fined if they were not on time. As further proof of that orderliness, the city had the world's largest clock face on a church. Its massive timepiece was so oversized on the St. Peter Kirche that it looked as if it could have taken out time itself if it had somehow collapsed. That might have meant the end of the Swiss universe. And not to forget, the railway timetable.

The possible reward for my own bad timing in letting my inner defenses collapse seemed to be reflected on the river waters in the form of a fragmented head. I had prayed that I was simply hallucinating onto the gentle, swaying, and neoned waves. That I had been mesmerized and hypnotized by magical reflections. Yes, the Limmat River had become my opiate. Though I had not been consumed by it, it had helped me through tortuous pain that meandered in and out as much as the river's trajectory.

There had been additional compensation for my struggles to stay dry and avoid the watery siren appeal of complete defeat. It was to have the bejesus further beaten out of me; my short shouts of agony were followed by more fists, kicks, and other protuberances. It was like an imagined canvas of Starry Lights Out that Van Gogh might have painted with his last brushstroke before he shot himself into eternity. It was like everyone's final and empty portrait snuffing out the confused swirling themes of life, no matter how distinctive I had felt that my own death should be. God, the pain of it, the futility as the final darkness descended on me.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from ZURABIA by PETER DASH Copyright © 2011 by Peter Dash. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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