The Story Behind This Book
In 1978, I was a banker on assignment in Tokyo for six weeks and a Japanese schoolmate of mine, Shinshiro Wada, insisted that my wife and I move out of our hotel and in with he, his wife, and their your son. One night he was out and our wives were talking about other matters, so I browsed through Shin's library. I came across a book called The Crash of '79 by a former banker, Paul Erdman. It was a fast-paced thriller of the Forsythe and Follett genre about the end of the Shah of Iran, Since it was written two years before he lost power, it de facto painted a fictional end to the regime, but because of its timing, it sold millions of copies. A couple of years later, I found myself living in the Philippines, and feeling like I had a book "in me". I started the book thinking I would write the Gone With the Wind of Asia, focusing on the sugar plantation culture of the Philippines and its similarity to the antebellum American South. I wrote the first chapter, and afterwards I didn't like what I read. Falling back on the old adage "write what you know" and realizing that like Paul Erdman, I was standing with my feed in a field of diamonds in the Philippines in the sense that the Marcos regime was going to end at some point in the not too distant future. Timing is everything, I recalled, and so The Marcos Money was born! But alas, I was transferred to Sri Lanka before it could be finished, and the fact that I had a new office to run in Colombo meant that I did not spend much time on completing it. A year and a half later, Cory Aquino and People Power deposed the Marcoses, and I missed that all important timing. I finished the fiction-based-on-fact book about six months after the Marcoses fled to Hawaii with their millions, but I never published the book. The fiction aspect of the book is largely in three of the lead players, Paul Steele, General Roman Menchaka, and the alluring Techy, and in the actual theft of the Marcoses' ill-gotten gains, tempting though it was. Almost everything else in the book is real the characters, though the names have been changed with few exceptions. Nearly all of the action actually occurred and all of the settings are real. The electronic theft possibility is based on products and tools that were available and being peddled by bankers at the time, and the money laundering techniques described were in active use in Southeast Asia. Time heals all things and e-Publishing finally came along, so now the book is available. People tell me it is indeed the fast-paced story I intended it to be, and that the characters are compelling. I hope you agree. As the Epilogue indicates, the corrosive effects of corruption are still depriving huge segments of the human race of education and economic opportunity, and safe havens such as Switzerland continue to offer depositories for ill-gotten wealth. I hope you like the characters and enjoy the tale.
