A Suitcase in Berlin

1932: Berlin newspaper reporter Leo Goldberg joins the New York Post in an exchange program. In the meantime the Nazis take over Germany. They send Leo a letter: "As a Jew, you are no longer acceptable on the staff of a German Newspaper. Heil Hitler." Leo's Grandfather Salomon, former head of the now disowned Goldberg bank, tells Leo of gold bars at the confiscated Goldberg villa in Berlin, hidden as bricks in the wine cellar by an ancestor at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. If Leo can recover them, it will help him to rescue his young wife Paula, captain of the Berlin Scala Girls who has gone into hiding. She has ridiculed a Nazi official who wants her arrested. Against all odds, Leo makes his way back to Berlin. He finds the gold bars - and he finds Paula. She is now the mistress of the high ranking Gestapo man, Otto Ravenbroich. Paula's father, Professor Isidor Fischer, is to operate the brain tumor of an important Hitler party official. It must not be known that a Jew operates on a Nazi. Ravenbroich blackmails Paula to be his mistress. He promises to give her and her father an exit visa after the successful operation. Leo Goldberg tricks his way back into the family's villa. As the fake Sondergruppenf hrer von Bergolt who is responsible only to Hitler himself, Leo declares the premises as headquarters of the fake Sondergruppe I. He and Paula use the villa to shelter Jews. With the help of the hidden gold and a corrupt US Vice Consul, Paula and Leo take a bus-load of twenty-eight Berlin Jews as a group of American tourists on an adventurous trip across Germany. Also fascinating: "END GAME", far more than the usual thriller.

Berlin born Pierre Frei is best known for his international success ＂Berlin, a novel＂, which has been translated into many languages, amongst them Chinese and Japanese. After reading literature and journalism, the author went abroad to report from Cairo, New York, Rome and London as an independent newspaper correspondent. Amongst his many books are ＂Interpreter＂, the memoirs of Hitler’s and Mussolini’s interpreter Eugen Dollmann, ＂La Main du Ciel＂, a Vatican thriller, ＂I am a Berliner＂, how Kennedy escaped an assassination, ＂The Coburg Diaries＂, the death of a Princess. Pierre Frei lives with his French wife, a well known interior designer, at their château in the south west of France.