407 Views · Ongoing · David A. Stearns
A thrilling novel of financial and political suspense and intrigue, The HAWALADAR recounts one man's ill-conceived attempt to meld the highly regulated culture of modern commercial banking with that of the parallel, underground netherworld of Hawala, a world-wide network of shadowy money-movers whose services are ideally suited to the needs of such nefarious clientele as organized crime, drug cartels, rogue governments and modern-day terrorist organizations. Tariq Nasir, is a brilliant, dynamic Pakistani-American, who is amassing significant wealth via a fast-growing international business empire, structured to commingle modern business systems and technology with the highly secretive commercial practices of the old world and Hawala. The attempted assimilation of controlling interest in a highly regulated U.S. financial institution, however, ushers in the gradual unraveling of a family business plan conceived in Pakistan years prior to Mr. Nasir's birth.Logan Hart, is a man who is no stranger to financial or international intrigue. Hired as number two executive at the Nasir-controlled Global United Bank of Chicago to assist in morphing the once local community bank into the kind of international banking organization conceived by the Nasir plan, the recently widowed, career banker and former special military operator questions the advisability of having accepted his new position when a series of strange events start happening shortly after his arrival. Doubt begins with the death of a much-beloved, old regulator from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, who is murdered while examining the bank. Partnered with Cassandra Price, the federal official assigned by the OCC to investigate the circumstances surrounding the untimely death of her associate, Hart finds himself unexpectedly attracted to the senior regulator, as the two help uncover an insidious plot by an Islamic fundamentalist terror group, who are planning a coordinated attack on several American cities with a biological weapon of mass destruction. The pair find themselves at the forward edge of the battle area in the War on Terror as they work with the FBI and agencies of the Department of Homeland Security in a race against time to avert a disaster of epic proportions.
