by David Evans
Cutler approached Robert Stahmer. He described to Stahmer the outline over his own loss, and the problems he had encountered in trying to investigate his loss. Cutler omitted telling Stahmer where the funds to finance MIDAS had originated, and Stahmer did not ask.
Throughout the interviews, Robert Stahmer never discussed any detail about the Houses of Parliament attack, which reinforced Cutler’s initial belief that this man could be trusted with a secret. Robert Stahmer was, however, more forthcoming on how he had tracked down the drug-infused local who had followed his wife into the restroom at the back of a jewellery shop they had been visiting.
The drug addict had attacked Stahmer’s wife with a machete, dismembering the arm so he could retrieve the bracelet her loving husband had just purchased for her. The piece of jewellery would pay for his next few fixes. Mrs Stahmer just plain bled out, blood pumping profusely from the open arteries that seconds before had been connected to the amputated limb. She died on the bathroom floor. Her severed arm, stripped of the bracelet, was discarded a hundred yards away where the killer had dropped it.
Stahmer was angry; mad at himself for not having the foresight; angry he was not there in the bathroom to help her; and even angrier that he didn’t know who did it, as he wanted to rip him limb from limb. Stahmer had lost both his parents the previous decade and thought he knew about grief; he did not. The pain and constant ache, and the emotional rollercoaster he suffered; he had never known before. The nightmare kept him awake, until sleep overtook him. When he awoke, he thought it was indeed a nightmare, and his beloved wife would come striding through with his morning coffee in hand, just like she had done for all their years of marriage.
Stahmer returned home to bury his wife. The funeral was not an end to his ordeal; it gave him no finality, only despair. A few days after the funeral, Stahmer returned to Dominica, determined to get the person who had cruelly taken his wife away. He was not sure what he was going to do; only that he would not and could not rest until he had him.
On his return, Stahmer ensured he was on one television or radio news station or another for several weeks, complaining about the lack of information from the public, and how this could affect tourism. In the end, it was money, bribery, and persistence that finally unearthed the information. It had taken seven weeks of stubborn adherence to the gruesome task.
Stahmer was not oblivious to the danger he was in. The island’s publicity and façade are one of Caribbean beauty, white sandy beaches, and rum-infused nights. Go several hundred yards away from the tourist routes and you were in a third-world, poverty-stricken, violent country. Stahmer had hired a local who was an enormous mountain of a man, all muscle, but one Stahmer was assured he could trust. Joe Frazier had been named after the world boxing champion and probably, Stahmer thought, would have given a good account of himself with his namesake in the ring, even in his heyday. Stahmer began calling him The Champ after he knocked two drug dealers out cold who took offense to the questions Stahmer kept on asking their clients.
Finally, after a month, it was the shop owner who came forward with a name. He feigned terror of reprisal if he came forward but had now suddenly found his backbone. Stahmer disbelieved him. After physical intervention from Joe Frazier, and the threat of much worse to come, the jeweller admitted he had been approached by the killer with a false name of a rival, and they were going to split the reward. It did not take Joe very long to get the correct name from the jeweller. Stahmer would honour the reward to the jeweller, as he would need it to reconstruct his jaw and replace the teeth he had lost, not at the hands of Joe, but Stahmer.
More money passed hands, and Stahmer was permitted to go with the six police officers to observe the arrest. They broke down the door of the wooden hut and pulled out Nero, as he was nicknamed. Stahmer recognized him, not from the jeweller’s, but as someone who had been paying them attention several hours before his wife’s attack.
“You want him dead, boss? Five thousand US dollars,” the senior officer inquired.
“No, I don’t want him dead; that’s too easy. After seeing the state of your police station, I gather your prisons are inhumane. I am going to pay you a thousand dollars a year for as long as it takes to keep him locked up. I want guarantees that no one will pay to get him out, or I will pay the same amount to someone else to settle the breach of contract with you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, boss, I send you proof every year. We keep him alive barely.”
“Good, I want a copy of his fingerprints and his footprints, and each year for the next decade on the anniversary of my wife’s killings you will cut off one of his digits, so I may verify them when I come back. I also want access to him in the prison to see him,” Stahmer said coldly.
Nero began to beg, and the officer slammed his gun into his gut, knocking all the wind out of him.
“We don’t feed them in prison. They rely on relatives. This guy will have no one once word gets around, he is not getting out ever. I’m afraid that will cost you another five hundred dollars a year to make sure we can sustain him and pay for some antibiotics, as his stumps will get infected,” the officer pressed.
Stahmer handed over the fifteen hundred dollars to the officer as the first installment and kicked the recovering Nero as hard as he could between the legs.
Cutler had asked Kale Fray how he had come across this information, as he had found Stahmer quiet, proficient, and professional, and not someone that would give up private information easily.
“That’s simple; Joe Frazier is ours. He’s been our informant for many years. We owed Stahmer after the Parliament affair. He would have hit a brick wall in Dominica without Joe. We ensured, without Stahmer’s knowledge, that Joe had his back,” Fray replied.
“Nice to see chivalry is not dead,” Cutler concluded.
Cutler knew that as well as brains and investigators, he would need muscle. The investigators would need someone to accompany them; muscle, and brains, to have their backs; specialists willing to go the extra mile.
Stahmer requested Joe Frazier as his minder. Cutler at first, was reticent. After getting the clearance from Fray, Cutler interviewed Joe and made it quite clear that if he worked for him, his days of reporting back to MI5 were over. He also asked him if he were up to the odd task that walked the line of legality.
“That’s my specialty. One other thing; if I’m to give up my security with the British, I want US citizenship,” Joe said. Cutler realized that the Jamaican jive Joe talked was a put-on, and he spoke with a very passable English accent.
What Cutler would learn over time was that Joe was as loyal a person as you could get. He also had a marvellous ability to speak in most accents and could mimic individuals. Sometimes Cutler wondered if he was talking to a colleague on the phone, or if it was Joe up to his tricks again.
Following the acquisition of Stahmer’s and Joe’s services, Cutler turned his attention to a security company in Atlanta. Custodela Incorporated was set up by John and Nick Commons. John was ex-Seal, and Nick was ex-Secret Service. This was the pond they fished in for their operatives. Custodela, as a name, was picked as it translated from Latin to ‘guard’, and this is what they did; they guarded the world’s VIPs in areas of trouble. The company was initially set up to send out bodyguards to protect the green zone occupants in Baghdad; it had now widened its scope to other theatres of war.
It took a $50,000 introduction fee to Custodela to get Tuck Walters and a further $50,000 to release him from his contract. Walters was known just as Tuck. He was ex-SAS trained Special Forces. Tuck had worked with John Commons in a joint operation in Afghanistan to locate and call in drones to dispose of two leading members of the Taliban.
Cutler had thought the ex-SAS man short for Special Forces, at five feet eight, when he had appraised his file. However, on meeting Tuck, it became apparent that size did not matter. The man looked tough; he oozed power and presence. Tuck was of Maori descent, olive-skinned, square-jawed, a
nd black hair. He was all muscle and was shaped like a V from the waist up. Originally from Rarotonga in the Cook Isles, he had found the life too peaceful and sedentary; others call that paradise. Tuck had emigrated and signed up for the New Zealand Armed Forces until finally being shipped off to the SAS training grounds of Hereford in the United Kingdom.
Tuck had seen action when stationed with the British in Kuwait, Iraq, and undercover in Iran and Sudan. He had gained a reputation as a dependable member of the team; fearless, fierce, and uncompromising. Lately he had been providing personal protection for oil executives from the UK and the States in Iraq, and had saved several from assassination attempts, leaving a dozen or so activists bereft of breath.
Tuck was to oversee the security team, and as such, wanted to recruit his own men. He wanted a wing man, and immediately put forward and hired Hoagie Finberg, who towered over Tuck at six foot five inches. The pair had worked together on several sorties, each had saved the other’s life on at least one occasion. They had a bond; where Tuck went, Hoagie followed. This cost MIDAS another $50,000 introduction fee to Custodela. The company was quite willing to let their operatives leave for finder fees. As it stood, they now had an abundance of veterans from the Seals and SAS on their books, looking for high wages, and the need to get away from the boredom of civilian life.
Hoagie was as good-looking as Tuck was tough-looking. Short, blonde, salt-and-pepper speckled hair, and a striking facial resemblance to George Clooney. Due to this doppelganger legacy, he seldom left a pub or nightclub alone. The problem for the army of women admirers was, he always left with men, as Hoagie was gay. This perceived and outdated blemish on Hoagie’s curriculum vitae led to his dismissal from the United States Navy Seals, and his subsequent twelve months in prison for striking the officer who blew the whistle on his sexual preferences.
Another recruit was a twenty-two-year-old graduate from Harvard: Ghislaine Lyman nee Farouk. She was of Palestinian extract, born in the Gaza Strip. Her parents had been killed when a retaliation raid for an earlier bomb attack on a bus station in Haifa. The result of the bombing had prompted the Israelis to send over ten times more explosive power in the form of rockets into the Gaza Strip. Unfortunately, one such missile blew up the family home. Ghislaine had been dragged from the wreckage of what was left of the house by an American volunteer for the World Health Organization. By hook and by crook, the American volunteer had gotten Ghislaine back to the States, where he and his wife had adopted Ghislaine Farouk, who several years later took on the Lyman name.
What Cutler had been looking for was a linguist; someone who could speak several languages. Cutler had a good grasp on German and Arabic, but that was all. Tuck could speak Maori and Aborigine; how useful that would be, they did not know. Fabienne could speak her native Swiss, plus English, French, and German.
What Cutler had not expected was Ghislaine’s sheer presence; she was as striking as she was gifted. She had jet-black hair that flowed like layers of silk in the wind. Her olive skin had the red blush of youth and was faultless. She was five feet nine inches tall, and the heels she wore made her look more like six feet. When Cutler met her for the first time, she wore a two-piece white trouser suit which defined her slim, hourglass figure. The suit also accentuated the lustre of her hair against the whiteness of the suit. Ghislaine wore round Gucci sunglasses, her bright green eyes shining through the polarized layers of glass.
Cutler and Cheryl now had their initial team for MIDAS. Cheryl would be the researcher based in Florida who would be responsible for initial research. Matt Rice was their photographic expert. Fabienne in Geneva was responsible for building secure IT systems, research, and building search engines to assist Cheryl. Tuck and Hoagie were security, surveillance, and counter-surveillance. Robert Stahmer was his deputy lead investigator. Ghislaine was their translator.
Finally, Cutler transferred the first $1.4 million across to the MIDAS bank account. This was the interest earned on the initial deposit and would be the running fee for the pristine organization. This was the same day Fabienne completed the new MIDAS website, with the first appeal to anyone with information on Cheryl’s husband’s death and subsequent disappearance from the Large Pink Boat.
Cutler would wait a month or so before putting up a page for his missing sister Elisa. He thought he owed it to Cheryl to try and solve that case first and put the whole of his team on it.
He had worked for several weeks trying to identify and locate other potential investigators. One person he had not considered was Detective Manfred Shultz from Munich. He had collaborated with him in the Werner case and had almost forgotten about him. The news about his sister Elisa had overpowered him to such an extent that he had overlooked an obvious and capable investigator.
Cutler had known Shultz for eighteen months while working on the Werner case. Shultz had been responsible for identifying the master forger and the first tenuous link with an unknown government official. It was unfortunate that six months before they arrested Werner, Shultz had gone off on holiday and then disappeared off the radar. The German police did not offer an explanation to Cutler at the time, and appeared to be hiding something from him.
Cutler was enjoying a Wiener schnitzel and Weiss beer with Enrich, the German police commander Cutler had worked so closely with on the Werner case. The meeting in Munich had originally been set up as an update on the counterfeit gang. The commander was aware that Cutler had left the Secret Service and set up MIDAS. They had become good friends during the lengthy investigation.
Having enjoyed the main course, they moved on to the apple strudel, washed down with a double helping of Jägermeister. In the pauses, when they were neither eating nor drinking, Enrich briefed Cutler on the progress of the investigation. In return, Cutler explained how he had now left the Secret Service and had set up MIDAS, and on the revelations, or lack of them, surrounding his sister’s disappearance. As an addendum and a throwaway remark, he asked Enrich if he knew of any first-class investigators looking for a well-paid and varied career.
Not really expecting any quick reply, Cutler was caught a little off guard when Enrich directed him towards Shultz.
“We kept this from you and within the department for his sake, and for the benefit of the department. Shultz’s wife went missing on holiday, and he spent some time under investigation as a prime suspect before being repatriated to Munich for lack of evidence.”
“My Lord, I didn’t know!” Cutler replied.
“It was several months before your terrible news concerning your sister. You had enough grief to deal with without giving you more bad news, as I know you both got on well,” Enrich said, between sips of his Jägermeister.
“Is he still with the department?”
“No, I’m ashamed to say. The bad publicity… he was released for lack of evidence, not cleared. My overlords deemed this sufficient to terminate his employment.”
Cutler thought for a moment before replying.
“He was a damned good investigator. What is he up to now?”
“He undertakes private investigations, affairs and divorces, mostly. But he is not happy in his work. I think he would be exactly what you are looking for, considering the remit of MIDAS.”
Cutler ensured that Enrich had the details of his new office in the Everglades, and in return he received the napkin with Shultz’s address and telephone number.
Cutler took a day to consider and assess the data Fabienne had accessed on Shultz. Knowing the man, and with Enrich’s advocacy, he gave careful thought and felt that the evidence before him was full of holes. He was willing to do what the Munich authorities had not done—give Shultz the benefit of the doubt, and the opportunity to come on-board with MIDAS.
They met at the Olympic Stadium. Cutler guided him past the lake and up the knoll while exchanging pleasantries. Cutler did not think it appropriate to ask him the questions he needed to be answered, nor did he want to be overheard while explaining the position available.
Atop the hill, with the BMW factory with the four buildings shaped like car pistons in the background, Cutler asked him about the circumstances of his wife’s disappearance. Cutler was stunned by the closeness of the situation surrounding Shultz’s wife’s disappearance and Elisa’s. Once satisfied he was telling him the truth, he outlined the vision of MIDAS and the offer on the table.
Shultz needed no more than a minute to absorb the implications and changes the offer would make to his life and accepted immediately. He had one proviso, however; that at some stage, MIDAS would investigate his wife’s disappearance.
Cutler accepted the proviso but thought they had three open cases now: Elisa, Cheryl’s husband Don, and now Frau Shultz.
“One more thing; the job may not always be safe. We are looking for killers. You need to make a will; we have insured each operative for one million dollars. In your contract, there is a ‘volenti non fit injuria’ clause. In simple terms, you accept the risk willingly.”
Shultz agreed to fly to the Everglades the following week for induction, technique training, and to meet the team. From there he would travel to Geneva to see the set-up there, and then he would be allocated his first case.
Cutler drove from Munich for several hours in his hired C-class Mercedes and met his next appointment at the service station of the A12 Autobahn. Unbeknown to Cheryl, Cutler had recruited one more investigator. The position was not for MIDAS, it was for his conscience. While his primary concern was MIDAS, and finding out what had happened to his sister, he could not forget that there was a senior politician in Germany authorizing the manufacture of counterfeit American dollars along with her gangster counterpart, Werner. Cutler felt he had a duty to continue the investigation; maybe it was the money he had taken, but he did not think it was guilt. He felt it was the right thing to do.