The Nuremberg Enigma

Berlin. April 1945. The Führer is missing, and so are his uranium stocks. Could Hitler be alive? Stalin wants a body and needs uranium for his nuclear bomb. The British will have none of it. The hunt is on. For the British: Peter Birkett of T Force, the youngest captain in the British Army. For the Soviet Union: Captain Elizaveta Terisova, Stalin’s favourite Komsomol maiden. One mission. Two agents – both smart, resourceful and ruthless. Both deeply conflicted. No rules. It is “Stunde Null”, or Ground Zero. The Thousand-Year Reich is imploding, its sole legacy a vertiginous vacuum. No state, no law, no moral certainties. No shelter, no food, no fuel. Hardly any men. Only betrayal, fear and hunger. Life is cheap. Soon, an International Military Tribunal will convene in Nuremberg to pass judgment on the Nazi elite. It is beset by divisions between the victorious Allies. A rampant Göring is running rings round the prosecution. Anyway, what could this trial possibly mean without Hitler in the dock? Against the backdrop of a convulsed Europe, in addition to their own ghosts and demons, Peter Birkett and Elizaveta Terisova are confronted with the horror of war, the moral and physical dangers of occupation and the peculiar plight of women in combat zones. They are baffled by the realpolitik which masquerades as international law. Which of their moral principles, if any, can they afford to uphold? What will become of nineteen-year-old Susette, Peter Birkett’s German girlfriend? What happens if, out of myriad historical facts painstakingly researched over several years, a couple get imperceptibly tweaked? As we realise that what has been is never fixed, nor totally distinct from what could have been, this riveting historical thriller is remorselessly subverting our view of history. Woven together ever more tightly, disparate strands inexorably converge towards an explosive denouement as shocking as the unforgettable finale of Yves Bonavero’s acclaimed first novel, “Something in the Sea”.