Jerry Bader

The Axel Files: The Cherub & The ChariotWritten by Jerry BaderPrivate Investigator Axel Webb is drawn into an intricate web of revolution, greed, and infidelity when his Russian nemesis, gangster Vladimir Bok, pressures Axel to find a missing Faberg Egg: an exquisite example of Russian Imperial craftsmanship that disappeared sometime in the 1930s.Wealthy Americans jumped at the chance to collect these works of art when successive Bolshevik regimes sold off these national treasures to fund their political and economic incompetence. Decades later, national pride demanded the repatriation of as many of the fifty-two eggs created as possible. Most of the eggs are accounted for, except six. One of the six has been dubbed The Cherub and The Chariot due to its design, described as a gold putto pulling a cart that holds a bejewelled, gold egg that opens to reveal a clock. The House of Faberg created the egg for Tsar Alexander III to give to his wife, Maria Feodorovna, for Easter in 1885.Axel is approached by Monty Brown, a former colleague he worked with, to find the egg. Monty is an art expert and conman by trade, but Axel ignores Monty's penchant for double-dealing because he's a friend. And because Bok threatened to kill Monty if he couldn't get Axel to help.Bok isn't your average mobster; he's connected to the one man who controls everything in Russia: the other Vladimir. He's been given diplomatic status, so he's free to do whatever is necessary to find and purchase the missing eggs. Axel's expertise is finding lost or stolen works of art, so Bok needs his help, but Axel and Bok have too much history for Bok to contact Axel directly, so he uses Monty as his go-between.Reluctantly, Axel takes on the case that leads him to Hollywood, an estate lawyer, a disgraced former movie star, and the great-granddaughter of the illegitimate daughter of the oil baron who the Kremlin ordered to turn the Imperial treasures into cash. But nothing Axel does is ever uncomplicated. During the hunt for the missing Easter egg, Axel discovers what he thinks is a missing Oscar plaque that could be the one rumoured to have been stolen during the 1938 Academy Awards. The discovery is somehow connected to the missing egg.Success in the case of The Cherub and Chariot is an elusive objective. A fat fee doesn't balance the betrayal Axel feels when the truth is finally revealed.

Ari Katz, an old friend and Israeli Lahav 433 Agent, approaches Investigator Axel Webb to find the Saudi Blue, a 50-carat blue diamond stolen in 1989 by a Thai servant, Jira Bun Ma, working at the palace of a Saudi Prince. After a quick Thai police investigation, Bun Ma was arrested. Most of the gems were found and returned to the Saudis with great fanfare. Unfortunately, many items returned were fakes and not the original gems stolen. The most valuable of the missing gems was the Saudi Blue. When Saudi officials noticed newspaper photographs of the wives of high-ranking members of the Thai police and government wearing the Prince's jewellery, they knew they'd been played. The result was the murder of three Saudi diplomats and a Saudi businessman and friend of the Prince. The diplomatic disaster led to thirty years of tensions between the two countries. In January 2022, the two countries ended their feud even though the Saudi Blue was still missing.The Israelis want Axel to find the diamond so they can quietly return it to the Saudis to cement their cooperation in assisting in the elimination of terrorist groups in the region. It could also lead to the signing of the stalled Abraham Accords.Israeli intelligence believes the Saudi Blue is in the hands of an expat Thai living in Toronto who has ties to the corrupt bureaucrats and politicians involved in the fake gem scandal that led to the diplomatic rift. Axel's partner, the Yakuza Oyabun, Hibiki Sato, locates several possible suspects: a former Thai restaurateur whose wife is related to high-ranking Thai government officials, a former Thai Deputy Minister of Industry who was responsible for the success of the Thai gem trade, and the son of a Chao pho gangster who runs a chain of successful Muay Thai training facilities.To find the Saudi Blue, Axel and Ari have to dig deep into the thirty-five-year-old cold case that resulted in multiple murders and a diplomatic disaster. They also have to contend with Kamal Jabari, a Saudi Mabahith assassin whose mission is to find and eliminate the people who killed his fellow countrymen.An audacious robbery, multiple assassinations, diplomatic discord, crooked police, corrupt authorities, a Chao pho gangster, rival intelligence agencies and Axel all collide in the search for the Saudi Blue.

In my business, you meet all kinds of people; some, let's call them civilians, are ordinary, what the politicians call "folks;" then there are the characters, the peculiar sorts, people with strange peccadilloes: what an old friend of mine might call, "people who scare the horses." Some, let's call them "the desperate: " come to me because they find themselves in a situation, sometimes of their own making and other times... well... let's just say, imposed upon them. In each case, they have secrets: something they'd like to hide from the authorities and me, things like felonies, misdemeanours, mishaps, or misunderstandings. These cases are always about one of two things: money or women, but sometimes neither money nor women come in the form you'd expect, which brings me to the case of "Finding Lunia."It all started one day when Jacob Lerner, a young Aussie artist nicknamed Garbo, walked into my office carrying a painting. Not just any canvas, but a masterpiece he claimed he'd found in the trash in a Montmartre back alley. If the artwork was the original, it was one of five masterpieces stolen from the Mus e d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris on a warm Spring night in 2010 by the renowned second-story burglar, L'Araign e, The Spider.The painting is a Modigliani portrait of Lunia Czechowska, one of five expressionist masterpieces stolen by L'Araign e and supposedly dumped in the trash by a nervous associate who was supposed to hold onto the canvases for safekeeping, not that anyone in their right mind believed someone would throw one hundred million dollars worth of art into the trash. Usually, I am hired to find some lost, stolen or misappropriated object, but in this case, the item found me, or so my Aussie client claimed. If you believe the story that played out in a Paris courtroom in 2017, then it would make sense to believe the story told to me by Jacob Lerner. All I had to do was prove the painting wasn't a forgery. The trouble is twenty percent of the canvases in the world's most prestigious museums are fakes, and Modigliani is one of the most frequently forged artists. Money and women: this case involves both, but not necessarily in the ways you'd expect.Axel Webb, Private Investigator

The Axel Files: The Disappeared Honjo MasamuneInvestigator Axel Webb is hired by a Japanese Naichō Agent on the recommendation of his Yakuza friend, Hibiki Sato, to find the Honjō Masamune katana that was last seen in 1945 when it was taken from a Mejiro Police Station by a U.S. Army Sergeant. The Sergeant's name was recorded by the police in Japanese. Years later, it is translated back into English. Unfortunately, there is no record of anybody by that name serving in Japan during the post-war Occupation. The katana is not just any sword; it is considered the most perfect sword ever made. It is also a symbol of the Tokugawa shogunate. The Japanese government does not want the lost National Treasure and ancient cultural symbol to fall into the hands of a newly formed Neo-fascist political party determined to gain power and return the country to its pre-war policies.The new political party, the Meiyo Aru Dōmei, is an alliance of fourteen of the most extreme right-wing groups, including politician Junichi Kato, Leader of the Azuna-tō, Yakuza, Fukashi Nakamura, Kumichō of the Meiyo-kai, and Daizō Hokama, Leader of the alliance, the Meiyo Aru Dōmei. Hokama wants to use the lost Honjō Masamune katana as a rallying symbol that his followers and the public can get behind.A Toronto podcaster becomes interested in the lost sword. During his research, he works out the correct name of the Sergeant who picked up the sword from the police station. He announces he'll reveal the soldier's name in his next podcast, but he is murdered before getting the chance. The podcaster's daughter hires Axel to find out who killed her father. Axel and one of Hibiki's closest associates, a sumo-sized Yakuza known as, Ōotoko, track the sword to a Buffalo gangster, Jimmy Kowalski. But the sword is stolen from him by Nakamura's men before Axel and Ōotoko can negotiate a deal.Axel and Ōotoko must deny the extremists their symbol and return it to the government, but the Naichō aren't the only ones that want the sword. Buffalo gangster, Jimmy Kowalski, wants his sword back, no matter the cost. And Daizō Hokama will do anything, including murder, to keep it.

The Axel Files: The History of CardenioVero Nihil VeriusPeople find comfort in their histories. It connects them to a continuum that we are all a part of and thus gives us purpose and hope. Children who've been adopted invariably need to know who they are, where they came from, and how they are connected to the world. But what if it was all wrong? What if everything you thought you knew was a lie: an obfuscation designed to mislead? If this happened to you: wouldn't you demand the truth? Wouldn't you need to know who you really were? And so, English artist Alice Bulbeck and her twin brother Edward approach Axel Webb to find a lost Shakespeare play entitled The History of Cardenio. The play, performed only once for James I, has been lost for four hundred years. It wasn't included in the 1623 First Folio published by Shakespeare's friends after his death. It is the only known play credited to William Shakespeare that has never been published. The question is, why?Controversy has surrounded the authorship of the Shakespeare plays ever since they were written four centuries ago. Many of the Bard's contemporaries have been put forward as the actual author of the plays; one such man is Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, formerly known as Viscount Bulbeck. So why are orphaned twins, born to a Shoreditch bag lady known as Mad Alice, named Edward and Alice Bulbeck. It is the question the twins ask private investigator Axel Webb to answer.If Axel can find Cardenio, he'll discover the truth. But history is not the truth: history is a sloppy goulash of fact, fable, and self-interest. Those whose interests will be tarnished will do anything to stop the truth from coming into the open. One such man is Theo Payne-Foster, CEO of Payne-Foster Publishing, the leading publisher of everything and anything to do with the man we call William Shakespeare. If the truth of who wrote The History of Cardenio ever comes out, it will cost Payne-Foster a fortune. And so, he will do anything to stop that from happening. His main obstacle, the man he must stop, is Axel Webb.

Little Frankie Darling wants revenge, Asami Sato wants her inheritance, and Oyabun Kitsune wants the magic artifact hidden in the one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old cherrywood box. They each pay investigator, Axel Webb, to find the box, but things are not always what they seem, and people always lie to conceal their secret agendas.Two seemingly disparate events, oceans and years apart, cause ripples of consequences that reverberate around the world until they come crashing down on Axel Webb's desk. Axel will do just about anything for a buck, but when Little Frankie and his wooden pal come calling. Axel turns them down. Little Frankie Darling wants Axel to find the men that killed his Pops, that's all, just find them; he'll do the rest. But when Axel asks him what that means, Little Frankie tells him the truth: "Axel, old buddy, I'm going to kill the bastards. That's what I'll do the rest means." As I said, Axel will do almost anything for money, but setting someone up to get whacked isn't in his job description.Webb's specialty is finding things, not people, things that have been lost, stolen or misappropriated by some nefarious means. So when Asami Sato interrupts Axel's breakfast with a case that involves purchasing a cherrywood box of historic Shunga woodblocks, Axel takes the bait. What Sato doesn't tell Axel is: she and Little Frankie are a thing: a very odd thing indeed, considering Little Frankie only speaks through an antique ventriloquist's dummy, but who's to say what attracts people?Infidelity, murder, war, earthquakes, and historic treasures lead Axel from a swanky Toronto hotel to an Oyabun's Tokyo headquarters and on to a high-octane London auction house; in search of what really is hidden in the cherrywood box.

The Axel Files: Florence's FloozyWho Will Find The Savola Diamond, And Who Will Die Trying?What would you do to be rich? Not just rich, but fabulously rich. Perhaps you are that unique soul that has no dreams, no aspirations, no agenda... well if you are, good luck. It must be a very dreary existence. But if you're like the rest of us, you have a fantasy, a vision of what could be, of what you could be. Maybe that dream is selfish, or maybe it's altruistic, or maybe... it's extremist. What if there was a family jewel, an exquisite 133-carat pink piece of perfection, a diamond that historically belonged to you, and what if that gem was stolen and disappeared for eighty years? And what if, rumour had it, that diamond suddenly reappeared? What lengths would you go to get it back? And what if the person who stole that diamond promised it to some very bad people so he could get his family to safety during a war. And what if that person was murdered for making that Faustian deal that he refused to deliver on? What if... What if...When people are desperate, when people run out of options, when people have no other place to go... who do they turn to? Perhaps to a man like Axel Webb. Why? Just ask him. He'll tell you: "I find things; I find out things about things, and I find evidence of things."So it's not surprising that an exiled Italian Conte and his wife, a pair of religiously motivated social extremists, and the great-granddaughter of the man who stole the gem all find their way to Axel Webb's office. International intrigue, religious extremism, self-preservation, and murder are all facets of the glittering pink prize. Who will find it, and at what cost? Or does it even still exist?

A new entry in the Deception series, Defection, details the kidnapping of Rita Daveed, aka Harriet. The MSS needs to retrieve an audio SD card that will reveal the identity of Dragonfly, a Chinese sleeper agent embedded high-up in Vauxhall Cross. Defection is a story of treason, betrayal, and revenge. Three women with varying agendas clash over identifying the elusive spy known only as Dragonfly.Before Rita is taken on orders from Yang Bo, the Director of the UFWD, she manages to leave behind a clue, a postcard from the Bowley Gallery in London, with a cryptic message scrawled on the back, "Find Harry "Yang Hu, an MSS agent and daughter of Yang Bo, decides she's had enough international intrigue. She makes the decision to defect to Great Britain.Hu's get-out-of-China-alive card is her knowledge of who Dragonfly really is. She contacts Arty Pearl, Rita's boyfriend, telling him she knows where Rita is being held. In return, she wants Arty to inform Harry: MI6 has a mole.The Quandary Team, now led by Harry, finds circumstantial evidence to suggest Alice May, the Special Assistant to the Chief of SIS, is Dragonfly. Sir William refuses to believe his longtime assistant is a spy. But he does authorize Harry to arrange Yang Hu's defection on the condition she reveals the true identity of the mole. Unfortunately, Sir William dies of a heart attack before Harry can make the arrangements. The new Acting Chief is a former Cabinet Minister and party hack, Thomas Burgundy-Smith. Burgundy-Smith rescinds the defection order, fires Harry, disbands Quandary, and promotes Alice May.Rita escapes and begins to plot her revenge; Yang Hu puts her Plan B into action, and Alice May continues to disrupt the MI6 operations from her position of influence. Three women, three agendas, and one spy connive, maneuver, and manipulate the intelligence landscape for advantage, security, and revenge.

DiversionAhab's FollyA Tale of Spies, Lies, and Wise-GuysHarry is drawn back into the Quandary orbit when his restaurant partner goes missing, and a dead North Korean RGB agent is found murdered on Benten Island under the torii gate of the Itsukushima Shrine, near Matsumae Castle in Hokkaido, Japan. A Japanese Naicho CIRO Agent, a Mossad, Kidon Agent, and twin brother casino operators, join Harry and his Quandary colleagues to unravel the latest attempt by the Chinese and North Koreans to disrupt the financial institutions in the West. Are the documents found on the dead RGB agent clues to a North Korean kidnapping scheme to raise money to pay their Chinese benefactors for keeping the Kim regime afloat? Or, perhaps, the purpose is merely to keep the North Korean Generals well-stocked in the finest Irish whiskey and French Champagne so the Supreme Leader can sleep with at least one eye closed? On the other hand, maybe it's a smokescreen, a feint attack to hide the real, more nasty and nefarious plot to cause havoc in the situation rooms of Whitehall and the White House. And what does Harry's missing business partner have to do with it? Or, is the missing Sydney Katz just a coincidence, but then Harry doesn't believe in coincidences.

A poisoned accountant, a Chinese painter with an infamous Italian name, the People's Minister of Science and Technology, his brother the Director of the Enterprise Division of the Ministry of State Security, and Harry, the art dealer who moonlights as a Secret Intelligence Service agent are the players in the search for why D. D. Greyson was poisoned by a seventeenth-century Italian cosmetic favoured by disillusioned wives. The business of intelligence is often referred to as information gathering. A simple proposition: gather enough data so the politicians can make informed, rational decisions on things like national security, or on whether or not one of the several competing forces in the world is about to go all ballistic on your ass. But the problem is not too little information, but too much. There are cameras everywhere and facial recognition software that allows agencies to track anyone's movement day and night. The various intelligence services have so much information at their disposal, it becomes difficult to decide what is relevant, actionable, or even real. It is the paradox of choice, paralysis of analysis, or if you prefer, the spy's dilemma. No one knows what is real, what is noise, or what is purposeful misdirection. And so our hero, Harry, becomes a player, not because he is particularly brave or expert in the art of manipulation or even killing, but rather because he has an imagination. He is a man who can conjure reality out of abstraction and that particular skill can be a very important asset when it comes to playing three-player Chinese checkers with competing Beijing interests. The worlds of art and national security collide on the streets of London leaving a trail of burned paintings, dirty payoffs, dead bodies, and corrupted microchips.

On a chilly November New York City morning in 1953, a scientist working for the CIA on psychotropic mind-control experiments walked off the tenth-floor balcony of the Statler Hotel. He had become increasingly disenchanted with the bizarre and incredibly dangerous work he had been doing in service to national security. Despite the patriotic rationale, the scientist felt his life's work was immoral and most certainly illegal. He wanted out, unfortunately, he knew too much, and knowing too much is a very precarious position to be in if you work for a clandestine operation run by America's very own version of Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death. The scientist insisted on getting out, and out he got, through the window and off the balcony of the Statler Hotel on that brisk Fall morning in Manhattan. Was suicide his solution for terminating his deal with the devil or did the devil do him in? It's impossible to say. The evidence although in plain sight is murky and blurred by time and the self-preservation of those responsible. I know what you're thinking, not in my America, not in my beloved United States, not in the home of the brave and the land of the free. Unfortunately, it did happen; it's the kind of thing that happens when governments feel an existential threat. America has a fundamental flaw, an Achilles heel of perspective and attitude; it fails to understand history and its place in it. In the words of philosopher, George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." If you believe it can't happen here, I urge you to take a look at The Wall Street Putsch of 1933, and the name of one of the participants. You might find it informative. It could happen again. America is under siege by a series of existential threats. It's not some crackpot conspiracy theory; it's history. The question I have is: which is more dangerous, the external threat or the internal threat?For those who cling to Senator Barry Goldwater's Cold War aphorism, "Extremism in defence of liberty is no vice." I urge you to remember the past because if you don't, you will be condemned to a future you did not expect and an existence you will be forced to endure.What follows could happen, and maybe will happen if you allow extremism to take hold of the levers of power.

On a chilly November New York City morning in 1953, a scientist working for the CIA on psychotropic mind-control experiments walked off the tenth-floor balcony of the Statler Hotel. He had become increasingly disenchanted with the bizarre and incredibly dangerous work he had been doing in service to national security. Despite the patriotic rationale, the scientist felt his life's work was immoral and most certainly illegal. He wanted out, unfortunately, he knew too much, and knowing too much is a very precarious position to be in if you work for a clandestine operation run by America's very own version of Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death. The scientist insisted on getting out, and out he got, through the window and off the balcony of the Statler Hotel on that brisk Fall morning in Manhattan. Was suicide his solution for terminating his deal with the devil or did the devil do him in? It's impossible to say. The evidence although in plain sight is murky and blurred by time and the self-preservation of those responsible. I know what you're thinking, not in my America, not in my beloved United States, not in the home of the brave and the land of the free. Unfortunately, it did happen; it's the kind of thing that happens when governments feel an existential threat. America has a fundamental flaw, an Achilles heel of perspective and attitude; it fails to understand history and its place in it. In the words of philosopher, George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." If you believe it can't happen here, I urge you to take a look at The Wall Street Putsch of 1933, and the name of one of the participants. You might find it informative. It could happen again. America is under siege by a series of existential threats. It's not some crackpot conspiracy theory; it's history. The question I have is: which is more dangerous, the external threat or the internal threat?For those who cling to Senator Barry Goldwater's Cold War aphorism, "Extremism in defence of liberty is no vice." I urge you to remember the past because if you don't, you will be condemned to a future you did not expect and an existence you will be forced to endure.What follows could happen, and maybe will happen if you allow extremism to take hold of the levers of power.

The world is a dangerous place, and every country has men and women tasked to protect it. These people go by many names: secret agent, intelligence officer, and analyst are just a few. Harry is one such person. He is an analyst. He spends his time reading, researching, and analyzing, followed by writing reports that often never see the light of day.Harry is well educated with a seemingly important job, but Harry is bored. Bored, because analysts never get to be the hero, never get to order cocktails stirred not shaken, and, never, never, get the girl. Harry is frustrated, frustrated because his superiors told him the report he just spent six months working on is to be tabled, and no, he can't have a field operative to work with to follow up.Harry has one very dangerous character flaw, he has an imagination, not something the men on the Top Floor appreciate. Harry needs to prove himself; he needs some excitement in his life, and that excitement comes in a deadly package of intrigue and murder that combines something called the Sister Project with a Russian master spy, H, K. Kyrsa, code name, the Beautiful Rat, and the devastatingly gorgeous Harriet. The question is, is it all just happening in Harry's head, or is there a real plot that needs to be stopped? Is Harry just plain crazy, or are the Russians out to mess with the West one more time? Harry is on his own, not sure who to trust. Are there any good guys in the world of espionage? The only way to find out is to find Kyrsa, the Beautiful Rat. Join Harry in his search for what may not even be real.

The world is a dangerous place, and every country has men and women tasked to protect it. These people go by many names: secret agent, intelligence officer, and analyst are just a few. Harry is one such person. He is an analyst. He spends his time reading, researching, and analyzing, followed by writing reports that often never see the light of day.Harry is well educated with a seemingly important job, but Harry is bored. Bored, because analysts never get to be the hero, never get to order cocktails stirred not shaken, and, never, never, get the girl. Harry is frustrated, frustrated because his superiors told him the report he just spent six months working on is to be tabled, and no, he can't have a field operative to work with to follow up.Harry has one very dangerous character flaw, he has an imagination, not something the men on the Top Floor appreciate. Harry needs to prove himself; he needs some excitement in his life, and that excitement comes in a deadly package of intrigue and murder that combines something called the Sister Project with a Russian master spy, H, K. Kyrsa, code name, the Beautiful Rat, and the devastatingly gorgeous Harriet. The question is, is it all just happening in Harry's head, or is there a real plot that needs to be stopped? Is Harry just plain crazy, or are the Russians out to mess with the West one more time? Harry is on his own, not sure who to trust. Are there any good guys in the world of espionage? The only way to find out is to find Kyrsa, the Beautiful Rat. Join Harry in his search for what may not even be real.