XPD

Built around the twin events of secret meetings Winston Churchill was supposed to have had with Hitler negotiating for peace (with UK) on the one hand, and stolen German fortunes and documents from “the Kaiseroda mine” on the other. It’s now 35 years after the war (World War II) in 1979 and a historical movie to be based on the missing treasures is in the offing in California. It sets alarms ringing across the secret services of the UK and Russia. The Russians want the documents stolen from the mine, including the “Hitler Minutes” that documented the secret meetings, for its propaganda value, while the British want them also but for the opposite reason. They want nobody to know about them, anyone that did must die! The reason being that Churchill was supposed to have bargained away to Germany some of its territories, and so his fame would have been rubished if these countries learn about this. XPD is the term they use for such official killing and it meant expedient demise.

The key actors include Boyd Stuart the British spy who flew around from London to the US to Europe; Willi Kleiber ex-Nazi now working for the Russians in secret; his ex-Nazi colleague Max Breslow now a US citizen and brought in as the movie director; Charles Stein one of the US soldiers that masterminded the theft of the fortune and documents that suddenly made him rich after the war, who is now pursued by the British and Russian spies for the documents.

After a lot of violence and suspense the British do obtain the Hitler Minutes. And both Kleiber and Stein lose their lives.

May 30, 2015. Review initially written in 2008. Novel first published in 1981 by Hutchinson & Co, this Panther Books (Granada) edition being published in 1982; ISBN 0-586-05447-2.