Cure (eBook)

Ken Peters (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
150 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-5185-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Once, Africa belonged to the families that resided in Her vast lands. She belonged to the people who grew in the shadow of Kilimanjaro to the fertile plains of the Serengeti. By the late 20th century, Africa's minerals, crops, and oil was being ripped from the soil and sold across the world leeching European industrialists. The tribal culture was no longer a fit for the urban world as a man could no longer measure his wealth by the number of cows he owned but instead, he began to measure his wealth by the number of children he sired. With promiscuity in the emerging cities and industrial human encroachment into the bush, so came the dreaded HIV virus. A company in South Africa develops a vaccine, but when a plot is hatched by a Group of Six Old World European Families to change the vaccine and cripple the continent, Africa is on the brink of another catastrophe. "e;The Cure"e; is a novel of biological espionage. A sinister group of mercenaries attempts to alter a vaccine that will result in the crippling of the African people. Can the Biotechnologist that helped developed the vaccine expose their plot and save the people?

Textauszug

Chapter 1

A Morning’s Business

Small, descriptive advertisements were placed worldwide in industry trade journals. T The talents and skills sought were plentiful. What was not plentiful, however, were the secret criteria.

There would be no shortfall of applicants. The grueling interviews would take months. The criteria they sought was beyond ability, it was about background and personal information. Those who would fill these positions would need to be single and without ties or family. They would need the appearance of still participating in society, while in reality, having long since left the ranks of those with dreams of a future.

The genesis of this advertisement began with a clandestine group of six powerful men. Their motivations were similar, but disagreements remained on the means to justify the ends. They were the old world intellectual patriarchs of Europe. Their power resided in the ability to secretively coerce governments through vast wealth. Today, late in the first decade of the 21st century, they were the leaders of families who had for more than two centuries controlled massive amounts of money in Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the UK.

Their current net worth was derived from their fathers and grandfathers before them who seized it during the 19th century when the industrial revolution of the west enabled Europeans to accelerate seizure and settlement of African wealth.

At the meeting today was Nigel Jones age 75 and Roger Atwell age 77, two men who had once controlled more than 85% of the exports and imports to Zimbabwe. The country, formerly Rhodesia, was once the breadbasket of Africa. The men had been business partners for almost a half a century.

Almost like a Dickens novel, they lived their lives around the wealth they had accumulated yet took little pleasure from it beyond the old world estate surrounding their daily comportment. They indulged not thoughts toward using their wealth to enjoy life. One might think that such men believed they would live forever! They both resided in west England’s Exmore country on grand estates, insulated from the common, but with all the technology to operate their empires without traveling.

Neither man could count any of their children or grandchildren worthy to fill their shoes in regards to taking over their respective empires. The two of them, as time had gone by, kept increasingly to themselves. Even family members needed clearance from their respective servants to get into the house. Their world view was shrinking, becoming more about what they confided to each other.

More and more their discussions centered upon what must be done to preserve their respective empires. For surely if nothing was done in the next 25 years, their families would lose their vast power. Money was important, but power established control. Patricians were never satisfied with money, power was the ultimate wealth!

Post the world’s financial debacle of 2008, the wealthiest worldwide were under a new scrutiny as wealth distribution became consolidated. A reset button was going to be pushed, and many things were going to change. The future of their families had to be secured,, even if none of their descendants were deserving of their wealth. The name must be maintained.

But their wealth would have to be removed from Europe where the EU was devolving into turmoil. Both Nigel and Roger kept this goal and their friendship foremost in their minds. They had been school mates since primary school. Their families had been very close, and Roger and Nigel were as close as brothers. Their family estates in Yorkshire abutted one another and so through the years whether riding or involved with pranking local farmers, they were thick as thieves.

After graduation, Nigel spent some time as a Chartered accountant while Roger became a solicitor working in his family’s law firm, Atwell, Hackett and Lawton. After a few years Nigel was sent to Africa to oversee several of the family’s interests. He continued to rise in responsibilities until by age 50 he was granted the position of managing director for his family’s interests in their own conglomerate of companies known as Thames Commodity Brokerage. By that time the law firm owned by Roger’s family had long since been partnered with Thames Commodity Brokerage and it was but a short jump for Nigel and Roger as old friends to begin melding much of the investments and fortunes to work jointly.

Another of the group, Fritz Kronner, was an 82-year- old of Swiss man whose family holdings accounted for more than twenty two different banks found in Uganda, Kenya, Zambia (northern Rhodesia), Namibia (former SW South Africa) and the Republic of South Africa. Fritz’s family emigrated to SW Africa in the 1820’s. His great grandfather and his two brothers all were educated in Berne and had attained degrees well suited for exploration into Africa.

As young lads the three brothers, a geologist, an engineer and an architect set out for adventure and fortune. Arriving in SW Africa their skills were in high demand and they quickly found their legs and began the family’s Africa Empire. From there it was a straight path into the world of mining given, their critical usefulness in analyzing underground conditions. Their efforts avoided dangerous rock formations which might not support tunnels for the mining of gold, diamonds and copper.

Given the European rush toward Africa and the lure of great wealth through gold, it wasn’t long after that the Kronner brothers began banking on a small scale by lending money to stake holders who were undercapitalized. This usually led to seizing their properties based on defaults. Banking became just another route to continue to control more and more of the land and mines. It became a spinoff business which generated funds to be moved back to Switzerland and fuel their Swiss banks.

Next was Roger Atwell, 69 years old of Belgium. His family formerly ran the railroads and the infrastructure at the port city of Boma in the Belgium Congo. They were early facilitators for the ships coming in from Europe, distributing incoming good as and sending materials back. The Atwell family built many of the European railroads and as Africa became more and more colonized with the advent of trade, the Atwell family saw the value of building miles and miles of train infrastructure as demand for goods was dire from surrounding countries. As the resources surrounding the port city diminished, the family pushed further into the interior, seeking untouched reserves yet to be harvested by the thriving colonists.

The family of Franz Heren, age 79, had once controlled most of the farming enterprises in South Africa. His family had immigrated to in the 1680’s to the Western Cape and from there the family’s fortunes expanded exponentially in those early days. It stretched as far north as Vintners. Their dairy holdings extended as far as Zimbabwe, into the Rift valley from Caper Town.

Lastly among the Group of six was Fredrich Dressel, age 86. For more than his seniority, the chair of this private and exclusive group. His family’s wealth wasn’t derived from the old world but out of Nazi Germany’s once huge fortunes, stolen and transferred in art, gold and other treasures during WWII.

Dressel was a former SS Colonel who oversaw Hitler’s art treasuries. Starting in 1945, those assets were secreted out of Europe and sent to South Africa. His family had settled in there after the Boer war and became major political leaders, founding the Nationalist party and beginning Apartheid. His roots of self-righteousness and criminality were well developed through the SS.

Fredrich was a self-made man, if only through theft, but nevertheless the wealth he stole was the wealth he brought to South Africa. It built his empire by financing the support of Nationalist party politicians who in return, after election, granted huge portions of prime real estate upon which the foundations of the great city of Johannesburg were built. His wealth continued to grow while building vast shopping centers and becoming one of if not the largest commercial developer in South Africa. Eventually, after the change of government, he had to relinquish, due to the new government of black rule, a 51% share of all his enterprises to the indigenous stake holders of that country.

Each of the group of six had to turn much of their family’s fortunes over to indigenous quasi businessmen in recent decades. These recipients, using the political system, took control of the former white European built businesses. In essence, the leaders of these new African governments used the independence movements to seize businesses for their own benefit. For the people, in some instances more than four decades had gone by and instead of democracy and growth, only dictatorships under the guise of democracy evolved, and the poor remained impoverished.

Of course, independence and anti-colonial movements were always done in the name of the people, but nevertheless those indigenous people who seized political power always seized the wealth. This same scenario repeated across numerous African nations as they won independence in the latter part of the 20th century.

The concept of retaking the continent, which was once theirs and their families alone, by removing all such indigenous impediments, was not even remotely considered wrong or immoral, particularly by Fredrich Dressler.

By any means, it was justified to retake that which was stolen from them during the decolonization in the name of independence. With great ire, for the group of 6 this was the ultimate affront and insult to...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.1.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-5185-1 / 1098351851
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-5185-4 / 9781098351854