The Malta Key
Chapter 1 The rain lashed against the heavy, timber-framed windows of the study, a rhythmic drumming that did not interrupt the silence of the house. It was the kind of silence that settles during a storm, or perhaps, after a life has been extinguished. Villa Lindenhof, with its solid, storybook walls and grounded, Teutonic charm, stood as a quiet testament to a world that was slipping away. Gertie stood before the heavy mahogany desk, the telegram crumpled in her hand, its paper thin and brittle as dried leaves. "Der Führer has ordered my daddy to kill himself." The words did not make sense, not really, until the weight of them hit her in the chest like a physical blow. Her father, the Desert Fox, the man who had commanded armies across the burning sands of Africa, was being commanded by a man in a flat cap to end his own life. A man who saw himself as a conductor of empires, but was merely a stage player in a tragedy of his own making. A strange, jagged sensation rose in h...