by David Evans
Sebastian settled down and hid under the leaf of a large, indigenous plant. Its foliage was as broad as Sebastian’s ship cabin. He kept a careful lookout for snakes and the numerous large poisonous spiders that inhabited the island. He was angry with himself that he had not considered this when putting his plan together. The last thing he needed was a bite from one of these reptiles or arachnids to destroy his day and possibly expose him.
With the light increasing, Sebastian decided to make a move a few minutes past 6 am. He used his binoculars to watch the kampong stir into life. He was somewhat surprised as spotlessly clean children in neat and ironed school uniforms emerged from the ramshackle huts and went off through the tracks to catch their early morning school bus.
The men emerged from their shelters and went off to the fields and factories in nearby towns. By 7 am, the kampong appeared mostly deserted, apart from a young teenager who chatted quietly with an older-looking lady, possibly her mother. The older woman was slim, with her own teeth, and skin a little leathery from the effects of the sun. He surmised the woman was in her middle forties. They sat around a small, square wooden table that looked older than the woman, the varnish and wood stain a distant memory. It was not more than thirty minutes before the teenager left to go about her business.
He dismissed the idea of killing the mother when a younger girl, no more than twenty-two, emerged from the hut next to the one he had been observing. She was about five feet tall, with a beautiful, childlike, rounded face, and jet-black hair tied back with a rainbow-coloured ribbon. Sebastian knew it had to be her.
The old woman chatted with the young Malay woman for several minutes, while clearing the leftover rice and stinky fruit from that morning’s breakfast.
After a further twenty minutes, the old lady emerged from her hut with reed shopping bags, and disappeared between the other shelters, obviously going out for the dinner she would serve up that evening.
Sebastian edged closer and closer, with only the movement of the leaves in his wake, and the noise drowned out by the chorus of the jungle. He stopped beside a bamboo wall that acted as a fence to one of the huts, out of sight and waited another ten minutes to ensure that no one else was around.
His condition was far from ideal, soaking wet with sweat from the high humidity, and sure he must be leaving DNA traces along the route.
Sebastian amended his plans to minimize any risk of being seen, or worse, caught in the act. There were several areas of chance and uncertainty. He could not be sure that there was no one else in any of the other huts so it would have to be silent, and death rendered almost immediately. While he would have preferred to have some foreplay, this was a risk too far today, so his torture fantasies were put away for another time—and they were many.
He had considered burning the hut on completion of his task but thought that would bring attention to bear too quickly. He was satisfied; his precautions were sufficient for the task at hand.
Today would have to be perfect. It was not some simple rite of passage. Not a quick, fumbled, devastating exchange like Geraldine. Here and now was the real deal; this was more like the fantasy he had had ever since he had killed for the first time as a child.
There was not, nor had there ever been, a message from God telling him to kill. There were no conflicting voices in his head. No purely sexual motive for what he was about to do. It was about who he was and what he wanted to do. The planning and the act were what made life bearable and exciting. It was simple: he needed hair, and he enjoyed the pain.
After stowing his rucksack under some bushes, he stealthily crept forward, until he reached the only entrance in and out of the hut. He gently knocked on the door, and the young, pregnant woman answered immediately. There were no eyeholes in the door to see who was there, no chain lock, for this was a simple hut in a Malaysian kampong, and what was the risk to her?
As she opened the door, she wondered who this stranger was, and looked astonished for a millisecond before she began to collapse. Sebastian had stunned her with a jab to the jaw; it had rocked the slightly built woman to the core. As she started to collapse, Sebastian pushed his way into the hut. He placed a hand over the woman’s mouth, in case she gathered her senses and began to scream.
He noticed a wooden surround vanity mirror which could be altered to various angles, that the woman used to ready her appearance. With one hand, Sebastian placed this on the floor and redirected the perspective so he could see the face of the woman. She was on her knees with Sebastian behind her, also on his knees. He ripped off her sarong with one fluid movement, and the girl was naked underneath the garment. He would have to forgo the pleasure of seeing this beautiful girl in pain. He knew silence was the key, as there were possibly other villagers around. He would have to kill her quickly, which took the edge of excitement off a little.
The girl’s naked body was perfect. He would start with the pubic hairs, which were few, and head upwards to the beautiful, long, shiny black hair. He would have her plucked like a chicken within the hour.
Sebastian transferred his left hand from her mouth to her throat and began to squeeze. This had a weakening effect on the woman. She struggled relentlessly, legs kicking at first, and then more of a convulsive shudder as she slowly choked to death.
Sebastian did not take his eyes off the mirror, watching her struggle to breathe, the eyes wide and terrified, and still he squeezed. She babbled on in her mother tongue, more a rasp, as the life was being choked out of her. Her hand was on his, trying to pry his fingers off her throat, the other was rubbing her stomach as if soothing the baby inside from the horror that had befallen her and it.
Just as life was leaving her, the door suddenly creaked and opened slightly. Sebastian jumped up and let the choking girl fall. In a fluid movement, he stamped down on her throat, extinguishing her spark of life. Sebastian was furious that his experience had been interrupted. He was fast and no sooner had the visitor creaked open the door then he pulled her in.
It was evident now that the older woman he had seen earlier had forgotten something, and on her return had heard the commotion in the hut.
The elderly lady’s eyes opened in terror at the sight of her naked neighbour spread-eagled on the floor. Her eyes were wide open; it was clear she was dead. The woman went to scream, but the scream would not come out. What she had not realized was that her brain had not accepted the death delivered to her a second earlier. Sebastian struck her with the clenched heel of his palm. He hit her directly under the nose, and the force knocked the cartilage upwards until the nasal bone was pushed backwards into the brain.
Sebastian was enraged. He had not had time to think; the kill was a reflex action to a situation he had not expected. He had killed two women but had not had the explosion of pleasure he so wanted and needed because he was disturbed by this woman.
Sebastian lost several minutes of memory while he delivered his fury through his feet to the lifeless body beneath him. Gone was the pleasure. Gone was his meticulous and flawless planning. His lack of control startled him back to reality. He had blood spattered up his legs, and his white training shoes dyed into a bloody, slick red. Quickly he checked the slat which passed for a window; there was no other movement, and for that he was thankful. He turned his attention back to his victim, and with a firm grip, he tore away at the young girl’s hair, pulling out clumps of the scalp along with the strands of dark hair. Each tuft took Sebastian several minutes to gulp down.
Bloodied from the splatters from the women, and the constant leaking of sweat from his brow, Sebastian’s face and clothes were streaked. He took a bottle of water that was placed on a rickety table and began to wash away the evidence from his legs. His training shoes proved more resilient to the water. Once most of the blood was removed from his legs, he began to reformulate his plan. There was a pool of water mixed with blood on the floor; there were streaks of blood over the wooden slats of the door and on some of the furniture.
Sebastian took a
deep breath. His original plan was always open for adaptation, but this was going to be one hell of an adjustment. He would have to burn the hut and destroy what evidence was there; if he could make it look accidental, all the better.
The hut had what passed for two rooms; a bedroom with several beds in it where all the family slept, regardless of age, and the main room, which was both a living and cooking area.
As in most hot countries, the occupants would cook on open fires outside the huts. But in times of monsoon there needed to be a backup. In the corner was a 13.5 kg butane gas bottle attached to a basic camp stove, which consisted of two rings. On the table were a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches. His plan was formulating and taking shape.
Bordered by a pair of bodies and blood evidence, it was time to take his predetermined route back to the main road before the village folk heard the explosion.
As Sebastian boarded the bus to Georgetown, he heard a dull thud in the distance and could see wisps of smoke from over the tree line from the direction of the kampong. The cigarette Sebastian had lit as the ignition source married with the gas from the ruptured rubber line leading from the gas bottle to the two-ring stove. The explosion blew the hut apart and pieces of the dead women lay scattered over a two hundred metre circumference amongst the burning trees and foliage.
No DNA, Sebastian thought. He doubted the police would search for it, as this was a simple, tragic accident. The bodies incinerated beyond recognition he hoped, their injuries obliterated.
From Georgetown, it took fourteen hours to Singapore Central Station. From the train station, Sebastian took a taxi to Orchid Road, had some Singapore dim sum with noodles, mixed with a couple of strands of his victim’s hair, and ate the strange concoction hungrily. Following the meal, Sebastian hailed a taxi to Changi Airport. By this time, the fire that had engulfed the kampong and obliterated seventeen other huts close to the murder scene, and the lives and possessions of those two family members, mothers both, were finally extinguished. The final death toll had been four: the old woman, the young, intended victim, a child who had missed school through chickenpox, and her grandma who had been looking after her.
Three hours and two airport showers later, Sebastian boarded a Boeing 747 on the way back to San Diego, via London.
Chapter Six
Max Cutler was twenty-four years of age in 2005. During the previous five years, he had been through all the recruitment training, and then some, at the Secret Service training academy outside of Washington, DC. Graduating from the course in the top two percentile, he was marked down for the fast track for exceptional officers. He had quickly learned the advanced application training in combatting counterfeiting and could identify a forged dollar bill within seconds. His marksmanship was assessed as sniper level, and he relished and excelled at water survival skills and physical fitness. The slight blemish on his record from the course was the inability to keep his manhood in his pants when a beautiful lady, in this case a female instructor, came a-calling.
Within a year, Max had had several excursions into the field, as part of a covert team investigating counterfeiting and the organizations that undertake such activities. He had had cause to draw his weapon twice in the intervening years and had shot in retaliation once. The Romanian he had cornered with $25,000 in counterfeit bills was not going to come easy and had shot at Cutler and his colleagues three times before Cutler put a 9mm projectile between the Romanian’s eyes.
The Secret Service offered mandatory counselling, as they did for all agents who had participated in a shooting that had led to a fatality. His debrief was short, and the kill was good. Cutler felt no remorse; the guy was trying to kill him. After the shooting, he was no longer treated as the new kid on the block. Cutler had earned respect for his aptitude and attitude from day one from his peers and superiors, but the way he handled himself had built up new levels of respect and admiration from others in the Service.
He had been leading an investigation unit comprised of three agents and himself for the past year. At twenty-four years of age, he was amongst the youngest team leaders the Service had had since the Second World War.
Cutler and his team had been investigating a German gang of counterfeiters for much of 2005 and into 2006.
The Berlin Wall had been dismantled in 1989, which led to the demise of the East German Ministry of State Security, commonly known as the Stasi. Trained by the KGB, the Stasi had a reputation for being one of the most ruthless of any government department, even outstripping the KGB in some ways.
Reforming and restructuring the Soviet Union, known as Perestroika, had been Gorbachev’s legacy, and one of the turning points in the twentieth century. On the downside, hundreds of highly trained East German intelligence operatives had been put out of work overnight. Some of them would be tracked down and prosecuted over atrocities they had committed in the name of the East German government. Some had been taken on by their West German counterparts; most had set up criminal operations and utilized other ex-members or trained up new ones.
Cutler had begun to investigate such a gang, which originated in Dresden, in the old Eastern section. When the police started to close in on them, they moved base, setting up operations in a beautiful small town in Bavaria, Bad Reichenhall, right in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. The area was as stunning as it was quiet, just fifteen minutes from the Austrian border and Salzburg, the same distance up the steep, winding road to Berchtesgaden.
Cutler was on their trail and set up his base in Berchtesgaden. Following the second world war, the USA created a significant military presence in the area and built a large army camp, on the foot of an alpine peak. This town and camp were situated below the lodge known as the Eagle’s Nest, a birthday present for Adolf Hitler in 1939. The American military and CIA had several safe houses near the base. Cutler chose a pleasant Bavarian chalet between the river and salt mine, which was once an SS brothel in the Second World War.
The third day of June 2006, Cutler had travelled some eight miles along the alpine road to Konigsee. The scenery was outstanding: tree-lined, with Bavarian chalets interspersed with woods and fast-flowing rivers of ice melt from the looming alps, which served as a picture-postcard backdrop.
Their destination was an alpine lake with green slopes and wildflowers surrounding the bright expanse of water. Apart from the top of the Alps, the snow had receded two months earlier. Where there had been crisp, 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.