The Road to Ithaca
Moscow, spring of 1941. Hitler is about to invade the country, yet the German-Russian pact is still valid. All participate in a complex dance of friendly double-talk, while sabers rattle in the background. In this devious atmosphere Martin Bora, aide to the German embassy military attaché, is charged with an odd mission: traveling thousands of miles to the island of Crete - newly in Nazi hands - to acquire precious local wine as a gift to Lavrenti Beria, the all-powerful, alcoholic head of Stalin’s secret police.
Bora has to grin and bear the unheroic charge, and takes off for the Mediterranean. As soon as he lands on Crete, however, his orders change dramatically. Aside from securing Beria’s wine, he must urgently investigate a complicated criminal case threatening to damage German relations with neutral Switzerland. An affluent Swiss scholar, friend to SS-chief Himmler, was brutally murdered along with his Greek household. All clues lead to a platoon of trigger-happy German paratroopers... But is this the truth?
Carrying Joyce’s Ulysses in his pocket, Bora will enterprise a perilous odyssey of his own, lacking in none of the Greek hero’s mythical encounters: labyrinth, Minotaur, sirens, giants and evil winds. An additional problem comes potentially from his female travel companion, a Texas-born archeologist with a proverbial curl on her forehead...
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