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.
He is 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
begins to question 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 of 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.