Tidal Rage by David Evans (best big ereader .TXT) 📗

white, virgin snow in March, the hillsides had transformed and were alive with the vibrant colour and fresh smell of resplendent alpine flowers. The flora was glorious and all-encompassing. The impact on the view was stunning, with several shades of green interspersed with the blues and whites of the alpine flowers. Cutler had excellent hearing, and the chorus of birds and insects drowned out the radio, which was on low. The most evocative of his senses were sight and smell. The aroma took him back to his childhood, days of skiing in Lake Louise, Canada. The crisp, white snowmelt raced past in the river that ran beside his car. Sweet, aromatic flowers, combined with fresh bread from a bakery some several hundred yards down the road, overwhelmed his senses. His sense of wellbeing was in sharp contrast to what he and his team were about to do.

On the same day, several hours earlier, Sebastian, under the cloak of darkness, dropped Cutler’s sister Elisa still-warm body over the stern of the cruise ship. He had finally succumbed to his passion and killed a guest, a very special person to the Cutler family and her friends.

Cutler and his team were close to closing this ex-Stasi gang down once and for all. He had his team plant microphones where he assumed, they would meet in the parking lot leading to the lake. He placed one of his team behind the ticket office for the parking lot, and another elevated on a slight rise in the Alps, hidden by several pine trees. The third was in the café opposite the lake, and Cutler headed to the alpine ski area with its magnificent bobsled run.

Seppi Werner was the ex-Stasi agent in charge of the operation. He was a typical Aryan, with short, blond, cropped hair and blue eyes. At six foot one, Werner looked squat due to muscle, which appeared to weigh him down, lowering his centre of gravity. His operation was simple; he had acquired, through fair means and foul, as many one-dollar bills as possible. Werner used an American airline stewardess to import a thousand one-dollar bills from the States each month. He had an American US Air Force mechanic who could bring in another eight hundred through his contacts, an East End London car broker could ensure seven hundred and fifty per month, and others besides.

On average, the gang was collecting over four thousand one dollar bills each month. With their technique, equipment, and knowledge, they could convert the one-dollar bills into hundred-dollar bills.

This operation in Bad Reichenhall was generating them $480,000 per year. They received fifty cents on the dollar from other couriers, who would use and spread the hundred-dollar bills as genuine. The gang was clearing $240,000 per month from the counterfeit operation.

The bills were of excellent quality, as the main ingredient was the unique paper, of which they had a steady supply. Neither Cutler nor his superiors had ever seen such high-quality bills, and they were concerned, as it would be easy to integrate the bills into the economy of the USA.

The technique for bleaching and over-printing of the bills was perfected in a building in the Tierpark in Berlin, which was Stasi-controlled, and was now the German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst.

Along with its Russian counterpart, the KBG, the Stasi planned to flood Europe with hundred-dollar bills. Ironically, the United States had given the Russians the idea of flooding other countries with its currency to destabilize the country.

The Americans had told the English in the 1950s that if they did not leave Egypt and give up their stranglehold on the Suez Canal, this is what they would do to them. Their only problem was, the Americans controlled their output of money carefully, and to flood Europe with sufficient dollars to cause the Americans serious problems would prove impracticable. That is when the Stasi came up with forging the money.

Once the plan was evaluated, the Russians put it on the back shelf; it was assessed that the amount of counterfeit money generated would not impact the American economy sufficiently to destablise it.

However, the Stasi, with Werner leading the counterintelligence, was not willing to put it away so quickly, and had been working on the plan and converting dollars for five years before the Berlin Wall came down. If not for the communist cause, Werner was happy to proceed for his own greed.

Cutler stood in the warm sunshine at the bottom of the concrete bobsled run. He was just another tourist visiting this place of past sporting triumphs and beauty. The difference was he was looking through his 10x50 WB Swarovski binoculars at the parking lot instead of looking at the lake. The binoculars were amongst the best in the world. They gave Max a clear view of the Mercedes van as it drew up alongside the white Ford transit van with the oval Austrian vehicle registration sticker, designated by the black letter ‘A’ on the white oval background.

Cutler knew from previous observations that the counterfeit money would be moved from Konigsee, a few miles to Obersalzberg, down the steep, cobbled Alpen Strasse until it flattened out on the outskirts of Salzburg. Then it would be on the autobahn down to Vienna and then moved on again in several directions to their distributors in Hungary, Slovakia, Italy, and Switzerland.

The counterfeit dollar bills in ten large brown packets were being transferred from the Mercedes to the Ford, which took several minutes. It took far less time for the five suitcases filled with $100,000 in genuine bills to be handed over from the two men from the Ford. Werner went inside the Mercedes van, to check the suitcases. Five minutes later, Werner emerged and nodded to the drivers of the Ford, who already had the engine running and ready to go. Cutler observed the transactions.

Cutler, in liaison with the local police, had three police vans waiting on the Alpen Strasse