The Elegant Lie

Sam Eastland

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571335701
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

The year is 1949.
In the bombed-out ruins of Cologne, Hanno Dasch is king.
Director of the most successful black market operation in post-war Germany, Dasch has kept his clients supplied with goods so extravagant and rare that they were almost impossible to find even at the height of Germany's conquests.
Nobody but Dasch, his enigmatic daughter and the war criminal he keeps as his bodyguard know how he does it.
None of this has escaped the attention of Allied Intelligence, who face not only the systemic corruption of a country where everything is in short supply, but the growing threat of Stalin's KGB.
Fearing that Dasch will soon expand his business to include dealings with Russia, and invite the further meddling of Russian agents in the west, the CIA sets in motion an undercover operation to infiltrate and, ultimately, destroy Dasch's empire.
A disgraced American Army officer, Nathan Carter, is recruited to approach Dasch and to ingratiate himself with promises of stolen army supplies.
As Carter moves further and further into the labyrinth of Dasch's world, it soon becomes clear that the black market ring has already been compromised, but by someone even more dangerous than the Russians.
Carter stumbles upon a counterfeiting ring, with whom Dasch has unwittingly gone into business, which seems to have been created with the sole purpose of destroying the Soviet economy, something it could easily do with the superlative quality of the forged bills it is producing. With Carter caught in the middle, and facing the danger that his cover might be blown at any moment, a race begins between the Russian and American spy agencies to uncover who is responsible, before the situation escalates to war.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• When the guard came to his cell…
• That evening Carter was lying…
• It was Carter’s own father,…
• In his room at the Hotel Europa…
• It was late October 1944 when …
• Although many of the skills…
• In the cold, grey dawn…
• The Minerva bar, where…
• Back at the compound…
• When Carter walked out of the farmhouse
• He has what?
• When Major Wharton stepped in…
• The sun had not yet risen above…
• You came to warn us?
• After the meeting with Eckberg…
• While a freezing wind blew through…
• The night of Galton’s arrest…
• The headquarters of US Military Police
• After his meeting with Wilby…
• Following his discharge from the army…
• The year was 1948…
• The stranger was only a hundred…
• The day after his staged arrest…
• Leaving Teresa to nurse her injured…
• It took another twenty-four hours…
• One hour later, Carter arrived…
• Babcock was sitting with his feet up…
• In the grand foyer of the…
• About the Author
• Also by the Author
• Copyright