Evasive Gold by Mauritz Fredriksen

Have fifty tons of gold been astray since World War II? But how could that threaten America’s dominant global role? Only if the word gets out. And it has.

When Norway was invaded by Nazi Germany in April, 1940, the National Bank’s 50 tons of gold deposits were smuggled away and brought across the Atlantic to safety. Or maybe not.

Could the hoard still be out there somewhere?

The word has leaked to a group of Neo Nazis who have made their own calculation. Fifty tons of gold is worth more than ten times what Osama bin Laden needed to build up the Al Qaida terrorist network.

Two agents are each given a mission. One in 1940, and one in present-day New York. Evasive Gold follows both men – each in his own period of time – until the final dramatic moment when their two paths converge.

US Treasury Agent Jay Ricci is sent to Stockholm, flying blind and on his own except for one official contact: Deborah Goodman at the Stockholm embassy. He quickly finds that she is different from any of the women he has ever known.

The Neo-Nazis are on the same mission – with their own purpose. And Ricci is a fly in their ointment. A deadly cat-and-mouse game moves from the streets of Stockholm, to Oslo, and on to the mountains of Norway.

Although Ricci has no backup from federal authority, he does have one other contact – highly unofficial, confidential and under the radar. Alec Henning is an American expat with an obscure past and a questionable reputation – and a hidden aura of power. And Ricci needs all the help he can get.

In 1940, Agent Peter Hagenmüller of the Abwehr Foreign Intelligence Service is stationed in Norway. He is given a mission that involves gold.

Through the war years, Peter is torn between his love for Norwegian Siri and his duties. A precarious balancing act is needed to survive, not only for himself, but for their life together. But with what he knows about the gold, Peter may avoid being crushed by the power struggles among the Third Reich’s elites during the final phases of the war.

Peter has only distant memories of his loving mother, and none of his father who fell in the Great War. He was lonely and bullied at the orphanage until he formed a life-long bond with fellow-orphan Jocken, who entrusted Peter with a secret – that he was Jewish.

Evasive Gold is both a historical WWII novel and a present-day mystery seeking to reveal the past through a hunt for elusive clues in the present, written and hidden 75-80 years ago.

But gradually the key to it all emerges. They must learn to understand the man from the past, Peter Hagenmüller.