During World War Two, gold extracted from Jewish inmates who had been interned and murdered in concentraton camps, was made into ingots, embossed with a swastika and placed in the vaults of the Vatican. This gold was intended to be secretly handed back to the Jewish people by Pope Pius VII without Mussolini’s knowledge. To ensure that Mussolini prevented this happening, His Holiness the Pope, the Vatican and the administrative officers took the precaution to jettison and temporarily deposit several tons of this Nazi gold on to the island of Malta by Italian Navy E-boats and transport to the catacombs in Rabat, smelted down and made into bells and to this day nobody knows where they are.
Sir James Brown, ex-Foreign Office and long retired, had been working for MI6 at their secret headquarters in Oxford Street, London, during the war years. He is becoming increasingly disturbed when he sees and immediately recognizes Captain Lorenzo Giovanni Marino, alias Rolando Donatello, code-named “The Condor” by MI6, and Herman Klaus Schneider, alias Jack Smith, John Lobkowicz and code-named “The Hare”, named also by MI6, both of whom were trained by the British to become double agents. Sir James convinces himself they are in London for one reason only: to take revenge on those MI6 officers who had played a significant part in their arrests and subsequent enforced risks, including the threats to their wives and families if they should defect.
Even when, ironically, Mary, his wife, suggested they spend a week in Malta, as soon as they arrived on the Island, the demons which had begun to plague him in London persisted and during an otherwise pleasant and often amusing holiday when they filled each day with sightseeing and meeting an assortment of fellow holidaymakers, it didn’t make any difference. From the very first day, each time he went to sleep, his dreams took him back to those days and weeks during 1942, following the simultaneous progress of Captain Marino and Herman Klaus Schneider right up to the culmination of the roles they played during the war.
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