David Lakeman

The discovery in the Sahara Desert of a world war two military vehicle containing the remains of two former Luftwaffe officers twenty years after they went missing on a covert mission opens up interest in a long dead MI6 file concerning the mystery of their disappearance and post war Nazi plans in the event that they lost the war.

It also details life in the Nazi hierarchy and wartime Berlin and introduces the reader to the personalities of Reichmarschall Hermann Goering and Gruppen-fuehrer Heinrich Mueller, the head of the Gestapo who disappeared at the end of the war and who was, after the suicides of Goering and Himmler, the highest ranking wanted Nazi war criminal. No trace of him has ever been found nor any definitive proof from the many conflicting rumours of his death or existence. This plot reveals what could have happened to him.

The novel encompasses the time period of twenty years from 1942 to 1963 detail-ing the wartime activities of Walter von Lutzdorf, the most senior of the casual-ties found, and a prominent member of an aristocratic, anti Nazi German family. It details the tragedies they suffered in wartime and how they carried on after the loss of their son Walter, the heir to the Barony.

The action takes place from Europe to South Africa and back as well as from Europe to South American and back to North Africa.

It describes the emergence of the secret SS organization known as ODESSA which was instrumental in helping many ex SS wanted war criminals evade cap-ture. The plot contends that the ODESSA continued to grow after the war in a clandestine manner and evolved into an even more sinister and powerful organi-zation called the Brotherhood of the Blood, infiltrating all levels of business and politics in post war Germany with the aim of rebuilding

Germany into the Fourth Reich.

After the discovery of the bodies a two pronged expedition by land and air was organized to recover them which was infiltrated by members the Brotherhood resulting in a confrontation in the desert between them and MI6 over the posses-sion of important documentation which would expose the extent of the Brother-hood and its aims and ambitions.