SYNOPSIS for RED DIAMONDS & NAZI GOLD © - THE MAKING OF A TYCOON During the second half of the 60’s Eric Stark had served his country as Trade Commissioner for Western Canada and the US Northwest with headquarters in Vancouver, British Columbia. Through his work he had established a close relationship with the Foreign Procurement Manager for a major space and aircraft corporation in Renton, Washington; his name was Pierre Renard, an aeronautical engineer, who had left France immediately after the allied invasion in Normandy and then succeeded to land his top executive job at North American Space and Aircraft Industries – NASAI for short; he lived with his wife Jane in a beautiful house in Edmonds, a small community on the shores of Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest. Eric Stark had grown up in Stockholm during the war. The fearful memories they both had of the wartime – Pierre in an occupied country and Eric in a land surrounded and continuously intimidated by the Nazis - had brought them together in a common goal: to do whatever they could to help prevent a Third World War. They were convinced that only as long as there was a Balance of Power between the superpowers, a new world war could be avoided; to enhance that balance the two friends developed and implemented a bold scheme of international high-tech sharing. After leaving service, Eric Stark marries Elizabeth Banning in Las Vegas; she had until then been responsible for marketing of rough diamonds in Western Europe for De Beers, Johannesburg. They settle down in George Town on Cayman Islands to embark on a daring diamond joint venture with an English consortium; the company – Durum Limited – is to start its operations on October 1, 1970. A powerful adversary decides to stop them in their endeavor and has no qualms about even committing murder to keep them out of the world diamond market. But what the antagonist doesn’t know is that Eric Stark has a mighty partner in Giovanni Bertonini, the owner of the Italian corporation contracted for the worldwide marketing of the cut diamonds; but he is also Capo of one of the leading Camorra families in Napoli. Will Eric Stark and Giovanni Bertonini prevail over their cunning adversary? The huge cash flow from the high-tech transfer business with Moscow and Beirut finances Eric’s and Pierre’s initial investment in Durum Limited giving them fifty percent of the share capital; the remaining fifty percent is held by the English consortium; together with brokerage fees from the future high-tech transfer business with Beijing through a new intermediary in Singapore, the financing of a rapid expansion of the diamond business seems secured. The projected cash flow further allows Eric and Pierre to start a new business venture – Corporate Raiding – through their holding company within the next few years; the time schedule for the new venture changes dramatically when they are offered one billion US dollars from German investment groups in Argentina, Chile and Paraguay for Corporate Raiding projects. Eric and Pierre are convinced that this huge pile of money must be part of the Nazi treasure stolen from museums, castles and wealthy Jewish people in Europe. The two partners discuss whether they should use Nazi Gold for their own enrichment and come to the conclusion that if they don’t, someone else will; hence, they decide to go ahead. KGB’s efforts to find the owner of the number-account in Zurich, Switzerland, to which Moscow had paid for the microfilm deliveries, had already led to the liquidation of one of its agents; another of its agents discovers by chance Johann Schneebeli, the Swiss Manager for that number-account, at one of the gambling tables in Las Vegas and starts tailing him; the Swiss senses the tail and takes a cab to Joe Cossini, one of Giovanni Bertonini’s men, in the outskirts of Las Vegas to get rid of the Russian. The Swiss realizes that he is the only one knowing the identity of the owner of the Swiss number-account and is determined not to disclose that to KGB or anyone else. Copyright©2009 ICM Ltd., Canada. All rights reserved.