Bøger af Steve Schach

In his hotel room in Kyoto, Japan, Oliver Thompson-a highly successful CPA who specializes in offshore trusts-finds the blood-covered dead body of Yoko Azuma, a bellhop, lying in his bed. He immediately finds the hotel manager, but when the two head to the elevator, the doors open to reveal an unscathed Yoko. Strange things continue to happen that put Oliver's and others' lives in danger, so Oliver consults the police, who cannot seem to corroborate anything he says. At first, Oliver wonders if his good fortune has finally come to an end. Is he going crazy? He consults a Kyoto private detective, who suggests that Oliver is the victim of a large-scale conspiracy. But what is the aim of the conspiracy? And why are the conspirators plaguing Oliver?

Dr. Ulrich zu Westerheimer is a German-born nuclear physicist working on the American atomic bomb project in Los Alamos. In 1943, he flies to Novosibirsk in Siberia for a meeting with his younger brother, Carl Friedrich, a fanatical Nazi who is also a nuclear physicist. Carl Friedrich was captured at Stalingrad and is to be flown to Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia with a Soviet peace proposal for Hitler. Hidden in the briefcase is a report by Nobel Prize winner Dr. James Chadwick regarding the infeasibility of a plutonium bomb. The report is genuine, but wrong. The Americans want to deceive Hitler with the report. But the NKGB (the Soviet Secret Police) play some deceptive tricks of their own.

Empress Maria Theresa of Austria has sent secret agents Paul Müller and Franz Braun to Prussia to assassinate King Frederick the Great. The King's preoccupation with the visiting musical master, Johann Sebastian Bach, offers a host of opportunities for the two secret agents to make inroads. However, the pair mistakenly underestimates the unscrupulous and cruel Prussian Minister of Police, Baron Manfred von Hochenheimer. Paul and Franz concoct plans to deceive the Minister, but their trickeries merely thwart their own efforts. The two conclude that, in order to kill Frederick the Great, they will have to first eliminate the man who so staunchly protects the royal subject. They carry out a revised strategy and unexpectedly receive aid from an insurgent on his own crusade. However, each small success Franz and Paul achieve seems to set them further back from their ultimate goal of slaying the King. Pursued by Prussian border guards, they are forced to flee Berlin on foot and seek the guidance of their prudent spymaster. In the safe haven of Vienna, the three men employ various tactics for gaining intelligence on the King. Ordered back to Prussia to finalize their mission, Paul and Franz must fool overzealous innkeepers, foresters, soldiers and secret police. Can they outwit the Prussian forces and attack the throne? Or will their fraudulent behavior have a rebound effect that propels them toward a future of torture and execution?

Hector Longstreet should have retired years ago, but he still teaches Latin and Greek at a school in England because it's the middle of the Second World War, and the younger schoolmasters are serving in the military. However, Hector's real interest in life is composing cryptic crosswords. His puzzles, published in a British Sunday newspaper, end up in the hands of the Germans. Is he passing secrets to the enemy via the answers to his fiendishly difficult clues, or perhaps via the clues themselves? Or is the crossword traitor Bridget Hawkesbury, another composer of cryptic puzzles, who was trapped in Germany when war broke out? Bridget is imprisoned in an internment camp in Upper Silesia. The camp commandant gives her Hector's puzzles to solve, after which he forwards her solutions to German Military Intelligence in Berlin. And what about the crossword set by MI5 officers to inform the Germans where the D-Day landings will take place? This fast-paced thriller has clues aplenty-but few answers until the exciting finish.